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Sunday, March 31, 2013
Thursday, March 28, 2013
SAfrica: Mandela in hospital with lung infection
JOHANNESBURG (AP) ? South Africa says Nelson Mandela has been admitted to a hospital with a lung infection.
The office of President Jacob Zuma said in a statement Thursday that the 94-year-old former president and anti-apartheid leader went to the hospital just before midnight on Wednesday.
The statement says Mandela is being treated for a "recurrence of his lung infection" and that doctors are ensuring he has the best possible treatment.
Zuma wished Mandela a speedy recovery and he urged South Africans and the world to pray for the former leader and his family. Mandela has become increasingly frail in recent years.
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Wednesday, March 27, 2013
The T-Mobile iPhone Is Here at Last (Updating)
Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/MkbI5ChvBZg/the-t+mobile-iphone-is-here-at-last-updating
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Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Artifacts shed light on social networks of the past
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Public release date: 25-Mar-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Barbara Mills
bmills@email.arizona.edu
520-621-6298
University of Arizona
Researchers studied thousands of ceramic and obsidian artifacts from A.D. 1200-1450 to learn about the growth, collapse and change of social networks in the late pre-Hispanic Southwest
The advent of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have made us all more connected, but long-distance social networks existed long before the Internet.
An article published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences sheds light on the transformation of social networks in the late pre-Hispanic American Southwest and shows that people of that period were able to maintain surprisingly long-distance relationships with nothing more than their feet to connect them.
Led by University of Arizona anthropologist Barbara Mills, the study is based on analysis of more than 800,000 painted ceramic and more than 4,800 obsidian artifacts dating from A.D. 1200-1450, uncovered from more than 700 sites in the western Southwest, in what is now Arizona and western New Mexico.
With funding from the National Science Foundation, Mills, director of the UA School of Anthropology, worked with collaborators at Archeology Southwest in Tucson to compile a database of more than 4.3 million ceramic artifacts and more than 4,800 obsidian artifacts, from which they drew for the study.
They then applied formal social network analysis to see what material culture could teach them about how social networks shifted and evolved during a period that saw large-scale demographic changes, including long-distance migration and coalescence of populations into large villages.
Their findings illustrate dramatic changes in social networks in the Southwest over the 250-year period between A.D. 1200 and 1450. They found, for example, that while a large social network in the southern part of the Southwest grew very large and then collapsed, networks in the northern part of the Southwest became more fragmented but persisted over time.
"Network scientists often talk about how increasingly connected networks become, or the 'small world' effect, but our study shows that this isn't always the case," said Mills, who led the study with co-principal investigator and UA alumnus Jeffery Clark, of Archaeology Southwest.
"Our long-term study shows that there are cycles of growth and collapse in social networks when we look at them over centuries," Mills said. "Highly connected worlds can become highly fragmented."
Another important finding was that early social networks do not appear to have been as restricted as expected by settlements' physical distance from one another. Researchers found that similar types of painted pottery were being created and used in villages as far as 250 kilometers apart, suggesting people were maintaining relationships across relatively large geographic expanses, despite the only mode of transportation being walking.
"They were making, using and discarding very similar kinds of assemblages over these very large spaces, which means that a lot of their daily practices were the same," Mills said. "That doesn't come about by chance; it has to come about by interaction the kind of interaction where it's not just a simple exchange but where people are learning how to make and how to use and ultimately discard different kinds of pottery."
"That really shocked us, this idea that you can have such long distance connections. In the pre-Hispanic Southwest they had no real vehicles, they had no beasts of burden, so they had to share information by walking," she said.
The application of formal social network analysis which focuses on the relationships among nodes, such as individuals, household or settlements is relatively new in the field of archaeology, which has traditionally focused more on specific attributes of those nodes, such as their size or function.
The UA study shows how social network analysis can be applied to a database of material culture to illustrate changes in network structures over time.
"We already knew about demographic changes where people were living and where migration was happening but what we didn't know was how that changed social networks," Mills said. "We're so used to looking traditionally at distributions of pottery and other objects based on their occurrence in space, but to see how social relationships are created out of these distributions is what network analysis can help with."
One of Mills's collaborators on the project was Ronald Breiger, renowned network analysis expert and a UA professor of sociology, with affiliations in statistics and government and public policy, who says being able to apply network analysis to archaeology has important implications for his field.
"Barbara (Mills) and her group are pioneers in bringing the social network perspective to archaeology and into ancient societies," said Breiger, who worked with Mills along with collaborators from the UA School of Anthropology; Archaeology Southwest; the University of Wisconsin; Hendrix College; the University of Colorado, Boulder; the Santa Fe Institute; and Archaeological XRF Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M.
"What archaeology has to offer for a study of networks is a focus on very long-term dynamics and applications to societies that aren't necessarily Western, so that's broadening to the community of social network researchers," Breiger said. "The coming together of social network and spatial analysis and the use of material objects to talk about culture is very much at the forefront of where I see the field of social network analysis moving."
Going forward, Mills hopes to use the same types of analyses to study even older social networks.
"We have a basis for building on, and we're hoping to get even greater time depth. We'd like to extend it back in time 400 years earlier," she said. "The implications are we can see things at a spatial scale that we've never been able to look at before in a systematic way. It changes our picture of the Southwest."
###
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
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.
Public release date: 25-Mar-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Barbara Mills
bmills@email.arizona.edu
520-621-6298
University of Arizona
Researchers studied thousands of ceramic and obsidian artifacts from A.D. 1200-1450 to learn about the growth, collapse and change of social networks in the late pre-Hispanic Southwest
The advent of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have made us all more connected, but long-distance social networks existed long before the Internet.
