In each issue of Distro, editor-in-chief Tim Stevens publishes a wrap-up of the week in news.
After watching some of the life get sucked out of many of our favorite consumer electronics shows with major companies choosing to do their own thing in boutique events in fabulous cities around the world, we had our concerns about the 2013 iteration of Mobile World Congress. The HTC One got a showy New York City launch the week before the event and we already knew that Samsung was holding the Galaxy S IV until later. What's left to see in MWC, then? As it turns out, a heck of a lot.
Dear Debt Adviser, I had a medical emergency last year and opened a payday loan for $1,500. I haven't been able to pay it off, and I'm unable to get a real loan due to a decline in my credit score. Is there any way out for me other than bankruptcy? A loan with a co-signer maybe? I hate being behind on my bills, and I want to resolve this. -- Janet
Dear Janet, Bankruptcy isn't the best option here given the relatively small amount you owe. It's usually a last resort, and it'll sink your credit score. Also, once you file for bankruptcy, there's a lengthy waiting period before you can file again (should you need to).
You have other options, but they will require some planning on your part.
First, you should drastically cut back on expenses to pay off the payday loans. Take a look at your monthly spending and determine how much you could save on a bare-bones budget. By bare-bones I mean no entertainment, no cable TV, no new clothing, no lattes and not even any bubble gum -- at least for a while.
I also want you to look for a part-time job or some overtime to bring in more money. If that's not possible, then consider selling something.
And you might try to pay off some of the loans with a credit card. Using credit got you into this mess. Using more of it to get out is less than ideal. And you may not qualify for a card with a low interest rate at this point. Still, a high-interest-rate card that takes you months to pay off would still cost less than the fees you are paying to the payday lenders.
If you're unable to qualify for a credit card on your own, and you know someone willing to help you out, you could request that he or she co-sign for a credit card account. Before going through with this, make sure that you have a solid plan for paying off the balance on the card. Share your plan with your potential co-signer and promise that you will let the person know in advance if you are ever unable to make the required monthly payment. If someone is willing to put her own credit on the line for you, you need to make good on your promise to pay. At the very least, you should let the co-signer know if you're going to fall behind on your payments.
Once you have broken the payday loan cycle, begin saving for emergencies so you can avoid being in this situation again in the future. Save as much as you can each pay period and include any unexpected funds such as pay raises, tax refunds, etc. until you reach at least six months' of living expenses.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Government workers normally unfazed by political gridlock are angry that they will be disproportionately hurt by Washington's inability to reach a deal to avoid some $85 billion in automatic budget cuts due to kick in on Friday.
The indiscriminate spending cuts, which will occur unless President Barack Obama and Congress reach a last-minute agreement, threaten to puncture the affluence of the U.S. capital and its suburbs, where incomes and house prices have benefited from decades of federal largesse.
The area's 375,000 federal workers are bracing for possible furloughs and pay cuts that also stand to drain the budgets of local municipalities and possibly force companies doing business with the government to lay off staff.
"It's like a bull's eye: any target, we are there," said Jay Matthews, who works in the chief counsel's office at the Internal Revenue Service in Washington. "They target us because they think we make too much money. And they target us because they think we're lazy."
The Pentagon said last week it planned to put its 800,000 civilian defense employees around the world on 22 days of unpaid leave, or furlough, this year if the cuts went through.
That amounts to a 20 percent pay cut for Erika Townes, 38, a nurse at the Joint Base Andrews military facility in Maryland who said she supports four children and a disabled husband on less than $50,000 a year.
"Most people I work with are one paycheck away from being homeless - one. That's the way the economy is right now," she said.
The cuts, known as "sequestration," are already law, though they were never intended to go through when lawmakers devised them in 2011 as part of a U.S. debt limit agreement. It was believed that the cuts would be so big and indiscriminate that Democrats and Republicans would come up with an alternative.
But neither side has budged on how to resolve the impasse, with the Republicans drawing a line on further tax increases and Democrats refusing major cuts to the Medicare health program for seniors and other government entitlements.
Carolyn McMillian, a financial management specialist at the Food and Drug Administration office in White Oak, Maryland, said she was working 12- to 14-hour-days, keeping a tight rein on spending for FDA inspectors.
Inspectors who travel alone are discouraged from renting a car; they must rely on public transportation or try to find a government vehicle.
"I'm hoping Obama and Congress have a meeting of the minds at the last minute so they can compromise," McMillian said. "I would tell them to treat it as if they were in our shoes."
REGIONAL ECONOMY THREATENED
The Washington region, with its 5.6 million people, accounts for just under 5 percent of the U.S. population but gets 9 percent of federal spending and 15 percent of Pentagon outlays.
Federal procurement in the Washington area has climbed from less than $5 billion in 1980 to its peak of more than $80 billion in 2010, with the rise steepening since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, according to George Mason University data.
The automatic cuts could cost an estimated 208,000 jobs in Virginia, 127,000 in the District of Columbia and 115,000 in Maryland, according to George Mason University's Center for Regional Analysis.
About two-thirds of the job losses in Virginia, home to the Pentagon and such defense companies as General Dynamics Corp and naval shipyards at Newport News, would come from $46 billion in Pentagon spending cuts, the study said.
With an eye to the "sequester," planners at Fairfax County, Virginia, which is home to the Pentagon, this week proposed a fiscal 2014 budget that was 0.37 percent smaller than the previous year's. County workers would get no pay raises.
The impact on county finances was "unknown and potentially significant," Fairfax County said in a statement.
Jim Dinegar, president and chief executive of the Greater Washington Board of Trade, said businesses have frozen hiring, contractors are pressing lawyers to hold down rates, and companies are reluctant to take work without a guarantee of payment.
"Right now, everything is delayed," Dinegar said.
(Editing by Daniel Trotta, Karey Wutkowski and Paul Simao)
The Gillian Anderson pilot will find the actress starring as CEO Meg Fitch, whose daughter is taken prisoner. NBC has ordered the Gillian Anderson pilot.
