AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian warplanes bombed rebel positions on the outskirts of the central city of Homs on Tuesday to try to break a siege of an army base housing dozens of soldiers, opposition activists said.
Two rebels were killed and 10 wounded at al-Mubarkiyeh, a village 6 km (4 miles) south of Homs, where rebels have besieged a compound guarding a tank maintenance facility, they said.
Opposition sources said the facility had been used to shell Sunni Muslim villages near the Lebanese border.
There was no word on Syrian army casualties in the fighting, which followed a failed four-day truce proposed by peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to mark the Eid al-Adha Muslim holiday.
The truce lasted only a few hours and Eid al-Adha ended on Monday with a wave of air strikes on Sunni regions where rebels have slowly made gains. Clashes raged on across the country.
"The warplanes hit al-Mubarkiyeh five times this morning. Army bulldozers had already razed the village in March," said activist Nader al-Husseini by telephone from near the area.
Syria's military, stretched thin by the struggle to keep control, has made increasing use of air power against opposition areas, including those in the main cities of Damascus and Aleppo. Insurgents lack effective anti-aircraft weapons.
Al-Mubarkiyeh was one several Sunni areas in and around Homs flattened by the army after troops captured the rebel-held Baba Amr neighbourhood in February. Rebels have since re-established a foothold in nearby farmland, trying to cut army supply lines.
Most of Homs's one million residents have fled since the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad began in March. It is home to majority Sunnis as well as members of Assad's Shi'ite-related Alawite sect which has dominated power since the 1960s.
(Reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis, Amman newsroom; Editing by Alistair Lyon)
ScienceDaily (Oct. 29, 2012) ? Using a new method for precisely controlling the deposition of carbon, researchers have demonstrated a technique for connecting multi-walled carbon nanotubes to the metallic pads of integrated circuits without the high interface resistance produced by traditional fabrication techniques.
Based on electron beam-induced deposition (EBID), the work is believed to be the first to connect multiple shells of a multi-walled carbon nanotube to metal terminals on a semiconducting substrate, which is relevant to integrated circuit fabrication. Using this three-dimensional fabrication technique, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology developed graphitic nanojoints on both ends of the multi-walled carbon nanotubes, which yielded a 10-fold decrease in resistivity in its connection to metal junctions.
The technique could facilitate the integration of carbon nanotubes as interconnects in next-generation integrated circuits that use both silicon and carbon components. The research was supported by the Semiconductor Research Corporation, and in its early stages, by the National Science Foundation. The work was reported online October 4, 2012, by the journal IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology.
"For the first time, we have established connections to multiple shells of carbon nanotubes with a technique that is amenable to integration with conventional integrated circuit microfabrication processes," said Andrei Fedorov, a professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. "Connecting to multiple shells allows us to dramatically reduce the resistance and move to the next level of device performance."
In developing the new technique, the researchers relied on modeling to guide their process parameters. To make it scalable for manufacturing, they also worked toward technologies for isolating and aligning individual carbon nanotubes between the metal terminals on a silicon substrate, and for examining the properties of the resulting structures. The researchers believe the technique could also be used to connect multi-layered graphene to metal contacts, though their published research has so far focused on carbon nanotubes.
The low-temperature EBID process takes place in a scanning electron microscope (SEM) system modified for material deposition. The SEM's vacuum chamber is altered to introduce precursors of the materials that researchers would like to deposit. The electron gun normally used for imaging of nanostructures is instead used to generate low energy secondary electrons when the high energy primary electrons impinge on the substrate at carefully chosen locations. When the secondary electrons interact with hydrocarbon precursor molecules introduced into the SEM chamber, carbon is deposited in desired locations.
Unique to the EBID process, the deposited carbon makes a strong, chemically-bonded connection to the ends of the carbon nanotubes, unlike the weakly-coupled physical interface made in traditional techniques based on metal evaporation. Prior to deposition, the ends of the nanotubes are opened using an etching process, so the deposited carbon grows into the open end of the nanotube to electronically connect multiple shells. Thermal annealing of the carbon after deposition converts it to a crystalline graphitic form that significantly improves electrical conductivity.
"Atom-by-atom, we can build the connection where the electron beam strikes right near the open end of the carbon nanotubes," Fedorov explained. "The highest rate of deposition occurs where the concentration of precursor is high and there are a lot of secondary electrons. This provides a nanoscale sculpturing tool with three-dimensional control for connecting the open ends of carbon nanotubes on any desired substrate."
Multi-walled carbon nanotubes offer the promise of higher information delivery throughput for certain interconnects used in electronic devices. Researchers have envisioned a future generation of hybrid devices based on traditional integrated circuits but using interconnects based on carbon nanotubes.
Until now, however, resistance at the connections between the carbon structures and conventional silicon electronics has been too high to make the devices practical.
"The big challenge in this field is to make a connection not just to a single shell of a carbon nanotube," said Fedorov. "If only the outer wall of a carbon nanotube is connected, you really don't gain much because most of the transmission channel is under-utilized or not utilized at all."
