Iran upbeat on nuclear talks, West still wary

ALMATY (Reuters) - Iran was upbeat on Wednesday after talks with world powers about its nuclear work ended with an agreement to meet again, but Western officials said it had yet to take concrete steps to ease their fears about its atomic ambitions.

Rapid progress was unlikely with Iran's presidential election, due in June, raising domestic political tensions, diplomats and analysts had said ahead of the February 26-27 meeting in the Kazakh city of Almaty, the first in eight months.

The United States, China, France, Russia, Britain and Germany offered modest sanctions relief in return for Iran curbing its most sensitive nuclear work but made clear that they expected no immediate breakthrough.

In an attempt to make their proposals more palatable to Iran, the six powers appeared to have softened previous demands somewhat, for example regarding their requirement that the Islamic state ship out its stockpile of higher-grade uranium.

Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili said the powers had tried to "get closer to our viewpoint", which he said was positive.

In Paris, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry commented that the talks had been "useful" and that a serious engagement by Iran could lead to a comprehensive deal in a decade-old dispute that has threatened to trigger a new Middle East war.

Iran's foreign minister said in Vienna he was "very confident" an agreement could be reached and Jalili, the chief negotiator, said he believed the Almaty meeting could be a "turning point".

However, one diplomat said Iranian officials at the negotiations appeared to be suggesting that they were opening new avenues, but it was not clear if this was really the case.

Iran expert Dina Esfandiary of the International Institute for Strategic Studies said: "Everyone is saying Iran was more positive and portrayed the talks as a win."

"I reckon the reason for that is that they are saving face internally while buying time with the West until after the elections," she said.

The two sides agreed to hold expert-level talks in Istanbul on March 18 to discuss the powers' proposals, and return to Almaty for political discussions on April 5-6, when Western diplomats made clear they wanted to see a substantive response from Iran.

"Iran knows what it needs to do, the president has made clear his determination to implement his policy that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon," Kerry said.

A senior U.S. official in Almaty said, "What we care about at the end is concrete results."

ISRAELI WARNING

Israel, assumed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed power, was watching the talks closely. It has strongly hinted it might attack Iran if diplomacy and sanctions fail to ensure that it cannot build a nuclear weapon. Iran denies any such aim.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said economic sanctions were failing and urged the international community to threaten Iran with military action.

Western officials said the offer presented by the six powers included an easing of a ban on trade in gold and other precious metals, and a relaxation of an import embargo on Iranian petrochemical products. They gave no further details.

In exchange, a senior U.S. official said, Iran would among other things have to suspend uranium enrichment to a fissile concentration of 20 percent at its Fordow underground facility and "constrain the ability to quickly resume operations there".

The official did not describe what was being asked of Iran as a "shutdown" of the plant as Western diplomats had said in previous meetings with Iran last year.

Iran says it has a sovereign right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, and wants to fuel nuclear power plants so that it can export more oil.

But 20-percent purity is far higher than that needed for nuclear power, and rings alarm bells abroad because it is only a short technical step away from weapons-grade uranium. Iran says it produces higher-grade uranium to fuel a research reactor.

Iran's growing stockpile of 20-percent-enriched uranium is already more than half-way to a "red line" that Israel has made clear it would consider sufficient for a bomb.

In Vienna on Wednesday, a senior U.N. nuclear agency official told diplomats in a closed-door briefing that Iran was technically ready to sharply increase this higher-grade enrichment, two Western diplomats said.

"Iran can triple 20 percent production in the blink of an eye," one of the diplomats said.

The U.S. official in Almaty said the powers' latest proposal would "significantly restrict the accumulation of near-20-percent enriched uranium in Iran, while enabling the Iranians to produce sufficient fuel" for their Tehran medical reactor.

This appeared to be a softening of a previous demand that Iran ship out its stockpile of higher-grade enriched uranium, which it says it needs to produce medical isotopes.

Iran has often indicated that 20-percent enrichment could be up for negotiation if it received the fuel from abroad instead.

Jalili suggested Iran could discuss the issue, although he appeared to rule out shutting down Fordow. He said the powers had not made that specific demand.

The Iranian rial, which has lost more than half its foreign exchange value in the last year as sanctions bite, rose some 2 percent on Wednesday, currency tracking websites reported.

(Additional reporting by Fredrik Dahl and Yeganeh Torbati in Almaty, Georgina Prodhan in Vienna, Zahra Hosseinian in Zurich, Gabriela Baczynska in Moscow, Dan Williams in Jerusalem and Marcus George in Dubai; Writing by Timothy Heritage and Fredrik Dahl; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/powers-wait-hear-iran-response-nuclear-offer-043022098.html

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Lawmakers push measure on Israel's self-defense

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The United States would back Israel militarily if the Mideast ally were to attack Iran in self-defense, a bipartisan group of senators said Thursday in introducing a forceful resolution.

"No one wants another conflict anywhere in the world militarily, but we also don't want a nuclear-capable Iran," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., at a news conference.

The resolution also strongly endorses unilateral penalties against Iran. The measure comes as world powers met in Kazakhstan and proposed concessions to Tehran to maintain diplomatic channels that aim to rein in Iran's nuclear program.

Iran insists that program is geared toward peaceful purposes such as generating electricity and producing nuclear medical radioisotopes for medical use.

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., said he hopes for real progress toward a negotiated solution, but "we will not talk for talking sake."

The resolution says that if Israel is "compelled to take military action in self-defense, the United States government should stand with Israel and provide diplomatic, military and economic support to the government of Israel in its defense of its territory, people and existence."

It says that nothing in the measure should be considered an authorization for the use of military force or a declaration of war.

"This is not a green light to Israel to do anything other than defend itself. ... We will be there," Graham said.

Joining Menendez and Graham were Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Susan Collins, R-Maine, John Hoeven, R-N.D., Bob Casey, D-Pa., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.

The group hopes to pass the resolution before President Barack Obama's expected trip to Israel in March.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lawmakers-push-measure-israels-self-defense-195648515--politics.html

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Yes, But Michelle Malkin Can't Dance (Atlantic Politics Channel)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories Stories, RSS Feeds and Widgets via Feedzilla.

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Critical Thinking Is Best Taught Outside the Classroom

Image: Ellen Weinstein

A democracy relies on an electorate of critical thinkers. Yet formal education, which is driven by test taking, is increasingly failing to require students to ask the kind of questions that lead to informed decisions.

