PFT: Clemons says player coming out is 'selfish'

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New Dolphins DT Vaugn Martin says he had offers from the Pats, Eagles, Chargers, Chiefs, and Seattle.

Former Bills QB Frank Reich will hold his annual Call to Courage Award Breakfast on April 6; this year?s event includes a 20-year look back at the greatest comeback in NFL history.

WR Danny Amendola will wear No. 16 with the Pats, if it?s available.? (For now, it isn?t.)

The Jets won?t be hosting the Honey Badger before the draft, a fact that typically has little bearing on whether the player will be picked by the team in question.

Ravens secondary coach Teryl Austin is upbeat about the teams defensive backfield.

The Bengals will now try to find a safety, via free agency or the draft.

The Browns have ?very mild interest? in free-agent WR Domenik Hixon.

Former Steelers OL John Wiley died this week at the age of 92.? (He played in the first publicly-televised college football game, which was broadcast in 1939 by NBC.)

Former Texans LB Connor Barwin took out a newspaper ad thanking a variety of folks who helped his career in Houston ? including Jaguars QB Blaine Gabbert and ?my cleaning lady.?

Over the next couple of months, new Jaguars coach Gus Bradley will establish his vision for the team.

Colts QB Andrew Luck is among the candidates for the cover of an overhyped, underperforming football video game that inexplicably continues to sell millions of copies every year.

Someone actually believes that Ryan Fitzpatrick is an upgrade over Matthew Hasselbeck at backup quarterback for the Titans.

The Broncos hope to play as fast as possible on offense in 2013.

The Chiefs have explained the convoluted title of the man who once used the phrase ?programmatic non-fit? with a straight face.

Here?s a look at the Raiders? draft options with the third overall pick in 2013.

The agent for former Chargers LT Marcus McNeill says McNeill isn?t considering a comeback.

Cowboys QB Tony Romo talks about his new contract in a video that includes an image of Romo in front of a collection of trophies many think he?ll never touch and Romo?s young son rebuffing owner Jerry Jones? high-five attempt.

RB Tim Hightower?s workout with the Giants will occur early next week.

The Eagles reportedly have some lingering interest in OT Eric Winston.

The Redskins reportedly are eyeballing Miami CB Brandon McGee and Nevada safety Duke Williams.

The contract signed by new Bears OL Matt Slauson is worth more than the minimum salary.

Lions Hall of Famer Lem Barney has sued a former employer after he was fired for signing too many autographs.

CB Loyce Means, out of football in 2012, could be signed by the Packers early next week.

Should the Vikings focus on improving their front four?

The supposedly ultra-talented Falcons have a major hole at cornerback.

The effort to upgrade the Panthers? stadium with public money?continues to face opposition.

New Saints LB Victor Butler says that he was simply looking for a ?chance to compete and be a part of a winning team.?

How good will the Buccaneers? offensive line be in 2013, and beyond?

The Cardinals won?t be going to Flagstaff for training camp.

The Rams are ready to pull the plug on this year?s Pro Day circuit.

So who will be No. 2 on the depth chart behind Colin Kaepernick?

The Seahawks have put together 25 thinks to like about CB Richard Sherman on his 25th birthday.? (?Humility? is not on the list.)

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/03/30/clemons-question-motivation-of-gay-player-coming-out/related/

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Philadelphian jumps on tracks to help fallen man

PHILADELPHIA (AP) ? A recovering drug addict with a long rap sheet who's being hailed as a hero for jumping onto subway tracks in Philadelphia to rescue a man says he doesn't see himself as heroic.

Thirty-two-year-old Christopher Knafelc (kuh-NAY-ful) told The Associated Press on Friday that he just sees it as doing the right thing.

Knafelc had just sat down to wait for a train at a north Philadelphia station Thursday afternoon when he saw a man fall off the platform and onto the tracks. He jumped down to help the man, knowing that another train would be arriving in a few minutes.

Knafelc says he's struggled with drug addiction since his teens but is getting his life back on track, thanks in part to the birth of his daughter in 2010.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/philadelphian-jumps-tracks-help-fallen-man-135625720.html

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Cink, Haas tied for lead in Houston Open

HUMBLE, Texas (AP) ? Seven players within four shots of the lead at the Houston Open have never won on the PGA Tour. Twelve of them still aren't in the Masters. One of them includes a journeyman who had to qualify Monday just to get a tee time at Redstone Golf Club.

In a tournament loaded with so many possibilities, one of the big surprises is a major champion.

Stewart Cink has not been heard from very much since that summer day at Turnberry in 2009 when he beat Tom Watson to win the British Open. His highest finish since then was third, and that was in the four-man field at the PGA Grand Slam of Golf. In 81 starts since becoming a major champion, he has missed the cut 30 percent of the time. He has plunged to No. 272 in the world ranking.

Cink finished off another solid round Saturday by saving par form the bunker on the 18th hole for a 4-under 68, giving him a share of the lead with Bill Haas.

"Tomorrow is a great learning opportunity for me to get out there and be nervous and perform and try to stay in the moment and let it happen," Cink said. "I can't wait."

Indeed, there will be a sense of urgency in this tournament.

Haas, the co-leader after 36 holes at Bay Hill last week, made seven birdies over his last 13 holes for a 67 and joined Cink at 11-under 205.

Now comes the hard part, 20 players separated by four shots on a course where birdies are available, but the slightest miss can prove costly.

"Tomorrow you're going to have to play very well," Haas said. "You can't just hang on and hope everybody else will fall back."

Steve Wheatcroft, who only got into this tournament through a Monday qualifier, got off to a good start and fell back with an embarrassing finish. Wheatcroft was tied for the lead when he shanked a shot from the greenside bunker on the 18th, the ball coming out at a 45-degree angle, over the green and almost into the gallery. He made a 15-foot putt to salvage bogey for a 72.

Wheatcroft still was only one shot out of the lead, along with Ben Crane (67), D.A. Points (71) and Jason Kokrak (71).

"If you don't catch it perfectly, it runs across the green into the water," Wheatcroft said about his bunker shot. "I opened the club face just trying to hit a high soft one and obviously I missed most of the club face."

Nine players were only two shots behind, a group that included former British Open champion Louis Oosthuizen (65), former world No. 1 Lee Westwood (67), former PGA champion Keegan Bradley (67) two-time major champion Angel Cabrera (69) and Henrik Stenson (68), who is one round away from playing his way into the Masters through being top 50 in the world.

Phil Mickelson finished his round of 67 before the leaders teed off, and he closed with a wedge into 6 feet for birdie. He wound up five shots out of the lead, still within range of trying to add another win before heading to Augusta for the Masters.

"I feel like I've got a low round in me tomorrow," Mickelson said before leaving to meet with former president George H.W. Bush, who attended the tournament Saturday.

Rory McIlroy had a chance to join the mix. Swinging more freely, the world's No. 2 player was poised to reach 6 under for the tournament with a superb bunker shot to 5 feet for birdie on the 13th hole. He missed the putt, and then missed the 3-footer he had left and wound up with a bogey. McIlroy short-sided himself on the next hole for bogey, and dropped another shot on the 18th with a tee shot into the water. He had to settle for a 71 and was at 214, nine shots behind.