An article published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences sheds light on the transformation of social networks in the late pre-Hispanic American Southwest and shows that people of that period were able to maintain surprisingly long-distance relationships with nothing more than their feet to connect them.
Led by University of Arizona anthropologist Barbara Mills, the study is based on analysis of more than 800,000 painted ceramic and more than 4,800 obsidian artifacts dating from A.D. 1200-1450, uncovered from more than 700 sites in the western Southwest, in what is now Arizona and western New Mexico.
With funding from the National Science Foundation, Mills, director of the UA School of Anthropology, worked with collaborators at Archeology Southwest in Tucson to compile a database of more than 4.3 million ceramic artifacts and more than 4,800 obsidian artifacts, from which they drew for the study.
They then applied formal social network analysis to see what material culture could teach them about how social networks shifted and evolved during a period that saw large-scale demographic changes, including long-distance migration and coalescence of populations into large villages.
Their findings illustrate dramatic changes in social networks in the Southwest over the 250-year period between A.D. 1200 and 1450. They found, for example, that while a large social network in the southern part of the Southwest grew very large and then collapsed, networks in the northern part of the Southwest became more fragmented but persisted over time.
"Network scientists often talk about how increasingly connected networks become, or the 'small world' effect, but our study shows that this isn't always the case," said Mills, who led the study with co-principal investigator and UA alumnus Jeffery Clark, of Archaeology Southwest.
"Our long-term study shows that there are cycles of growth and collapse in social networks when we look at them over centuries," Mills said. "Highly connected worlds can become highly fragmented."
Another important finding was that early social networks do not appear to have been as restricted as expected by settlements' physical distance from one another. Researchers found that similar types of painted pottery were being created and used in villages as far as 250 kilometers apart, suggesting people were maintaining relationships across relatively large geographic expanses, despite the only mode of transportation being walking.
"They were making, using and discarding very similar kinds of assemblages over these very large spaces, which means that a lot of their daily practices were the same," Mills said. "That doesn't come about by chance; it has to come about by interaction the kind of interaction where it's not just a simple exchange but where people are learning how to make and how to use and ultimately discard different kinds of pottery."
"That really shocked us, this idea that you can have such long distance connections. In the pre-Hispanic Southwest they had no real vehicles, they had no beasts of burden, so they had to share information by walking," she said.
The application of formal social network analysis which focuses on the relationships among nodes, such as individuals, household or settlements is relatively new in the field of archaeology, which has traditionally focused more on specific attributes of those nodes, such as their size or function.
The UA study shows how social network analysis can be applied to a database of material culture to illustrate changes in network structures over time.
"We already knew about demographic changes where people were living and where migration was happening but what we didn't know was how that changed social networks," Mills said. "We're so used to looking traditionally at distributions of pottery and other objects based on their occurrence in space, but to see how social relationships are created out of these distributions is what network analysis can help with."
One of Mills's collaborators on the project was Ronald Breiger, renowned network analysis expert and a UA professor of sociology, with affiliations in statistics and government and public policy, who says being able to apply network analysis to archaeology has important implications for his field.
"Barbara (Mills) and her group are pioneers in bringing the social network perspective to archaeology and into ancient societies," said Breiger, who worked with Mills along with collaborators from the UA School of Anthropology; Archaeology Southwest; the University of Wisconsin; Hendrix College; the University of Colorado, Boulder; the Santa Fe Institute; and Archaeological XRF Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M.
"What archaeology has to offer for a study of networks is a focus on very long-term dynamics and applications to societies that aren't necessarily Western, so that's broadening to the community of social network researchers," Breiger said. "The coming together of social network and spatial analysis and the use of material objects to talk about culture is very much at the forefront of where I see the field of social network analysis moving."
Going forward, Mills hopes to use the same types of analyses to study even older social networks.
"We have a basis for building on, and we're hoping to get even greater time depth. We'd like to extend it back in time 400 years earlier," she said. "The implications are we can see things at a spatial scale that we've never been able to look at before in a systematic way. It changes our picture of the Southwest."
###
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
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.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/uoa-asl032513.php
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Monday, March 25, 2013
Start your week with the Greatest Android Podcast in the World!
Now we're not usually ones to toot our own horns -- oh, but what the hell, Thursday night's episode of the Android Central Podcast was pretty damn good. Fireworks, explosions, heated discussions about, well, everything. More HTC One. More Galaxy S4. Google kills some beloved products while announcing others. Plus, we (finally) got caught up on your e-mails and voicemails.
The Android Central Podcast is your weekly peek into the world of Android, where we break down the news that really matters, and explain what's just a bunch of hype. Plus, we answer your e-mails and voicemails. You don't want to miss it. Check out the Android Central Podcast.
 |  |
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/o18a0THZ9io/story01.htm
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Erdogan: No quick restoration of ties with Israel
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) ? Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested "normalization" of ties with Israel would take time, hinting that Turkey wanted to ensure the victims of a flotilla raid were compensated and Israel remained committed to the easing of restrictions of goods to Gaza before relations are restored between the two nations.
Erdogan's comments on Sunday came days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Turkish leader to apologize for the botched raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla in 2010 that killed eight Turks and one Turkish-American. Erdogan accepted the apology and both leaders said they would begin the work of restoring full relations.
But in a public address Sunday, Erdogan suggested there would be no quick restoration of ties.
"We have said: 'an apology will be made, compensation will be paid and the blockade on Palestine will be lifted. There will be no normalization without these," he said. "Normalization will happen the moment there is an implementation. But if there is no implementation, then I am sorry."