More than a decade ago cognitive scientists John D. Bransford and Daniel L. Schwartz, both then at Vanderbilt University, found that what distinguished young adults from children was not the ability to retain facts or apply prior knowledge to a new situation but a quality they called ?preparation for future learning.? The researchers asked fifth graders and college students to create a recovery plan to protect bald eagles from extinction. Shockingly, the two groups came up with plans of similar quality (although the college students had better spelling skills). From the standpoint of a traditional educator, this outcome indicated that schooling had failed to help students think about ecosystems and extinction, major scientific ideas.

The researchers decided to delve deeper, however. They asked both groups to generate questions about important issues needed to create recovery plans. On this task, they found large differences. College students focused on critical issues of interdependence between eagles and their habitats (?What type of eco-system supports eagles?? and ?What different kinds of specialists are needed for different recovery areas??). Fifth graders tended to focus on features of individual eagles (?How big are they?? and ?What do they eat??). The college students had cultivated the ability to ask questions, the cornerstone of critical thinking. They had learned how to learn.

Museums and other institutions of informal learning may be better suited to teach this skill than elementary and secondary schools. At the Exploratorium in San Francisco, we recently studied how learning to ask good questions can affect the quality of people's scientific inquiry. We found that when we taught participants to ask ?What if?? and ?How can?? questions that nobody present would know the answer to and that would spark exploration, they engaged in better inquiry at the next exhibit?asking more questions, performing more experiments and making better interpretations of their results. Specifically, their questions became more comprehensive at the new exhibit. Rather than merely asking about something they wanted to try (?What happens when you block out a magnet??), they tended to include both cause and effect in their question (?What if we pull this one magnet out and see if the other ones move by the same amount??). Asking juicy questions appears to be a transferable skill for deepening collaborative inquiry into the science content found in exhibits.

This type of learning is not confined to museums or institutional settings. One of the best examples is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, in which the eponymous host expertly shreds political, commercial and scientific-sounding claims in the press by using numbers, logic and old video. The Maker Faire, which conducts techie do-it-yourself projects, has reintroduced the idea that our learning is richer for our mistakes: D.I.Y. experimentalists get stuck, reframe the question and figure things out.

Informal learning environments tolerate failure better than schools. Perhaps many teachers have too little time to allow students to form and pursue their own questions and too much ground to cover in the curriculum and for standardized tests. But people must acquire this skill somewhere. Our society depends on them being able to make critical decisions, about their own medical treatment, say, or what we must do about global energy needs and demands. For that, we have a robust informal learning system that eschews grades, takes all comers, and is available even on holidays and weekends.

This article was originally published with the title What Is Your Question?.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=5e13f0bb50b370f4d861580a1779b03b

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Kyle Chandler and Daughter, Sawyer, to Join Texas Humane Lobby ...

February?26,?2013

Texas-based TV and film star supports daughter?s animal advocacy

Kyle Chandler, star of ?Friday Night Lights,? Oscar-winning ?Argo? and ?Zero Dark Thirty,? and his 11-year-old daughter, Sawyer, will be joining The Humane Society of the United States and other concerned animal welfare advocates to meet with Texas lawmakers and lobby for better protections for sharks. H.B.852/S.B. 572 was recently introduced by Rep. Eddie Lucio III, D-District 38, and Sen. Larry Taylor, R-District 11, to prohibit the sale, trade, purchase and transportation of shark fins in Texas.

Sawyer Chandler, who is scheduled to address the Humane Lobby Day attendees on March 14, started a website and petition to speak out regarding threats against sharks and advocate for them through the political process. Her dedication to this issue sparked her father?s interest and her work was recently highlighted on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

?I created the website to help end shark finning because when I first learned of this horrible cruelty I knew that I wanted to do something about it,? said Sawyer Chandler. ?I am glad that these politicians are listening to an 11 year old ? they?re good guys.?

Shark finning involves cutting off the fins of sharks then throwing the shark back into the ocean, often while still alive, only to drown, starve or die a slow death due to predation from other animals. Some species of shark are on the brink of extinction due to the cruel and exploitive shark fin industry.

?I?m proud of my daughter and I?m proud to be a part of her passion,? said Kyle Chandler. ?I am also proud to be alongside The Humane Society of the United States to meet with Texas lawmakers and urge them to pass HB 852/SB 572.?

?It is always exciting to see young people get involved in the legislative process and exhibit a passion for animal welfare issues,? said Katie Jarl, Texas state director for The HSUS. ?The Humane Society of the United States is grateful to Sawyer Chandler and her dad, Kyle, for bringing the cruel shark fin trade in Texas to the attention of Texas lawmakers.?

If passed, Texas would become the sixth state to crack down on the cruel and unnecessary shark fin trade. Similar legislation has been enacted in California, Hawaii, Illinois, Oregon and Washington as well as in the U.S. Pacific territories of Guam, American Samoa and the Marianna Islands.

Texas Humane Lobby Day will be held on Thursday, March 14, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Texas State Capitol Building in Austin and is hosted by The HSUS, ASPCA and Texas Humane Legislation Network. You can find more information here.

NOTE: Sawyer Chandler will be available for media interviews during Humane Lobby Day. To learn more and schedule an interview, please contact Niki Ianni at nianni@humanesociety.org

Media Contact: Niki Ianni, 301-548-7793, nianni@humanesociety.org

Source: http://www.humanesociety.org/news/press_releases/2013/02/kyle-sawyer-chandler-tx-shark-finning-022613.html

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Death of adopted Russian child ignites firestorm of nationalism ...

Foreign ministry vows ?murderers? of three-year-old Max Shatto will be punished

Here at Maclean's, we appreciate the written word. And we appreciate you, the reader. We are always looking for ways to create a better user experience for you and wanted to try out a new functionality that provides you with a reading experience in which the words and fonts take centre stage. We believe you'll appreciate the clean, white layout as you read our feature articles. But we don't want to force it on you and it's completely optional. Click "View in Clean Reading Mode" on any article if you want to try it out. Once there, you can click "Go back to regular view" at the top or bottom of the article to return to the regular layout.

The emergency room death of an adopted Russian child in the U.S. has ignited a firestorm of nationalism, political posturing, and anti-American anger in Russia.

Three-year-old Max Shatto, who was adopted last year by a Texas family, died in January under circumstances U.S. officials are investigating, though no arrests have been made.

Russian officials are not withholding judgment. The country?s senior investigating authority says the ?murderers of the Russian child? will be punished; a special representative for human rights at Russia?s foreign ministry calls it ?another case of inhuman abuse of a Russian child by U.S. adoptive parents.?

Last year, Russia passed a law banning U.S. adoptions?ostensibly because of previous deaths of Russian children in the U.S. But the move followed the passage of U.S. legislation to prevent Russians suspected of human rights abuses from entering America. There are almost one million orphans in Russia, many of them with health and psychological problems that make them less likely to be adopted by Russian parents. Americans have adopted 60,000 Russian children in the past two decades?their best shot at a life, said one orphanage director.