"It's the best I've hit it on the golf course this week," McIlroy said.

Wheatcroft and Kokrak are among seven players within four shots of the lead who have never won on the PGA Tour, and Wheatcroft still has high hopes of winning to get a two-year exemption in the big leagues. He would be the first Monday qualifier to win since Arjun Atwal in August 2010 at the Wyndham Championship.

He would be the ultimately long shot, especially after the tweet he posted upon learning McIlroy had signed up for the Texas Open next week. Wheatcroft wanted everyone to know he signed up for the Texas Open qualifier on Monday, though a top-10 would get him into the field at San Antonio. A win would allow him to play two majors and two World Golf Championships this year, and just about anywhere he wanted on tour for the next two years.

Cink is going after his seventh tour win, though he made it sound like he was trying for his first.

"I'll be nervous and I definitely will not be ignoring the fact that I'll feel a little bit nervous tomorrow," he said. "But that's just natural human behavior and I'm looking forward to it. To get back in the hunt is what you play golf for when you're out on the PGA Tour. It's a lot of fun and hard work, but I can't wait."

Cink can only hope he hasn't forgotten how to finish, though experience could play a big factor.

Oosthuizen was the 54-hole leader in the Houston Open last year. Bradley was relieved to finally see some putts go in the hole. Westwood has started slowly this year, but he feels his game is rounding into shape at Augusta.

"There isn't a lot of experience at the top of the leaderboard," Westwood said. "There are some tough shots out there. Few birdie chances if you're hitting it well."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cink-haas-tied-lead-houston-open-220331799--spt.html

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Oh, the places you won't go! World's 25 least-visited countries

Using UN statistics, travel writer?Gunnar Garfors found that top contenders for the least-visited award are often dangerous or remote. But some are just plain boring.

By Ryan Lenora Brown,?Correspondent / March 29, 2013

Somali men look out across Mogadishu's fishing harbor in the early morning as fishermen land their catch and transport their fish to the market in the Xamar Weyne district of the Somali capital, March 16. Somalia is the second-least visited country in the world, according to a recent list compiled by travel writer Gunnar Garfors from UN statistics.

Courtesy of Stuart Price/AU-UN IST PHOTO/Reuters

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For some travelers, getting off the beaten path is a point of pride, a way to see the parts of the world that don?t make it into glossy guidebooks.

Skip to next paragraph Ryan Lenora Brown

Correspondent

Ryan Brown edits the Africa Monitor blog and contributes to the national and international news desks of the Monitor. She is a former Fulbright fellow to South Africa and holds a degree in history from Duke University.?

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But how many of those same adventurous travelers would be willing to visit, say, Somalia?

About 500, it turns out.

At least, that?s how many tourists found their way to the wartorn east African nation last year. ?

That makes Somalia the second-least visited country in the world, after the tiny pacific island nation Nauru, according to a recent list compiled by travel writer Gunnar Garfors from UN statistics.?

Little Nauru ? 8.1 square miles in size, population 9,378 ? got just 200 visitors last year, and it?s pretty clear why.

?There is almost nothing to see there,? writes Mr. Garfors, ?as most of the island ? is a large open phosphate mine.??

Indeed, most of the world?s least visited countries seem to fall in one of two categories. There are the Naurus, where you?ll puzzle over what to do, and the Somalias, where it?s simply too dangerous to do much of anything at all. (As Somalia?s Wikitravel page aptly notes, ?the easiest method for staying safe in Somalia is not to go in the first place.?)?

Most of the ?nothing to do? countries are the crumbs that dust a map of the Pacific Ocean: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, and Tuvalu. The latter shares with the Maldives the dubious distinction of having "highest elevation points" that are the lowest on earth ? 15 feet above sea level. Visit while you can, as rising sea levels could make the island uninhabitable within a century.

As for the ?too dangerous? countries, the list reads like a global primer in political conflict. For instance, despite its pristine national parks full of wild gorillas and elephants, the perpetually ungovernable Central African Republic (#23) is an unpopular destination for tourists. And its stock will likely continue to plummet ? last week a rebel alliance seized the capital, Bangui, and the president fled to neighboring Cameroon. (For more on the tempestuous politics of the CAR, read about the rebel alliance that took power there Sunday)

Afghanistan (#10) also suffers from tourism-deflating instability, which keeps visitors away from its rugged peaks, ancient Buddhist monuments, and Islamic holy sites, including the 12th-century Minaret of Jam, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

?The Taliban have a message for foreign tourists who come to Afghanistan, especially if they are from any of the 50 countries that are part of the NATO-led coalition supporting the government: Big mistake,? writes The New York Times.

Other countries on the list, like Guinea Bissau (#14), Libya (#15), and East Timor (#18), have seen their reputations ? and infrastructure ? hobbled by recent wars or uprisings.

But not every country on the list is too dangerous or boring to visit. A few are simply effectively sealed off to the outside world.

All foreign visitors to North Korea (#16) are limited to a state-curated itinerary and must have an official government ?minder? by their side at all times. But for the few Western tourists who venture into the country, that?s part of the appeal. ?You will rarely get to see propaganda done more explicitly,? Garfors writes.

Except, perhaps, in Turkmenistan (#7), where visitors who brave the onerous Soviet-esque visa application process are rewarded with sites like a 50-ft. golden statue of former dictator Saparmurat Niyazov in the capital Ashgabat, which rotates throughout the course of the day to face the sun. But the country?s most indisputably impressive site is a massive flaming crater deep in the Karakum Desert. Measuring 230 feet across and almost 70 feet deep, the so-called ?Door to Hell? has been burning continuously since Soviet scientists lit it on fire in 1971. ?

Obscure? Yes. But that's part of the charm.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/NWsRTQMB3ZM/Oh-the-places-you-won-t-go!-World-s-25-least-visited-countries

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Nelson Mandela in 'good spirits' in South Africa hospital

The former South African president is responding to treatment for a recurring lung infection, officials say. This marks the third time in four months the 94-year-old has been hospitalized. NBC's Keir Simmons reports.

By Alastair Jamieson, Staff writer, NBC News

Former South Africa leader Nelson Mandela was in ?good spirits? Friday, officials said, as he spent a second day in hospital where he is being treated for a recurring lung infection.

?The doctors report that he is making steady progress,? said a statement from the country?s presidency, adding that the 94-year-old had ?enjoyed a full breakfast.?

Earlier, South Africa?s president, Jacob Zuma, sought to reassure his country over Mandela?s health,?saying in a BBC interview that people "must not panic."

However, he appeared to agree with the suggestion that South Africa should prepare for Mandela?s eventual death.

?Is this a time for us to be aware of what is inevitable?? asked the BBC's Lerato Mbele. ?Well, I would imagine so,? replied Zuma.

Mandela, 94, was taken to a hospital just before midnight local time (6 p.m. ET) on Wednesday ? his third hospital visit since December.