The statement was largely seen as effort to ease concerns of his religious and pro-Palestinian support base. Erdogan has won praise both at home and the Arab world for his criticism of Israel and for breaking off ties with the Jewish state over the flotilla raid.
Turkey and Israel were once strong allies but relations began to decline after Erdogan, whose party has roots in Turkey's Islamist movement, became prime minister in 2003. Erdogan has embarked on a campaign to make Turkey a regional powerhouse in an attempt to become a leading voice in the Muslim world, distanced from Israel.
Animosity increased after the flotilla incident and ambassadors were later withdrawn. Netanyahu had previously refused to apologize, saying Israeli soldiers acted in self-defense after being attacked by activists.
Israel lifted most restrictions on the import of goods into Gaza following the flotilla incident and only restrictions on some construction materials and most exports remain in effect.
During Friday's conversation between the two leaders, Netanyahu said Israel had substantially lifted the restrictions on the entry of civilian goods into Gaza and the Palestinian territories and this would continue as long as "calm prevailed."?
But Israeli military officials have taken to punishing Gaza residents for breaches of a November truce. Since Thursday, in response to militant rocket fire from the territory, all movement through a civilian crossing between Gaza and Israel was cancelled, except for humanitarian cases. Gaza fishermen had their permitted fishing territory restricted and a commercial goods-crossing was shut down, according to Israeli rights group, Gisha.
An Israeli military spokeswoman had no immediate comment on the restrictions.
Netanyahu said Saturday concerns over Syria's chemical weapons stockpile were the motivating factor in restoring ties with Turkey. He said the two countries, which border Syria, needed to communicate with each other over the issue.
Israeli President Shimon Peres said Sunday he would be willing to shake hands with his Turkish counterpart "soon," saying friendly ties were in both countries' interest.
"I can think of a thousand reasons why Turkey and Israel should be friends. I cannot find one reason why they shouldn't be friends," Peres said in an interview with Turkey's Hurriyet newspaper. His comments were provided by Peres' office.
He said Israel's real threat is a nuclear Iran. "Turkey and Iran are like day and night," he said.
Responding to a longstanding Turkish demand that Israel rid itself of its suspected nuclear weapons, Peres hinted at the existence of nuclear weapons in the country, which Israel has never officially confirmed.
"Once the Middle East will be free from threat, there won't be any need for nuclear weapons. Israel is a country which is being threatened with destruction. Turkey is a country nobody is threatening," Peres said.
Meanwhile, Erdogan said he plans to travel to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank "within the month, in April."
__
Associated Press writers Diaa Hadid and Daniel Estrin in Jerusalem contributed.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/erdogan-no-quick-restoration-ties-israel-152302465.html
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Saturday, March 23, 2013
Is automatic enrollment the future of retirement savings?
A bold plan in California would eventually make automatic enrollment widespread and could revolutionize the state?s retirement savings landscape, Harris writes.
A man swims his daily mile at a retirement community in Sun City, Ariz. Evidence suggests that if California's automatic enrollment plan ever becomes policy, it will go a long towards increasing retirement saving, Harris writes.
Lucy Nicholson/Reuters/File
EnlargeAutomatic enrollment is slowly gaining steam as the choice strategy to encourage retirement saving. ?A?bold plan in California?would eventually make the practice widespread and could revolutionize the state?s saving landscape.
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Last September, the California legislature approved a framework for automatically enrolling private-sector workers in a retirement savings plan.? Employers with more than five workers would have to offer a workplace retirement plan, automatically enroll employees in the newly established California Secure Choice Retirement Savings Plan (SCP), or face a fine. Workers enrolled in SCP would automatically contribute 3 percent of their pay to an IRA-like account unless they opted out; like an IRA, benefits would be based on account contributions and investment returns. Employers are only required to set up the plan, not to contribute to the account, and there is no explicit cost to taxpayers.
A third-party?either a private firm or California?s pension administrator (CALPERS)?would administer the plan, investing no more than half the pooled funds in equities. (A private administrator may be the superior option given CALPERS??recent history?of fraud and mismanagement.) Annual administrative expenses would be limited to one percent of fund assets. The framework also calls for a guaranteed return, although the details have yet to be ironed out.
The plan is a long way from becoming a reality. The framework calls for further study of the plan?s feasibility and costs, and additional legislation will be needed to turn the idea into policy. In addition, the IRS and Department of Labor must still rule on the legality of some of the details.?
How the data center has evolved to support the modern cloud
There?s little argument among IT and data center professionals that over that past few years, there have been some serious technological movements in the industry. This doesn?t only mean data centers. More computers, devices, and the strong push behind IT consumerization have forced many professionals to rethink their designs and optimize to this evolving environment.
When cloud computing came to the forefront of the technological discussion, data center operators quickly realized that they would have to adapt or be replaced by some other provider who is more agile.
The changes have come in all forms, both in the data center itself and how data flows outside of its walls. The bottom line is this: If cloud computing has a home, without a doubt, it?s within the data center.
There are several technologies that have helped not only with data center growth, but with the expansion of the cloud environment. Although there are many platforms, tools and solutions which help facilitate data center usability in conjunction with the cloud ? the ones below outline just how far we?ve come from a technological perspective.
- High-density computing. Switches, servers, storage devices, and racks are all now being designed to reduce the hardware footprint while still supporting more users. Let?s put this in perspective. A single Cisco UCS Chassis is capable of 160Gbps. From there, a single B200M3 blade can hold two Xeon 8-core processors (16 processing cores) and 768GB of RAM. Each blade can also support 2TB of storage and up to 32GB for flash memory. Now, if you place 8 of these blades into a single UCS Chassis, you can have 128 processing cores, over 6TB of RAM, and 16TB of storage. This means a lot of users, a lot of workload and plenty of room for expansion. This holds true for logical storage segmentation and better usage around other computing devices.