Source: http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/02/26/death-of-adopted-russian-child-ignites-firestorm-of-nationalism/

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Researchers test holographic technique for restoring vision

Feb. 26, 2013 ? Researchers led by biomedical engineering Professor Shy Shoham of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology are testing the power of holography to artificially stimulate cells in the eye, with hopes of developing a new strategy for bionic vision restoration.

Computer-generated holography, they say, could be used in conjunction with a technique called optogenetics, which uses gene therapy to deliver light-sensitive proteins to damaged retinal nerve cells. In conditions such as Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) -- a condition affecting about one in 4000 people in the United States -- these light-sensing cells degenerate and lead to blindness.

"The basic idea of optogenetics is to take a light-sensitive protein from another organism, typically from algae or bacteria, and insert it into a target cell, and that photosensitizes the cell," Shoham explained.

Intense pulses of light can activate nerve cells newly sensitized by this gene therapy approach. But Shoham said researchers around the world are still searching for the best way to deliver the light patterns so that the retina "sees" or responds in a nearly normal way.

The plan is to someday develop a prosthetic headset or eyepiece that a person could wear to translate visual scenes into patterns of light that stimulate the genetically altered cells.

In their paper in the Feb. 26 issue of Nature Communications, the Technion researchers show how light from computer-generated holography could be used to stimulate these repaired cells in mouse retinas. The key, they say, is to use a light stimulus that is intense, precise, and can trigger activity across a variety of cells all at once.

"Holography, what we're using, has the advantage of being relatively precise and intense," Shoham said. "And you need those two things to see."

The researchers turned to holography after exploring other options, including laser deflectors and digital displays used in many portable projectors to stimulate these cells. Both methods had their drawbacks, Shoham said.

Digital light displays can stimulate many nerve cells at once, "but they have low light intensity and very low light efficiency," Shoham said. The genetically repaired cells are less sensitive to light than normal healthy retinal cells, so they preferably need a bright light source like a laser to be activated.

"Lasers give intensity, but they can't give the parallel projection" that would simultaneously stimulate all of the cells needed to see a complete picture, Shoham noted. "Holography is a way of getting the best of both worlds."

The researchers have tested the potential of holographic stimulation in retinal cells in the lab, and have done some preliminary work with the technology in living mice with damaged retinal cells. The experiments show that holography can provide reliable and simultaneous stimulation of multiple cells at millisecond speeds.

But implementing a holographic prosthesis in humans is far in the future, Shoham cautioned.

His team is exploring other ways, aside from optogenetics, to activate damaged nerve cells. For instance, they are also experimenting with ultrasound for activating retinal and brain tissue.

And Shoham said holography itself "also provides a very interesting path toward three-dimensional stimulation, which we don't use so much in the retina, but is very interesting in other projects where it allow us to stimulate 3-D brain tissue."

In mid-February, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first artificial retina and retinal prosthesis, which works in a different fashion than the Technion project. The FDA-approved device, the Argus II, uses an artificial "retina" consisting of electrodes, and a glasses-like prosthesis to transmit light signals to the electrodes.

"I think Shy's lab is very smart to pursue many methods of restoring vision," said Eyal Margalit, a retinal disease specialist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. He said researchers around the world are also looking for ways to use stem cells to replace damaged retinal cells, to transplant entire layers of healthy retinal cells, and in some cases "bypass the eye entirely, and stimulate the cortex of the brain directly" to restore lost vision.

Shoham's co-authors on the paper included Dr. Inna Reutsky-Gefen, Lior Golan, Dr. Nairouz Farah, Adi Schejter, Limor Tsur, and Dr. Inbar Brosh.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Technion Society. The original article was written by Kevin Hattori.

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

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Journal Reference:

1. Inna Reutsky-Gefen, Lior Golan, Nairouz Farah, Adi Schejter, Limor Tsur, Inbar Brosh, Shy Shoham. Holographic optogenetic stimulation of patterned neuronal activity for vision restoration. Nature Communications, 2013; 4: 1509 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2500

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

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

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/G1QOPaftAZc/130226134259.htm

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Budget battle guide: This time may be for real

Air Force personnel salute as Air Force One, with President Barack Obama on board, arrives at in the rain at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2013. The president was returning from Newport News, Va., for an event on the automatic budget cuts. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Air Force personnel salute as Air Force One, with President Barack Obama on board, arrives at in the rain at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2013. The president was returning from Newport News, Va., for an event on the automatic budget cuts. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Standing in front of a ships propeller, President Barack Obama gestures as he speaks about about automatic defense budget cuts, Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2013, at Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport News, Va. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

Following a closed-door party caucus, House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, accompanied by fellow GOP leaders, meet with reporters, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2013, to challenge President Obama and the Senate to avoid the automatic spending cuts set to take effect in four days. Speaking at the Republican National Committee headquarters, Boehner complained that the House, with Republicans in the majority, has twice passed bills that would replace the across-the-board cuts known as the "sequester" with more targeted reductions, while the Senate, controlled by the Democrats, has not acted. From left are, Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R-Kansas, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., Boehner, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Va. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, accompanied by fellow members of the House GOP leadership, responds to President Barack Obama's remarks to the nation's governors earlier today about how to fend off the impending automatic budget cuts, Monday, Feb. 25, 2013, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? America's leaders have threatened to shut the government down, drive it over a cliff and bounce it off the ceiling. Now they're ready to smack it with a "sequester." And it sounds like they mean it this time.

If no one backs down, big cuts in federal spending begin Friday. Should Americans be worried?

A primer on the nation's latest fiscal standoff ? how we got here, who could get hurt and possible ways to end this thing:

___

What, again?

Like life in a bad Road Runner cartoon, the United States has survived the New Year's "fiscal cliff," double rounds of debt-ceiling roulette and various budget blow-ups over the past two years. Now the threat is $85 billion in indiscriminate spending cuts that would hit most federal programs and fall hardest on the military.

By law, these cuts known as the "sequester" will begin unfolding automatically at week's end unless President Barack Obama and Congress act to stop them.

Why did they agree to a law like that? In hopes of finally getting the nation's trillion-dollar-plus annual budget deficits under control.

___

Isn't deficit-cutting good?

Obama, nearly all of Congress and plenty of economists say two things:

1) The budget deficit needs to be reduced.

2) The sequester is the wrong way to do it.

"Only a fool would do it this way," says Paul Light, a budget expert at New York University. "Primordial. It's beyond belief."

