Man. These guys are going to make so, so, so much money. Zenefits, the free, YC-backed "set-it-and-forget-it" service thats helps small businesses worry less about employee benefits, made a pair of announcements at Disrupt NY 2013 this morning: They'll now be able to handle payroll duties, and they're expanding the service to New York.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/4RsCM-aFxHk/
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DETROIT (AP) ? Ex-U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick of Detroit and six other former Congress members are presiding over hearings on the existence of extraterrestrials.
The 30 hours of congressional-style hearings kicked off Monday and are scheduled to run through Friday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Those testifying hope to prove that aliens contact Earth ? and that the government is trying to keep it secret.
Kilpatrick tells The Detroit News (http://bit.ly/Y8HUMc ) she's been researching the topic and is "looking forward to the week's activities."
The News says Kilpatrick, who is being paid $20,000 plus expenses, will chair the panel on Tuesday.
Kilpatrick is a Democrat who served in Congress from 1997-2011. Her son, ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, is awaiting sentencing after being convicted on two dozen counts of corruption.
___
Information from: The Detroit News, http://detnews.com/
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ex-mich-congresswoman-presides-over-et-hearings-175652330.html
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ABUJA (Reuters) - Pirates have kidnapped five crew members from a cargo ship off Nigeria, a piracy watchdog and a security source said on Monday, part of a growing trend of attacks that are pushing up maritime insurance costs in the Gulf of Guinea.
The Antigua and Barbuda-flagged MV City of Xiamen container ship was attacked late on April 25 off the coast of oil-producing Bayelsa state, a security source said.
The crew were mostly Sri Lankans but included one member from Russia and another from Myanmar, the source said.
The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) said 14 heavily armed pirates attacked the container ship, breached its citadel - a strong room designed to protect the crew from attack. The pirates took five crew captive before escaping with cash taken from the ship and the crew, the IMB said in a piracy report.
Pirates in a speed boat off Nigeria chased and fired upon another container ship on April 24 but the vessel increased speed and escaped, the IMB said.
West Africa is an important source of oil, cocoa and metals for world markets, but international navies are not engaged in counter-piracy missions at present. Many vessels are forced to anchor off Nigeria with little protection, making them a soft target for criminals.
Naval patrols and the presence of armed guards aboard merchant vessels have helped reduce piracy off Somalia on Africa's eastern coast.
(Reporting by Joe Brock; Editing by Tim Cocks and Jon Boyle)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pirates-kidnap-five-crew-ship-off-nigeria-agency-103940988.html
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Apr. 29, 2013 ? This past weekend teams from the National Football League used statistics like height, weight and speed to draft the best college players, and in a few weeks, armchair enthusiasts will use similar measures to select players for their own fantasy football teams. Neuroscientists at Carnegie Mellon University are taking a similar approach to compile "dream teams" of neurons using a statistics-based method that can evaluate the fitness of individual neurons.
After assembling the teams, a computer simulation pitted the groups of neurons against one another in a playoff-style format to find out which population was the best. Researchers analyzed the winning teams to see what types of neurons made the most successful squads.
The results were published in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of April 29.
"We wanted to know what team of neurons would be most likely to perform best in response to a variety of stimuli," said Nathan Urban, the Dr. Frederick A. Schwertz Distinguished Professor of Life Sciences and head of the Department of Biological Sciences at Carnegie Mellon.
The human brain contains more than 100 billion neurons that work together in smaller groups to complete certain tasks like processing an odor, or seeing a color. Previous work by Urban's lab found that no two neurons are exactly alike and that diverse teams of neurons were better able to determine a stimulus than teams of similar neurons.
"The next step in our work was to figure out how to assemble the best possible population of neurons in order to complete a task," said Urban, who is also a member of the joint Carnegie Mellon/University of Pittsburgh Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC).
However, using existing methods, scouting for the best team of neurons was a seemingly daunting task. It would be impossible for scientists to determine how each of the billions of neurons in the brain would individually respond to a multitude of stimuli. Urban and Shreejoy Tripathy, the article's lead author and graduate student in the CNBC's Program in Neural Computation, solved this problem using a statistical modeling approach, known as generalized linear models (GLMs), to analyze the cell-to-cell variability. Urban and Tripathy found that by applying this approach they were able to accurately reproduce the behavior of individual neurons in a computer, allowing them to gather statistics on each single cell.
Then, much like in fantasy football, the computer model used the statistics to put together thousands of teams of neurons. The teams competed against one another in a computer simulation to see which were able to most accurately recreate a stimulus delivered to the team of neurons. In the end researchers identified a small set of teams that they could study to see what characteristics made those populations successful.
They found that the winning teams of neurons were diverse but not as diverse as they would be if they were selected at random from the general population of neurons. The most successful sets contained a heterogeneous group of neurons that were flexible and able to respond well to a variety of stimuli.
"You can't have a football team made up of only linebackers. You need linebackers and tight ends, a quarterback and a kicker. But, the players can't just be random people off of the street; they all need to be good athletes. And you need to draft for positions, not just the best player available. If your best player is a quarterback -- you don't take another quarterback with your first pick," Urban said. "It's the same with neurons. To make the most effective grouping of neurons, you need a diverse bunch that also happens to be more robust and flexible than your average neuron."