The technique developed by Fedorov and his collaborators produces record low resistivity at the connection between the carbon nanotube and the metal pad. The researchers have measured resistance as low as approximately 100 Ohms -- a factor of ten lower than the best that had been measured with other connection techniques.
"This technique gives us many new opportunities to go forward with integrating these carbon nanostructures into conventional devices," he said. "Because it is carbon, this interface has an advantage because its properties are similar to those of the carbon nanotubes to which they are providing a connection."
The researchers don't know exactly how many of the carbon nanotube shells are connected, but based on resistance measurements, they believe at least 10 of the approximately 30 conducting shells are contributing to electrical conduction.
However, handling carbon nanotubes poses a significant challenge to their use as interconnects. When formed through the electric arc technique, for example, carbon nanotubes are produced as a tangle of structures with varying lengths and properties, some with mechanical defects. Techniques have been developed to separate out single nanotubes, and to open their ends.
Fedorov and his collaborators -- current and former graduate students Songkil Kim, Dhaval Kulkarni, Konrad Rykaczewski and Mathias Henry, along with Georgia Tech professor Vladimir Tsukruk -- developed a method for aligning the multi-walled nanotubes across electronic contacts using focused electrical fields in combination with a substrate template created through electron beam lithography. The process has a significantly improved yield of properly aligned carbon nanotubes, with a potential for scalability over a large chip area.
Once the nanotubes are placed into their positions, the carbon is deposited using the EBID process, followed by graphitization. The phase transformation in the carbon interface is monitored using Raman spectroscopy to ensure that the material is transformed into its optimal nanocrystalline graphite state.
"Only by making advances in each of these areas can we achieve this technological advance, which is an enabling technology for nanoelectronics based on carbon materials," he said. "This is really a critical step for making many different kinds of devices using carbon nanotubes or graphene."
Before the new technique can be used on a large scale, researchers will have to improve their technique for aligning carbon nanotubes and develop EBID systems able to deposit connectors on multiple devices simultaneously. Advances in parallel electron beam systems may provide a way to mass-produce the connections, Fedorov said.
"A major amount of work remains to be done in this area, but we believe this is possible if industry becomes interested," he noted. "There are applications where integrating carbon nanotubes into circuits could be very attractive."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Georgia Institute of Technology, Research Communications, via Newswise.
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Journal Reference:
S. Kim, D. Kulkarni, K. Rykaczewski, M. Henry, V. Tsukruk, A. Fedorov. Fabrication of an Ultra-Low-Resistance Ohmic Contact to MWCNT-Metal Interconnect using Graphitic Carbon by Electron Beam Induced Deposition (EBID). IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology, 2012; : 1 DOI: 10.1109/TNANO.2012.2220377
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
A man walks down a flooded street ahead of Hurricane Sandy on Monday in Atlantic City, New Jersey. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's emergency declaration shut down the city's casinos and 30,000 residents were ordered to evacuate. The storm, which threatens 50 million people in the eastern third of the U.S., is expected to bring days of rain, high winds and possibly heavy snow.
NEW YORK (AP) ? A construction crane is dangling off a luxury high-rise in Manhattan, prompting a large emergency response as a huge storm bears down on New York City.
The crane is at West 57th Street. No injuries are reported.
The city has ordered people in neighboring buildings to move to lower floors. Streets have been cleared.
The call came in around 2:30 p.m. Monday as conditions worsened from the approaching Hurricane Sandy. Meteorologists say winds that far off the ground might have been close to 95 mph at the time.
The Buildings Department had suspended construction work at 5 p.m. Saturday. It reminded contractors and property owners to secure construction sites and buildings.
A six-bedroom penthouse at the building, called One57, is under contract for a reported $90 million.
You are here: Home / Outdoors / What You?ve Got To Know About Base Layers Clothing
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Reference Directory of K-12 public, private, and charter schools in all 50 states. http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/schools/
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ECS: James Bryant Conant Award The Education Commission of the States James Bryant Conant Award is bestowed upon individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to improving education across the country in significant ways such as: providing leadership on groundbreaking task forces or committees; publishing works and/or conducting research that profoundly influenced thinking on public education in the United States and/or had a substantial impact on policy; shepherding groundbreaking education reform through the legislative process; and/or demonstrating exemplary service as a public figure or elected official deeply involved in improving education for all. Maximum award: recognition. Deadline: November 21, 2012. http://www.ecs.org/html/aboutECS/Awards.htm
Architecture for Humanity: Guerrilla Green Sustainable Showdown The Guerrilla Green Sustainable Showdown invites teams of middle and high school students across the U.S. to bring innovative solutions to their school buildings, outdoor spaces, and activities. Maximum award: $10,000. Eligibility: middle or high school teams of one to four people. Deadline: December 3, 2012. http://guerrillagreen.architectureforhumanity.org/
Coalition for Community Schools: Individual Community Schools Awards The Coalition for Community Schools is now accepting nominations for its Community Schools of Excellence Awards. The Individual Community Schools Awards will go to schools that have been operating as community schools for at least three years and have demonstrated success. Three individual schools will be recognized. Maximum award: $2,500. Eligibility: schools that have been operating as community schools for at least three years. Deadline: December 15, 2012. http://www.communityschools.org/2013_community_school_awards_for_excellence.aspx
Coalition for Community Schools: Community School Initiative Awards The Community School Initiative Awards will go to initiatives with joint efforts between schools and community stakeholders that have organized multiple community school sites with a strong commitment to scaling up across the community or school systems. Up to two initiatives will be recognized. Maximum award: $5,000. Eligibility: school systems operating more than one community school for more than three years, which has both community leadership and an intermediary organization (e.g., a CBO, institution of higher education, United Way, consortium of organizations, local education fund, local government, etc.) Deadline: December 15, 2012. http://www.communityschools.org/2013_community_school_awards_for_excellence.aspx
Educational CyberPlayGround, Inc.? strives to help Teachers, Parents, and Policy Makers: Learn about Music, Teaching, Internet, Technology, Literacy, Arts and Linguistics in the K12 classroom.