- Data center efficiency. To help support larger amounts of users and a greater cloud environment, data center environments had to restructure some of their efficiency practices. Whether through a better analysis of their cooling capacity factors (CCF) or a better understanding around power utilization, modern technologies are allowing the data center to operate more optimally. Remember, with high-density computing we are potentially reducing the amount of hardware, but the hardware replacing older machines may require more cooling and energy. Data centers are now focusing on lowering their PUE and are looking for ways to cool and power their environments more optimally. As cloud continues to grow, there will be more emphasis on placing larger workloads with the data center environment.
- Virtualization. Virtualization has helped reduce the amount of hardware within a data center. However, we?re not just discussing server virtualization any longer. New types of technologies have taken efficiency and data center distribution to a whole new level. Aside from server virtualization, IT professionals are now working with:?Storage virtualization, user virtualization (hardware abstraction), network virtualization, storage virtualization, and security virtualization. All of these technologies strive to lessen the administrative burden while increasing efficiency, resiliency and improving business continuity.
More appliances can be placed at various points within the data center to help control data flow and further secure an environment.
- WAN technologies. The Wide Area Network has helped the data center evolve in the sense that it brings facilities ?close together.? Fewer hops and more connections are becoming available to enterprise data center environments where administrators are able to leverage new types of solutions to create an even more agile infrastructure. Having the capability to dedicate massive amounts of private bandwidth between regional data centers has proven to be a huge factor. Data center resiliency, recovery and manageability have become a little bit easier because of these new types of WAN services. Furthermore, site-to-site replication of data and massive systems is now happening at a much faster pace. Even now, big data has new types of developments to help large data center quantify and effectively distribute enormous data sets. Projects like the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) are helping data center realize that open-source technologies are powerful engines for data distribution and management.
- Distributed data center management. This is, arguably, one of the biggest pieces of evidence in how well the data center has evolved to help support the modern cloud. Original data center infrastructure management (DCIM) solutions usually focused on singular data centers without too much visibility into other sites. Now, DCIM has evolved to help support a truly global data center environment. In fact, new terms are being used to help describe this new type of data center platform. Some have called it ?data center virtualization? or the abstraction of the hardware layer within the data center itself. This means managing and fully optimizing processes running within the data center and then replicating it to other sites. In some other cases, a new type of management solution is starting to take form: The Data Center Operating System. The goal is to create a global computing and data center cluster which is capable of providing business intelligence, real-time visibility and control of the data center environment from a single pane of glass.
The conversation has shifted from central data points to a truly distributed data center world. Now, our information is heavily replicated over the WAN and stored in numerous different data center points. Remember, much of this technology is still new, being developed, and is only now beginning to have some standardization. This means that best practices and thorough planning should never be avoided. Even large organizations sometimes find themselves in cloud conundrums. For example, all those that experienced the recent Microsoft Azure?or Amazon AWS?outages are definitely thinking of how to make their environment more resilient.
The use of the Internet as well as various types of WAN services is only going to continue to grow. Now, there are even cloud API models?which are striving to unify cloud environments and allow for improved cloud communication. More devices are requesting access to the cloud and some of these are no longer just your common tablet or smartphone. Soon, homes, entire business, cars, and other daily-use objects will be communicating with the cloud. All of this information has to be stored, processed and controlled. This is where the data center steps in and continues to help the cloud grow.
About Bill Kleyman
Bill Kleyman is a veteran, enthusiastic technologist with experience in data center design, management and deployment. His architecture work includes virtualization and cloud deployments as well as business network design and implementation. Currently, Bill works as a cloud and virtualization architect at MTM Technologies, a Stamford, CT based consulting firm.
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Friday, March 22, 2013
Eric Schmidt: Chrome and Android to remain separate
With the recent news that Chrome boss Sundar Pichai will be taking over from Andy Rubin as head of Android, together with Android features like Google Now starting to show up in Chrome OS, there'd been speculation that the two platforms would eventually merge into one.
Not so, says Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, who spoke to reporters at the Big Tent conference in India today. According to Reuters, Schmidt said that the two would remain separate, but that there'd be more "commonality" between them. So while we may see more overlapping features, the two operating systems will remain technically independent, it seems there are no plans to roll them into one super-OS spanning both mobile and desktop.
Schmidt also dismissed speculation that he himself may be leaving the company, saying "Google is my home."
Source: Reuters; via: The Verge
| |
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/zOipbURaf50/story01.htm
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WSJ: FCC chairman Julius Genachowski will say tomorrow that he's stepping down
Merely a day after FCC commissioner Robert McDowell announced his resignation, it appears that chairman Julius Genachowski is going to do likewise. Citing an unnamed FCC official and industry official, The Wall Street Journal reports Genachowski is expected to leave -- presumably as his term ends on June 30th. Granted, the departure isn't a shock to anyone who follows the roller coaster ride of Washington, but it's bound to rekindle chatter about who is set to take his place.
Like most every other figurehead in politics, Genachowski has had his fair share of outspoken proponents and critics, but he has embedded himself into the world of consumer electronics in a way that few other chairmen have. From calling for hastened broadband rollouts throughout America to voicing concerns about the existing phone unlocking policy, Genachowski won't soon be forgotten for his forthright opinions on matters that impact folks who frequent this site. As for the man or woman taking his place this summer? Looks like we'll have to wait a bit for the answer to that one.