He has a history of lung problems dating back to his days as a political prisoner in the notorious Robben Island jail under the apartheid regime, where inmates worked in an open quarry. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1988 after being moved to Pollsmoor Prison.

Mandela spent 18 days in hospital in December, undergoing surgery for gallstones.

Earlier, President Barack Obama sent his best wishes to the former leader.

"He is as strong physically as he's been in character and in leadership over so many decades, and hopefully he will ... come out of this latest challenge," Obama told reporters at the White House Thursday.

"When you think of a single individual that embodies the kind of leadership qualities that I think we all aspire to, the first name that comes up is Nelson Mandela. And so we wish him all the very best," Obama said.

NBC News? Stacey Klein contributed to this report.

Related:

Secrecy over Mandela's health fuels concern for South Africa icon

'Who is my Mandela?' South Africans consider icon's place in a changing world

?

This story was originally published on Fri Mar 29, 2013 5:03 AM EDT

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653387/s/2a2168b0/l/0Lworldnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A30C290C17512950A0Enelson0Emandela0Ein0Egood0Espirits0Ein0Esouth0Eafrica0Ehospital0Dlite/story01.htm

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UK police: Berezovsky's neck had been bound

WINDSOR, England (AP) ? Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky was found dead on his bathroom floor with his neck bound and a similar piece of material attached to a shower rail, a police officer told a coroner's inquest on Thursday.

Detective Inspector Mark Bissell of Thames Valley Police said there were no signs of a struggle, but that the involvement of a third party "cannot be completely eliminated as tests remain outstanding."

Investigators have not specified the nature of the ligature ? a cord or other material used for binding ? that was found around the neck of the 67-year-old oligarch.

Berezovsky, a one-time Kremlin powerbroker-turned-critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, lived in self-imposed exile in Britain.

Bissell said Berezovsky was last seen alive at 9:05 p.m. on Friday. His body was found Saturday by a member of his staff at 3:20 p.m. at his mansion in Ascot, 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of London.

Police are still searching the property and toxicology tests are being conducted on Berezovsky's body.

Several wealthy Russians have died suddenly in Britain in recent years ? most notoriously Berezovsky's friend Alexander Litivinenko, who died in 2006 of poisoning after ingesting the radioactive isotope polonium-210. Britain has accused two Kremlin-linked Russians in the killing of the former KGB agent, who had fled to Britain.

Speculation has swirled about possible foul play in Berezovsky's death. But friends also say he was depressed after losing a 35 million pound ($54 million) lawsuit against a former business partner, Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich.

A mathematician-turned-Mercedes dealer, Berezovsky built up his wealth during Russia's chaotic privatization of state assets in the 1990s following the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.

Berezovsky helped build up Putin's power base but fell out of favor and was charged in Russia with fraud and embezzlement.

A U.K. coroner's inquest ? held to determine the facts in cases of violent or unexplained deaths ? opened with a brief hearing Thursday at Windsor's Guildhall, then was adjourned to a later date.

Officials said Berezovsky had legally changed his name to Platon Elenin in 2003 and would be identified by that name at the inquest.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/uk-police-berezovskys-neck-had-bound-120105951.html

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Gay People Are Boring, Obama Is Boring, And That?s Great For America (OliverWillisLikeKryptoniteToStupid)

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Seeing happiness in ambiguous facial expressions reduces aggressive behavior

Mar. 27, 2013 ? Encouraging young people at high-risk of criminal offending and delinquency to see happiness rather than anger in facial expressions results in a decrease in their levels of anger and aggression, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

The study, led by Marcus Munaf? and Ian Penton-Voak of the University of Bristol (UK), explored the relationship between recognition of emotion in ambiguous facial expressions and aggressive thoughts and behavior, both in healthy adults and in adolescent youth considered to be at high-risk of committing crime.

The researchers showed it was possible to experimentally modify biases in emotion recognition to encourage the perception of happiness over anger when viewing ambiguous expressions. This resulted in a decrease in measures of self-reported anger and aggression in both healthy adults and high-risk adolescents, and also for independently-rated aggressive behavior in the adolescents.

To modify these biases, participants were shown composite images of facial expressions that were happy, angry or emotionally ambiguous and asked to rate them as happy or angry. This established a baseline balance point of how likely they were to read ambiguous faces as angry. The researchers then used feedback to nudge some of the participants away from this negativity bias by telling them that some of the ambiguous faces they had previously labeled as angry were in fact happy.

In the first experiment in 40 healthy volunteers, this ultimately resulted in the participants learning to identify happiness in these faces rather than anger -- and these participants subsequently reported lower levels of anger and aggression in themselves.

The experiment was then repeated with 46 adolescents aged 11 to 16 years old who had been referred to a youth program, either by the courts or by schools, as being at high risk of committing crime and with a high frequency of aggressive behavior.

Again, participants trained to recognize happiness rather than anger in the ambiguous faces reported less aggressive behavior. In addition, incidence of aggressive behavior -- as recorded independently by program staff in the week before and the two weeks following the training -- were also reduced.

To test this result further, the researchers then ran a different experiment on a further 53 healthy volunteers which did not rely on explicit feedback to change the way participants judged facial expressions.

Previous studies have shown that prolonged viewing of an image subsequently alters the perception of similar images, so one group of participants was shown only angry faces while a control group looked at an equal mix of happy and angry faces.

The researchers found that those shown only angry faces subsequently shifted their perceptions and became more likely to see happiness in ambiguous faces. Again, they also reported lower levels of anger and aggression in themselves.

"Our results provide strong evidence that emotion processing plays a causal role in anger and the maintenance of aggressive behavior. This could potentially lead to novel behavioral treatments in the future," said Munaf?.

In addition to Penton-Voak and Munaf?, co-authors on the research include Jamie Thomas of the University of Wales Institute, Suzanne Gage and Sarah McDonald of the University of Bristol, and Mary McMurran of the University of Nottingham.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Association for Psychological Science.

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Journal Reference:

1. I. S. Penton-Voak, J. Thomas, S. H. Gage, M. McMurran, S. McDonald, M. R. Munafo. Increasing Recognition of Happiness in Ambiguous Facial Expressions Reduces Anger and Aggressive Behavior. Psychological Science, 2013; DOI: 10.1177/0956797612459657

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

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

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/D_t658f0cAE/130328080559.htm

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Five Favorite Films with Derek Cianfrance

Derek Cianfrance's 2010 drama Blue Valentine earned strong reviews and confirmed stars Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling as among the best actors of their generation. For his follow-up, the filmmaker has again enlisted Gosling, together with Bradley Cooper and Eva Mendes, as part of an ambitious, three-part drama on the legacy of troubled fathers and sons. It's called The Place Beyond the Pines, and it opens in select theaters across the country this week. Here, we talk with Cianfrance about his favorite movies.

GoodFellas

(Martin Scorsese, 1990; 97% Tomatometer)

First one I'd say is GoodFellas. When I was a teenager I slept underneath a picture of Martin Scorsese. I think GoodFellas is just a perfect film. From an efficiency of storytelling standpoint, from an entertainment standpoint, from a performance standpoint, from a use of music standpoint, from a cinematography and editing standpoint -- to me it's just a perfect movie. That's a movie I saw when I was 16 years old, when I watched it in a theater 30 times. A perfect movie.