It makes him think of the movie "Dr. Strangelove," with Slim Pickens riding bronco on an atomic bomb, waving his cowboy hat.

The sequester was designed to land with a mighty splat ? to create such a mess if allowed to occur that lawmakers would do the right and honorable thing and negotiate a measured, meaningful and discerning package of deficit reduction to head it off. But that didn't happen, so the sequester is about to.

And, yes, that should mean progress on the nation's debt. The sequester is one of several developments expected to restrain the nation's red ink after four straight years of deficits topping $1 trillion.

Yee-haw.

___

Are the cuts really that bad?

It's unlikely they will be as bad ? or at least as immediate ? as some overexcited members of the Obama administration have made out. But the cuts have the potential to be significant if the standoff drags on.

Early on, about 2 million long-term unemployed people could see a $30 cut in benefit checks now averaging $300 a week. Federal subsidies for school construction, clean energy and state and local public works projects could be pinched. Low-income pregnant women and new mothers may find it harder to sign up for food aid.

Much depends on how states and communities manage any shortfalls in aid from Washington.

Furloughs of federal employees are for the most part a month or more away. Then, they might have to take up to a day off per week without pay.

That's when the public could start seeing delays at airports, disruptions in meat inspection, fewer services at national parks and the like.

An impasse lasting into the fall would reach farther, probably shrinking Head Start slots, for example.

Much of the federal budget is off-limits to the automatic cuts. Among exempted programs: Social Security, Medicaid, food stamps, Pell Grants and veterans' programs.

Even so, officials warn of a hollowed-out military capability, compromised border security and spreading deterioration of public services if the sequester continues. It's "like a rolling ball," said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. "It keeps growing."

___

Maybe it's fiscal-crisis fatigue.

Americans are yawning this one off. Only 27 percent of those surveyed for a Pew Research Center/USA Today poll last week said they had heard a lot about the looming automatic spending cuts.

Less than a third think the budget cuts would deeply affect their own financial situation, according to a Washington Post poll. Sixty percent, however, believe the cuts would have a major effect on the U.S. economy.

That's what economists and business people are nervous about.

The political standoff is the factor that economists blame most for the slowing economy, according to the latest Associated Press Economic Survey. The uncertainty is causing businesses to hold back on investment and hiring, and it's making consumers less confident about spending, economists warn.

___

How did it come to this?

Obama and congressional Republicans have been deadlocked over spending since the GOP won control of the House in 2010, with a big boost from tea party activists who champion lower taxes and an end to red-ink budgets.

House Republicans refused to raise the nation's borrowing limit in 2011 without major deficit cuts. To resolve the stalemate, Congress passed and Obama signed the Budget Control Act, which temporarily allowed borrowing to resume, set spending caps and created a bipartisan "supercommittee" to recommend at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years. Republicans and Democrats on the committee failed to compromise, however.

That triggered the law's doomsday scenario ? the so-called "fiscal cliff" package of across-the-board tax increases and spending cuts.

In a New Year's Eve deal, Obama and Congress agreed to raise taxes on some of the nation's wealthiest earners. And they postponed the spending cuts for two months ? until Friday.

That was supposed to buy time to cut a deal.

___

No surrender?

As the days melt into hours, neither side shows sign of blinking ? or even negotiating.

Obama insists on a blend of targeted spending cuts and tax increases. Republican leaders reject any more tax increases and say the savings must come from spending cuts.

While both sides talk about reducing the deficit, Obama and other Democrats say this must be done gradually, to avoid wounding an already weak economy.

The president is taking his case to the people, blasting Republicans at campaign-style events. GOP leaders, just back from a congressional vacation themselves, are publicly grousing that Obama should be bargaining with them, not grand-standing.

___

Is there a way out?

Expect intense negotiations to begin in Washington if enough Americans begin yelping about the pain from reduced federal spending.

Obama and Congress could agree to pare down the budget cuts to a more logical package of reductions, perhaps with some tax changes, too. Such a deal could also retroactively restore spending where they want to.

The "sequester" isn't the only line in the sand, however.

On March 27, legislation that has been temporarily financing the government expires. Without agreement to extend it, the threat of a government shutdown looms again. Later in the spring, it will be time to raise the nation's debt limit again.

So far, two years of budget crises have been settled with quick fixes. They have barely dented the underlying disagreement over how to reform Medicare, Social Security, taxes and spending to address the nation's long-term deficit problem.

If those festering questions remain unanswered, the U.S. economy will remain a hostage to politics.

___

Follow Connie Cass on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ConnieCass

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-02-26-US-Budget-Battle-News-Guide/id-7ea9d2c74c954552aaa63d0c7377265a

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BlackBerry Is Testing a Mobile Money Messaging Service

It's no secret that BlackBerry has seen better days, despite the recent introduction of new phones. But one of its bright spots is BlackBerry Messenger, and now, according to Bloomberg, it's looking into adding a money transfer service to this product. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/m72KV_ypkb4/blackberry-is-testing-a-mobile-money-messaging-service

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Donald Trump announced for WWE Hall of Fame

On Saturday, April 6, 2013, real estate mogul,?best-selling author and perennial thorn in Mr. McMahon?s side Donald Trump will be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame alongside Bruno Sammartino, Mick Foley, Bob Backlund and Trish Stratus in Madison Square Garden. (TICKETS AVAILABLE NOW)

?Donald is a global icon whose status brought an unmatched level of publicity and grandeur to WWE,? WWE Chairman and CEO Mr. McMahon said. (RETROSPECTIVE VIDEO)

The star and co-producer of the hit NBC series, "The Apprentice" ? which premieres its 13th season on Sunday, March 3 ? Trump has been a key figure in WWE since 1988 when his Trump Plaza hosted WrestleMania IV. The following year, WrestleMania V emanated from the same building, making it the first venue to present consecutive Show of Shows. (TRUMP'S FULL PROFILE)

The Donald?s most lasting impact on WWE occurred at WrestleMania 23 when he put his famous head of hair on the line against Mr. McMahon?s mane in a ?Battle of the Billionaires.? A record number of viewers tuned in to see Trump back Bobby Lashley to victory over Mr. McMahon?s Umaga and then shave The Chairman?s head in front of more than 80,000 WWE fans.

?It was literally the thrill of a lifetime performing in front of 80,000 enthusiastic fans during the ?Battle of the Billionaires? match at WrestleMania 23,? Donald Trump said.

