Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/295783365?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Sunday, March 31, 2013
Kruger helicopter crash kills five
31 March 2013
Last updated at 03:17 ET
Five members of the South African military have died in a helicopter crash, officials said.
The aircraft was patrolling the Kruger National Park on Saturday evening looking for rhino poachers.
The patrol was routine and an investigation is under way.
The poaching of rhinos is rampant in South Africa. Their horns are sold in Asia, where some believe they have medicinal purposes, although there is no evidence to support it.
The South African Broadcasting Corporation quoted Brig Gen Xolani Mabanga as saying that the Agusta A1-0-9 light utility helicopter had come down at around 19:00 GMT on Saturday, killing all five people on board.
Gen Mabanga said the ministry of defence extended condolences to the families of the deceased, all members of the South African National Defence Force.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21986456#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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Daily Kos: Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: Gun responsibility, autism ...
Team 26 riders supporting a team member up a long hill
Photo Credit: Becky Frank
Dana Milbank:
?Don?t get squishy,? President Obama told members of Congress.Milbank's analysis, like that of most inside the Beltway people, has a fundamental misunderstanding of what's done at state level (see CT next week), what's done at Federal level (it's all about background checks and keeping guns out of the hands of those who should not have them) and what it takes to make sausage in Congress (slow consensus building). Think of it as parallel to those who looked at one poll and concluded Romney is ahead. The data suggests otherwise:But they already have.
Newtown changed the debate. The Newtown shooting had a greater impact on public opinion about guns than any other event in the past two decades?and led to a clear rise in public support for stronger gun laws. In particular, three aspects about public opinion in the wake of Newtown are notable:Vaccines are not associated with autism. Still.? Near unanimous support for universal background checks and clear majority support for high-capacity magazine and assault-weapons bans
? Almost as much support for stronger gun laws among gun owners as among the general public
? A large gender gap in views on guns and violence
A new study adds to years of research showing that childhood vaccines do not cause autism, despite worries among a growing number of parents that their young children receive ?too many vaccines.?If you think they are, you're wrong. You're not only wrong, you've wasted years of everyone's time and effort. Give it up and move on.Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that even when multiple inoculations are given on the same day, children are at no higher risk of developing autism, according to the report published in the Journal of Pediatrics Friday.
?This study looked into the concern that receiving too many vaccines at one doctor?s visit or too many vaccines during the first two years of life may be linked to the development of autism,? the report?s lead author, Dr. Frank DeStefano told NBC chief medical editor Dr. Nancy Snyderman. ?We found they?re not related.?
Jonathan Bernstein:
I recommend a solid New York Times editorial today about the unprecedented, outrageous obstruction by Republican senators against President Obama?s nominees, especially his executive branch nominees.Greg Sargent:It?s critically important to give this story as much attention as it deserves ? which is quite a lot. Just the names alone: Hagel, Brennan, McCarthy, Perez, Cordray . . . and that?s only the ones from this term whom the Times mentions. Remember, however, that every single nomination is being subjected to a 60-vote requirement. That?s a filibuster, and it means that every single nominee is being filibustered. The only question is how many Republicans will support the filibuster, not whether there is one. And as the Times points out, there are additional forms of obstruction, too, whether it?s Sen. Rand Paul?s day-long speech, or asking the nominees to answering never-ending extraneous questions.
Okay, so here?s today?s edition of what Brian Beutler has labeled GOP ?sequester NIMBYism.?Joe Nocera on some things about the NCAA you probably didn't know.... but ought to.A group of nearly 30 House Republicans (and a few Democrats) has written a letter to the Obama administration protesting implementation of the sequester. They claim the federal government ? because of the sequester ? is requiring a refund of money that has ?already been disbursed to states,? which is unfair, because those funds ?are already being used for rural schools, emergency services, infrastructure, and protecting communities from the risk of catastrophic wildfire.?
Whether these Republicans are right on the merits ? and perhaps they are ? this is yet another reminder of the degree to which Republicans are chafing at the sequester cuts (which some of them claim they wanted all along) when they hit programs these lawmakers like.
An organization with a moral compass would have refused to allow itself to be a pawn in a segregationist effort to preserve an all-white team. But the N.C.A.A. has never had a moral compass.An interesting environmental observation from my son, Stephen Dworkin:
The timing of Shell?s New Years Day crash is also significant. According to the company?s own admission, Shell was hightailing the Kulluk out of Alaskan waters when the rig ran aground in order to avoid a January 1 state tax assessment. This scheme illustrates a much broader truth about Big Oil: there is a gaping disconnect between oil industry profits and Americans? economic prosperity. There can be no ?trickle-down? to working families or local and state governments when it?s standard practice to risk oil spills in order to evade taxes.WaPo on the "changing" GOP:
Slurs against Latinos, gays complicate GOP?s mission to broaden its tentYes, we've discussed it before here. No, it has not gone away.