We reached out for more, and a spokesperson for the chairman declined to comment.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
Source: Wall Street Journal
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/21/fcc-chairman-julius-genachowski-stepping-down/
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Thursday, March 21, 2013
No Child Left Behind Comes to Campus | From the Bell Tower
Problems that led to the demise of K-12 education could be easily ignored by higher education. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was designed to improve the quality of American education. The products of that program, now headed to our campuses, will get our attention.
Librarian educators know the challenges of activating students in their instruction sessions. We want to connect with our students in ways that lead them to think critically about the resources they choose and be able to thoughtfully synthesize information into well-written documents. That gives us something in common with our faculty. They too want to reach students in ways that achieve deep, not surface, learning. Well, we may all be getting exactly what we don?t want?the result of No Child Left Behind. These students are far less inclined to think for themselves because their education was largely focused on preparing for and passing the next test. At least that?s the warning coming from our colleagues in K-12 education. Perhaps it?s an exaggeration. Perhaps we have nothing to fear. Then again, perhaps we ought to take a closer look under this particular rock.
From the horse?s mouth
If there is something here that higher education needs to know, it can thank Kenneth Bernstein. He?s a high school educator in the Washington, DC, area, and has taught since the introduction of NCLB in 2002. We may know that NCLB, as a program, has a reputation for teaching to the test. It does involve standardized testing of K-12 students at the state level, and there are severe consequences for school districts. Schools that do well continue to receive their funding. Those that do poorly are subject to serious requirements for improvement, such as restructuring or the replacement of staff members. So there is considerable incentive to teach students to do as well as they can on these NCLB exams. Bernstein claims that even those who teach at selective higher education institutions will begin to notice a shift in their incoming students.
Beware the students
What has Mr. Bernstein so alarmed? For starters, the tenth graders that he sees are information deprived. He finds that the content they?ve learned in his area, social studies, was so tailored to the assessment process, that the students actually know little of what he expects at this level. You get the impression that Bernstein would want to correct that problem, but as an NCLB educator he spent so much time preparing students for tests that he rarely got to the serious subject matter. Perhaps of greater concern to faculty and librarians is the deficiency in writing ability. Owing to the heavy use of more cost-efficient multiple-choice exams, the NCLB generation rarely writes, and they certainly experience few opportunities for writing essay responses that require analytical, deeper thinking. When it comes to AP exams, writes Bernstein, students actually succeed with writing that scores points but is technically poorly constructed. Low expectations, he suggests, are what we should hold. ?Now you are seeing the results in the students arriving at your institutions. They may be very bright. But we have not been able to prepare them for the kind of intellectual work that you have every right to expect of them?.
Sooner than expected
Bernstein?s warning suggests that those of us in higher education need to prepare for an onslaught of smart but ill-prepared students?in the near future. But according to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Bernstein?s concerns are surfacing much sooner than expected. At a recent conference of the American Association of Law Schools, faculty shared observations that their students? writing is the worst ever seen. They shared anecdotes about students incapable of writing business letters or the increased time required to interpret students? written essay answers. They also complained of students having far greater expectations for learning how to give the right answers. In far less supply are students who can demonstrate the ability to learn on their own. Ironically, given their dissatisfaction with the quality of their students, the law professors were left to contemplate how their own admissions emphasis on GPAs and LSAT scores was contributing to the problem. The NCLB generation is here now.
Can?t Write, Can?t Research
To what extent the NCLB phenomenon will rear its ugly head in the academic librarian?s world it is difficult to say. Being somewhat disconnected from our students? work products and class discussions, we are less likely to notice the degradation of writing skills or their ability to participate in thoughtful, intellectual interaction. It may be more noticeable when our efforts to engage them in active learning seem more difficult than in past years. If Bernstein is correct, the deeper research needed for good writing will surely fall victim to teaching to the test. In more impoverished urban school districts where federal funding is like water to a man lost in the desert, librarians and libraries are already becoming remnants of the past, perhaps sacrificed so that more instructors and time is devoted to test preparation. These students come to us devoid of more than just writing or independent thinking skills; they lack virtually any prior knowledge of even the most basic library skills. Looking ahead, perhaps the challenges that the NCLB generation brings to higher education could be a rallying point for faculty and academic librarians. If Bernstein is right, we?ll need each other to figure out how to help these students build the skills and confidence needed to do more than take tests.
This article was featured in Library Journal's Academic Newswire enewsletter. Subscribe today to have more articles like this delivered to your inbox for free.
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English edition of book by Pope Francis out in May
Pope Francis waves as he arrives in St. Peter's Square for his inauguration Mass at the Vatican, Tuesday, March 19, 2013. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)
Pope Francis waves as he arrives in St. Peter's Square for his inauguration Mass at the Vatican, Tuesday, March 19, 2013. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)
NEW YORK (AP) ? An English-language edition of a 2010 book co-authored by Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, will be published in May.
Image Books, a "Catholic-interest" imprint of Random House Inc., announced Tuesday that "On Heaven and Earth: Pope Francis on Faith, Family and the Church in the 21st Century" will come out May 7. The book was co-written by Rabbi Abraham Skorka, Rector of the Latin American Rabbinical Seminary in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
According to Image Books, "On Heaven and Earth" includes discussions between the two religious leaders on everything from atheism and euthanasia to abortion and globalization. A Spanish-language edition was released in Latin America and Spain in 2010 by Random House Mondadori. Vintage Espanol, also a Random House imprint, will publish the Spanish edition in North America.
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Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Breast Cancer Research | Abstract | Risk of breast cancer in Lynch ...