You must have been happy to have Ray Liotta in The Place Beyond the Pines.

I was. When I first met with my co-writer, Ben Coccio, I found out that his favorite movie was GoodFellas, too -- so we said, "Hey, why don't we write a movie together and let's write a role for Ray Liotta in it." And then five years later there I was sitting in an audition room with Ray Liotta -- it was like, you know, dreams really do come true.

Did you tell him how many times you saw his movie?

Yeah. And he said, "Oh, I only saw it once." [Laughs] Someday, I think they're gonna carve his face into a mountaintop.

Next choice I'd say would be The Gospel According to St. Matthew, by Pasolini. I saw that movie for the first time when I was 23 years old. I'd gone to church every Sunday and catechism every week for my whole childhood, but I never paid attention; I was always daydreaming in church -- and all of a sudden I went to go see this movie, and I knew everything in the movie. I guess all of my Catholic upbringing I had absorbed through some sort of osmosis. Here was this movie which was this Biblical story which was told so beautifully: the cinema was so simple and so beautiful. He had, you know, Odetta playing "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child" as the three wise men found Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus. It was, you know... I started sweating while I was watching the movie. The whole left side of my body went numb while I was watching, and I was sure that I was having a heart attack. It was all that I could do -- you know, I didn't want to because it was the greatest movie I'd ever seen -- but it was all I could do to crawl out of the movie theater and knock on the projectionist's door and ask him if I could call my girlfriend. I called my girlfriend and told her I thought I was dying, 'cause I was seeing the greatest movie I'd ever seen, and she showed up. I remember it had been snowing in Colorado and she had all this dirty snow on the roof of her car and I was eating all this dirty snow because my mouth was just parched. And I remember being in the emergency room and thinking that when the doctor walks through, if he looked like Jesus from The Gospel According to St. Matthew, I knew that meant I was dead. Fortunately the guy didn't look anything like Jesus.

Gimme Shelter (Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin, 1970; 100% Tomatometer)

Another one of my five favorite films would be Gimme Shelter, by the Maysles brothers. I spent many years making documentary films between my first film and my second film, Blue Valentine, and I learned to really embrace, and be humbled by life, and by telling a story where you're telling someone else's story. And there's something about the Maysles brothers, and especially that movie, where they were able to witness these moments. Especially with Gimme Shelter, you know, these moments of American history -- this concert at Altamont that turned into kind of the bad trip of Woodstock. And I love how they frame it with the band, the Stones, watching the footage, watching their memories; this document, this witness to this incredible time in American life -- and this crime, this real crime in America. Also, for nothing else than the moment where Mick Jagger has to watch Tina Turner. Again, like watching the Scorsese movie -- and the Pasolini movie -- their use of music, you know, is to watch a real rock and roll movie in the theater, with that sound. It's great.

Contempt

(Jean-Luc Godard, 1963; 93% Tomatometer)

Next one would be Contempt by Godard. The first time I ever saw it, on a VHS copy 25 years ago, I thought it was the worst movie I'd ever seen. Actually, every Godard film I've ever seen I've hated the first time. But it got re-released a number of years back and I was in New York and saw it at the Film Forum, and I felt like I was seeing Halley's Comet, you know -- I couldn't believe how wrong I was; how much I'd despised this film the first time I saw it and how much my second viewing was completely the polar opposite reaction. I think the performances, from Bardot and Piccoli to Jack Palance, to, you know, Cotard's photography and Delerue's amazing repetitive score... to me it's one of those Godard movies where it's a perfect balance between heart and mind, you know? Oftentimes his films are extremely heavy, but this film was not only heavy -- you could forever gaze into it on repeated viewings, as it appeals to your intelligence -- but it also appealed to your soul. It was a huge, huge inspiration for Blue Valentine, especially the middle section of Contempt, where it feels like this 45-minute sequence where this couple is in their apartment.

The last film I would say -- and I could pick many of his films, but I will choose Woman Under the Influence, by Cassavetes. I could also have said Faces, or I could have said The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, or Husbands, or Minnie and Moskowitz, or I could have said Love Streams, but -- today it will be Woman Under the Influence. I love the structure of it; its two-part structure -- it really feels like a film in two movements. Arguably the two greatest performances of all time, between Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands. You know, it's a home movie, and everything I've been trying to make are home movies -- movies that take place inside the house and the family. I love the spirit of Cassavetes' films, in that he's casting his wife and his best friend in the roles, and his mother and her mother are in it, and the kids. To me it's a movie that changes, too, throughtout the course of my life. I know the movie isn't changing, I'm changing; but when I watch it the movie seems to shape-shift. I remember the first time I ever saw it I thought she was crazy; I remember on the 50th time I watched it I thought she was the only sane person in the movie and everyone else was crazy. I love that about movies that are made with a certain openness -- that the audience can kind of participate in the imagination of the characters, you know; of their lives and of the story.

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The Place Beyond the Pines is in select theaters this week.

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1927110/news/1927110/

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Brazilian doctor charged with 7 murders, may have killed 300, investigator says

By Anthony Boadle

BRASILIA (Reuters) - A Brazilian doctor who was charged with killing seven patients to free up beds at a hospital intensive care unit may have been responsible for as many as 300 deaths, according to a Health Ministry investigator.

Prosecutors said Dr. Virginia Soares de Souza and her medical team administered muscle relaxing drugs to patients, then reduced their oxygen supply, causing them to die of asphyxia at the Evangelical Hospital in the southern city of Curitiba.

De Souza, a 56-year-old widow, was arrested last month and charged with seven counts of aggravated first degree murder. Three other doctors, three nurses and a physiotherapist who worked under De Souza have also been charged with murder.

Prosecutors for the state of Parana said wiretaps of De Souza's phone conversations revealed that her motive was to free up hospital beds for other patients.

"I want to clear the intensive care unit. It's making me itch," she said in one recording released to Brazilian media. "Unfortunately, our mission is to be go-betweens on the springboard to the next life," she added in the same phone call.

De Souza's lawyer, Elias Mattar Assad, said investigators had misunderstood how an intensive care unit works and she would prove her innocence.

More cases are expected to emerge as investigators comb through 1,700 medical records of patients who died in the last seven years at the hospital, where De Souza headed the intensive care unit.

"We already have more than 20 cases established, and there are nearly 300 more that we are looking into," the chief investigator assigned by Brazil's Health Ministry, Dr. Mario Lobato, said on Globo TV's Fantastico program on Sunday.

If prosecutors prove that De Souza killed 300 patients, this could be one of the world's worst serial killings, rivaling the notorious case of Harold Shipman, the English doctor who was found to have killed at least 215 patients.

Lobato said the deaths he reviewed occurred under similar circumstances: a muscle relaxant such as Pancuronium (trademark Pavulon) was administered, increasing the patients' dependence on artificial respiration; then the oxygen supply was reduced, causing death by asphyxia.