Urban believes that GLMs can be used to further understand the importance of neuronal diversity. He plans to use the models to predict how alterations in the variability of neurons' responses, which can be caused by learning or disease, impact function.
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/UpRHO-B1TAY/130429154105.htm
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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) ? Police say a 24-year-old man stabbed four people at a Catholic church in Albuquerque as a Sunday mass was nearing its end.
Police spokesman Robert Gibbs says Lawrence Capener jumped over several pews at St. Jude Thaddeus Catholic Church around noon Sunday and walked up to the choir area where he began his attack.
The injuries to the four church-goers weren't life-threatening. All four were being treated at hospitals.
An off-duty police officer and others at the church subdued Capener and held him down until police arrived.
Some of those who were stabbed were members of the choir.
Gibbs says Capener is now being interviewed by police and is expected to face felony charges.
It's not yet known whether Capener has an attorney.
Gibbs says investigators don't yet know the motive for the stabbings, whether Capener had ties to the victims or whether he regularly attended the church.
The stabbings occurred as the choir had just begun its closing hymns.
Archbishop of Santa Fe Michael Sheehan released a statement saying he was saddened by the attack.
"I pray for all who have been harmed, their families, the parishioners and that nothing like this will ever happen again," Sheehan said.
The church didn't immediately return calls seeking comment on Sunday afternoon.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/police-4-people-stabbed-albuquerque-church-224409447.html
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BEIRUT (AP) ? The instances in which chemical weapons are alleged to have been used in Syria were purportedly small in scale: nothing along the lines of Saddam Hussein's 1988 attack in Kurdish Iraq that killed thousands.
That raises the question of who would stand to gain as President Bashar Assad's regime and the opposition trade blame for the alleged attacks, and proof remains elusive.
Analysts say the answer could lie in the past ? the regime has a pattern of gradually introducing a weapon to the conflict to test the international community's response.
The U.S. said last week that intelligence indicates the Syrian military has likely used sarin, a deadly nerve agent, on at least two occasions in the civil war, echoing similar assessments from Israel, France and Britain. Syria's rebels accuse the regime of firing chemical weapons on at least four occasions, while the government denies the charges and says opposition fighters have used chemical agents in a bid to frame it.
But using chemical weapons to try to force foreign intervention would be a huge gamble for the opposition, and one that could easily backfire. It would undoubtedly taint the rebellion in the eyes of the international community and seriously strain its credibility.
Mustafa Alani, an analyst at the Gulf Research Center in Geneva, said it would also be difficult for the rebels to successfully employ chemical agents.
"It's very difficult to weaponize chemical weapons," he said. "It needs a special warhead, for the artillery a special fuse."
In the chaos of Syria's civil war, pinning down definitive proof on the alleged use of weapons of mass destruction is a tricky task with high stakes. President Barack Obama has said any use of chemical arms ? or the transfer of stockpiles to terrorists ? would cross a "red line" and carry "enormous consequences."
Already, the White House's announcement that the Syrian regime appears to have used chemical arms has ratcheted up the pressure on Obama to move forcefully. He has sought to temper expectations of a quick U.S. response, saying too little is known about the alleged attacks to take action now.
Analysts suggest that a limited introduction of the weapons, with little ostensible military gain, could be an attempt by the Syrian government to test the West's resolve while retaining the veil of plausible deniability. This approach would also allow foreign powers eager to avoid a costly intervention in Syria to remain on the sidelines, while at the same time opening the door for the regime to use the weapons down the road.
"If it's testing the water, and we're going to turn a blind eye, it could be used widely, repeatedly," Alani said. "If you are silent once, you will be silent twice."
The slow introduction of a weapon to gauge the West's response fits a pattern of behavior the Assad regime has demonstrated since the uprising began in March 2011, according to Joseph Holliday, a Syria analyst at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.
When largely peaceful protesters initially took to the streets, the regime responded with small arms fire and a wave of arrests. As the government ramped up its violent crackdown, the opposition began to take up arms in late 2011, prompting yet another escalation in force by the regime.
In early 2012, government troops began using heavy weapons, first in a relatively restrained manner on military targets.
"Once they could confirm that there wasn't going to be a major reaction from the West, they were able to expand the use of artillery," Holliday said.
By the summer of 2012, government troops were pounding rebellious neighborhoods with tank fire, field cannons and mortars, but the rebellion was stronger than ever, prompting Assad to turn to his air force, and the regime's MiG fighter jets and helicopter gunships began to strike military targets in rural areas.
After the government was satisfied that the international community wasn't going to impose a no-fly zone like NATO did in Libya, Assad unleashed the full might of his air power, and warplanes have been indiscriminately bombing rebel-held areas since.
"It all fits the pattern of being able to do this incrementally," Holliday said.
"It's been important for the regime to introduce these capabilities as gradually as possible so that they don't trip the international community's red lines," he added. "I think this is basically a modus operandi that the Assad regime has established and tested with the United States, and confirmed that it works, and he's using it again with chemical weapons."
Syria has never confirmed it even has chemical weapons. But it is believed to possess substantial stockpiles of mustard gas and a range of nerve agents, including sarin, a highly toxic substance that can suffocate its victims by paralyzing muscles around their lungs.