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Dentist's office a 'menace'; thousands possibly exposed to HIV
Dr. Scott Harrington, an oral surgeon in Tulsa, Okla., is being charged for unsafe and unsanitary practices, possibly exposing as many as 7,000 patients to hepatitis and HIV after one patient tested positive for both after a visit to his office. NBC's Dr. Nancy Snyderman reports.
By Justin Juozapavicius, The Associated Press
The crisp, stucco exterior of an Oklahoma dental clinic concealed what health inspectors say they found inside: rusty instruments used on patients with infectious diseases and a pattern of unsanitary practices that put thousands of people at risk for hepatitis and the virus that causes AIDS.
State and local health officials planned to mail notices Friday urging 7,000 patients of Dr. W. Scott Harrington to seek medical screenings for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV. Inspectors allege workers at his two clinics used dirty equipment and risked cross-contamination to the point that the state Dentistry Board branded Harrington a "menace to the public health."
"The office looked clean," said Joyce Baylor, who had a tooth pulled at Harrington's Tulsa office 1? years ago. In an interview, Baylor, 69, said she'll be tested next week to determine whether she contracted any infection.
"I'm sure he's not suffering financially that he can't afford instruments," Baylor said of Harrington.
Health officials opened their investigation after a patient with no known risk factors tested positive for both hepatitis C and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. After determining the "index patient" had a dental procedure about the likely time of exposure, investigators visited Harrington's office and found a number of unsafe practices, state epidemiologist Kristy Bailey said.
"I want to stress that this is not an outbreak. The investigation is still very much in its early stages," Bailey said.
Harrington voluntarily gave up his license, closed his offices in Tulsa and suburban Owasso, and is cooperating with investigators, said Kaitlin Snider, a spokeswoman for the Tulsa Health Department. He faces a hearing April 19, when his license could be permanently revoked.
"It's uncertain how long those practices have been in place," Snider said. "He's been practicing for 36 years."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is consulting on the case, and agency spokeswoman Abbigail Tumpey said such situations involving dental clinics are rare. Last year a Colorado oral surgeon was accused of reusing needles and syringes, prompting letters to 8,000 patients, Tumpey said. It wasn't clear whether anyone was actually infected.
"We've only had a handful of dental facilities where we've had notifications in the last decade," Tumpey said.
The Oklahoma Dentistry Board lodged a 17-count complaint against Harrington, saying he was a "menace to the public health by reasons of practicing dentistry in an unsafe or unsanitary manner." Among the claims was one detailing the use of rusty instruments in patients known to have infectious diseases.
"The CDC has determined that rusted instruments are porous and cannot be properly sterilized," the board said.
Health officials are sending letters to 7,000 known patients but cautioned that they don't know who visited his clinics before 2007. The letters urge the patients to be tested for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV ? viruses typically spread through intravenous drug use or unprotected sex, not occupational settings.
Harrington could not be reached for comment Thursday. A message at his Tulsa office said it was closed, and the doctor's answering service referred callers to the Tulsa Health Department. Phone numbers listed for Harrington were disconnected. A message left with Harrington's malpractice attorney in Tulsa, Jim Secrest II, was not immediately returned.
Harrington's Tulsa practice is in a thriving part of town, on a row of some of medical practices. The white-and-green stucco, two-story dental clinic has the doctor's name in letters on the facade.
NBCLatino: You may have Hep C and not know it
According to the complaint, the clinic had varying cleaning procedures for its equipment, needles were re-inserted in drug vials after their initial use and the office had no written infection-protection procedure.
Harrington told officials he left questions about sterilization and drug procedures to his employees.
"They take care of that, I don't," the dentistry board quoted him as saying.
The doctor also is accused of letting his assistants perform tasks only a licensed dentist should have done, including administering IV sedation. Also, the complaint says the doctor's staff could not produce permits for the assistants when asked.
Susan Rogers, executive director of the state Dentistry Board, said that as an oral surgeon Harrington regularly did invasive procedures involving "pulling teeth, open wounds, open blood vessels." The board's complaint also noted Harrington and his staff told investigators a "high population of known infectious disease carrier patients" received dental care from him.
Despite the high-risk clientele, a device used to sterilize instruments wasn't being properly used and hadn't been tested in six years, the board complaint said. Tests are required monthly.