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ScienceDaily (Oct. 30, 2012) ? Archaeologists leading the analysis of human remains found in the Search for Richard III have commented on the second skeleton found at the Church of Grey Friars in Leicester.
The University of Leicester, in association with Leicester City Council and the Richard III Society, is leading the Search for Richard III. In September, archaeologists disclosed they discovered two skeletons, one of which is being subjected to rigorous laboratory tests.
The University team say they have not yet examined the second set of disarticulated remains of a female found under a car park in Leicester city centre.
Mathew Morris, University of Leicester Archaeological Services' site director said: "It wasn't unexpected finding the remains of a woman buried in the friary. We know of at least one woman connected with the friary, Ellen Luenor, a possible benefactor and founder with her husband, Gilbert.
"However the friary would have administered to the poor, sick and homeless as well, and without knowing where Ellen Luenor had been originally buried we are unlikely to ever know who the remains are of, or why she was buried there."
Richard Buckley, lead archaeologist of the Grey Friars project and co-director of the University of Leicester Archaeological Services, said that at some point in the past, the bones had been disturbed and subsequently reburied. He said the skeleton may have been dug up by a gardener when the site was the garden of a mansion house in the 17th century. The remains were then reburied at a higher level than the church floor.
Mr Buckley said: "These bones comprise what is known as 'charnel' and there is evidence on many sites of respect being according to disturbed human remains which were carefully gathered up and reburied or stored in charnel houses."
Philippa Langley, who conceived the search, undertook extensive desk-based research during the three years it took to launch the Leicester dig project. During this time she and Dr John Ashdown-Hill established seven potential named burials in addition to King Richard's in the church of the Grey Friars. Of these further seven, only one was female, that of Ellen Luenor, wife of Gilbert Luenor, a possible founder and benefactor of the Grey Friars.
Philippa said: "It was a tenuous connection but an intriguing one only mentioned, as far as we could tell, by the 16th century historian John Stow."
At the moment of discovery at the dig, Philippa was excited to see another element of the history of the Grey Friars possibly coming to life, in that they may indeed be the remains of Ellen who would have been buried around 1250.
She added: "It's a slim chance that they could be Ellen, but at least we have a female name to attribute to them and at the moment there is no other."
The university is currently analysing another skeleton -- the only set of articulated remains exhumed on the site -- which has apparent battle wounds and curvature of the spine, and could be the remains of Richard III. The University has made it clear that it is not saying it has found Richard III -- rather that the skeleton has characteristics that warrant extensive further detailed examination and that the search has moved from an archaeological to a laboratory phase.
The University has added that the outcomes of its investigations are expected in January- and that possible outcomes are:
? The scientific research suggests it is Richard III
? The scientific research suggests it is not Richard III
? The scientific research is inconclusive and therefore conclusions may be drawn from the evidence available.