By Molly Driscoll,?Staff Writer / February 26, 2013
Will ?X-Files? star Gillian Anderson be returning to television?
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According to TV Guide, the actress will star in an untitled pilot for NBC, in which she will play a CEO named Meg Fitch whose daughter and daughter?s classmates are taken prisoner. The show itself, which will be produced and written by Rand Ravich with Far Shariat, will center on a vast conspiracy that comes to involve some of the most powerful people in Washington, D.C.
Actress Rachael Taylor of ABC?s ?666 Park Avenue? will star on the show as Susie Dunn, an FBI agent who is Meg?s sister and who is in charge of the operation to find her niece and her niece?s classmates. Before the kidnapping, Fitch and Dunn were estranged because of a secret that lies between them.
Taylor also starred on the ABC remake of ?Charlie?s Angels? as Abby Sampson, one of the titular Angels, and guest-starred on the ABC medical drama ?Grey?s Anatomy? as Dr. Lucy Fields.
Ravich created and wrote the NBC series ?Life,? which starred actor Damian Lewis pre-?Homeland? as a police officer who gets back on the job after having been mistakenly sent to jail. Shariat served as an executive producer on "Life."
?Battle Force? actress Stevie Lynn Jones has also signed on to Ravich and Shariat's NBC pilot, according to TV Guide.
Anderson starred in the 2007 film version of ?The X-Files,? titled ?The X-Files: I Want to Believe,? and signed on for an arc on the upcoming NBC show ?Hannibal,? which will center on the ?Silence of the Lambs? killer Hannibal Lecter. She also appeared in a BBC miniseries of the Charles Dickens novel ?Bleak House? and in a miniseries, also by the BBC, of ?Great Expectations.? She recently starred as a detective on the British series ?The Fall,? which will air on the BBC.?
On ?Hannibal,? the actress will play a therapist named Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier who serves as doctor to Hannibal Lecter himself.
Researchers surgically removed the eyes of tadpoles and then grafted new eyes onto their tales. Some of these tadpoles were able to pass a vision test with their new eyes.
By Charles Choi,?LiveScience Contributor / February 28, 2013
Researchers grafted the tails of blind tadpoles of the African frog with eye tissue, which gave the tadpoles sight.
Douglas Blackiston
Enlarge
Eyes hooked up to the tail can help blinded tadpoles see, researchers say.
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These findings could help guide therapies involving natural or artificial implants, scientists added.
A major roadblock when it comes to?treating blindness?and other sensory disorders is how much remains unknown about the nervous system and its ability to adapt to change. To learn more about the relationship between the body and the brain, researchers wanted to see how capable the brain was of interpreting sensory data from abnormal "ectopic" locations from which it normally does not receive? signals.
Eye on the tail
Scientists experimented with 134 tadpoles of the?African clawed frog?Xenopus laevis, a common lab animal. They painstakingly grafted new eyes onto places such as their torsos and tails and then surgically removed their original eyes. [See Images of the Odd-Eyed Tadpoles]
"We do a lot of work to understand regenerative biology, and that entails experiments that change the body," researcher Michael Levin, a developmental biologist at Tufts University, told LiveScience. "We have four-headed worms, six-legged frogs, and many other?unusual creatures?here as part of our work on bioelectricity and organ regeneration."
These experimental tadpoles then received a vision test the researchers first refined on normal tadpoles. The tadpoles were placed in a circular arena half illuminated with red light and half with blue light, with software regularly switching what color light the areas received. When tadpoles entered places lit by red light, they received a tiny electric zap. A motion-tracking camera kept tabs on where the tadpoles were.
Remarkably, the scientists found that six tadpoles that had eyes implanted in their tails could apparently see, choosing to remain in the safer blue-light areas.
"The brain is not wired to find an eye on the tail, since it's never happened before and thus is not something the brain has evolved specifically to deal with, and yet it can recognize this patch of tissue as providing valuable visual information," Levin said.
"These findings suggest that the?brain has remarkable plasticity?and may actually take a survey of its body configuration to make use of different body arrangements," Levin added. "If it were not the case, then every time a mutation produced an improvement in body plan ? a large significant change in anatomy ? the animal would die and the beneficial mutation would be lost."
Rather, when a mutation makes a change in the body plan of an embryo, the brain-body programs that tell an eye to see and a hand to grasp, for instance, "don't suddenly become useless," Levin said. "The brain can map its activity onto a wide range of configurations of the body. This modularity makes it much easier for complex new body features to evolve."
Augmentation technology
The transplanted eyes came from tadpole donors genetically modified to generate a red fluorescent protein. As such, the researchers could see under a microscope whether these eyes sent red nerves outward in the body. Half the recipient tadpoles had no such nerves grow, while about a quarter had nerves projecting toward the gut and the other quarter had nerves extending toward their spine.
The six tadpoles that could see well all had nerves plugged into their spine, which makes sense ? their eyes apparently linked with their central nervous system.
"This has implications not only for regenerative medicine ? replacing damaged sensory and motor organs ? but also for augmentation technology," Levin said. "Perhaps you'd like some more eyes, maybe ones that?see in infrared?" [Bionic Humans: Top 10 Technologies]
One question Levin and his colleagues often get asked "is whether the tadpoles are experiencing sight from these ectopic eyes like they do from normal eyes," Levin said. "We have no idea what a tadpole is experiencing. This is a philosophical question that is not immediately tractable.
"Another thing people sometimes assume is that this capability is only for tadpoles or 'lower' animals," Levin said. "In fact, this kind of thing probably works in humans also,?as evidenced by related studies over the last few years. Brain plasticity is a fundamental aspect of the function of the nervous system and its interface to the body."
The researchers seek to figure out three other aspects: which brain regions are processing the sensory data, how many extra eyes a frog brain can handle, and how the brain knows that this piece of tissue on the tail is providing visual data, and not simply indicating an infection, injury or other sense like smell, Levin said.