Trump wasn?t done with Mr. McMahon just yet as he returned in 2009 to purchase Monday Night Raw from his rival. The following week, The Donald presented the show commercial-free and gave every fan in attendance a full refund. Mr. McMahon was so incensed with Trump?s actions that he was cornered into buying his program back for twice the price. (PHOTOS OF TRUMP)

?I?ve always enjoyed and respected WWE?s brand of entertainment and look forward to the ceremony in my hometown at Madison Square Garden,? the Chairman and President of The Trump Organization said.

Want to be there when The Donald enters the WWE Hall of Fame on April 6? Tickets for the Induction Ceremony are on sale now and available at the MSG box office, online at Ticketmaster.com and various Ticketmaster outlets, or charge by phone at 800-745-3000. Ticket prices range from $50 to $150.

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Source: http://www.wwe.com/classics/wwe-hall-of-fame/donald-trump-announced-for-wwe-hall-of-fame

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Playstation 4 Games Warn of PS-Style Surveillance

The debut of the PlayStation 4 in New York City Wednesday (Feb. 20) was as remarkable for what it showed as for what it didn't show: Sony unveiled a raft of beautiful, incredibly realistic new games, but not the console itself. The device, perhaps in a straight-from-the-lab rough appearance, was somewhere offstage, driving the giant projectors that broadcast previews of upcoming games around the Hammerstein Ballroom.

Out-of-site-yet-everywhere seems to be the overall metaphor of the PlayStation 4 (PS4), as Sony described it. The PS4 (which Sony plans to sell by year's end) is not so much a machine as a network ? with games delivered from the cloud, games that can follow you as you move from the PS4 to a mobile device, and the ability to post video clips of your adventures or even broadcast entire games online.

"We're making it so your friends can look over your shoulder virtually and interact with you as you play," said David Perry, co-founder of Gaikai, a company that Sony bought to build its cloud-gaming network.

But not only friends will be watching. Sony will. "The PlayStation network will get to know you by understanding your personal preferences and the preferences of your community and turn this knowledge into useful information that will enhance your gameplay," Perry said.

Every important technology has good and bad uses. Some of the upcoming games that Sony showcased for the PS4 explore, perhaps unwittingly, the darker side of omnipresent, omniscient networks similar to what Sony is building.

Suckerpunch's new game "inFAMOUS: Second Son" explores the surveillance state. "Right now, there are 4.2 million security cameras distributed all around Great Britain. That's one camera for every 14 citizens," said game director Nate Fox, in a dramatic introduction to the game. "It is hard to put your finger on what that sense of security is worth, but it is easy to say what it costs ? our freedom."

Like Great Britain, the PS4 will also have a vast network of cameras ? not one for every 14 citizens, but one for every console owner. At the presentation, Marc Cerny, head of the PlayStation hardware platform, showed a photo of a depth-sensing stereo camera for the PS4, designed to track the new Dualshock controller as it moves.

The danger in "Second Son" is that some individuals have developed super-human powers (a la "Heroes") that make them living weapons. They carry no traditional weapons and show no physical signs of danger ? rendering all the modern surveillance tech impotent.

But what if new security technology could go beyond the physical? What if it could read people's intentions and predict their next moves?

What if it were like the PS4?

Sony believes that PlayStation owners simply give off so much data as they interact intensively with the console, other devices and the network that it can know what its users intend to do.

"People haven't' changed, but now everybody's broadcasting. And once you've seen it, all of it, how do you look away?"

That's not a quote from a Sony or game-company executive. It's from the lead character in the upcoming Ubisoft game "Watch Dogs." It follows a vigilante character with access to all that information. As he walks through Chicago, message windows pop up, showing details about the people he passes. Marcus Rhodes, a 43-year-old Iraq War veteran, is unemployed. Sandy Higgins, a grade-school teacher, recently won a child-custody battle and has a 30 percent chance of being a crime victim. [See also:?Is Your Cellphone Under Surveillance?]

In the clip, the vigilante uses the knowledge to find a woman in danger and to track her attacker in a chase through the city. But as the police then pursue him, the game shows how much data the protagonist himself is giving off.

It's rather unlikely that the PlayStation 4 was designed to be a mass surveillance device, a Trojan Horse of a game console designed to slip spooks into the living room. Far likelier, Sony just wants the games to be more involving and better targeted for the customers, so they will buy and play more games.

"If we know enough about you to predict the next game you'll purchase, then that game can be loaded and ready to go before you even click the button," Marc Cerny said.

But still, the PS4 will collect a lot of information. That itself, in the right imagination, could be fodder for a good dystopian video game.

This story was provided by TechNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow TechNewsDaily on Twitter @TechNewsDaily, or on Facebook.?Follow Sean Captain @seancaptain

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/playstation-4-games-warn-ps-style-surveillance-135426994.html

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Future evidence for extraterrestrial life might come from dying stars

Feb. 25, 2013 ? Even dying stars could host planets with life -- and if such life exists, we might be able to detect it within the next decade. This encouraging result comes from a new theoretical study of Earth-like planets orbiting white dwarf stars. Researchers found that we could detect oxygen in the atmosphere of a white dwarf's planet much more easily than for an Earth-like planet orbiting a Sun-like star.

"In the quest for extraterrestrial biological signatures, the first stars we study should be white dwarfs," said Avi Loeb, theorist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and director of the Institute for Theory and Computation.

When a star like the Sun dies, it puffs off its outer layers, leaving behind a hot core called a white dwarf. A typical white dwarf is about the size of Earth. It slowly cools and fades over time, but it can retain heat long enough to warm a nearby world for billions of years.

Since a white dwarf is much smaller and fainter than the Sun, a planet would have to be much closer in to be habitable with liquid water on its surface. A habitable planet would circle the white dwarf once every 10 hours at a distance of about a million miles.

Before a star becomes a white dwarf it swells into a red giant, engulfing and destroying any nearby planets. Therefore, a planet would have to arrive in the habitable zone after the star evolved into a white dwarf. A planet could form from leftover dust and gas (making it a second-generation world), or migrate inward from a larger distance.

If planets exist in the habitable zones of white dwarfs, we would need to find them before we could study them. The abundance of heavy elements on the surface of white dwarfs suggests that a significant fraction of them have rocky planets. Loeb and his colleague Dan Maoz (Tel Aviv University) estimate that a survey of the 500 closest white dwarfs could spot one or more habitable Earths.

The best method for finding such planets is a transit search -- looking for a star that dims as an orbiting planet crosses in front of it. Since a white dwarf is about the same size as Earth, an Earth-sized planet would block a large fraction of its light and create an obvious signal.

More importantly, we can only study the atmospheres of transiting planets. When the white dwarf's light shines through the ring of air that surrounds the planet's silhouetted disk, the atmosphere absorbs some starlight. This leaves chemical fingerprints showing whether that air contains water vapor, or even signatures of life, such as oxygen.