Some of the patients were conscious moments before they died, he said.

Prosecutors said De Souza felt "all powerful" running the intensive care unit homicide, to the point where she "had the power to decree the moment when a victim would die."

In some cases, De Souza was absent from the hospital and gave instructions to end the life of a patient by telephone to members of her medical team, according to documents detailing the charges.

Last week, a Curitiba judge ordered the release of De Souza and her medical team. Prosecutors sought on Monday to have her returned to custody because she was the leader of the team and witnesses had reported being intimidated.

Parana state prosecutors asked police on Wednesday to investigate whether more hospital employees, including former managers, were involved in the case.

President Dilma Rousseff's government will announce steps on Thursday to reorganize the hospital, a spokesman for the Health Ministry said.

(Editing by Stacey Joyce)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/brazilian-doctor-charged-7-murders-may-killed-300-225149812.html

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'Biggest cyberattack in history' turns out to be overblown

Is it "the biggest cyberattack in history"? Or just routine flak that network-security providers face all the time?

News websites across the Western world proclaimed Internet Armageddon today (March 27), largely due to a New York Times story detailing a "squabble" between the spam-fighting vigilantes at Spamhaus and the dodgy Dutch Web-hosting company Cyberbunker.

"Fight Jams Internet," the Times headline said. "Global Internet slows," the BBC proclaimed in the wake of the Times' story. Both websites alleged that Netflix streaming was slowing down as a result.

The reality is less exciting, though still serious. The Internet disruptions, which were centered in Western Europe, appear to be largely over, and were largely unnoticed even when occurring.

But, if anything, the incident may prompt a fix for a basic security flaw in the Domain Name System that serves as one of the underpinnings of the Internet.

"Despite the work that has gone into making the Internet extremely resilient, these attacks underscore the fact that there are still some aspects of it that are relatively fragile," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at San Francisco-based network-security provider nCircle.

Too much information

Cyberbunker appears to be behind a massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that first tried to first take down Spamhaus, then Spamhaus' network-reliability provider CloudFlare, and finally this past Saturday (March 23) hit CloudFlare's own bandwidth providers in Europe.

Boston-based Akamai Networks told the Times, and Spamhaus told the BBC, that the last round of attacks peaked at 300 gigabits per second, possibly the largest amount of bandwidth ever recorded during a DDoS attack.

According to a CloudFlare blog posting, the attack was launched on March 18 and immediately involved a tactic called DNS amplification, in which unprotected Domain Name System (DNS) servers are used to flood targeted servers with huge amounts of useless information, tying up bandwidth and processing time.

The attacks increased in volume during the week, finally peaking on Saturday when, according to CloudFlare, half of the infrastructure on the London Internet Exchange, an Internet node connecting several large-scale networks, was tied up by the attack. (CloudFlare is based in Palo Alto, Calif., but runs a global network.)

DNS servers are essentially the phone books of the Internet. Every Internet-connected device, from your computer to your smartphone, uses them to match a website address that humans use, such as "www.technewsdaily.com," with an Internet Protocol address that computers and routers use, such as "207.86.128.60."

DNS servers are essential, yet many remain "open," which means they will accept lookup requests from anyone, not just their specified clients.

Attackers make lookup requests using the IP addresses of their targets, then request tons of information, which ends up flooding the targeted servers with huge amounts of DNS information.

[5 (Probably) American Cyberweapons]

Did two wrongs make a bigger wrong?

Spamhaus, a group of related companies based in London and Geneva, was started in 1998 to track and combat email spam and spammers. It maintains a blacklist of Web-hosting companies known to host spammers, and a whitelist of known "clean" Web hosts.

Both lists are used by Internet service providers around the world, and Spamhaus is partly responsible for the huge drop in email spam in recent years.

Some Web-hosting companies have complained they've been unfairly placed on the Spamhaus blacklist. Spammers have launched DDoS attacks against Spamhaus' website and servers. (There's even a "Stophaus" website based in Russia and dedicated to combating what it calls Spamhaus' "underhanded extortion tactics.")

It appears Cyberbunker has both complained and attacked.

Cyberbunker bases its operations in a decommissioned NATO bunker, built to withstand a nuclear war, in the southern Netherlands. The company was founded in 1998 by a group of hackers who proclaimed the "Republic of Cyberbunker," a sovereign state "surrounded by the Netherlands on all borders."

The company pledges not to ask questions about what its clients are up to.

"In most cases we have no idea as to who or where our customers actually are," the Cyberbunker site proclaims. "Customers are allowed to host any content they like, except child porn and anything related to terrorism. Everything else is fine."

Such a policy has attracted some unsavory clients, including the file-sharing site The Pirate Bay, and, according to Spamhaus, the cybercrime gang known as the Russian Business Network. Cyberbunker also claims to have been raided by a Dutch police SWAT team, which apparently found nothing incriminating on the premises.

It was Cyberbunker's alleged hosting of spammers that caused Spamhaus to place both Cyberbunker and its ISP on the Spamhaus blacklist in the fall of 2011.

As a result, Cyberbunker's ISP dropped it as a client, but both the ISP and Cyberbunker posted long manifestos about why Spamhaus was evil.

The issue seems to have lain dormant until March 18, when a false Anonymous campaign called "Operation Stophaus" was proclaimed on the online bulletin board Pastebin.

It listed a litany of complaints against the "tax-circumventing self-declared Internet terrorists" of Spamhaus, then added a variant of the Anonymous "We Are Legion" tagline.

That posting may have been cover for the DDoS attacks that began the same day. In a statement to the New York Times, Sven Olaf Kamphuis, who claimed to speak for Cyberbunker, and whose Google+ page gives his residence as "Republic Cyberbunker," affirmed that the Dutch hosting company was behind the attacks.

"Nobody ever deputized Spamhaus to determine what goes and does not go on the Internet," Kamphuis told the newspaper. "They worked themselves into that position by pretending to fight spam."

It's hard to see how such an attack can be legally justified. The Netherlands has famously lax laws governing the Internet and other digital communications, but odds are Cyberbunker will be facing another SWAT raid very soon.

Fixing a hole

For his blog posting, CloudFlare's Matthew Prince used the headline "The DDoS That Almost Broke the Internet." That's not entirely accurate, since the problems were rather localized.

However, the attack may prompt an overhaul of the DNS system. Prince and others have been vocal about the need to lock down most or all DNS servers so they no longer respond to lookup requests from anyone.

That move would go against the model of openness and accessibility that's guided the Internet for 40 years. The idea has always been that any Internet-connected device can reach any other using any path, and open DNS servers are essential to that model.

But the problem of DNS-amplified attacks has been growing exponentially in just the past few months.

The ongoing attacks against U.S. bank websites which began last September use the tactic, and have reached 100 Gbps at times.

If this week's unrelated attacks truly did hit 300 Gbps, the end to the open-DNS server model may be inevitable.

This story was provided by TechNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow Paul Wagenseil?@snd_wagenseil. Follow us?@TechNewsDaily,?Facebook?or?Google+.