Levin and his colleague Douglas Blackiston detailed their findings online today (Feb. 27) in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
Follow LiveScience on Twitter?@livescience. We're also on?Facebook?&?Google+.
Copyright 2013?LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Code.org, the new non-profit aimed at encouraging computer science education launched last month by entrepreneur and investor brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi, has assembled an all-star group of the world's most well-known and successful folks with programming skills to talk about how learning to code has changed their lives -- and isn't quite as hard as people might think.
Looking for your dream phone? Chances are, this isn't it -- but it could be the precursor to what could eventually be cradled in your pocket, especially if you are a fan of E Ink. The device seen above and in the first gallery below is one of just five prototypes of the E-ink reference phone in existence. The point? The company wants to have a tangible Android-powered (2.3.5 Gingerbread, to be exact) model to give to potential partners, so they can craft something similar down the road. We're told that it will most likely be used on the back of color phones, much like the YotaPhone, but partners are welcome to get crazy on the front screen as well. No official timeframe for availability or seeding has been set, but it is expected to roll out in limited capacity sometime this year.
Official specs are few and far between, but what we do know is that this nameless phone is driven by a Cortex-A5 CPU of some kind. Given that this is an extremely early prototype, the E Ink device had a lot of bugs when we played with it: force closes, reboots and slow response are among the things we noticed. However, we imagine this will continue to improve with time, so by the time of seeding it may be a completely different story.
The UI reminds us of a simplistic feature phone geared toward the basic user, with six icons on the front screen including an app menu. As we'd expect, the phone is great for reading books, and it comes with the option to install applications (though it's possible most games wouldn't look that great). You can also shake the device to clean the text in case it ends up getting "dirty," or misaligned.
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Having many sons may shorten women's lives after their last birth more than having daughters, according to new research.
The findings, which came from a group of Finnish women born mostly before industrialization, are correlational, so they can't prove sons actually cause shorter lives for their moms relative to daughters. And because the effect varies across the world, social factors, rather than intrinsic biological effects, may be to blame.
But the study, published today (Feb. 26) in the journal Biology Letters, suggests that cultural differences in how sons and daughters have historically been raised may affect women's life spans.
"Adult sons may be beneficial for their parental well-being and thus survival in some countries, but girls may be beneficial in other countries," study co-author Samuli Helle, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Turku in Finland, wrote in an email.
Costly process
Pregnancy and breast-feeding both require extra nutrients and calories.
That extra energy requirement can take a toll on women who have more children and shorten their lives, even if they start out healthier than other women to begin with, said Grazyna Jasienska, a biological anthropologist at Jagiellonian University in Poland, who was not involved in the study. [8 Odd Ways a Woman's Body Changes During Pregnancy]
And because males are born slightly heavier than females on average, researchers have hypothesized that they may require more nutrients, making them more reproductively costly to rear.
But studies throughout the world have shown conflicting effects. In China, males seem to confer a longevity advantage, for instance.
To see how the effect played out in Finland, Helle and his colleagues tracked Lutheran church parish records for more than 11,000 women and their children from the last three centuries. The vast majority of the women were born before 1960.
The more sons a woman had, the more likely she was to live a shorter time after last giving birth. The effect held whether women were rich or poor.
Cultural effect
The reason for this shortening probably doesn't have to do with the extra energetic costs associated with boys during pregnancy and infancy, Jasienska told LiveScience.
Instead, it probably reflects the prevailing social norms at the time.
"Girls in many traditional societies are, as we know, much more helpful to mothers than boys," Jasienska said. "They may help with child care, they may help with many tasks."
And because the study was looking at a mostly pre-industrial society, where food was scarcer and woman had no birth control, the effects may not persist today, Helle wrote.
"One could speculate that owing to modern medical care, smaller family size and more abundant resources, the biological costs of reproduction might not play that important role in modern societies anymore," Helle wrote.
But other social differences could still make sons and daughters affect women's longevity differently, he added.
Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter @tiaghose?or LiveScience @livescience. We're also on Facebook?& Google+.?
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
My childhood home -- a four-bedroom colonial in a Washington, D.C., suburb -- had an exquisite exterior. But inside there was too much furniture crowding every room; too many Sears receipts spilling from end tables with too many drawers; too many televisions, with their confusing array of remotes, making too much noise; too many boxes of yellow cake mix aging in the overstuffed pantry; too many shoes and coats crammed into the hall closet, making it impossible to find the ones I needed in a hurry. Don't get me wrong: Ours was never one of those unsanitary houses you see on hoarding shows. It was just uncomfortably full, like a belly straining against a belt while its owner made room for one more pie and seven more mini-muffins.
The problem was my mother, who had trouble parting with anything she thought someone she loved might someday need from her (in other words, anything). My father vacillated between resister and accomplice. In my more enlightened moments, I imagine that if I had grown up as they did, in a poor village in Pakistan, I, too, might have held on a little too tightly once fortune finally favored me. But as a child, I felt as though I were drowning. I remember coming home from school to find things in my closet -- wrapping paper, extra blankets -- that didn't belong there. In protest, I'd toss these intruders into the hall. Then as now, clutter had a physical effect on me. The sight of knickknacks caused my left shoulder to rise and fall, tic-like, as if trying to shake something off.
Since leaving home for college, I've been making up for lost space. The home I currently share with my two sons looks from the outside like the one I grew up in -- gorgeous redbrick, huge yard -- but inside, there are no walk-in closets. No kitchen pantry. And gloriously, no garage. There are no coffee tables, because with them comes coffee-table clutter. No televisions, because their sidekicks are remote controls and piles of DVDs. If a decorator walked through my home, she'd recommend an ottoman here and there, a decorative accessory for the hallway, or end tables to cradle the telephones that sit on the hardwood floor in front of the jacks. She'd suggest art for my untouched walls. She might wonder why there's no dining table in the dining room.