Research article Breast Cancer Research 2013, 15:R27?doi:10.1186/bcr3405
Published: 19 March 2013Abstract (provisional)
Introduction
Lynch syndrome is an autosomal dominantly inherited disorder of cancer susceptibility caused by germline mutations in the DNA mismatch repair (MMR) genes. Mutation carriers have a substantial burden of increased risks of cancers of the colon, rectum, endometrium and several other organs which generally occur at younger ages than for the general population. The issue of whether breast cancer risk is increased for MMR gene mutation carriers has been debated with evidence for and against this association.
Methods
Using the PUBMED, we identified all relevant studies of breast cancer associated with Lynch syndrome that were published by December 15, 2012. In the review, we included: (i) molecular studies that reported microsatellite instability and/or immunohistochemistry in breast cancer tumors of MMR gene mutation carriers; and (ii) risk studies that investigated risk of breast cancer for confirmed MMR gene mutation carriers or families or clinically and/or pathologically defined Lynch syndrome families.
Results
We identified 15 molecular studies and, when combined, observed 62 of 122 (51%; 95% confidence interval, CI 42-60%) breast cancers in MMR gene mutation carriers were MMR-deficient. Of the 21 risk studies identified, 13 did not observe statistical evidence for an association of breast cancer risk with Lynch syndrome while 8 studies found an increased risk of breast cancer ranging from 2 to 18-fold compared with the general population (or non-carriers). There is only one prospective study demonstrating an elevated risk of breast cancer for MMR gene mutation carriers compared with the general population (standardized incidence ratio 3.95; 95% CI 1.59-8.13).
Conclusions
Since breast cancer is relatively common disease in the general population, more precise estimate of risk and gene-specific risks will need to utilize large prospective cohort studies with a long follow-up. While current data is inconclusive at a population level, individual tumor testing results suggest that MMR deficiency is involved with breast cancers in some individuals with Lynch syndrome.
Source: http://breast-cancer-research.com/content/15/2/R27
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Atlas Genius Had To Perfect The Art Of Hotel Recording
'It's so hard to achieve so little when you're touring,' says singer Keith Jeffrey of recording some of their debut on the road.
By Gil Kaufman
Atlas Genius
Photo: MTV News
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1703973/atlas-genius-trojans-recording.jhtml
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Tuesday, March 19, 2013
US: Congo warlord Ntaganda turns himself in
KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) ? A Congolese warlord accused of conscripting child soldiers who had lived as an international fugitive for years surrendered to the United States Embassy in Rwanda on Monday and asked to be transferred to the International Criminal Court, a U.S. State Department spokeswoman said.
The move marks a major advance in efforts to prosecute Bosco Ntaganda, who had become a symbol of impunity in Africa as he played tennis and lived in an upscale villa in eastern Congo despite the international warrants for his arrest.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland confirmed that Ntaganda walked into the U.S. Embassy in Kigali on Monday and asked to be transferred to the International Criminal Court at The Hague, Netherlands. She said the U.S. was consulting with the Rwandan government.
"We want to facilitate that request," she said. "We strongly support the work that the ICC is doing to investigate the atrocities committed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And we are going to continue to work with the ICC on this matter."
The ICC first indicted Ntaganda in 2006. However despite that warrant, he went on to become a general in the Congolese army, living freely in eastern Congo.
The ICC has no police force and has to rely on member states to detain those it indicts. Congo failed to apprehend him for years, and the United States is not a member.
"If he's actually handed over to the International Criminal Court or a court that would prosecute him, that would be a huge step forward in the fight for justice in eastern Congo," said Carina Tertsakian, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch.
The allegations against Ntaganda date back to crimes allegedly committed a decade ago in northeastern Congo. However, human rights groups say he has been implicated in other attacks on civilians in eastern Congo during his time as a fugitive.
News of Ntaganda's surrender first came in a Tweet and later in an official communique from Rwandan Foreign Minister and government spokeswoman Louise Mushikiwabo.
While Ntaganda was long believed to have enjoyed Rwanda's support, his relationship with the country where he was born has been unclear ever since his rebel movement split into two different factions earlier this month.
It was unclear why Ntaganda choose to surrender, and to turn himself into the U.S. embassy, after years at large, though the split within his group may have left him more vulnerable. The move comes days after Ntaganda's ally Jean-Marie Runiga was detained by Rwandan authorities. The leader of a rival faction within the M23 movement at the time vowed to go after Ntaganda next.
The news of Ntaganda's surrender was hailed by Congolese government spokesman Lambert Mende.
"We are confident they will hand him over to justice," he said of the U.S. officials in Kigali.
Nicknamed "The Terminator," for his ruthless actions, Ntaganda was born in Rwanda in 1973, and moved to the neighboring nation of Congo as a teenager.
He was first indicted in 2006 by the International Criminal Court for conscripting and using child soldiers during his time as a senior commander in a Congolese rebel group accused of terrorizing the Ituri region of eastern Congo between 2002 and 2003.
He later joined and rose through the ranks of a different rebel group, the National Congress for the Defense of the People, which signed a peace accord with the Congolese government on March 23, 2009.
That accord paved the way for Ntaganda and his fellow rebels to join the ranks of the regular Congolese army.
Then last spring, he and his men began defecting from the Congolese army by the hundreds, claiming that the government had failed to uphold their end of the 2009 deal.
They started a new rebellion, dubbed the M23, in honor of the March 23 signing of the now-defunct 2009 accord. And in November last year, the rebel group marched into and seized control of the provincial capital of Goma.
Ntaganda's exact role in the M23 rebellion remained murky. Human rights groups accused him of leading it, while other M23 leaders attempted to distance themselves from the fugitive general.
Rights groups on Monday called for Ntaganda's swift prosecution.