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Arranging Foriegn Storage Space On The Cell Phone S
Creating several cloud safe-keeping records is often a attractive method to raise your smartphones safe-keeping capacity. Every accounts an individual develop can provide you with concerning 6 or 7 gb involving free space. Whom wouldn't would like much more free space offered just how costly cell phone safe-keeping could be. nOnetheless , this particular free storage space gets to be more hard to organize because amount of records an individual join raises. You don't only need to handle an increasing number of devices , nevertheless , you also need to down load and also discover ways to make use of a new software for each and every new accounts. Fortunately , it has an software to solve this problem. The finest software for planning and also handling the cloud safe-keeping is SanDisk memory space sector. Memory space sector will allow you to handle one of the most well-known cloud safe-keeping providers almost all beneath a single specific software. This protects you needing to down load several programs and also through needing to swap among different programs whenever you should access another safe-keeping push.this makes less complicated to discover ways to takes place cloud devices considering that your entire cloud devices is now able to handled beneath a single incorporated record boss. The actual record boss can sort documents in your case determined by type--making it easier for you to identify audio , movie , and also photos. It also keeps an individual organized. As an additional profit , the actual software in addition enables you to join new records through lots of the major cloud safe-keeping providers almost all from the inside of the actual software. This protects which you trip to the internet browser and also streamlines the multi-cloud push application. Because remarkable because they major features seem , the actual software is much more remarkable when you see it for doing things. Check out this particular movie manufactured by SanDisk: The subsequent actions will assist you to install SanDisk memory space sector and also create the cloud devices. 1. Start away from beginning with getting the actual software for your device and after that and can install. It is possible to down load the actual software with a QR scanning device for you to check the actual QR signal for your appropriate or else you are able to use the url to obtain the software on the amazon. Com software retailer. 2. Next click the actual + online safe-keeping switch. This will likely allow you to choose from all of the backed cloud push computers. At present , Picasa, Dropbox, fb , yahoo paperwork (yahoo push ), SugarSync, box , and also skies push through 'microsoft' are common backed. Some distinctive providers who are not backed consist of amazon. Com cloud push and also flickr. 3. After an individual include every cloud push you'll be caused for you to signing in or perhaps develop a merchant account. nOw continue with the onscreen instructions to put together your current records and also sign up for new records. 4. Some of those providers asks one to firewood straight into the electronic mail and also verify the records. This particular ensures that men and women are not just using bots to subscribe for the
bunch of false records. When you have confirmed all of the records a good recommended action would be to move through and also un-install virtually any programs that might be created redundant now that you have memory space sector. By way of example it is possible to un-install the Dropbox software or perhaps SugarSync software. After including all of the different cloud devices you have to have an additional 28 gb involving free cloud space. This does not add the space directed at an individual through Picasa or perhaps fb. When you have completed these simple actions after you are ready to make use of exactly what cloud safe-keeping is offering. Many of the cloud safe-keeping suppliers like DropBox will provide you with room for doing special events for example tests beta computer software , competing vague ideas , or perhaps scavenger tracks. Additionally they give you room for referring your friends , filling out tutorials , and also adding the actual DropBox pc request. After obtaining this room one of the primary stuff that you need to accomplish should be to back the micro sd card. The most effective destination for a retailer photos would be in your fb accounts and also Picasa accounts because those people a couple of providers are usually a lesser amount of adaptable all of which will just retailer photos and videos in your case. If you've amazon. Com cloud push utilize any particular one for you to retailer the audio because amazon. Com cloud music includes a built-in music player. A good place for you to retailer your entire microsoft office documents for example milliseconds phrase , power point , shine , pdfs , and other company papers is yahoo paperwork (yahoo push ). Keeping microsoft office documents there will probably allow you to utilize yahoo paperwork online for you to modify and also see those people record types. Anything else could be stored how we think acceptable.
The strongest function involving cloud safe-keeping is accessibility. rIght after keeping your entire documents inside atmosphere you need to now be capable to access your entire documents through virtually any gadget which has entry to the world wide web. What this means is it is possible to require a photograph using your mobile phone after which see at a later date any pill. You can obtain a song from the pc and also listen to it at the job in your mobile phone. You can file a video in your mobile phone after which view it at a later date the television. If you decide on a fresh mobile phone all of the documents from the previous mobile phone may be easily synced for your new mobile phone while using drive of some links. This can be a appeal of cloud storage--you arrive at access your entire documents through everywhere.
Ahead of the big Windows Phone soiree later today, Nokia has now confirmed that Verizon will be getting the Lumia 822, which will its 4G portfolio in the coming months. While the fact that a Big Red version of Nokia's second Windows Phone 8 device wasn't the best-kept secret, Nokia's proud press release (after the break) finally confirms it -- although it neglects to mention any prices or dates. The phone will arrive in black, white and grey options -- all LTE-ready, with those interchangeable covers also incoming. That slightly modest 4.3-inch screen WVGA screen will also try to make the most of those colorful tiles -- and we'll likely get play with one very soon.
NEVER mind the bitter end - it is the bitter beginning of an infection that triggers an immune response.
We know that taste receptors on the tongue detect bitter foods, but there are also identical taste receptors in the upper airway. Noam Cohen at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and his team think they know why.
They grew cell cultures from sinus tissue samples collected from surgical patients, and found that bitter taste receptors in the tissue picked up the presence of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacterium that can cause pneumonia. The sinus tissue responded by producing nitric oxide to kill the invading microbes (Journal of Clinical Investigation, doi.org/jj4).
"Certain people have strong innate defences against these bacteria, which is based on their ability to detect bitterness," says Cohen. "Others who don't really 'taste' these bitter compounds have a weakened defence."
The research could lead to nasal sprays designed to activate the taste receptors and boost people's natural defences against sinus infections.
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We've seen web portals that let you search for TV and movies on the internet across different services, but a new update for Roku is bringing that capability directly to its set-top boxes. Whether you're searching by movie, TV show, actor or director it will sniff out related content across some of the higher profile services it offers, including Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Hulu Plus, Crackle, Vudu and HBO Go. The new Roku Search function is front and center (once your second gen HD or higher player has been updated to the latest version) and in our tests worked quickly, pulling up content wherever it was available and mentioning if it was available in HD. The only downside is navigating the onscreen keyboard via remote, although you can always sub in your mobile device thanks to those recently upgraded remote apps for iOS and Android. All in all Roku says it can reach its tendrils across around 130,000 titles and almost 100,000 actors and directors. Check after the break for a couple of screenshots and a quick demo video, hit the official blog for more info or force an update on your hockey puck to check it out yourself.