It's not that I dislike decorations; I truly admire beautifully appointed homes. My laundry room holds tightly taped boxes full of mementos from my travels. I just can't figure out how to put them up without turning into a woman who has animal statues flanking her front door. I fear that if I start, my DNA strands -- with their broken C gene -- might eventually strangle me, leaving me writhing in a pile of throw pillows. Surely children of alcoholics are just as careful about taking that first drink.
Though my home is empty of the extraneous, it never feels empty enough. I frequently walk around with a cardboard box hunting for donation targets. For me, decluttering is an itch that pleads, then demands, to be scratched. If something's not being used this very moment, or on the cusp of being used, it's out. There's no ill-fitting clothing in my home, save the two onesies I held on to from my sons' baby days -- and one small box of prepregnancy pants that keep me jogging. I purge my closet seasonally, tossing anything that isn't earning its keep. What have you done for me lately, red sweater?
When they've sat unused too long, mocking me, I've evicted my hair dryer, curling iron, patio furniture, any coffee mug with words on it, and my broiler pan. I understand that most ovens come with a broiler pan. What I don't understand is, why? Why don't we get a choice in the matter? I have no baking pans, either. In an emergency, tinfoil is quite foldable and durable.
I adore items with multiple uses, especially paper towels. In my house, these magic little squares moonlight as dinner napkins, place mats, sponges, dishrags, sometimes toilet paper, and, occasionally, ambitiously, maxipads. But even paper towels I cannot stand to stock up on. Since I discovered Amazon's Subscribe & Save service, they arrive on my doorstep monthly, in a perfectly synchronized dance of use and replacement.
One thing I've been unable to get rid of is the outdoor garbage can that my home's previous residents left behind. Do you know how hard it is to throw away a trash can? I've tried cute notes with smiley faces; I've stuck the can inside my own, but the garbage collectors refuse to take the thing. It grates on me daily to see that green monstrosity leaning against my house. Sometimes I force myself to use it, to justify its existence.
To me, making do with less -- almost to the point of deprivation -- feels like a slightly demented badge of honor, a silent scream that says, Look, Mom, no extras! But more often than I'd like to admit, it turns out that I actually do need an item that I've given away, and I'm forced to repurchase it. Two years ago, I donated my treadmill because I joined a gym. A year later, I quit the gym because I wasn't spending enough time there -- and paid $1,400 for a new treadmill. Two springs ago, I donated my space heaters to my children's school, because... well, it wasn't cold anymore. As it turned out, the frost returned the following winter, and I had to shell out $70 apiece for four new heaters. I once donated a Pakistani cookbook to Goodwill because I had the distressing feeling there might be another one somewhere in my house. I realized later that I'd written some family recipes on the back, so I had to repurchase my own book.
My greatest decluttering challenges are Zain, 11, and Zach, 8, who adore useless stuff just as much as I abhor it. On some days, I fantasize about tossing all their toys and books and papers, the daily avalanche that flows from their backpacks. It's a pipe dream I know I will regret entertaining once they are grown.
And grow they will, into men who will tell their balanced, bewildered wives that their mom never let them bring home stuffed animals or pogo sticks or water guns from their grandparents' house. They'll recount that they owned one pair of sneakers at a time, plus dress shoes for holidays, because I didn't want the hall closet cluttered. That their desire to display LEGO creations and chess trophies buttressed against my obsessive resistance to blemished surfaces. "I can't stand so much stuff everywhere," I recently blurted, surveying the four books and magic wand strewn atop Zach's nightstand. "Stand it, Mom," he replied, not unkindly.
Zain, meanwhile, defiantly displays a framed photo of his fourth-grade "Wizard of Oz" cast party on his desk. I once hid it in the laundry room, hoping he would forget about it. A year later, I felt guilty enough to return it to him. Now he is lobbying to put up a Harry Potter poster. I have engineered a compromise: He can put up whatever he wants, but on the inside of his closet doors.
Occasionally, I worry that I'm depriving my sons of the same sense of control over their environment that I longed for as a child. I cringe at the thought that they might not want to come home for spring break to a house with no television to watch the hockey game on, and no coffee table to prop their feet on while they watch it.
My former husband, who recycled himself two years ago, never shared my fear of clutter but kindly kept his collection of African masks at the office. The first thing I noticed about his new digs was the decorative table that existed solely to display photos of our boys: dozens of pictures of their fully frame-worthy faces. He also had flat-screen TVs. For a moment, I admired his ability to balance his own aesthetics with the needs of others. I doubted that, with his full larders and healthy attitude, he'd ever have trouble drawing anyone into his home to lean against a throw pillow and watch the game.
Then I retreated to my own gloriously uncluttered home, whose clarity rises up to embrace me as I enter the front door. I picked up a stray sneaker and admired a drawing poking out from a backpack. Eventually I sat, with a mug of coffee that had no words on it, on a couch with just enough pillows to make a decent nest. I thought about how lucky I am to live in this perfect, unencumbered space with my two perfect, if cluttery, children. I thought about how everything in this house is here because of a carefully considered decision. Myself included. Ironically, I've lived for the past two years in my parents' real estate clutter, an extra home in a great school district they purchased when I was 3 and held on to for the absurd reason that someday, someone they loved might need it.
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? The U.S.-led military coalition in Afghanistan incorrectly reported a decline in Taliban attacks last year, and officials said Tuesday that there was actually no change in the number of attacks on international troops from 2011 to 2012.
The corrected numbers ? from the original reports of a 7 percent decline to one of no change ? could undercut the narrative promoted by the international coalition and the Obama administration of an insurgency in steep decline.
A coalition spokesman, Jamie Graybeal, attributed the miscounting to clerical errors and said the problem does not change officials' basic assessment of the war.