Astronomers are particularly interested in finding oxygen because the oxygen in Earth's atmosphere is continuously replenished, through photosynthesis, by plant life. Were all life to cease on Earth, our atmosphere would quickly become devoid of oxygen, which would dissolve in the oceans and oxidize the surface. Thus, the presence of large quantities of oxygen in the atmosphere of a distant planet would signal the likely presence of life there.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scheduled for launch by the end of this decade, promises to sniff out the gases of these alien worlds. Loeb and Maoz created a synthetic spectrum, replicating what JWST would see if it examined a habitable planet orbiting a white dwarf. They found that both oxygen and water vapor would be detectable with only a few hours of total observation time.

"JWST offers the best hope of finding an inhabited planet in the near future," said Maoz.

Recent research by CfA astronomers Courtney Dressing and David Charbonneau showed that the closest habitable planet is likely to orbit a red dwarf star (a cool, low-mass star undergoing nuclear fusion). Since a red dwarf, although smaller and fainter than the Sun, is much larger and brighter than a white dwarf, its glare would overwhelm the faint signal from an orbiting planet's atmosphere. JWST would have to observe hundreds of hours of transits to have any hope of analyzing the atmosphere's composition.

"Although the closest habitable planet might orbit a red dwarf star, the closest one we can easily prove to be life-bearing might orbit a white dwarf," said Loeb.

Their paper has been accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory. CfA scientists, organized into six research divisions, study the origin, evolution and ultimate fate of the universe.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

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

---

Journal Reference:

1. Abraham Loeb, Dan Maoz. Detecting bio-markers in habitable-zone earths transiting white dwarfs. Arxiv, 2013 [link]

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

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

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/N7HMdoJEg3U/130225131618.htm

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Williams scores 46 to lead New Mexico past CSU

FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) -- With 9 minutes left, New Mexico guard Kendall Williams trudged to the bench with a career-high 28 points - and four fouls.

While he caught his breath, No. 22 Colorado State built a six-point lead over the 16th-ranked Lobos.

Moby Arena was rocking and the Rams were rolling, about to extend the nation's third-longest home winning streak to 28 games.

Williams had other things in mind - and 18 points left to score.

"Luckily, some shots went in," said the junior guard from Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., who finished with a career-best 46 points - almost double his previous career high of 24 - in leading New Mexico to a 91-82 win Saturday.

Williams set a Mountain West Conference record with 10 3-pointers and his 46 points were the most in the 47-year-old arena, topping the 44 scored by Portland State's Freeman Williams on Nov. 29, 1975.

"He should be hands-down player of the week, I would think," Lobos coach Steve Alford deadpanned.

Williams helped the Lobos overcome that 70-64 deficit at the 6-minute mark by hitting a trio of 3-pointers, a dunk and seven free throws down the stretch as New Mexico outscored the Rams 27-12.

"He got on a roll today," Alford said. "And it was a 40-minute roll."

Actually, it was a 33-minute roll. He spent seven minutes on the bench in foul trouble.

"That's what's really impressive," Alford said. "He sat about a four-minute stretch there in the second half and still scores and does what he does. It's pretty amazing. But he did a great job in that last six minutes not picking up that fifth" foul.

Center Alex Kirk added 19 points and 10 rebounds for the Lobos (23-4, 10-2), who increased their lead in the conference race to two games over the Rams (21-5, 8-4).

Colton Iverson had 26 points and 15 boards for the Rams, who looked like they were going to move into a first-place tie atop the standings after taking a 70-64 lead at the 6-minute mark.

Williams' treys highlighted a 14-2 run that gave New Mexico a 78-72 lead before the Rams sent the Lobos to the line over the final two minutes.

"Well, that was a special night to watch," Alford said. "I told him that. I said I never had a 10-3 game, I never got to 46. Forty-two was the most I ever scored and eight 3s was the most I ever made in a game."

"There's not too many one-ups you can get on Coach Alford, especially in scoring," Williams said. "I might be on top of the world for the rest of the weekend."

Williams' previous career best was 24 points against Indiana State and New Mexico State earlier this season.

"The players kept feeding me the ball," said Williams, who had 15 family members, including his grandmother, in the stands. "It was really just a team effort, some of the shots I hit were tough. But if the teammates didn't put me in position and the coaches didn't put me in position, I wouldn't have had quite the night I had."

The Rams blamed themselves for Williams' big game.

"We had no answer for him," Rams coach Larry Eustachy said. "... He was completely unstoppable. I want to see film on how many of those shots were contested."

His bet is that not many were.

The Rams, who gave up 45 points to Air Force's Michael Lyons a week earlier, left Williams open early on while locking down Tony Snell, who scored 10 points Saturday after getting 23 in their first meeting last month.

"He hadn't been shooting well this year," Dorian Green said. "We gave him some uncontested looks, let him get hot. Guys are too good in our league to do that."

"We gave him open looks early," Wes Eikmeier added. "He got hot and then he was feeling it the rest of the night."

Green (20) and Eikmeier (22) gave the Rams three 20-point scorers in their losing effort. Eikmeier scored 11 straight to put the Rams ahead 55-50.

The Lobos quieted the crowd with a 12-6 run to regain the lead at 62-61, but Williams, less than a minute after returning to the lineup, was whistled for his fourth foul and took a seat at the nine-minute mark.

"I was real mad," Williams said. "My emotions were high, but (assistant coach Craig) Neal came over while Coach Alford was doing his thing and calmed me down and says, `You're going to have to bring it home, kid. Don't foul and get the shots that you need.' And that's exactly what I did."

The Rams were coming off a two-point loss at UNLV on Wednesday night that snapped their six-game winning streak, which began after a 66-61 loss to the Lobos in Albuquerque last month.

They hadn't lost at home since Nov. 11, 2012, to Southern Miss., which was coached at the time by Eustachy, who took the Rams job last offseason.

Williams' 10th 3-pointer - in 13 tries - broke the conference mark of nine set by several players, most recently UNLV's Chace Stanback against Central Arkansas on Dec. 28, 2011. It was a difficult shot from the right corner.

"Why not? Just throw it up there, had hit a few already," Williams said. "With the hoop the size it was tonight and the rhythm I was feeling, it just felt like I had to throw that one up."

---

Follow Arnie Melendrez Stapleton on Twitter: http://twitter.com/arniestapleton

Source: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BKC_T25_NEW_MEXICO_COLORADO_STATE?SITE=NCWIN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

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Early results show Cypriot conservative chief with strong lead

NICOSIA (Reuters) - Cypriot conservative leader Nicos Anastasiades took a commanding lead in Sunday's presidential runoff with a 56.8 percent share of the vote after 10 percent of votes were counted, interior ministry data showed.