Concern rose last summer when then-Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi told a news conference that Damascus would only use chemical or biological weapons in case of foreign attack, not against its own people. The ministry then tried to blur the issue, saying it had never acknowledged having such arms.
Weapons of mass destruction are generally viewed as a deterrent against foreign attack, and their use a sign of desperation. But Assad appears far from desperate at the moment, and in fact is operating from a position of relative strength.
While much of northern Syria has fallen to the rebels, the government's hold on Damascus is firm and its forces have been on the offensive in the capital's suburbs and in the countryside near the border with Lebanon. In the northwest, regime troops recently opened up a key supply road to soldiers fighting in the embattled city of Aleppo.
Two of the alleged attacks the Syrian opposition blames on the regime took place in and around Aleppo: one in Khan al-Assal west of the city on March 19, and another in the contested Shiekh Maqsoud neighborhood on April 13. The other alleged instances were in the central city of Homs on Dec. 23 and in the village of Otaybah outside Damascus on March 19.
It is not clear exactly how many people died in those attacks because of the scarcity of credible information. The Syrian government seals off areas it controls to journalists and outside observers, making details of the attacks sketchy. But reports from anti-Assad activists and the government provide a basic outline.
Opposition activists have posted videos and pictures online of alleged victims of the attacks foaming at the mouth or with blister burns ? symptoms consistent with chemical weapons attacks, but also other munitions. The Syrian state news agency, after one attack it blamed on rebels, published photos of casualties, including children. None showed signs of physical injuries.
Both sides in the civil war, which has already killed more than 70,000 people, have tried to use the issue to sway international opinion.
Rebels have been clamoring for more robust international action against the Assad regime. At a recent gathering in Turkey of the rebellion's international supporters, the opposition political leadership demanded drone strikes on regime targets and the imposition of a no-fly zone, and it reiterated calls for transfers of heavier weapons to its fighters.
The regime has seized on the opposition's demands for outside support to bolster its argument that rebels may have used chemical weapons to frame the government and precipitate foreign intervention.
In December, after rebels captured a chlorine factory in Aleppo, the government warned the opposition could be planning a chemical attack to frame the regime. To back up its assertions, the state news agency pointed to internet videos that purported to show regime opponents experimenting with poisons on mice and rabbits.
In the video, a masked man mixes gases in a glass box containing two rabbits. About a minute later, the animals start to spasm and then collapse. A narrator then says, "This is what will happen to you, Assad supporters." The origin of the video was not known.
Alani dismissed the possibility of the rebels, including Islamic extremist groups among the most powerful opposition fighting factions, carrying out a chlorine attack.
He noted that al-Qaida militants used chlorine on at least two occasions in Iraq in the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah, but abandoned the practice because "the impact of the chlorine was far less than conventional explosives."
___
Follow Ryan Lucas on Twitter at www.twitter.com/relucasz
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pattern-seen-alleged-chemical-arms-syria-191327590.html
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BERLIN (AP) ? Reports that the late German actor Horst Tappert, best known for his longtime role as dapper TV sleuth Stefan Derrick, served in a feared Nazi SS unit prompted at least one European broadcaster to announce Saturday that it would drop the show's reruns from its schedule.
Dutch TV station MAX pulled reruns of the show, which was produced from 1974 to 1998, after daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published documents Friday showing the actor had been in the SS during World War II.
"Derrick" was one of the most widely syndicated German TV shows, broadcast in over 100 countries including China, Australia, France and Norway.
"We are not going to honor an actor like this who has lied about his past," Dutch public broadcaster NOS quoted MAX chairman Jan Slagter as saying.
Tappert had spoken of his wartime service as a medic in an interview 10 years before his death in 2008. But he didn't mention that his unit was part of the elite SS Armored Infantry Regiment 1, nicknamed the "Skulls" after the emblem they wore.
The SS is known to have committed atrocities during World War II but it was unclear from the newly discovered documents whether Tappert was directly involved.
Peter Grune, a spokesman for German public broadcaster ZDF that co-produced the show's 281 episodes, said nobody at the station had known of Tappert's SS past.
"Stories like these come up now and again," he said. "For us it's not an urgent matter because he's dead."
The hidden history of prominent Germans' involvement in the war has become a subject of public debate again in recent years, after being largely ignored for decades.
In 2006, German Nobel literature laureate Guenter Grass admitted in an autobiography that he had been a member of the SS in the final months of the war. The revelation hurt Grass' image as one of the 'moral consciences' in post-war Germany.
Earlier this year ZDF broadcast a three-part drama about the war, accompanied by a publicity campaign that urged Germans to seek out survivors of the Nazi period and ask them about the role they played at the time.
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Feeling frisky? If so, chances are greater your estrogen level ?? and, perhaps, fertility ?? are hitting their monthly peak. If not, you're more likely experiencing a profusion of desire-deadening progesterone, and the less fertile time in your cycle. Oh, the power of hormones.
Researchers have long suspected a correlation between hormone levels and libido, but now scientists at UC Santa Barbara, led by James Roney, a professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, have actually demonstrated hormonal predictors for sexual desire. Their findings appear in the current issue of the journal Hormones and Behavior.