The 7 percent figure had been included in a report posted on the coalition's website in late January as part of its monthly update on trends in security and violence. It was removed from the website recently without explanation. After The Associated Press asked last week about the missing report, coalition officials said they were correcting the data and would re-publish the report in coming days.
U.S. and allied officials have often cited declining violence as a sign that the Taliban has been degraded and that Afghan forces are in position to take the lead security role when the last U.S. combat troops leave Dec. 31, 2014.
In mid-December, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said "violence is down," in 2012, and that Afghan forces "have gotten much better at providing security" in areas where they have taken the lead role. He said the Taliban can be expected to continue to attack, "but overall they are losing."
On Tuesday, Pentagon spokesman George Little said Panetta was "concerned to learn of the errors" and was only very recently briefed on the matter.
"This particular set of metrics doesn't tell the full story of progress against the Taliban, of course, but it's unhelpful to have inaccurate information in our systems," Little said.
The Taliban have lost a good deal of territory since a 2010 surge of U.S. forces in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, and they failed to recover it during the last two fighting seasons. Even so, they are resilient, and they are expected to severely test Afghan forces as the U.S. and its coalition partners step further into the background this year and complete their combat mission next year.
Graybeal did not fully explain ISAF's erroneous reporting of 2012 Taliban attacks. It was not clear, for example, at what point the data errors began or who discovered them.
"During a quality control check, ISAF recently became aware that some data was incorrectly entered into the database that is used for tracking security-related incidents across Afghanistan," Graybeal said from Kabul, speaking for the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF.
Graybeal said an audit determined that portions of the data from unilateral Afghan military operations were "not properly reflected" in the trends ISAF had reported in its monthly updates.
"After including this unilateral ANSF (Afghan National Security Force) data into our database, we have determined that there was no change in the total number of EIAs (enemy initiated attacks) from 2011 to 2012," Graybeal said.
"This was a record-keeping error that we recognized and have now corrected," he added.
The coalition defines enemy initiated attacks as attacks by small arms, mortars, rockets and improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. But it does not include IEDs that are found and cleared before they explode.
Trends in Taliban attacks are one yardstick used by ISAF to measure war progress. Others include the state of security in populated areas, the number of coalition and Afghan casualties, the degree to which civilians can move about freely, and the performance of Afghan security forces.
Graybeal said even though the number of 2012 Taliban attacks was unchanged from 2011, "our assessment of the fundamentals of campaign progress has not changed. The enemy is increasingly separated from the population and the ANSF are currently in the lead for the vast majority of partnered operations."
Study finds maize in diets of people in coastal Peru dates to 5,000 years agoPublic release date: 25-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Nancy O'Shea media@fieldmuseum.org 312-665-7103 Field Museum
For decades, archaeologists have struggled with understanding the emergence of a distinct South American civilization during the Late Archaic period (3000-1800 B.C.) in Peru. One of the persistent questions has been the role of agriculture and particularly corn (maize) in the evolution of complex, centralized societies. Up until now, the prevailing theory was that marine resources, not agriculture and corn, provided the economic engine behind the development of civilization in the Andean region of Peru.
Now, breakthrough research led by Field Museum curator Dr. Jonathan Haas is providing new resolution to the issue by looking at microscopic evidence found in soil, on stone tools, and in coprolites from ancient sites and dated with over 200 Carbon-14 dates.
After years of study, Haas and his colleagues have concluded that during the Late Archaic, maize (Zea mays, or corn) was indeed a primary component in the diet of people living in the Norte Chico region of Peru, an area of remarkable cultural florescence in 3rd millennium B.C. Their research is the subject of a paper that appears in the online Early Edition issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) the week of February 25, 2013..
"This new body of evidence demonstrates quite clearly that the very earliest emergence of civilization in South America was indeed based on agriculture as in the other great civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China," said Haas.
Haas and his team focused on sites in the desert valleys of Pativilca and Fortaleza north of Lima where broad botanical evidence pointed to the extensive production, processing and consumption of maize between 3000 and 1800 B.C. They studied a total of 13 sites. The two most extensively studied sites were Caballete, about six miles inland from the Pacific Ocean and consisting of six large platform mounds arranged in a "U" shape, and the site of Huaricanga, about 14 miles inland and consisting one very large mound and several much smaller mounds on either side.
The scientists targeted several areas at the sites including residences, trash pits, ceremonial rooms, and campsites. A total of 212 radiocarbon dates were obtained in the course of all the excavations.
Macroscopic remains of maize (kernels, leaves, stalks, and cobs) were rare.
However, the team looked deeper and found an abundance of microscopic evidence of maize in various forms in the excavations. One of the clearest markers was the abundance of maize pollen in the prehistoric soil samples. While maize is grown in the area today, they were able to rule out modern day contamination because modern maize pollen grains are larger and turn dark red when stain is applied. Also, modern soil samples consistently contain pollen from the Australian Pine (Casuarinaceae Casuarina), a plant which is an invasive species from Australia never found in prehistoric samples.
A majority of the soil samples analyzed came from trash pits associated with residential architecture. Other samples were taken from places such as room floors and construction debris. Of the 126 soil samples (not counting stone tools and coprolites) analyzed, 61 contained Z. mays pollen. (In fact, Z. mays was the second most common pollen found in the total of all samples, behind only pollen from cattails which have wind-pollinated flowers.) This is consistent with the percentage of maize pollen found in pollen analyses from sites in other parts of the world where maize is a major crop and constitutes the primary source of calories in the diet.
Haas and his colleagues also analyzed residues on stone tools used for cutting, scraping, pounding, and grinding. The tools were examined for evidence of plant residues, particularly starch grains and phytoliths (plant silica bodies). Of the 14 stone tools analyzed, 11 had maize starch grains on the working surfaces and two had maize phytoliths.