Leftist rival Stavros Malas, who is backed by the Communist party AKEL, trailed with a 43.3 share of the vote.

Anastasiades is in favour of a quick bailout deal with European Union and International Monetary Fund lenders to avert a looming Cypriot bankruptcy, while Malas has promised to drive a hard bargain on the austerity terms accompanying a rescue.

(Reporting by Michele Kambas, Writing by Deepa Babington)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/early-results-show-cypriot-conservative-chief-strong-lead-164110474.html

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Syria rebels fight for police academy near Aleppo

BEIRUT (AP) ? Rebels backed by captured tanks launched a fresh offensive on a government complex housing a police academy near the northern city of Aleppo on Sunday, while the government hit back with airstrikes to try to protect the strategic installation, activists said.

If rebels capture the complex on the outskirts of Aleppo, it would mark another setback for President Bashar Assad. In recent weeks, his regime has lost control of key infrastructure in the northeast including a hydroelectric dam, a major oil field and two army bases along the road linking Aleppo with the airport to its east.

Rebels also have been hitting the heart of Damascus with occasional mortars shells or bombings, posing a stiff challenge to the regime in its seat of power.

On Saturday, opposition fighters in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour overran a military post believed to have once been the site of a partly built nuclear reactor that Israeli warplanes bombed in 2007.

A year after the strike, the U.N. nuclear watchdog determined that the destroyed building's size and structure fit specifications of a nuclear reactor. Syria never stated the purpose of the site known as Al-Kibar.

After the bombing, the regime carted away all the debris from the destroyed building and equipment from the two standing structures, analysts said, adding that the rebels were unlikely to have found any weapons in the abandoned complex.

There were troops in the area until this weekend. It was not clear what the site was being used for most recently.

"It's more or less a shell because the Syrians decided to remove everything inside the buildings," said Mustafa Alani, an analyst with the Gulf Research Center in Geneva. "I don't think there's anything left really of any value for the rebels."

Separately, rebels have been trying for months to storm the government complex west of Aleppo in the suburb of Khan al-Asal, according to Rami Abdul-Rahman, the director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The facility also includes several smaller army outposts charged with protecting the police academy inside the compound.

The SANA state news agency said regime troops repelled the rebel attack on the police academy, inflicting heavy losses and destroying four armored vehicles and three cars fitted with machine guns. There was no word on government casualties.

Aleppo has been the scene of some of the heaviest fighting of Syria's nearly 2-year-old conflict.

In July, rebels launched an offensive on the city, the country's largest and one-time commercial capital, and quickly seized several neighborhoods. The battle has since devolved into a bloody stalemate, with heavy street fighting that has left whole districts in ruins and forced thousands to flee.

A key focus for the rebels as they try to capture the city is Aleppo's international airport, which they have been attacking for weeks.

Regime forces also fired an apparent ground-to-ground missile Sunday on the town of Tal Rifat, some 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of Aleppo, the Observatory said. There was no immediate word on casualties.

The report follows similar strikes last week on impoverished rebel-held Aleppo neighborhoods that killed at least 60 people.

Also on Sunday, prominent Syrian comedian Yassin Bakoush was killed in Damascus after apparently being caught in the crossfire between rebels and government troops.

Bakoush, 75, was known for playing characters that were likeable but naive and dim-witted. SANA said he is survived by11 children.

SANA said Yassin Bakoush was killed by a rebel mortar round that landed on his car in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus, which has seen heavy fighting in recent months. However, the anti-regime Observatory said Bakoush was killed when a rocket-propelled grenade launched by government forces slammed into his car.

French freelance photographer Olivier Voisin, who was wounded on Thursday in Syria and taken to Turkey for treatment, died of his wounds at an Istanbul hospital, the French Foreign Ministry said Sunday.

Voisin is the second French journalist this year to be killed while reporting on the civil war, which has proven to be one of the most dangerous conflicts for reporters to cover.

In Lebanon, two people were killed by Syrian shells and gunfire that landed on Lebanese territory near the border.

The state-run National News Agency in Lebanon said a man was killed and his brother was wounded by shells that slammed into the town of al-Hisheh in the Wadi Khaled area of the north, while another man was killed by gunfire in the area of al-Buqaiaa.

The deaths added to tensions in the area which has seen an escalation of violence in recent days. The civil war in Syria has increasingly spilled over into Lebanon with almost daily reports of cross-border shelling or gunfire in border areas.

The United Nations says at least 70,000 people have been killed since the uprising against Assad's authoritarian rule began nearly two years ago.

Efforts to stop the bloodshed so far have failed, leaving the international community at a loss of how to end the civil war.

A senior opposition leader said Sunday that his umbrella group has suspended participation in meetings with its Western backers and their Arab allies because of their indifference over the regime's attacks on the Syrian people in Aleppo and other cities.

"Assad has reached the stage of real genocide amid Arab silence and we renounce that," George Sabra, vice president of the Syrian National Coalition, said in Cairo after meeting Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby.

On Friday, the Coalition said its leaders would not travel to Washington or Moscow for any talks to protest the international community's "silence over crimes committed by the regime." It also said opposition leaders would boycott a meeting next month in Rome of the Friends of Syria, which includes the United States and its European allies.

In Washington, the State Department condemned rocket attacks on Aleppo, saying in a statement late Saturday the strikes are the "latest demonstrations of the Syrian regime's ruthlessness and its lack of compassion for the Syrian people it claims to represent."

___

Associated Press writers Ryan Lucas in Beirut and Lori Hinnant in Paris contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/syria-rebels-fight-police-academy-near-aleppo-111540797.html

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HBT: Bobby V will be Sacred Heart AD

Ex-Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine got the gig he was aiming for: he?ll be named the new Athletic Director of Sacred Heart University in a press conference scheduled for Tuesday, CtPost?s William Paxton reports.

It?s another odd turn for the former big-league infielder and three-time major league manager. Besides managing the Rangers, Mets and Red Sox and commentating for ESPN, Valentine also spent seven years managing in Japan, served as Director of Public Safety & Health for?Stamford, Connecticut and popularized the wrap sandwich.

Sacred Heart University is a Catholic school located in Fairfield, Connecticut and apparently is a Northeast Conference powerhouse in baseball and golf. The baseball team went 25-32 last season, but still won the NEC for a second straight season with a 19-13 conference record.

Following a disastrous lone season in Boston, it?s doubtful that the 62-year-old Valentine will ever surface in a major league dugout again. Still, he does have a winning record in 16 years as a major league manager, going 1,186-1,165.