"We found two hormonal signals that had opposite effects on sexual motivation," said Roney, the article's lead author. "Estrogen was having a positive effect, but with a two-day lag. Progesterone was having a persistent negative effect, both for current day, day before, and two days earlier." When hormone levels and sexual desire were factored against the menstrual cycles of test subjects ?? in this case, undergraduate students ?? the researchers saw a measurable increase in progesterone levels at the same time the subjects noted decreases in sexual motivation. Progesterone, the researchers say, is mediating this drop in desire from the fertile window to the luteal phase ?? the second half of the menstrual cycle.
"Progesterone acting as a potential stop signal within cycles is a novel finding in humans," noted Roney. "We know in rhesus monkeys there is a strong negative correlation with progesterone and a positive correlation with estrogen. The patterns are actually comparable to what you see in non-human primates, but hadn't been shown in humans."
The researchers' findings have potential implications on the treatment of low sexual desire and how hormone replacement trials are done. "We're not controlling hormones the way they do in the hormone replacement literature, so, in a sense, that literature is more directly applicable in terms of medical applications," said Roney. "But in the long run, it would be good to have a model of the combination of signals that operates in the natural cycle. The way hormone replacement trials are done now, there's no model of the natural signals, so they're sort of random ?? let's give estrogen, let's give testosterone, let's combine them this way or that way."
Roney noted that his findings don't present a full model, and he'd like to replicate his results with women of different age groups. "Undergraduates might be unique for a lot of reasons," he said. "Their hormone levels tend to be a bit different from those of women even just a little bit older. And married women in their 30's are likely to be more consistently sexually active, and that might change the patterns in some ways. They also tend to have higher hormone secretion and more regular cycles than younger women," he said
Eventually, Roney continued, the goal would be to have a better model of the signals in a natural cycle that might then inform medical research.
Another interesting finding, according to Roney, was the impact ?? or lack thereof ?? of testosterone on the women's sexual motivation. "There's a common belief in the medical literature that testosterone is the main regulator of women's libido," he explained. "Doctors tend to believe that, though the evidence isn't that strong in humans. In the natural cycles, we weren't finding effects of testosterone. It wasn't significantly predicting outcomes."
Roney doesn't deny that testosterone does seem to have a positive effect in hormone replacement therapy, but suggests the effects may be pharmacological. "Testosterone has those effects if you inject it externally in women who are menopausal, and there are a lot of reasons that might be the case," he said. "For example, testosterone can be converted to estrogen through a particular enzyme. If you inject menopausal women with testosterone, it might be acting as a device that's delivering estrogen to the target cells. So the fact that it works doesn't necessarily mean it's an important signal in the natural cycle."
###
University of California - Santa Barbara: http://www.ucsb.edu
Thanks to University of California - Santa Barbara for this article.
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Apr. 25, 2013 ? Weight loss is a topic of concern for nearly 36% of Americans who are considered obese. There are many barriers that can interfere with weight loss. For those attending face-to-face weight loss programs, barriers can include travel, conflict with work and home, need for childcare, and loss of anonymity.
In a new study released in the May/June 2013 issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, investigators from The University of Kansas Medical Center continue to explore alternative weight management delivery methods to eliminate some of these barriers. The solution they are investigating -- virtual reality for weight loss and weight maintenance.
Looking at the results from twenty overweight and obese individuals after 3 months of a weight loss program at a weekly clinic delivered via face-to-face or virtual reality and then 6 months of weight maintenance delivered via virtual reality, the investigators found virtual reality compares favorably with face-to-face for weight loss and may facilitate greater weight maintenance. Debra Sullivan, lead investigator, adds, "Although we found weight loss was significantly greater for face-to-face compared to virtual reality, weight maintenance was significantly better for virtual reality."
The virtual reality weight maintenance program was conducted using Second Life, a Web-based virtual reality environment available to the public. Participants in Second Life create virtual representations of themselves, called ''avatars,'' which can interact with other avatars and navigate through the virtual world of Second Life. Voice communication is accomplished via headset, which allows for person-to-person and group interaction. Education and training takes place on an ''island,'' which is purchased from Second Life and provides restricted group access to the nutrition education/training area.
To further explain how Second Life can be used in this capacity, Dr. Sullivan explains, "Individuals who want to participate in real-life scenarios without real-life repercussions can use virtual reality. For example, participants can practice meal planning, grocery shopping, and dietary control when eating at restaurants and holiday parties to a much greater extent with Second Life compared with the time-limited clinic meeting. Virtual reality may even be able to serve as a more feasible option to monitor individuals after completing a weight loss program."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Elsevier Health Sciences.
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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/bogh1gGK3B8/130426115628.htm
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All EVs have their own particular merits: some climb, some race, some only have three wheels, and some are even prone to melting. Chevrolet's Spark EV may not have any of these credentials, but now it's found the right feather to fit its cap as the "most efficient" retail car. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that the Spark has a combined city / highway range of 82 miles on a full charge of its 21 kWh battery, and has given the vehicle a rating of 119 MPGe (a gasoline-equivalent figure). As Autoblog notes, Honda's Fit EV will go 82 miles on a smaller 20 kWh battery but, once the regulators have done fiddling with digits, it only scores 118 MPGe. That's the efficiency number that matters, and whether you're saving the world or just trying to save money, every mile counts. You'll be able to put that EPA rating to the test this summer when the Spark EV goes on sale in California and Oregon, but until then, check out the official certificate below the fold for more juicy details (read: efficiency stats).