Coprolites (preserved fecal material) provide the best direct evidence of prehistoric diet. Among 62 coprolites analyzed of all types 34 human, 16 domesticated dog, and others from various animals 43 (or 69 percent) contained maize starch grains, phytoliths, or other remains. Of the 34 human coprolites, 23 (or 68 percent) contained evidence of maize. (The second most common grain in humans came from sweet potatoes.) Coprolites also showed that fish, mostly anchovies, did provide the primary protein in the diet, but not the calories.
The researchers concluded that the prevalence of maize in multiple contexts and in multiple sites indicates this domesticated food crop was grown widely in the area and constituted a major portion of the local diet, and it was not used just on ceremonial occasions. The research ultimately confirms the importance of agriculture in providing a strong economic base for the rise of complex, centralized societies in the emergence of the world's civilizations.
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All of the botanical work conducted on this project was carried out at the new Laboratorio de Palinologa y Paleobotnica at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, under the direction of Luis Huamn. Analysis of the botanical remains was a collaboration among Huaman, David Goldstein, National Park Service, Karl Reinhard, University of Nebraska, Cindy Vergel, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia. The Project was co-directed by Haas and Winifred Creamer, Northern Illinois University, with funding from the National Science Foundation.
Photos available upon request. Please contact Field Museum public relations through e-mail or at 312-665-7100.
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Study finds maize in diets of people in coastal Peru dates to 5,000 years agoPublic release date: 25-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Nancy O'Shea media@fieldmuseum.org 312-665-7103 Field Museum
For decades, archaeologists have struggled with understanding the emergence of a distinct South American civilization during the Late Archaic period (3000-1800 B.C.) in Peru. One of the persistent questions has been the role of agriculture and particularly corn (maize) in the evolution of complex, centralized societies. Up until now, the prevailing theory was that marine resources, not agriculture and corn, provided the economic engine behind the development of civilization in the Andean region of Peru.
Now, breakthrough research led by Field Museum curator Dr. Jonathan Haas is providing new resolution to the issue by looking at microscopic evidence found in soil, on stone tools, and in coprolites from ancient sites and dated with over 200 Carbon-14 dates.
After years of study, Haas and his colleagues have concluded that during the Late Archaic, maize (Zea mays, or corn) was indeed a primary component in the diet of people living in the Norte Chico region of Peru, an area of remarkable cultural florescence in 3rd millennium B.C. Their research is the subject of a paper that appears in the online Early Edition issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) the week of February 25, 2013..
"This new body of evidence demonstrates quite clearly that the very earliest emergence of civilization in South America was indeed based on agriculture as in the other great civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China," said Haas.
Haas and his team focused on sites in the desert valleys of Pativilca and Fortaleza north of Lima where broad botanical evidence pointed to the extensive production, processing and consumption of maize between 3000 and 1800 B.C. They studied a total of 13 sites. The two most extensively studied sites were Caballete, about six miles inland from the Pacific Ocean and consisting of six large platform mounds arranged in a "U" shape, and the site of Huaricanga, about 14 miles inland and consisting one very large mound and several much smaller mounds on either side.
The scientists targeted several areas at the sites including residences, trash pits, ceremonial rooms, and campsites. A total of 212 radiocarbon dates were obtained in the course of all the excavations.
Macroscopic remains of maize (kernels, leaves, stalks, and cobs) were rare.
However, the team looked deeper and found an abundance of microscopic evidence of maize in various forms in the excavations. One of the clearest markers was the abundance of maize pollen in the prehistoric soil samples. While maize is grown in the area today, they were able to rule out modern day contamination because modern maize pollen grains are larger and turn dark red when stain is applied. Also, modern soil samples consistently contain pollen from the Australian Pine (Casuarinaceae Casuarina), a plant which is an invasive species from Australia never found in prehistoric samples.
A majority of the soil samples analyzed came from trash pits associated with residential architecture. Other samples were taken from places such as room floors and construction debris. Of the 126 soil samples (not counting stone tools and coprolites) analyzed, 61 contained Z. mays pollen. (In fact, Z. mays was the second most common pollen found in the total of all samples, behind only pollen from cattails which have wind-pollinated flowers.) This is consistent with the percentage of maize pollen found in pollen analyses from sites in other parts of the world where maize is a major crop and constitutes the primary source of calories in the diet.
Haas and his colleagues also analyzed residues on stone tools used for cutting, scraping, pounding, and grinding. The tools were examined for evidence of plant residues, particularly starch grains and phytoliths (plant silica bodies). Of the 14 stone tools analyzed, 11 had maize starch grains on the working surfaces and two had maize phytoliths.
Coprolites (preserved fecal material) provide the best direct evidence of prehistoric diet. Among 62 coprolites analyzed of all types 34 human, 16 domesticated dog, and others from various animals 43 (or 69 percent) contained maize starch grains, phytoliths, or other remains. Of the 34 human coprolites, 23 (or 68 percent) contained evidence of maize. (The second most common grain in humans came from sweet potatoes.) Coprolites also showed that fish, mostly anchovies, did provide the primary protein in the diet, but not the calories.
The researchers concluded that the prevalence of maize in multiple contexts and in multiple sites indicates this domesticated food crop was grown widely in the area and constituted a major portion of the local diet, and it was not used just on ceremonial occasions. The research ultimately confirms the importance of agriculture in providing a strong economic base for the rise of complex, centralized societies in the emergence of the world's civilizations.
###
All of the botanical work conducted on this project was carried out at the new Laboratorio de Palinologa y Paleobotnica at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, under the direction of Luis Huamn. Analysis of the botanical remains was a collaboration among Huaman, David Goldstein, National Park Service, Karl Reinhard, University of Nebraska, Cindy Vergel, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia. The Project was co-directed by Haas and Winifred Creamer, Northern Illinois University, with funding from the National Science Foundation.
Photos available upon request. Please contact Field Museum public relations through e-mail or at 312-665-7100.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New York City police officer accused of plotting to kidnap and cannibalize women had been having dark fantasies since he was a teenager, but had no intention of ever turning those thoughts into reality, his attorney said on Monday at the start of his federal trial.