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

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/truth-behind-biggest-cyberattack-history-210723787.html

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Microsoft announces Build 2013 to be held June 26-28 in San Francisco

Developers, virtually mark your Windows Phone calendars: Microsoft announced that Build 2013, the company's developer conference, will be held from June 26th to 28th at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Specifically, Microsoft announced that it will be sharing details and future plans for Windows, Azure, Visual Studio "and more," so there'll be plenty of goodies to be had during the event. Registration opens on April 2nd, but in the meantime, head to the official sites below for more information.

Filed under: Mobile, Microsoft

Comments

Source: The Official Microsoft Blog

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/rotQ9PDlDyA/

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Maybe Isolation, Not Loneliness, Shortens Life

NPR:

Loneliness hurts, but social isolation can kill you. That's the conclusion of a study of more than 6,500 people in the U.K.

The study, by a team at University College London, comes after decades of research showing that both loneliness and infrequent contact with friends and family can, independently, shorten a person's life. The scientists expected to find that the combination of these two risk factors would be especially dangerous.

Read the whole story at NPR

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/26/maybe-isolation-not-lonel_n_2956840.html

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Loughner's parents hid shotgun from him, slew of new documents show

AFP - Getty Images, file

By Elizabeth Chuck, Staff Writer, NBC News

Jared Loughner hadn't been the same since he got fired from a job at a mall?in Tucson, his parents said. He had been expelled from college. After a visit from campus police, his parents decided to hide a shotgun that Loughner owned in the trunk of their car in the garage so he didn't have access to it in the house.

A slew of details about Loughner, 24 -- who has pleaded guilty to killing six people and wounding former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and a dozen others in a Jan. 8, 2011, shooting spree in Tucson -- emerged as authorities investigating the rampage released more than 2,700 pages of documents that they have compiled.

Among the thousands of interviews, police reports and survivors' statements released Wednesday, one theme was constant about Loughner, who has since been diagnosed with schizophrenia: As his father, Randy Loughner, told investigators at the time, he "just doesn't seem right lately."

Loughner was fired more than a year before the shooting, his father told investigators after the shooting, according to the documents. Trying to have a rational conversation with his son became more and more difficult after that, he said.

"Lost, lost and just didn't want to communicate with me," Randy Loughner said.

After Loughner was expelled, things got worse: Randy Loughner said his son felt harassed by campus police, who came to the Loughner home and asked if there were any firearms in the house. Loughner had bought a 12-gauge shotgun in 2008; at the recommendation of Pima Community College campus police, who recommended any firearms be taken away, they hid the shotgun and an antique weapon they owned.

"He had a shotgun. And I took it away," Randy Loughner told police. "They suggested that if I had any firearms, to take them away. And I did."

A former friend of Loughner's, Zachary Osler, was an employee at a store where Loughner later purchased a Glock handgun used in the Tucson rampage. Osler described the awkward encounter he had with Loughner.

"His response is nothing. Just a mute facial expression. And just like, he, he didn't care," Osler told investigators. He said the change in Loughner's personality made him uncomfortable to be around.?

"He would say he could dream and then control what he was doing while he was dreaming," Osler said, adding Loughner never mentioned Giffords in conversation to him.

Loughner's mother, Amy, felt her son's behavior was so odd that she tested him for drugs. Loughner kept a journal that was written in illegible script, his father said. Despite their concerns, Loughner's parents said they never sent him to get help and he had never been diagnosed as mentally ill.

On the morning of the shooting, Loughner's father said his son had been "acting strange." Loughner had taken his father's car early in the morning, returned home briefly, left again, then returned home once more before leaving on foot with a backpack.

Pima County Sheriff's Deputy T. Audetat Jr. wrote in his police report that when he arrived at the scene, he saw a man being held down by "two or three people". He handcuffed the shooter; in the shooter's pocket, in addition to two Glock magazines, fully loaded, he found a folding knife and a credit card and ID card, he said.?

He described what the shooter was wearing: black beanie, black hooded sweatshirt, khaki pants. Another deputy noticed he was wearing earplugs, he wrote in his report.

One of the victims of the shooting outside the Safeway supermarket, Ronald Barber, told police of the rampage, "I was laying on my right side and I could see the blood coming out. You know, and, uh, and all I remember is seeing the congresswoman with her back to me, on her side. On her right side, uh, with her head up against the window, you know, of the Safeway. And Daniel, um, who is our intern, saying, 'Stay with me, congresswoman, stay with me.'"

Once in the patrol car, Loughner pleaded the Fifth Amendment repeatedly, Deputy Audetat wrote. At the police station, Loughner said very little besides,?"I just want you to know that I'm the only person that knew about this," according to the deputy.

In his four-hour interview with authorities following the morning rampage, Loughner sat in restraints and was polite and cooperative with authorities, documents show. He asked to use the restroom at one point, saying thank you when he was permitted to. Although after a while he complained, "I'm about ready to fall over."

Loughner will spend the rest of his life behind bars but is not eligible for the death penalty because of his plea deal in the case. Giffords retired from her position in Congress a year after the shooting to focus on her recovery.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653381/s/2a10a1f2/l/0Lusnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A30C270C174885290Eloughners0Eparents0Ehid0Eshotgun0Efrom0Ehim0Eslew0Eof0Enew0Edocuments0Eshow0Dlite/story01.htm

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T-Mobile USA CEO: ready for any outcome of MetroPCS process

NEW YORK (Reuters) - John Legere, the chief executive T-Mobile USA, said he expects shareholders to approve the company's plan to merge with MetroPCS Communications Inc.

But if the deal falls through, the executive said, he would be prepared.

Legere has been meeting with MetroPCS shareholders ahead of an April 12 vote on the deal, which two activist investors are trying to block. T-Mobile USA is a unit of Deutsche Telekom, which would own 74 percent of the combined company.

While some investors told the executive that they are not sure if they will vote for the deal, Legere said he has yet to meet shareholders who had definitely decided to vote no. He declined to say if Deutsche Telekom might sweeten its offer.

"The deal will get done," Legere told Reuters in an interview after a press event where he unveiled T-Mobile's plans to start selling iPhone on April 12, the same day as the vote.

While Deutsche Telekom said earlier this week that the current deal was the best solution for both companies, some analysts said that the German company might end up changing the terms if shareholders appeared likely to reject the merger.

The result will likely be affected by recommendations for or against the deal by proxy advisory firms such as Glass Lewis and ISS, which are both expected to issue advisories this week.

But Legere said that if the vote does not work out as planned, T-Mobile would still be in a good position.

For example, he said that new service offerings and devices that T-Mobile unveiled this week would help it to compete against smaller rivals MetroPCS and Leap Wireless International.

"How hard would it be for me to go into MetroPCS and Leap's markets right now to compete," the executive said. "While they're waiting for somebody to come in and buy them, we're going to compete."

Legere said some shareholders he spoke to had speculated that a bigger rival like Sprint Nextel, No. 3 U.S. mobile operator, might offer MetroPCS a better deal than Deutsche Telekom has.