Filed under: Transportation
Via: Autoblog
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/sx6NJTXzwHw/
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Back in June last year BancBox, a payment services platform similar to Stripe, went further with a platform allowing developers to build a lot of different payment services. As cofounder Sanj Goyle claimed at the time: ?PayPal could be built on top of our platform." Now it has launched BancBox Crowd, which - as far as we can tell - is the first independent escrow service aimed at crowd funding portals which operate on equity, debt or revenue share models.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/sWFRmCYR6GU/
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A new project by Teehan+Lax, the Toronto-based design firm that helped created Ev Williams' Medium publishing platform, builds on its previous work with Hyperlapse to provide a way to navigate Google Street View with just a wave of your hand. The experiment uses the same engine as Hyperlapse, and takes advantage of an early developer-seeded Leap Motion controller unit to give a user a very cool way to navigate Google Street View.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/7SqIe2wToCQ/
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NEW YORK (AP) ? The NFL will hold a moment of silence at Thursday's draft for the victims of the Boston Marathon attacks and Texas fertilizer plant explosion.
Commissioner Roger Goodell said at a pre-draft event Wednesday that the league would recognize the two tragedies that took place last week. The three-day draft begins Thursday night with the first round.
The NFL said Tuesday that it was increasing security at the draft after the Boston bombings. There will be about 20 percent more security personnel and increased K-9 explosive detective teams on site. All attendees, including players, will be subject to screenings, including use of metal detectors and pat-downs, and searches of personal property.
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Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/21134540/vp/51662582#51662582
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Former CIA director David Petraeus addresses a University of Southern California event honoring the military on March 26 in Los Angeles.
David Petraeus is replacing one kind of intelligence work for another.
Macaulay Honors College at City University of New York said Tuesday the ex-Central Intelligence Agency director and retired four-star general has been named a visiting professor for public policy. He starts on August 1.
Petraeus has a Ph.D. from Princeton University and has written widely on international relations, military strategy and tactics and national security issues.
More news from NBCNewYork.com
In a statement released by the college, Petraeus said he was pleased to teach at the college, where 60 percent of students are children of immigrants. He also said he looks forward to leading a seminar on the global economic slowdown.
Petraeus?resigned in scandal from the CIA last November?after it was uncovered?he'd had an affair with his biographer.
NBCNewYork.com
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The Sony SBH20 stereo Bluetooth headset
Design, Fit, and Pairing
It isn't hard to figure out Sony's design inspiration here. The SBH20 looks exactly like an iPod Shuffle. From the tiny, clip-on design, to the multitude of colors (black, white, pink, orange, and turquoise), it's easy to confuse the headset with Apple's portable music player. That's fine by me, since it's sleek and discrete. It's also reminiscent of the Jabra Clipper Bluetooth headset, which itself is a clip that attaches to your clothing. But Sony has bested both Jabra and Apple with its design here, as the clip on the back of the SBH20 can be rotated in a circle, which ensures you'll be able to secure it however you'd like, in whichever position you find most agreeable.
The device itself is a 1.31-inch square that's 0.48-inch thick. I tested the white model, which is made of sturdy plastic with a matte finish, and a silver clip on the back with Sony's logo. Depending on how you fasten it, there's a volume rocker on top, a power port on the right, and a Power button, status light, 3.5mm headphone jack, and microphone on the left. The face has a Play/Pause/Call button in the center, flanked by Previous and Next track buttons. Although these buttons are highlighted with a clear, shiny overlay, they're the same exact color as the rest of the device, which makes them difficult to see. And they're completely flat, with barely any clicky feeling, so I never really knew whether I pressed the right button until I heard it through my earbuds.
The SBH20 comes with a set of in-ear headphones, with three different rubber tips so you can get a good fit. I found both the medium and large-size tips to be quite comfortable, and the in-ear design really helped block out surrounding noise. The earphones are designed to be worn around your neck, so one earbud wire is longer than the other. But in general, the primary wire that leads up from the SBH20 is a bit short. You basically need to wear the SBH20 at your chest in order for the headphones to reach your ears. That's fine for making a call, but if you just want to listen to music, it would've been nice to have a longer wire so you can put the SBH20 in your pocket or clip it to your bag. Thankfully, you can still connect any pair of headphones you want. As long as they have a 3.5mm jack you won't have any problems.
Here's how it works: The SBH20 clips onto your shirt, then you plug a set of headphones in, so you're not tethered to whatever additional device you're connected to. I found the clipping mechanism easy to use, and wide enough to accommodate most types of fabric. The SBH20 is automatically set to Bluetooth pairing mode the first time you use it, but you can always reenter pairing mode in the future by turning it on and holding the Play button down for a few seconds. Once in pairing mode, just pair it the same way you would with any Bluetooth device. An added bonus is NFC support. If you have a device with NFC, simply tap the SBH20 to it in order to pair.
For this review, I tested the SBH20 with an Apple iPhone 5, a Sony Xperia ZL, and a laptop PC running Windows 8. I didn't experience any pairing issues or audio dropouts.