Where this leaves Valentine and NBC is unclear. Valentine was hired last month to serve as a co-host on a weekday talk show for NBC Sports Radio. That gig was due to begin in April.

Source: http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/02/21/bobby-valentine-is-the-athletic-director-for-sacred-heart-university/related/

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Has evolution given humans unique brain structures?

Feb. 22, 2013 ? Humans have at least two functional networks in their cerebral cortex not found in rhesus monkeys. This means that new brain networks were likely added in the course of evolution from primate ancestor to human.

These findings, based on an analysis of functional brain scans, were published in a study by neurophysiologist Wim Vanduffel (KU Leuven and Harvard Medical School) in collaboration with a team of Italian and American researchers.

Our ancestors evolutionarily split from those of rhesus monkeys about 25 million years ago. Since then, brain areas have been added, have disappeared or have changed in function. This raises the question, 'Has evolution given humans unique brain structures?'. Scientists have entertained the idea before but conclusive evidence was lacking. By combining different research methods, we now have a first piece of evidence that could prove that humans have unique cortical brain networks.

Professor Vanduffel explains: "We did functional brain scans in humans and rhesus monkeys at rest and while watching a movie to compare both the place and the function of cortical brain networks. Even at rest, the brain is very active. Different brain areas that are active simultaneously during rest form so-called 'resting state' networks. For the most part, these resting state networks in humans and monkeys are surprisingly similar, but we found two networks unique to humans and one unique network in the monkey."

"When watching a movie, the cortex processes an enormous amount of visual and auditory information. The human-specific resting state networks react to this stimulation in a totally different way than any part of the monkey brain. This means that they also have a different function than any of the resting state networks found in the monkey. In other words, brain structures that are unique in humans are anatomically absent in the monkey and there no other brain structures in the monkey that have an analogous function. Our unique brain areas are primarily located high at the back and at the front of the cortex and are probably related to specific human cognitive abilities, such as human-specific intelligence."

The study used fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scans to visualise brain activity. fMRI scans map functional activity in the brain by detecting changes in blood flow. The oxygen content and the amount of blood in a given brain area vary according to a particular task, thus allowing activity to be tracked.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by KU Leuven, via AlphaGalileo.

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

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Journal Reference:

1. Dante Mantini, Maurizio Corbetta, Gian Luca Romani, Guy A. Orban, Wim Vanduffel. Evolutionary-Novel Functional Networks in the Human Brain? The Journal of Neuroscience, 2013; DOI: 10.1523/%u200BJNEUROSCI.4392-12.2013

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

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

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/xHGCPbZI-WU/130222120753.htm

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PFT: Receiver Austin says he's best player in draft

AP

Last year?s draft class of quarterbacks was a unique one, with eight rookies starting at some point in the season, and more than half of them playing well.

But according to Broncos executive John Elway, the rising tide of young quarterbacks is a function of improved play, rather than improved scouting.

Asked if the improved batting average on picking quarterbacks was because the league had learned something, Elway replied simply: ?I think quarterbacks are getting better. . . . We?re getting guys that are much better prepared.?

With the proliferation of 7-on-7 leagues at the high school level (and younger), to the individual instruction most draftable quarterbacks are getting now, there?s a higher level of training that passers are getting, which is raising the bar.

That doesn?t mean teams aren?t going to miss with this year?s crop, especially in a class where many personnel types are talking about the holes in their games, but the floor has been raised.

Of course, Elway still wants to see the intangibles in any passer he?s considering. He offered input to the league on the new personality test that was created to supplement the Wonderlic.

He said he was asked what he wanted to see measured, and he told the test-makers he?d wanted to see if they could gauge competitiveness.

Granted, he hasn?t seen the test to see how that manifested itself, and it seems no one has.

But as years pass, that too will be taught to the quarterbacks coming in, extending the cycle of preparedness.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/02/22/tavon-austin-im-the-best-player-in-the-draft/related/

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Behind-the-scenes deal pushes immigration reform closer to reality

The US Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO came up with a framework for solving one of the thorniest issues in immigration reform. The agreement shows momentum is growing.

By David Grant,?Staff writer / February 21, 2013

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka (c.) speaks to reporters outside the White House in Washington in this file photo. The AFL-CIO reached an agreement with the US Chamber of Commerce Thursday on one key aspect of immigration reform.

Carolyn Kaster/AP/File

Enlarge

A compromise agreement announced Thursday between the nation?s largest labor union and the top advocate for American business underscores the enormous momentum now behind immigration reform.

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The agreement touches on what was seen to be potentially one of the biggest stumbling blocks in the immigration reform debate ? namely, how the country should handle the flow of low-skilled, temporary foreign workers.

In finding middle ground, the AFL-CIO and the US Chamber of Commerce ? two powerful organizations often at loggerheads ? have taken a ?strong step forward? in resolving the issue, says Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum. Moreover, they have added to the impression that important stakeholders ? seeing immigration reform as increasingly likely ? are putting aside public posturing in order to hammer out solutions.?

?This particular slice of the pie is the most important piece: What does our immigration system look like moving forward?? Mr. Noorani says. ?Every day, [the Chamber and the AFL-CIO] are going to continue to put more meat on these bones.... For them to agree, even on the bones, means that they've been engaged in a really serious negotiation.?

Praise for the deal came from both sides of the aisle ? House majority leader Eric Cantor (R) of Virginia and Sen. Charles Schumer (D) of New York. "We are very hopeful that an agreement can be reached on a specific proposal in the next few weeks," said Senator Schumer, a member of the bipartisan Senate group working on an immigration compromise, in a statement.

?The principles of the agreement call for creating an independent commission that would study the labor market and propose tweaks to the number of lower-skilled workers admitted to the country. Currently, the number of temporary workers allowed into the country is set predominantly by quotas that continue at stable rates from year to year no matter the economic condition in the US.

The problem with the current system, all sides agree, is that it leaves worker shortages when the economy is surging and allows too many workers to enter the country when economic activity slackens. The AFL-CIO and the US Chamber of Commerce addressed this in their joint statement on Thursday.

?Our challenge is to create a mechanism that responds to the needs of business in a market-driven way, while also fully protecting the wages and working conditions of U.S. and immigrant workers,? it read.

While important details remain to be worked out, the Chamber and AFL-CIO said Thursday that the goal was achievable.

?The power of today?s technology enables us to use that knowledge to craft a workable demand-driven process fed by data that will inform how America addresses future labor shortages,? the two groups said in the statement.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/0dtOCbUuY_Q/Behind-the-scenes-deal-pushes-immigration-reform-closer-to-reality

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