Security experts say a specific kind of electronic-voting machine is vulnerable to being hacked. Influencing a national election would be difficult, but the advance of malware makes it possible.
By Mark Clayton,?Staff writer / October 26, 2012
Voters cast ballots on touch-screen voting machines during in-person absentee voting at the Fairfax County Governmental Center in Fairfax, Va., in early October.
Jonathan Ernst/REUTERS/File
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Rapid advances in the development of cyberweapons and malicious software mean that electronic-voting machines used in the 2012 election could be hacked, potentially tipping the presidential election or a number of other races.
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Since the machines are not connected to the Internet, any hack would not be a matter of someone sneaking through cyberspace to change ballots. Rather, the concern is that an individual hacker, a partisan group, or even a nation state could infect voting machines by gaining physical access to them or by targeting the companies that service them.
The 2010 discovery of the Stuxnet cyberweapon, which used a thumb drive to attack Iran's nuclear facilities and spread among its computers, illustrated how one type of attack could work. Most at risk are paperless e-voting machines, which don?t print out any record of votes, meaning the electronically stored results could be altered without anyone knowing they had been changed.
In a tight election, the result could be the difference between winning and losing. A Monitor analysis shows that four swing states ? Pennsylvania, Virginia, Colorado, and Florida ? rely to varying degrees on paperless machines.
"The risk of cyber manipulation of these machines is quite real," says Barbara Simons, a computer researcher and author of "Broken Ballots," a book documenting e-voting vulnerabilities. "Most people don't understand that these computer-based voting machines can have software bugs or even election-rigging malicious software in them."
There are plenty of software vulnerabilities to exploit, says Matt Blaze, a computer scientist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. In 2007, he was on a team investigating touch-screen and other voting systems for California and Ohio. The resulting study concluded? "virtually every important software security mechanism is vulnerable."
The paperless machines, however, stand out as particularly vulnerable.
"If there's no paper trail, you can have the corrupted software display on the voting-machine screen whatever you want to display ? and then after the voter leaves, record something completely different inside," says Richard Kemmerer, a computer scientist who heads the University of California, Santa Barbara, Computer Security Group.
Voting for Pac-Man
For example, Alex Halderman, a researcher at the University of Michigan, and a colleague at Princeton University hacked into a paperless touch-screen voting machine in 2010 and installed the video game Pac-Man. That lab exercise took three afternoons but did not break any tamper-proof seals and left no traces.
Similarly, he and Princeton researchers in 2006 demonstrated that if someone could get a few minutes? unattended access to a paperless machine, that person could install a software virus that could spread to other machines and switch those machines? votes before deleting all traces of itself.
Had a bad day? Extending your normal exercise routine by a few minutes may be the solution, according to Penn State researchers, who found that people's satisfaction with life was higher on days when they exercised more than usual.
"We found that people's satisfaction with life was directly impacted by their daily physical activity," said Jaclyn Maher, graduate student in kinesiology. "The findings reinforce the idea that physical activity is a health behavior with important consequences for daily well-being and should be considered when developing national policies to enhance satisfaction with life."
The team examined the influence of physical activity on satisfaction with life among emerging adults ages 18 to 25 years because this population's sense of well-being appears to worsen more quickly than at any other time during adulthood.
"Emerging adults are going through a lot of changes; they are leaving home for the first time and attending college or starting jobs," said Maher. "As a result, their satisfaction with life can plummet. We decided to focus on emerging adults because they stand to benefit the most from strategies to enhance satisfaction with life."
The researchers recruited two groups of college students at Penn State. The first group, consisting of 190 individuals, entered information into a diary every day for eight days. The second group, consisting of 63 individuals, entered information into a secure website every day for 14 days. Both groups answered questions aimed at determining participants' satisfaction with life, physical activity and self-esteem. The personalities of all participants in the first group were assessed at the outset of the study using the Big Five Inventory short form.
For the second group (the 63 individuals who filled out questionnaires online for 14 days), the researchers wanted to further investigate whether physical activity was indeed, the cause of participants' increased satisfaction with life rather than some other factor such as mental health, fatigue, or Body Mass Index.
"Shifts in depression, anxiety and stress would be expected to influence a person's satisfaction with life at any given point in time," said David Conroy, professor of kinesiology. "In addition, fatigue can be a barrier to engaging in physical activity, and a high Body Mass Index associated with being overweight may cause a person to be less satisfied in a variety of ways."
By controlling for these variables, the researchers were able to determine that the amount of physical activity a person undertakes in a particular day directly influences his or her satisfaction with life. Specifically, the team found that by exercising just a little more than usual a person can significantly improve his or her satisfaction with life.
The results appeared online this week in the journalHealth Psychology.
"Based on these findings, we recommend that people exercise a little longer or a little harder than usual as a way to boost satisfaction with life," said Conroy.
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Penn State: http://live.psu.edu
Thanks to Penn State for this article.