"Bosco Ntaganda is not called 'The Terminator' for nothing. The U.S. should immediately hand him over to the International Criminal Court for trial," said Sasha Lezhnev, senior analyst for the Enough Project in Washington, who closely follows Congo. "This would send serious signals to current and future warlords who continue to perpetrate atrocities in eastern Congo."
In Congo, Henri Bora Ladyi, who works at the Conflict Resolution Center which helps demobilize child soldiers, including some who fought in Ntaganda's rebel army, said: "It's a relief, but justice must be done. We fear that he will be kept in Rwanda and won't be extradited. Now what is important is to create space so that children in the M23 can leave the movement."
___
Gouby contributed to this report from Goma, Congo. Associated Press writers Rukmini Callimachi and Krista Larson also contributed to this report from Dakar, Senegal.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-congo-warlord-ntaganda-turns-himself-185432533.html
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More an immigrant holiday, St. Patrick's Day has come home to Ireland (+video)
Writer Jason Walsh in Dublin says he cannot recall the modern-day holiday hoopla in the Ireland of his youth.?
Children dressed as St. Patrick in a St. Patrick's Day parade in Limerick, Ireland.
Peter Morrison/AP
EnlargeHalf a million people will parade in Dublin today to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, but since when did Irish people celebrate this holiday?
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March 17 has always meant a lot to the Irish diaspora, particularly those who themselves had left the country seeking a better life abroad. It was a day to celebrate Irishness, to reminisce about home, and to stand together in solidarity. Public gatherings, and particularly parades, have always been part of the annual celebration of Irishness.
In recent years, though, St. Patrick's Day has come home: The Irish, the actual Irish in Ireland, now celebrate St. Patrick's Day with as much enthusiasm as their cousins in the US and Britain. Half a million people will take to the streets of Dublin today to watch the parade.
In fact, it's not just St. Patrick's Day, it's now a week-long?St. Patrick's Festival. Slick branding, float parades, giant green foam hands, buildings lit in green, fun fairs, stand-up comedy, and street performers: This is not how I remember things.
As a child in Belfast, Northern Ireland during the 1980s, St. Patrick's Day was little more than one of many days of religious observance. Church-goers went to church and wore shamrocks on their lapels, and Irish republicans paraded, much to the chagrin of pro-British unionists. My family was not religious so we didn't do much, though we did pin shamrocks to our jackets.
Later, but still a child, in the Republic of Ireland it was much the same, though the parades were less politically-charged state affairs.
In neither case did leprechaun hats, green beer, and the rest of the tidal wave of Paddywhackery feature. Of course, memory is notoriously?faulty, but I think it's unlikely I mistook pious Mass-goers with hard-partying fun-seekers. Difficult as it is to believe, in Ireland St. Patrick's Day was once a day of temperance, with the only overindulgence being in sugary-sweets as a kind of cheating break from severe Lenten fasting.
Reportedly things weren't much different in rural Ireland. My colleague Cian Ginty grew-up in Mayo in the west of Ireland and the parades he remembers were not slick affairs.
"Tractors. That's my memory of St Patrick's Day. You get tractors, or at least used to in parades in the country down here," he says.
It's not that I'm a killjoy. If people want to have a New York-style parade, floats and all, through Dublin and then head to an Irish pub, authentic or otherwise, it's no skin off my nose. Headlines such as St. Paddy's Day FAILS: Beer, Booze And Barfing?get on my nerves, but that's life. If I was to react to everything that irked me I'd have had an embolism years ago.
Nor am I a Catholic seeking a return to the true meaning of St. Patrick's Day. After all, what is the meaning of St. Patrick's Day? He didn't drive snakes out of Ireland and his explanation of the Trinity using a shamrock is a romantic fabrication from the eighteenth century.?Patrick the man, if his confession is anything to go by, cut a pious and stern figure, arguably closer to Protestant Rev. Ian Paisley than the green-festooned and cheery miter-wearing?bishop that we Irish tend to portray him as.
Bernie Whelan, second-generation Irish living in Britain, says she remembers when St. Patrick's Day had real meaning to the London Irish. Today, though, the Irish are just like everyone else.
?"The Irish community in North London has dispersed. I was an advice worker in the London Irish women's center in Stoke Newington until it closed. To be honest couldn't justify funding any more," she says.
As Ireland has modernized, the ongoing economic crisis notwithstanding, the idea of a unique Irish ethnicity has come to look increasingly threadbare. There is, no doubt, such a thing as Irish culture, but Ireland is also part of the modern, developed world and shares a universal culture with the rest of Europe, the US, and other countries. Irish identity, at least the version long defined by political oppression and poverty makes less sense than ever.
This hasn't stopped the marketing, though. In fact, the absence of bombs and bullets makes Irishness much easier to sell, abroad and at home, even if the beer-soaked mawkishness is now harder to explain. And so, on St. Patrick's Day we're told that everyone has a bit of Irish in them. Actually, they don't. Don't take it as an insult, it's just a fact. Besides, despite the attempt to turn Irishness into some kind of universal character trait, it's really just a nationality and, like all nationalities, means less than we tend to ascribe to it.
One thing, though: It's Paddy's day, not Patty. Patty is a female name, and don't start on the Patrick doesn't contain the letter "d". The Irish-language (Gaelic to you) P?draic does.
Celebrate St. Patrick's Day if you like. Have fun. Just don't for a moment think it's authentic.
As for me? ?I'll be celebrating that we're just like everyone else.
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Sunday, March 17, 2013
Cyprus secures $13 bn bailout from eurozone, IMF
BRUSSELS (AP) ? Cash-strapped Cyprus secured a ?10 billion ($13 billion) bailout package from its European partners and the International Monetary Fund in a bid to prevent the island nation from entering a bankruptcy that could rekindle the region's debt crisis, officials said early Saturday.