Attorney Julia Gatto also said that Officer Gilberto Valle, who faces 20 years to life in prison if convicted, talked online about torturing his own wife and her female friends and colleagues.
"What really turns on is the idea of a woman - oiled, bound, laid out on a platter with an apple in her mouth, about to be cooked," Gatto told jurors in opening arguments. "That's his dirty little secret."
She argued that Valle was engaged in online sexual fantasy role play involving a little-known internet subculture where people with unconventional desires gather to act them out in cyberspace but with no intention of every carrying out criminal acts.
"There are literally thousands and thousands of people doing the same thing, online, every day," she told jurors, saying that government investigators misunderstood what they found on his computer.
Federal prosecutors countered that Valle, who has pleaded not guilty, took the plot beyond fantasy and into real life when he "engaged in surveillance of some of the women he was targeting."
Prosecutors say Valle 28, improperly accessed a federal law enforcement database to get information about one woman, and met a second women - a former classmate - for brunch.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Randall Jackson also said Valle searched online for homemade recipes for chloroform to subdue victims and recipes for cooking human flesh.
"Make no mistake," Jackson told jurors. "Officer Valle was deadly serious."
Valle's estranged wife testified Monday that she placed web tracking software on the couple's computer last fall after she said he began acting strange. When asked what she discovered, she burst into tears.
Kathleen Mangan-Valle, 27, said she found pictures of herself and her female friends and colleagues, attached to emails her husband sent discussing extreme brutality and murder.
"I was going to be hung up by my feet and my throat slit," Mangan-Valle testified, choking back tears.
She said Valle also discussed kidnapping one of her friends and delivering her to a New Jersey mechanic for torture and murder. Another was to be "burned alive" and two more would be "raped in front of each other to heighten their terror," she added.
Mangan-Valle continued to cry as she quoted emails she said she found in which her husband discussed "driving a spit through their wombs over and over again."
"He kept saying the suffering was for his own enjoyment,'' she said, sobbing.
(Editing by Daniel Trotta, Alden Bentley, Cynthia Johnston and Eric Walsh)
The beaches of Mauritius contain fragments of a type of rock typical of ancient continental crust ? rock which could have been brought to the surface by volcanic eruptions.Image: http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.9116.1361551494!/image/HIRES%2042-32415022%20reduced.jpg
The drowned remnants of an ancient microcontinent may lie scattered beneath the waters between Madagascar and India, a new study suggests.
Evidence for the long-lost land comes from Mauritius, a volcanic island about 900 kilometers east of Madagascar. The oldest basalts on the island date to about 8.9 million years ago, says Bj?rn Jamtveit, a geologist at the University of Oslo. Yet grain-by-grain analyses of beach sand that Jamtveit and his colleagues collected at two sites on the Mauritian coast revealed around 20 zircons ? tiny crystals of zirconium silicate that are exceedingly resistant to erosion or chemical change ? that were far older.
The zircons had crystallized within granites or other igneous rocks at least 660 million years ago, says Jamtveit. One of these zircons was at least 1.97 billion years old.
Jamtveit and his colleagues suggest that rocks containing the wayfaring zircons originated in ancient fragments of continental crust located beneath Mauritius. They propose that geologically recent volcanic eruptions brought shards of the crust to Earth?s surface, where the zircons eroded from their parent rocks to pepper the island?s sands. The team's work is published today in Nature Geoscience.
Crustal remains The paper also suggests that not just one but many fragments of continental crust lie beneath the floor of the Indian Ocean. Analyses of Earth?s gravitational field reveal several broad areas where sea-floor crust is much thicker than normal ? at least 25 to 30 kilometers thick, rather than the normal 5 to 10 kilometers.
Those crustal anomalies may be the remains of a landmass that the team has dubbed Mauritia, which they suggest split from Madagascar when tectonic rifting and sea-floor spreading sent the Indian subcontinent surging northeast millions of years ago. Subsequent stretching and thinning of the region?s crust sank the fragments of Mauritia, which together had comprised an island or archipelago about three times the size of Crete, the researchers estimate.
The team chose to collect sand, rather than pulverize local rocks, to ensure that zircons inadvertently trapped in rock-crushing equipment from previous studies did not contaminate their fresh samples. The nearest known outcrop of continental crust that could have produced the Mauritian zircons is on Madagascar, far across a deep sea, Jamtveit notes. Furthermore, the zircons came from Mauritian sites so remote that it is unlikely that humans carried them there.
?There?s no obvious local source for these zircons,? says Conall Mac Niocaill, a geologist at the University of Oxford, UK, who was not involved in the research.
Also, it does not seem as if the zircons rode to Mauritius on the wind, says Robert Duncan, a marine geologist at Oregon State University in Corvallis. ?There?s a remote possibility that they were wind blown, but they?re probably too large to have done so,? he adds.
Other ocean basins worldwide may well host similarly submerged remains of ?ghost continents?, Mac Niocaill notes in an accompanying News & Views article. Only detailed surveys of the ocean floor, including geochemical analyses of their rocks, will reveal whether the splintered and now submerged Mauritia has any long-lost cousins, he suggests.
This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on February 24, 2013.
Classifying different kinds of malware is notoriously hard, but crucial if computer defences are to keep up with the ever-evolving ecosystem of malicious programs. Treating computer viruses as biological puzzle could help computer scientists get a better handle on the wide world of malware.?
Ajit Narayanan and Yi Chen at the Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand, converted the signatures of 120 worms and viruses into an amino acid representation. The signatures are more usually presented in hexadecimals - a base-16 numbering system which uses the digits 0 to 9 as well as the letters a to f - but the amino acid "alphabet" is better suited to machine-learning techniques that can analyse a piece of code to figure out whether it matches a known malware signature.