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We all know the feeling. You're sleepless in the sad hours of the night or stumbling around early on a hazy weekend morning in need of something to read, and that pile of unread books just isn't cutting it. Why not take a break from the fire hose of Twitter and RSS and check out our weekly roundup of essential writing from around the web about technology, culture, media, and the future? Sure, it's one more thing you can feel guilty about sitting in your Instapaper queue, but it's better than pulling in vain on your Twitter list again.
On online dating
Emily Witt explores the history of online dating and writes about her own experiences with it.
London Review of Books: Emily Witt - Diary
I went to a lecture by the novelist Ned Beauman who compared the OK Cupid experience to Carl Sagan pondering the limits of our ability even to imagine non-carbon-based extraterrestrial life, let alone perceive when it was beaming signals to us. We troll on OK Cupid for what we think we want, but what if we are incapable of seeing the signals being sent to us, let alone interpreting them?
On The Scream
Elizabeth Lopatto considers digital art and life through the paintings of Edvard Munch.
The Awl: Elizabeth Lopatto - "The Scream" at MoMA in the Cold Digital Age
What is sobering about the internet is not that it?s isolating per se?I find it attractive precisely because it?s got people on it?but that it feels less satisfying than in-person interactions. This much the critics have right. What they don?t have right is why.
On Art.sy
Jason Farago digs into why Art.sy isn't simply an art version of customized music streaming site Pandora, and why selling art online has been so difficult.
The New Republic: Jason Farago - Art.sy And The Myth Of The Online Art Market
There?s simply no possibility of a viral digital success?a "Call Me Maybe" of painting or photography?because a work only becomes successful upon its art world approbation. And that can?t be dismantled, not unless you also feel like dismantling the entire critical apparatus of contemporary art and, while you?re at it, destroying billions of dollars stored in chemicals on stretched pieces of canvas.
On memes
Amanda Hess looks at the political memes spinning wildly out of every move on the campaign trail. Similarly, check out Nathan Jurgenson's Speaking in Memes piece at The New Inquiry.
Poynter: Amanda Hess - Binders full of Big Bird: The risk & benefits of reporting on memes
The meme devolved from there. Romney?s critics have since used "binders" to mount vaguely related personal attacks against the candidate, including the suggestion that he?s a horndog. (Of the feminist critiques leveled against Romney, a history of sexual harassment is not one). Other entries are even less substantive. What relevance does the pop song "Call Me Maybe" or a years-old upskirt photo of Britney Spears to this meme? At a certain point, the feeling fueling the meme gave way to Trapper Keeper free-association. Not only does the meme make no sense as a political critique at this point ? it isn?t funny anymore, either.
On early gesture interfaces
With the help of GIFs and YouTube, Rhizome dives into the history of experimental, pre-Kinect gestural technology.
Rhizome: Prosthetic Knowledge - Prosthetic Knowledge Picks: Kinect Genealogy - A Brief History of Gestural Interfaces
Perhaps one of the earliest pioneers of this analog computer animation approach was Lee Harrison III. In the early 1960s, he experimented with animating figures using analog circuits and a cathode ray tube. Ahead of his time, he rigged up a body suit with potentiometers and created the first working motion capture rig, animating 3D figures in real-time on his CRT screen.
Have any favorites that you'd like to see included in next week's edition? Send them along to @thomashouston or share in the comments below.
ScienceDaily (Oct. 28, 2012) ? Getting a flu shot may not only protect you from getting sick, it might also prevent heart disease. Two Toronto-based researchers presented studies at the 2012 Canadian Cardiovascular Congress which found that the influenza vaccine could be an important treatment for maintaining heart health and warding off cardiovascular events like strokes and heart attacks.
Dr. Jacob Udell, a cardiologist at Women's College Hospital and the University of Toronto, and his team from the TIMI Study Group and Network for Innovation in Clinical Research looked at published clinical trials on this subject, dating back to the 1960s.
"For those who had the flu shot, there was a pretty strong risk reduction," says Dr. Udell.
The flu vaccine provided an approximate 50 per cent reduction in the risk of a major cardiac event (heart attack, stroke, or cardiac death) compared with placebo after one year of follow-up. A similar trend was seen for the flu vaccine reducing death from any cause (approximately 40 per cent).
The influenza vaccine reduced cardiovascular events and cardiovascular death in people with or without heart disease.
The combined studies examined a total of 3,227 patients, with an almost equal split between patients with and without established heart disease. Half of the participants were randomly assigned to receive flu vaccine and those that did not typically received a placebo vaccine.
Dr. Udell says these results provide support for current guideline recommendations for influenza vaccination of individuals with a prior heart attack, but for a different reason than simply reducing flu risk. And although it was encouraging to see a reduction in non-fatal cardiac events, he believes a large, lengthier multi-national study would comprehensively demonstrate the vaccine's effectiveness to reduce fatal cardiac events and save lives.
"A large study that was international in scope and representative of patients such as those in North America and Canada in particular could help answer this question," he says.
This research could also potentially boost use of the vaccine, which Udell believes is still woefully low. "The use of the vaccine is still much too low, less than 50 per cent of the general population; it's even poorly used among health care workers," he says. "Imagine if this vaccine could also be a proven way to prevent heart disease."