Sound Quality, Additional Uses, and Conclusions
For calls, the microphone is built into the corner of the SBH20 right next to the headphone jack, so you need to wear it as close to your mouth as possible for the best voice quality. I always find it a bit awkward to make calls using an in-ear headset, since the sound of your own voice is so prominent in your head, but that's inescapable here. For calls made indoors, voices sound somewhat digitized, but overall clear and easy to understand. Outdoors, however, is a different story. Noise cancellation is terrible. Voices became virtually inaudible over wind and background noise, even in areas that weren't terribly noisy. But this isn't the type of headset you should use in a car, since the in-ear headphone design would make for unsafe driving conditions. So as long as you don't plan to make any calls mid-jog you should be alright.?
For receiving calls over the included headphones, the SBH20 sounds average. Voices are a little thin and robotic but otherwise clear. At top volume, the headset lasted for exactly five hours. At mid-volume, it should be able to reach Sony's quoted six hours of battery life, and Sony claims up to 200 hours of standby time.
For music, sound quality is surprisingly good. All of the songs I listened to, across a number of genres, sounded rich, powerful, and clear, and the bass didn't distort, even at top volume. Don't get me wrong; these aren't headphones for bass fiends, but there's enough bass response to please casual listeners. And the best part is that you can always swap out the bundled earbuds for another pair you prefer more. For a brief comparison, Sony's bundled buds sound better than Apple's new EarPods, but can't hold a candle to a pair of Bowers & Wilkins C5 In-Ear Headphones.
All of the controls on the face of the device work as you'd expect. The only bummers are the aforementioned sticky keys, as well as the fact that there's no way to trigger voice dialing from the SBH20 itself. You can still use it to complete voice controlled tasks, but you need to initiate them on your phone first. Range is average; I was able to walk about 10 feet away from a paired phone before the sound started to stutter. Within another 10 feet it dropped out completely.
And here's a cool feature Sony doesn't highlight: You can connect the SBH20 to any set of speakers you like, provided they use a 3.5mm jack, to make them Bluetooth-compatible. That means your computer speakers, for instance, can be plugged into the SBH20, through which you can then stream music from your device. You can even use the speakers to receive calls, although you still need to be clipped onto the SBH20 to talk back. Still, when you consider that devices created expressly for this purpose, like the Logitech Wireless Speaker Adapter, cost virtually the same amount, you realize that this is a pretty good value.
The SBH20 does a lot more than most other stereo Bluetooth headsets, and in most instances Sony hasn't piled on features at the expense of quality. With better noise cancellation and less finicky controls, the SBH20 would be a shoo-in for our budget-priced stereo Bluetooth headset of choice. As it stands, it is still a very good choice for many buyers. The Jabra Clipper is a similarly solid option, with near-identical capabilities but a slightly different look and design. The Plantronics BackBeat Go?remains our Editors' Choice for its superior voice performance, excellent noise suppression in both directions, and clear sound quality.?
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/NNbcQDzxlfg/0,2817,2417963,00.asp
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Apr. 23, 2013 ? There's big news in the world of tiny things. New research led by University of Cincinnati physics professors Howard Jackson and Leigh Smith could contribute to better ways of harnessing solar energy, more effective air quality sensors or even stronger security measures against biological weapons such as anthrax. And it all starts with something that's 1,000 times thinner than the typical human hair -- a semiconductor nanowire.
UC's Jackson, Smith, recently graduated PhD student Melodie Fickenscher and physics doctoral student Teng Shi, as well as several colleagues from across the US and around the world recently have published the research paper "Optical, Structural and Numerical Investigations of GaAs/AlGaAs Core-Multishell Nanowire Quantum Well Tubes" in Nano Letters, a journal on nanoscience and nanotechnology published by the American Chemical Society. In the paper, the team reports that they've discovered a new structure in a semiconductor nanowire with unique properties.
"This kind of structure in the gallium arsenide/aluminum gallium arsenide system had not been achieved before," Jackson says. "It's new in terms of where you find the electrons and holes, and spatially it's a new structure."
EYES ON SIZE AND CORNERING ELECTRONS
These little structures could have a big effect on a variety of technologies. Semiconductors are at the center of modern electronics. Computers, TVs and cellphones have them. They're made from the crystalline form of elements that have scientifically beneficial electrical conductivity properties. Many semiconductors are made of silicon, but in this case they are made of gallium arsenide. And while widespread use of these thin nanowires in new devices might still be around the corner, the key to making that outcome a reality in the coming years is what's in the corner.
By using a thin shell called a quantum well tube and growing it -- to about 4 nanometers thick -- around the nanowire core, the researchers found electrons within the nanowire were distributed in an unusual way in relation to the facets of the hexagonal tube. A close look at the corners of the tube's facets revealed something unexpected -- a high concentration of ground state electrons and holes.
"Having the faceting really matters. It changes the ballgame," Jackson says. "Adjusting the quantum well tube width allows you to control the energy -- which would have been expected -- but in addition we have found that there's a highly localized ground state at the corners which then can give rise to true quantum nanowires."
The nanowires the team uses for its research are grown at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia -- one partner in this project that extends to disparate parts of the globe.
AFFECTING THE SCIENCE OF SMALL IN A BIG WAY
The team's discovery opens a new door to further study of the fundamental physics of semiconductor nanowires. As for leading to advances in technology such as photovoltaic cells, Jackson says it's too soon to tell because quantum nanowires are just now being explored. But in a world where hundreds of dollars' worth of technology is packed into a 5-by-2.5 inch iPhone, it's not hard to see how small but powerful science comes at a premium.