Generally, malware experts identify and calculate the signatures of new malware, but it can be hard for them keep up. While machine learning can help, it is limited because the hexadecimal signatures can be different lengths: Narayanan's team found that using machine learning to help classify the hexadecimal malware signatures resulted in accuracy no better than flipping a coin.
But some techniques used in bioinformatics for comparing amino acid sequences take differing lengths into account. After applying these to malware, Narayanan's average accuracy for classifying the signatures automatically using machine learning rose to 85 per cent.
Biology might help in other ways too. Narayanan notes that if further study shows malware evolution follows some of the same rules as amino acids and proteins, our knowledge of biological systems could be used to help fight it.
Feb. 25, 2013 ? New research from the Children of the 90s study at the University of Bristol shows that most babies who are slow to put on weight in the first nine months of life have caught up to within the normal range by the age of 13, but remain lighter and shorter than many of their peers. There are significant differences in the pattern of 'catch-up', depending on the infant's age when the slow weight gain occurs.
The findings, published February 25 in the journal Pediatrics, are based on data from 11,499 participants in Children of the 90s, and provide the most conclusive and reassuring evidence for parents to date that, with the right care, many infants who fail to put on weight quickly in the first nine months of life will catch up over time.
The study found that, of the 11,499 infants born at term, 507 were slow to put on weight before the age of eight weeks ('early group') and 480 were slow to gain weight between eight weeks and nine months ('late group'). Thirty children were common to both groups.
The infants in the early group recovered quickly and had almost caught up in weight by the age of two, whereas those in the later group gained weight slowly until the age of seven, then had a 'spurt' between seven and ten years, but remained considerably shorter and lighter than their peers and those in the early group at the age of 13. At that age, children in the later group were on average 5.5k lighter and almost 4cm shorter than their peers; those in the early group were on average 2.5k lighter and 3.25cm shorter than their peers.
Slow weight gain is often seen by parents and some healthcare professionals as a sign of underlying ill health and clinicians face a dilemma between taking steps to increase a child's energy intake and putting them at risk of obesity later in life by encouraging too rapid weight gain.
The study shows that there were very different patterns of recovery between the early and late groups, even when other factors like the mother's education, background, and her weight and height were taken into account, but that there was little difference between boys and girls.
Professor Alan Emond, Professor of Community Child Health in the University's School of Social and Community Medicine, said: "The reason the early group caught up more quickly may be because those infants had obvious feeding difficulties and were more readily identified at the eight-week check, resulting in early treatment leading to a more rapid recovery. However, as Children of the 90s is an observational study, there is limited information available about which infants received nutritional supplements or medical treatments.
"Those children who showed slow weight gain later in infancy took longer to recover, because of the longer period of slow growth and because their parents were smaller and lighter too.
"Overall, parents can be reassured that well babies showing slow weight gain in the first year do eventually recover to within the normal range, but at 13-years tend to be lighter and smaller than many of their peers.'
The findings highlight the importance of monitoring a baby's weight and height gain during the first few weeks and months, but not creating anxiety with parents of slow-growing babies who are well, as most of these babies will catch up to within the national average over time.
The message to health professionals is that, unless children require intervention due to ill health, their calorie intake should not be increased as this may predispose them to obesity later in life. Feeding habits in the second six months of life determine a child's future weight gain, so consuming too many calories in infancy can lead to weight problems later in life.
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Journal Reference:
Zia ud Din, Pauline Emmett, Colin Steer, and Alan Emond. Growth Outcomes of Weight Faltering in Infancy in ALSPAC. Pediatrics, February 25, 2013 DOI: 10.1542/peds.2012-0764
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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.
Jan 26, 2013; Mobile, AL, USA; Senior Bowl south squad offensive lineman Oday Aboushi of Virginia (72) prior to kickoff of a game against the Senior Bowl north squad at Ladd-Peebles Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports
In the next profile of an offensive linemen that could interest the Bengals in the later rounds, we are going to look at a talented player who is performing poorly at the NFL Scouting Combine. Sound familiar?
Today, Virginia left tackle ran a 5.23 40 yard dash. That?s not terrible for an offensive lineman, but it gets worse. Aboushi only bench-pressed 225 pounds for 17 reps, which was the third-lowest of all offensive linemen at the Combine. Starting to sound like Vontaze Burfict without the character red flags?
Aboushi?s tape is better than Burfict?s was, but it is also inconsistent and with fewer wow plays. What Aboushi does offer is fluid movement and a natural understanding of angles to defensive players that can not be taught. So, if Aboushi?s combine hurts his stock, the Bengals would love to get their mitts on him and strengthen him up, considering he has the foundation a 6-5, 308 pound frame that gives him prototypical left tackle size.
Although he often used his leverage very well against defenders, Aboushi?s lack of functional strength kept him from fully utilizing it. Without delivering a stunning initial pop, Aboushi did not immediately gain control of a defender in his blocks, but eventually gained separation and control using his hips to get underneath a defender.
But, considering his bench press reps, his functional strength and hand-power is greater than would be expected.
He does move very fluidly, if not explosively fast, either when playing in space or getting up to block a linebacker at the second level. He understands the angles to make the block and routinely beats defenders to their spots.
When he does run block at the line of scrimmage, his smooth bucket step allows him to easily seal the edge in the zone running game. He also is very adept at the backside blocks in the zone game. When he blocks down on a defensive tackle, he does not always get his feet set and gives up ground due to his strength.
But he has shown a mean streak, playing up until the whistle?s sound is dying out, although he sometimes can take plays off. Maybe that is a conditioning problem. He also has a tendency to freeze his base against defenders, making him susceptible to counter moves while his feet are frozen.
Although that can be fixed, Aboushi is not strong enough to freeze his feet and get off balance. His long arms, which give him an advantage in the leverage game, do help nullify his footwork slightly.
The Bengals could do much worse to catch a guy like Aboushi to groom to replace Andrew Whitworth, especially if he falls into the third or fourth round.
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