But if the MetroPCS deal collapses, Legere argued, T-Mobile would be a better acquisition target, because it has a much bigger wireless network and more subscribers than MetroPCS.

"If you're waiting for a white knight to come in," he said, "Why would you buy them and not us?"

Some analysts have questioned whether Sprint and T-Mobile would ever be allowed to merge after U.S. regulators blocked an effort by AT&T Inc, the No. 2 U.S. mobile service provider, to buy T-Mobile in 2011.

But Legere said that regulators may eventually feel more comfortable about a merger that forms a stronger No. 3 U.S. mobile provider.

"The ability to create a sustainable No. 3 is going to happen," he said. "In 12 to 24 months the environment will be different around Washington's opinion of consolidation."

(Reporting By Sinead Carew; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/t-mobile-usa-ceo-ready-outcome-metropcs-process-215757793--sector.html

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Winning $338 million Powerball ticket was sold at N.J. liquor store

PASSAIC, N.J. (AP) ? One mystery was solved Monday in the $338.3 Powerball jackpot drawing ? the location in New Jersey where the winning ticket was sold. But a bigger mystery remained: Who bought it?

New Jersey lottery officials announced a liquor store in the city of Passaic, 15 miles northwest of New York City, had sold the ticket but said they hadn't heard from the winner ? who has a year to step forward and claim the prize.

Eagle Liquors owner Sunil Sethi said "a couple of people are telling us they got it, but nobody has confirmed it yet."

Liquor store employee Pravin Mankodia, 67, who has worked at Eagle for seven years, sold the ticket. "It feels awesome, we feel so lucky," he said.

The store will get $10,000. The owner said he'll probably use some of the money to fix up the store and also share some with employees.

As word spread that Eagle had sold the ticket, some patrons continued to dream about what could have been.

James Brown, 56, of Passaic, who described himself as a scrap man, as in scrap metal, said he would have returned to his home state if he had scored the big jackpot.

"I like it here, but I'd be back in South Carolina by now if I had won. I would like to go back home and retire," he said.

Brown buys lottery tickets twice a day and said he will keep doing so.

He then sought out Mankodia.

"Maybe he'll shake my hand and give me some luck, too," he said.

Other patrons were excited that someone from the area had apparently won the big jackpot.

"It's about time someone from Passaic wins something," said Gloria Brinson of Paterson, who buys lottery tickets at the store each week. "But now the question is what are they going to do with the money? Are they going to help the community? I hope so."

The winner will owe 25 percent of the jackpot in federal taxes and 3 percent in state taxes, which amounts to about $59 million, according to state lottery officials. The cash value of the jackpot after taxes is about $152 million, if the winner chooses a lump-sum payment of $221 million over an annuity.

State lottery director Carole Hedinger said it's not usual for big winners to wait a few days or longer to claim the prize while they seek professional advice.

Lottery officials said it was the fourth-largest jackpot in Powerball history. The numbers drawn Saturday were 17, 29, 31, 52, 53 and Powerball 31.

No one had won the Powerball jackpot since early February, when Dave Honeywell in Virginia bought the winning ticket and elected a cash lump sum for his $217 million jackpot.

The largest Powerball jackpot ever came in at $587.5 million in November. The winning numbers were picked on two different tickets ? one by a couple in Missouri and the other by an Arizona man ? and the jackpot was split.

Nebraska still holds the record for the largest Powerball jackpot won on a single ticket ? $365 million ? by eight workers at a Lincoln meatpacking plant in February 2006.

Powerball is played in 42 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The chance of matching all five numbers and the Powerball number is about 1 in 175 million.

___

Associated Press writer Angela Delli Santi contributed to this report from Lawrenceville, N.J.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nj-liquor-store-sold-338m-powerball-ticket-154736229.html

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AWS Reveals In Job Listing It's Launching ?A New Business,? Looks ...

Amazon Web Services believes wholeheartedly that the cloud is the future. And not just the cloud, but the AWS public cloud. As a result, Amazon sees big opportunity for its technology in the enterprise market and has been making some aggressive moves to fluster the incumbents and stalwarts, like Microsoft.

The strategy has been to continue offering more and more services, beating its opponents at scale, while operating on razor-thin margins. And so far it?s been working: As Alex said in December, through its programmable architecture, volume and tiny margins, AWS has built a ?$1.5 billion business.?

Now, it seems that AWS is looking to apply its model to mobile to get deeper into enterprise ? with the creation of what looks to be a whole new arm of its cloud division. TechCrunch today learned of a job listing that has been posted both on its own site and on Stack Overflow that, in its attempt to allure engineers, describes the position as one that will be part of a new business.

?The Amazon Web Services (AWS) team is launching a new business,? it says plainly, and is looking for someone who wants to build ?amazing customer experiences on tablet and mobile apps on Android or iOS platforms.?

The post continues:

In this role, you will be responsible for creating and owning world-class production tablet and web client applications across major platforms including iOS and Android ? As a member of the founding team, you will have significant influence on our overall strategy by helping define the product features, drive system architecture, and spearhead the best practices that enable a quality v1 product setting the ground work for a successful v2 and beyond.

While we don?t know yet what Amazon has cooking (we?ve reached out and are awaiting their comment), we do know that they?re launching a new business that is focused on building ?quality software? for mobile and for those with deep experience building tablet apps. It will be a new product, something AWS hasn?t done before and the team will be small, iterating quickly in a ?hyper-growth environment where priorities shift fast.?

Again, Amazon needs a way to get deeper into the enterprise market as well as offer more for developers who increasingly look to their mobile devices to manage their apps.

AWS has been showing off its capabilities by adding the ability for its customers to quickly create virtual private clouds, and it?s been dropping its prices across the board. EC2 discounts, messaging and notifications, you name it.

Rishidot Research Founder Krishnan Subramanian says that Amazon looks to me ?making a play on the front-end and looking to build out a management service to build apps for AWS on multiple mobile platforms.?

For the most part, developers access AWS through the web, Subramanian said. Third-party providers are offering mobile apps, not Amazon. This new group could be charged with building a new arsenal of mobile apps.

AWS does need to make a backend play but this job posting does not reflect that. As it stands right now, Amazon doesn?t have the middleware, or cloud-based mobile SDK, which would allow mobile developers to build an app without having to worry about building their own stack. However, given how well?Kinvey?and others (who do offer this support) are doing, Amazon will likely look to get into that space.

Eventually, there?s going to be a bloodbath in this space, or a feed frenzy. Kinvey et al have already begun to feed off Oracle, IBM and the other enterprise giants, and Amazon would be remiss if it wasn?t on its gameplan.

But that is not the priority with this job posting. More so it looks like a way for the company to appeal to people who use mobile devices to manage their AWS instances.

Amazon Web Services, LLC offers Web services that allow users to build businesses. Its Web services are self-contained functions that can be published and invoked across the Web using XML-based protocols. It offers functions for directly accessing Amazon?s technology platform and product data ranging from retrieving information on set of products to adding an item to a shopping cart. It offers Amazon Associates Web Service that exposes Amazon?s product data and e-commerce functionality; Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, a Web...