An Ipsos Reid survey conducted by B.C. and Quebec Lung Associations this year found that 36 per cent of Canadians reported having received a flu shot in 2011.
And according to the Public Health Agency of Canada's National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI), the 2008 Adult National Immunization Coverage Survey found that vaccination rates for adults 18 to 64 years of age with a chronic medical condition is low at 35 per cent.
It also found that non-institutionalized seniors aged 65 and older have higher coverage, at 66 per cent.
According to the NACI, rates for both groups have declined somewhat since their 2006 survey and fall short of the 80 per cent national targets for influenza vaccine coverage in adults under age 65 with chronic conditions and in seniors.
People with ICDS who get the shot have fewer adverse events The second study, conducted by cardiologists Drs. Ramanan Kumareswaran and Sheldon Singh from Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre examined the use of the influenza vaccine in patients with implantable cardiac defibrillators or ICDs.
"Anecdotes suggest that patients have more ICD shocks during flu season. We were trying to figure out what we can do to reduce the amount of shocks in (our clinic's) ICD population during the flu season," says Dr. Kumareswaran.
Patients with ICDs that had appointments at the Sunnybrook Hospital ICD clinic between September 1st 2011 and November 31st 2011 completed a survey that identified their demographics, health status, if they received a flu shot in the past year and opinions towards the vaccine.
The patients' health charts were reviewed to determine all ICD therapies in five months preceding the 2010 flu season (June to October) and for three months during the 2010-2011 flu season (December to March).
A total of 230 patients with an average age between 70 and 74 completed surveys with 179 (78 per cent) patients reported receiving the vaccination in the previous year. Just over 20 per cent did not receive the vaccine.
The patients who did not receive the flu vaccine had a trend toward experiencing more ICD therapies on average. Specifically, 10.6 per cent of patients who received the vaccine received at least one ICD therapy during flu season compared to 13.7 per cent of patients who did not receive the influenza vaccine.
"What is interesting is that if this is consistent over time, it could be of significant benefit to our patient population who already have compromised survival to start with," says Dr. Singh.
"We would like to look at this on a larger scale to determine whether or not our results can be replicated. We're in the process to determine how best to do that." An ICD is a small battery-powered electrical impulse generator implanted in patients who are at risk of sudden cardiac death.
The device is programmed to detect cardiac arrhythmia and correct it by delivering a jolt of electricity or increasing the heart rate to restore a healthy rhythm once an irregular beat has been detected.
About 5,000 Canadians get ICDs every year and there are about 100,000 Canadians who currently have them. (Most Canadians with advanced heart disease are potential candidates for ICDs.)
Heart and Stroke Foundation spokesperson Dr. Beth Abramson says these studies strengthen National Advisory Committee for Immunization recommendations for the use of the influenza vaccine in those at high risk of developing influenza related complications, such as patients with heart disease or diabetes, and those who have close contact with those at high risk of developing complications.
"In addition to leading a heart healthy life, having an annual flu shot could be another easy way to help prevent cardiac events," she says.
Dr. Abramson notes that the Heart and Stroke Foundation recommends an influenza vaccination for those at high risk of influenza-related complications or hospitalization (including people with heart conditions, those with diabetes, people over 65 years of age, people with a BMI at or above 40 and children or adults treated with ASA). It is also recommended for people who are most likely to transmit influenza to high risk individuals (family members, friends, coworkers, healthcare provider and caregivers).
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
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Primates' brains make visual maps using triangular gridsPublic release date: 28-Oct-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Quinn Eastman qeastma@emory.edu 404-727-7829 Emory University
Primates' brains see the world through triangular grids, according to a new study published online Sunday in the journal Nature.
Scientists at Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, have identified grid cells, neurons that fire in repeating triangular patterns as the eyes explore visual scenes, in the brains of rhesus monkeys.
The finding has implications for understanding how humans form and remember mental maps of the world, as well as how neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's erode those abilities. This is the first time grid cells have been detected directly in primates. Grid cells were identified in rats in 2005, and their existence in humans has been indirectly inferred through magnetic resonance imaging.
Grid cells' electrical activities were recorded by introducing electrodes into monkeys' entorhinal cortex, a region of the brain in the medial temporal lobe. At the same time, the monkeys viewed a variety of images on a computer screen and explored those images with their eyes. Infrared eye-tracking allowed the scientists to follow which part of the image the monkey's eyes were focusing on. A single grid cell fires when the eyes focus on multiple discrete locations forming a grid pattern.
"The entorhinal cortex is one of the first brain regions to degenerate in Alzheimer's disease, so our results may help to explain why disorientation is one of the first behavioral signs of Alzheimer's," says senior author Elizabeth Buffalo, PhD, associate professor of neurology at Emory University School of Medicine and Yerkes National Primate Research Center. "We think these neurons help provide a context or structure for visual experiences to be stored in memory."
"Our discovery of grid cells in primates is a big step toward understanding how our brains form memories of visual information," says first author Nathan Killian, a graduate student in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. "This is an exciting way of thinking about memory that may lead to novel treatments for neurodegenerative diseases."