In a major departure from established policies, the package foresees a one-time levy on the money held in bank accounts in Cyprus. Analysts have warned that making depositors take a hit threatens to undermine investors' confidence in other weaker eurozone economies and might possibly lead to bank runs.
In return for the rescue loans, Cyprus will trim its deficit, significantly shrink its troubled banking sector, raise taxes and privatize state assets, said the Netherlands' Jeroen Dijsselbloem, president of the Eurogroup meetings of the 17-nation eurozone's finance ministers.
"The assistance is warranted to safeguard financial stability in Cyprus and the eurozone as a whole," he said, briefing reporters after almost 10 hours of negotiations.
People with less than ?100,000 in their Cypriot bank accounts will have to pay a one-time tax of 6.75 percent, those owning more money will lose 9.9 percent. The measure will be carried out early next week and is expected to net ?5.8 billion in additional revenues, Dijsselbloem added, thereby greatly reducing the country's financing need.
"We found it justified in terms of burden sharing to also involve the depositors," said Dijsselbloem, noting that it was a "unique measure" because of Cyprus' outsized banking system.
"As it is a contribution to the financial stability of Cyprus, it seems just to ask a contribution of all deposit holders," Dijsselbloem added.
Analysts have warned that imposing such a drastic measure could be seen as a watershed moment, undermining the eurozone's credibility. Although the leaders stressed the levy was a unique measure for Cyprus, they said the same when private holders of government bonds were forced to accept losses in Greece.
The measure therefore risks scaring investors in Europe's weaker economies, which could lead them to move their deposits to more stable eurozone countries like Germany. In that case, banks in southern Europe's economies might be considerably weakened and could possibly require new bailouts. That could then weaken the respective governments, which might then need further assistance from their eurozone partners ? possibly setting off a vicious spiral.
But Joerg Asmussen, a member of the European Central Bank's governing council, sought to dismiss fears of bank troubles stemming from the levy, saying the ECB stands ready to provide financial institutions with emergency liquidity assistance.
"The levy, it's an appropriate tool. It's really tailor-made to the situation in Cyprus," he said. "It's a country in extreme financing need, and what you do is to expand the tax base, not only to residents but also to non-residents," he said.
Russian citizens are estimated to have at least ?20 billion in deposits in Cyprus.
Asmussen stressed that there was no risk of such a levy being implemented in other countries that have already received bailouts, such as Greece, Ireland or Portugal, because those countries' financing needs are covered by their international rescue loans.
In a sign of how exceptional and urgent a decision the one-time levy is, Cypriot banks are already implementing measures to make sure that depositors cannot withdraw money to shrink the tax basis, Asmussen said. The remainder of their holdings can be withdrawn, he added.
But Cypriot Finance Minister Michalis Sarris added that electronic bank transfers won't be possible before Tuesday, Monday being a regular holiday in the country. In return for their one-time tax payment, depositors will get an equivalent stake in the bank where they have their account, he said.
"It was a very difficult decision," Sarris acknowledged, but added that "much more money could have been lost in a bankruptcy of the banking system or indeed the country."
Cypriot lawmakers are expected to approve a law on the bank levy over the weekend, and the money will be levied starting Tuesday.
"I want to underscore that this is a once and for all levy. We wanted to do it in a way, in a decisive way ... to remove any doubt about the future," Sarris said. "There is no reason whatsoever that deposit holders in Cyprus, existing and new ones, should have any concerns."
While the Cypriot bailout is many times smaller than Greece's ?240 billion package or Ireland's ?67.5 billion, it is still considered crucial to the future of the eurozone because a default even by a small country could roil financial markets and undermine investor confidence.
Cyprus' financing needs to recapitalize its banks and keep the government afloat were initially estimated to total ?17 billion, which is almost the equivalent of Cyprus' annual economic output and would have ballooned the country's public debt to about 140 percent of its economy, a level the IMF considers unsustainable.
The creditors therefore sought to exhaust all avenues to have Cyprus raise more revenue to reduce the need for external financing.
Losses will also be imposed on the banks' junior bondholders, the officials said. In addition, Cyprus agreed to increase its capital gains tax, and to raise its corporate tax by a quarter, from 10 to 25 percent, Dijsselbloem said.
To further reduce the financing needs, Russia was expected to significantly extend the maturity of a ?2.5 billion loan granted in 2011 after the country could no longer tap international markets.
The ministers also agreed to make sizeable Greek operations of the country's two largest banks, Bank of Cyprus and Laiki, eligible for spare rescue cash from Greece's bailout accord.
Under the bailout deal, Cyprus debt is forecast to reach about 100% of GDP by 2020.
The economy of Cyprus, an eastern Mediterranean island of just over a million people, represents less than 0.2 percent of the eurozone's annual economic output.
Cyprus, which first applied for a bailout last summer, wasn't in imminent danger of bankruptcy, as it faces its next bond redemption in June. But the European Central Bank, concerned that prolonged uncertainty over Cyprus could hurt market sentiment across the eurozone, had pushed for a swift deal, even threatening to cut the country's financial system off from emergency funding.
The finance ministers' agreement still has to be approved by parliaments in several eurozone nations. EU officials say everything should be done by the end of the month.
To appease its potential rescue creditors, Cyprus has already accepted an independent audit of its banks, which hold billions in Russian deposits, to soothe concerns voiced by Germany, France and others that they launder dirty Russian money.
___
Don Melvin in Brussels contributed to this report.
___
Juergen Baetz can be reached on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jbaetz
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cyprus-secures-13-bn-bailout-eurozone-imf-040518024--finance.html
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