? Learn more

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/24/aws-reveals-in-job-listing-its-launching-a-new-business-looks-to-be-pushing-deeper-into-mobile/

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Decoding the genetic history of the Texas longhorn

Mar. 25, 2013 ? Longhorn cattle have a hybrid global ancestry, according to a study by University of Texas at Austin researchers published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study of the genome of the Longhorn and related breeds tells a fascinating global history of human and cattle migration. It traces back through Christopher Columbus' second voyage to the New World, the Moorish invasion of Spain and the ancient domestication of the aurochs in the Middle East and India.

"It's a real Texas story, an American story," said Emily Jane McTavish, a doctoral student in the lab of biology professor David Hillis. "For a long time people thought these New World cattle were domesticated from a pure European lineage. But it turns out they have a more complex, more hybrid, more global ancestry, and there's evidence that this genetic diversity is partially responsible for their greater resilience to harsh climatic conditions."

To reconstruct the genetic history of Texas Longhorns, McTavish, Hillis and colleagues from the University of Missouri-Columbia analyzed almost 50,000 genetic markers from 58 cattle breeds. The most comprehensive such analysis to date, it was funded in part by the Cattlemen's Texas Longhorn Conservancy, which helped the scientists get access to samples used by ranchers.

Among the findings was that the Texas Longhorn breed are direct descendants of the first cattle in the New World. The ancestral cattle were brought over by Columbus in 1493 to the island of Hispaniola. They traveled the rest of the way to the continent in 1521 on the ships of later Spanish colonists.

Over the next two centuries the Spanish moved the cattle north, arriving in the area that would become Texas near the end of the 17^th century. The cattle escaped or were turned loose on the open range, where they remained mostly wild for the next two centuries

"It was known on some level that Longhorns are descendants from cattle brought over by early Spanish settlers," said Hillis, the Alfred W. Roark Centennial Professor in the College of Natural Sciences, "but they look so different from the cattle you see in Spain and Portugal today. So there was speculation that there had been interbreeding with later imports from Europe. But their genetic signature is co mpletely consistent with being direct descendants of the cattle Columbus brought over."

The study reveals that being a "pure" descendant of cattle from the Iberian peninsula indicates a more complicated ancestry than was understood. Approximately 85 percent of the Longhorn genome is "taurine," descended from the ancient domestication of the wild aurochs that occurred in the Middle East 8,000-10,000 years ago. As a result, Longhorns look similar to purer taurine breeds such as Holstein, Hereford and Angus, which came to Europe from the Middle East.

The other 15 percent of the genome is "indicine," from the other ancient domestication of the aurochs, in India. These indicine cattle, which often have a characteristic hump at the back of the neck, spread into Africa and from there up to the Iberian peninsula

"It's consistent with the Moorish invasions from the 8th to the 13th centuries," said Hillis. "The Moors brought cattle with them, and brought these African genes, and of course the European cattle were there as well. All those influences come together in the cattle of the Iberian peninsula, which were used to stock the Canary Islands, which is where Columbus stopped and picked up cattle on his second voyage and brought them to the New World."

Once in the New World, most of the cattle eventually went feral. Under the pressures of natural selection they were able to re-evolve ancient survival traits that had been artificially bred out of their European ancestors. Selection for longer horns allowed them to defend against wild predators. They became leaner and more able to survive heat and drought.

"The Longhorns that were in the area when Anglo settlers arrived almost looked more like the ancestral aurochsen than like modern cattle breeds," said McTavish. "Living wild on the range, they had to become very self sufficient. Having that genetic reservoir from those wild ancestors made it possible for a lot of those traits to be selected for once again."

McTavish said it's possible the indicine heritage in particular helped, because the climate in India and Africa tended to be hotter and drier than in Europe.

The Longhorns remained wild on the range, or very loosely managed, until after the Civil War, when Texans rounded up the wild herds and began supplying beef to the rest of the country. Since then the fortunes of the Longhorns have waxed and waned depending on how their unique genetic profile intersects with the changing needs of American consumers.

"The Longhorns almost went extinct starting in the late 19^th century," said Hillis. "A lot of the value of cattle at that time had to do with the fat they had, because the primary lighting source people had was candles, made of tallow, and Texas Longhorns have very low fat content. Ranchers began fencing off the range and importing breeds from Europe that had higher fat content. That's when Americans began developing their taste for fatty beef, so then the other cattle became valuable in that respect as well. The only reason the Longhorns didn't go extinct was because half a dozen or so ranchers kept herds going even though they knew that these other breeds were more valuable in some sense. They appreciated that the Longhorns were hardier, more self-sufficient."

Hillis, who raises Longhorns of his own out at the Double Helix Ranch, said that the winds of history now seem to be blowing in the Longhorns' direction. They can survive in hotter, drier climates, which will become increasingly important as the world warms. They provide lean and grass-fed beef, which is seen as healthier by many consumers. And their genes may prove valuable to ranchers, who can use the increasingly sophisticated genetic information to selectively breed the Longhorns' toughness into other breeds of cattle.

"It's another chapter in the story of a breed that is part of the history of Texas," he said.

History video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=G7-BlxmKuFM

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Texas at Austin. The original article was written by Daniel Oppenheimer.

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

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Journal Reference:

1. Emily Jane McTavish, Jared E. Decker, Robert D. Schnabel, Jeremy F. Taylor, and David M. Hillis. New World cattle show ancestry from multiple independent domestication events. PNAS, March 25, 2013 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1303367110

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

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

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/9vvxqejlDLA/130325160514.htm

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Steve 'Cyanogen' Kondik leaves Samsung

CM? founder 'decided to do something new,' offers thoughts on Galaxy S4

In a Google+ post this morning, CyanogenMod founder Steve Kondik offered some of his thoughts on Samsung's new Galaxy S4, before revealing that he's recently left the software engineering job he took at the company just over 18 months ago. In a further G+ comment, Kondik said his exit wasn't "because of anything in particular," adding "Samsung was great. Just decided to do something new."

On the S4 itself, he had praise for the new phone's hardware, saying " the device actually feels quite a bit more solid than the S3" and claiming "specwise, this device blows the competition out of the water." But on the software side, Kondik was critical of Samsung's latest TouchWiz UI. While "more consistent" than earlier iterations, he says, the new TouchWiz's fully tabbed UI "feels like it has been sent a few years back in time to the Froyo days."

The CM founder also had mixed opinions on some of the S4's new features. He praised the touchless "hover" preview capabilities and multi-window support, but said that the eye-tracking "smart scroll" feature "mostly serves to anger me into disabling it." In summary, Kondik called the Galaxy S4 a "solid device" and a "clear choice" for those upgrading from a Galaxy S2. S3 owners, he said, should feel "right at home."

There weren't any real clues as to where Steve Kondik might end up next, but we're sure we're not alone in hoping there's more Android in his future. Best of luck to Steve in his future endeavors!

You can read Steve Kondik's post in full over at the source link.

Source: +Steve Kondik

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/bIl-cCbnqec/story01.htm

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