The team at UC is one of only about a half dozen in the US conducting competitive research in the field. It's a relatively young discipline, too, Jackson says, and one that's moving fast. For such innovative science, he says it's important to have a collaborative effort. The team includes scientists from research centers in the Midwest, the West Coast and all the way Down Under: UC, Miami University of Ohio and Sandia National Laboratories in California here in the US; and Monash University and the Australian National University in Australia.
The team's efforts are another example of how UC not only stands out as a leader in top-notch science, but also in shaping the future of the discipline by providing its students with high-quality educational and research opportunities.
"We're training students in state-of-the-art techniques on state-of-the-art materials doing state-of-the-art physics," Jackson says. "Upon completing their education here, they're positioned to go out and make contributions of their own."
Additional contributors to the paper are Jan Yarrison-Rice of Miami University, Oxford, Ohio; Bryan Wong of Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore, Calif.; Changlin Zheng, Peter Miller and Joanne Etheridge of Monash University, Victoria, Australia; and Qiang Gao, Shriniwas Deshpande, Hark Hoe Tan and Chennupati Jagadish of the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/Rw930UopHIw/130423135720.htm
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Apr. 24, 2013 ? The often damaging impacts of intensive agriculture on nearby streams, rivers, and their wildlife has been well documented in temperate zones, such as North America and Europe.
Yet a new study in an important tropical zone -- the fast-changing southern Amazon, a region marked by widespread replacement of native forest by cattle ranches and more recently croplands -- suggests that at least some of those damaging impacts may be buffered by the very deep and highly permeable soils that characterize large areas of the expanding cropland.
The study, led by Christopher Neill, director of the Ecosystems Center at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), is published this week in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. This entire journal issue is devoted to the consequences of massive land-use changes in Mato Grosso, Brazil, the Amazon's biggest and most dynamic agricultural frontier.
"Over the past two decades, Mato Grosso has experienced both the highest rates of deforestation (mostly for pasture and soya bean expansion) and the greatest reduction in deforestation rates (associated with [government] policies and macroeconomic factors) in the Amazon," write the editors of the issue, who include Neill's collaborator Michael T. Coe of Woods Hole Research Center. "The regional focus of this issue allows for a deep assessment of the complex ecological and social changes related to agricultural transformation of a tropical forest environment."
Neill's study looked specifically at the impacts of soybean agriculture on water quality and quantity at Tanguro Ranch, a nearly 200,000-acre farm similar in climate and geography to large tracts of the Amazon where soybean production, largely for export as animal feed, is expanding rapidly.
The ranch has watersheds that are entirely forested, as well as watersheds that are now entirely soybean cropland, allowing for a comparison.
"We were surprised to find that, despite intensive agriculture at Tanguro Ranch, the streams do not appear to be receiving a significant amount of either nitrogen or phosphorus, despite a high application of phosphorus fertilizer to adjacent cropland," says Neill.
This is in contrast to many Northern Hemisphere cropland areas where fertilizers are known to add nutrients to the soil that, with rainfall, run off into freshwater streams and rivers, leading to over-fertilization and low-oxygen conditions that endanger fish and other aquatic life.
At Tanguro Ranch, however, "the soils are old and highly weathered, very deep, and likely to be fairly uniform over great depths," Neill says. "Water infiltrates the soil very rapidly, and the soil has a great capacity to absorb the nutrients. It appears to act as an enormous buffer."
However, this situation is in transition, he notes. "The southeastern Amazon is a very fast-moving environment of change. Right now, most soybean fields are not fertilized with nitrogen. But that will change because the Amazon is poised for large increases in nitrogen fertilizer use as double-cropping (soybeans plus corn) becomes more prevalent," Neill says. "So it's quite possible we will see greater effects on water quality in the future."
The study also noted impacts of deforestation on the quantity of water entering streams. Typically, after a forest is cut down,
about four times more surface water runs off into small streams because of reduced evaporation to the atmosphere. However, at Tanguro Ranch, rainfall infiltrates quickly into the soil and streams are fed predominantly by groundwater, so stream levels don't fluctuate dramatically, during either the wet and dry seasons, even in cropland watersheds.
"We don't see large changes to the structure of stream channels in small headwater streams, " Neill says. "But in the bigger rivers, we see a cumulative impact of all the extra water from those small streams piling up. When larger rivers have to handle that extra water caused by deforestation, they change geomorphically; their floodplains get re-arranged. Those are also rivers that people use for water supplies, fishing, and transportation. "
Finally, the study showed that the agricultural streams were warmer than the forested streams, caused both by a reduction in bordering forest and the presence of impoundments (small human-made dams).
"Warmer water has implications for the fish," Neill says, "because it holds less oxygen. Warmer water also increases fish metabolism, so fish need more food. We don't know if warming and other changes associated with expanding cropland also increase fish food supply -- if they don't, some fish may not have enough energy to survive."
Neill has been working at Tanguro Ranch since 2007 with collaborators from Woods Hole Research Center, Brown University, the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), and the University of S?o Paulo. Other authors in this journal issue include MBL Senior Scientist Linda Deegan; Shelby Riskin and Gillian Galford, both of whom graduated from the Brown-MBL Graduate Program in Biological and Environmental Sciences; and Brown-MBL faculty members Stephen Porder, Leah VanWey, and Jack Mustard.