In the experiments in which rats' grid cells were identified, the cells fired whenever the rats crossed lines on an invisible triangular grid.
"The surprising thing was that we could identify cells that behaved in the same way when the monkeys were simply moving their eyes," Buffalo says. "It suggests that primates don't have to actually visit a place to construct the same kind of mental map."
Another aspect of grid cells not previously seen with rodents is that the cells' responses change when monkeys are seeing an image for the second time. Specifically, the grid cells reduce their firing rate when a repeat image is seen. Moving from the posterior (rear) toward the anterior (front) of the entorhinal cortex, more neurons show memory responses.
"These results demonstrate that grid cells are involved in memory, not just mapping the visual field," Killian says.
Consistent with previous reports on grid cells in rats, Killian and Buffalo observed "theta-band" oscillations, where grid cells fire in a rhythmic way, from 3 to 12 times per second. Some scientists have proposed that theta oscillations are important for grid cell networks to be generated in development, and also for the brain to put together information from the grid cells. In the monkeys, populations of neurons exhibited theta oscillations that occurred in intermittent bouts, but these bouts did not appear to be critical for formation of the spatial representation.
Vision is thought to be a more prominent sense for primates (monkeys and humans) compared with rodents, for whom touch and smell are more important. While grid cells in rodents and primates were detected in different types of experiments, Buffalo says that it doesn't mean grid cells necessarily have a different nature in primates.
"We are now training a monkey to move through a virtual 3-D space. My guess is that we'll find grid cells that fire in similar patterns as the monkey navigates through that space," she says.
Buffalo says future experiments could examine how monkeys navigate in real space, including changes in head or body orientation, to determine how grid cells respond.
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Primates' brains make visual maps using triangular gridsPublic release date: 28-Oct-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Quinn Eastman qeastma@emory.edu 404-727-7829 Emory University
Primates' brains see the world through triangular grids, according to a new study published online Sunday in the journal Nature.
Scientists at Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, have identified grid cells, neurons that fire in repeating triangular patterns as the eyes explore visual scenes, in the brains of rhesus monkeys.
The finding has implications for understanding how humans form and remember mental maps of the world, as well as how neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's erode those abilities. This is the first time grid cells have been detected directly in primates. Grid cells were identified in rats in 2005, and their existence in humans has been indirectly inferred through magnetic resonance imaging.
Grid cells' electrical activities were recorded by introducing electrodes into monkeys' entorhinal cortex, a region of the brain in the medial temporal lobe. At the same time, the monkeys viewed a variety of images on a computer screen and explored those images with their eyes. Infrared eye-tracking allowed the scientists to follow which part of the image the monkey's eyes were focusing on. A single grid cell fires when the eyes focus on multiple discrete locations forming a grid pattern.
"The entorhinal cortex is one of the first brain regions to degenerate in Alzheimer's disease, so our results may help to explain why disorientation is one of the first behavioral signs of Alzheimer's," says senior author Elizabeth Buffalo, PhD, associate professor of neurology at Emory University School of Medicine and Yerkes National Primate Research Center. "We think these neurons help provide a context or structure for visual experiences to be stored in memory."
"Our discovery of grid cells in primates is a big step toward understanding how our brains form memories of visual information," says first author Nathan Killian, a graduate student in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. "This is an exciting way of thinking about memory that may lead to novel treatments for neurodegenerative diseases."
In the experiments in which rats' grid cells were identified, the cells fired whenever the rats crossed lines on an invisible triangular grid.
"The surprising thing was that we could identify cells that behaved in the same way when the monkeys were simply moving their eyes," Buffalo says. "It suggests that primates don't have to actually visit a place to construct the same kind of mental map."
Another aspect of grid cells not previously seen with rodents is that the cells' responses change when monkeys are seeing an image for the second time. Specifically, the grid cells reduce their firing rate when a repeat image is seen. Moving from the posterior (rear) toward the anterior (front) of the entorhinal cortex, more neurons show memory responses.
"These results demonstrate that grid cells are involved in memory, not just mapping the visual field," Killian says.
Consistent with previous reports on grid cells in rats, Killian and Buffalo observed "theta-band" oscillations, where grid cells fire in a rhythmic way, from 3 to 12 times per second. Some scientists have proposed that theta oscillations are important for grid cell networks to be generated in development, and also for the brain to put together information from the grid cells. In the monkeys, populations of neurons exhibited theta oscillations that occurred in intermittent bouts, but these bouts did not appear to be critical for formation of the spatial representation.
Vision is thought to be a more prominent sense for primates (monkeys and humans) compared with rodents, for whom touch and smell are more important. While grid cells in rodents and primates were detected in different types of experiments, Buffalo says that it doesn't mean grid cells necessarily have a different nature in primates.
"We are now training a monkey to move through a virtual 3-D space. My guess is that we'll find grid cells that fire in similar patterns as the monkey navigates through that space," she says.
Buffalo says future experiments could examine how monkeys navigate in real space, including changes in head or body orientation, to determine how grid cells respond.
###
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Public release date: 28-Oct-2012
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