"Tanguro Ranch is the focus of a huge amount of the science on land transitions and social-ecological dynamics in the Amazon," says Marty Downs, associate director of Brown University's Environmental Change Initiative.
Neill's study was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Fundac?o de Amparo ? Pesquisa do Estado de S?o Paulo, the Packard Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the Brazilian Council for Scientific and Technological Development.
Theme Issue Ecology, economy and management of an agroindustrial frontier landscape in the southeast Amazon, compiled and edited by Paulo M. Brando, Michael T. Coe and Ruth DeFries. Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. B, June 5, 2013.
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LOS ANGELES (AP) ? The city of Los Angeles reached a $4.2 million settlement with a mother and daughter who were injured when police mistakenly opened fire on them while they were delivering newspapers during the manhunt for disgruntled ex-cop Christopher Dorner, officials said Tuesday.
The money will be split evenly, with $2.1 million going to each woman, said Frank Mateljan, a spokesman for the city attorney's office.
The agreement must still be approved by the Los Angeles City Council.
Margie Carranza and her 71-year-old mother, Emma Hernandez, were delivering papers around 5 a.m. on Feb. 7 when LAPD officers guarding the Torrance home of a target named in an online Dorner manifesto blasted at least 100 rounds at their pickup.
Hernandez was shot in the back and Carranza had minor injuries.
The settlement means they cannot pursue any future injury claims against the city.
Dorner had vowed warfare on Los Angeles Police Department officers and their families for what he called an unfair firing.
He killed four people, including two law enforcement officers, during his nearly one-week run from authorities.
Attorney Glen Jonas, who represents the women, called the settlement amount fair and said it spared the city from defending a case that involved eight police officers and would have likely cost millions of dollars.
"The only certainty was the litigation was going to cost everyone a lot of money and a lot of time," Jonas said.
Jonas sent a nine-page demand to the city more than a month ago that provided an opening to negotiations. He said he negotiated with City Attorney Carmen Trutanich for weeks before the deal was reached on Monday night.
"We're two veteran trial lawyers trying to settle a case, and we both understand the reality of litigation and what it costs to both sides," Jonas said.
City Attorney Carmen Trutanich agreed the settlement was fair and said in a statement he was pleased by how swiftly it was reached.
"We hope Margie and Emma will be able to move on with their lives, the city will be spared millions of dollars in litigation expense and time, and this unfortunate chapter of the Dorner saga will be put to rest," Trutanich said.
The women agreed to receive the payment after June 30 ? the end of the fiscal year ? to help the city with its budgeting, Jonas said. The agreement came in addition to a separate $40,000 settlement reached earlier for the loss of the women's pickup truck.
"For them, the money is not the issue as much as (the city) just doing the right thing," Jonas said. "Everyone agreed that they were wronged, but we didn't know whether responsibility would be assumed ... It's pleasant to get that done without having to go through years of litigation."
The eight officers remain assigned to non-field duties pending an internal investigation.
___
Tami Abdollah can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/latams
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/los-angeles-settles-women-fired-manhunt-201857475.html
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AT&T just posted its earnings for the first quarter of 2013, and the market couldn't help but ding the company, which is now trading down in after hours markets. The business as a whole posted a net income of $3.7 billion, which is slightly up from $3.6 billion one year ago. Meanwhile, company revenues took a slight hit, which sit at $31.4 billion -- down 1.4 percent from the previous year. In terms of the company's wireless business, though, there's plenty of reason for optimism. The company was able to snag an additional 296,000 postpaid subscribers and put a solid 1.2 million people on smartphone plans during the quarter. For those keeping track, smartphone sales now account for 88 percent of AT&T's postpaid handsets. Unsurprisingly, the company is making more money than ever off of its data plans, which account for $5.1 billion of the company's business. As for the wireless segment as a whole, income is up 21 percent and AT&T is pulling in revenues of $16.6 billion with a 28 percent profit margin.
Encouraging signs were also revealed for U-verse, as the company's broadband service netted an additional 731,000 internet subscribers and 232,000 television subscribers during the quarter -- its best performance in two years -- for a grand total of 8.7 million subscribers. Naturally, one segment of Ma Bell's business isn't looking too hot, and that's the traditional wireline business, as revenues have fallen 10 percent from the previous year. Given the size of this segment, and the weakening demand for the service, it's easy to understand why investors might be slightly uneasy, even in light of all the encouraging news.
Filed under: Wireless, HD, Mobile, AT&T
Source: AT&T
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/_89FzC3DQTA/
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The FIA's upcoming Formula E series has revealed two US dates on its début 2014 calendar (Los Angeles, Miami) and yesterday it took to LA's streets to promote the partnership. For Earth Day, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa welcomed Formula E Holdings CEO Alejandro Agag downtown along with a Formula E racecar for the exhibition. The race will run on downtown streets next year, although the exact route the 140mph-capable EVs will take has yet to be locked down. Unfortunately there's no video of the event so while you can't not-hear its electric engine humming along as it burned rubber in the streets, the pictures in this gallery and video from its Moscow and Rome exhibitions will have to do.
Filed under: Transportation
Source: Formula E
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