Also, a drug vial found at a clinic this year had an expiration date of 1993 and one assistant's drug log said morphine had been used in the clinic last year despite its not receiving any morphine shipments since 2009.
Officials said patients will be offered free medical testing at the Tulsa Health Department's North Regional Health and Wellness Center.
Related:
Dental chain accused of hurting kids, bilking taxpayers
This story was originally published on Thu Mar 28, 2013 4:06 PM EDT
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Saturday, March 30, 2013
Shiri Appleby Welcomes Daughter Natalie Bouader
"Natalie Bouader Shook came into this world Saturday, March 23rd at 5 p.m. sharp, weighing in at 6 lbs. 12 oz. [and] 20.5 inches," Appleby tells PEOPLE.
Source: http://feeds.celebritybabies.com/~r/celebrity-babies/~3/at_Pv4PrqZI/
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Libyan official: 3 activists raped by militiamen
TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) ? Three female British activists of Pakistani origin were raped by Libyan pro-government militiamen in the eastern city of Benghazi, after joining an aid convoy bound for Gaza to break an Israeli blockade, officials from several countries confirmed on Friday.
Libyan deputy prime minister Awad al-Barassi, who visited the women in the hospital, said the victims were traveling with two male companions when they were kidnapped on Tuesday on their way to the Benghazi airport after deciding to return to Britain.
The overland convoy left Britain on Feb. 25, but was stuck for days along the Libyan-Egyptian border after Egyptian border guards refused to let them to cross.
Al-Barassi told Libya al-Hurra TV late Thursday that the women were in "very bad shape." Two of the women are sisters and their father witnessed the rape of the women, he said.
Their 10-vehicle convoy carrying medical supplies was named "Mavi Marmara" in honor of a ship involved in a 2010 deadly flotilla incident, according to Huseyin Oruc of IHH, a Turkish humanitarian relief organization.
IHH was the group that helped organize the international flotilla that was attacked on May 31, 2010. Israeli commandos stormed the Mavi Marmara while stopping the flotilla that was trying to breach an Israeli blockade of Gaza. Eight Turks and a Turkish-American were killed, and dozens of activists and seven Israeli soldiers were wounded.
IHH mediated the release of the kidnapped women and men after they were contacted by the convoy's organizers and pled for help. The man and his daughters were scheduled to return to Britain on Friday, he said.
He said the women were attacked and robbed, and that their abductors included a taxi driver and a group of men in military uniforms.
Less than two years after the country's uprising-turned-civil war, Libya is struggling to build a unified army and police force amid increasingly powerful militias. The government depends on some of the militias to fill the security vacuum, but has struggled to control over their actions.
Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry condemned the attack and said that Pakistani embassy in Libya had lodged a strong protest with Libyan authorities
"A heinous crime has been committed against these female activists," he said, adding that he hoped stern action would be taken against the attackers.
Britain's Foreign Office said in a statement that it was aware of an incident involving British nationals who were part of an aid convoy. The office said the government was providing consular assistance, but it did not elaborate.
___
Associated Press Writers Jill Lawless in London, Munir Ahmed in Islamabad and Suzan Fraser in Ankara contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/libyan-official-3-activists-raped-militiamen-143005387.html
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Friday, March 29, 2013
Adults text more than teens while driving
A new survey claims adults text more while driving than teens. (Yahoo!)As adults continue to mirror the social media habits of the nation?s youth, it appears some of the bad behaviors are being adopted as well. In fact, the grown-ups have apparently become the greater offenders when it comes to one particularly dangerous behavior: Texting while driving.
That's according to a new study conducted by AT&T, reported in USA Today, that shows adults text more while driving than their teenage counterparts.
The study finds that nearly half of all adults admit to texting while driving, with 98 percent of them saying they know the practice is dangerous. Conversely, 43 percent of teenagers admit to texting while behind the wheel.
"I was a little bit surprised," Charlene Lake, AT&T's senior vice president of public affairs, told USA Today.
But why do adults text while driving if they know it's unwise? The answers are complicated, but according to some adults who told Yahoo News about their own distracted driving, they feel shame, guilt and stubbornness when texting.
AT&T surveyed 1,011 adult drivers for its It Can Wait campaign, which seeks to educate drivers about the risks of distracted driving. The company has launched a free app that sends an automated and customizable reply text message to incoming texts when the vehicle is moving at 25 mph or more.
A similar study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 31 percent of all drivers in the U.S. text while driving, despite the practice being illegal in 39 states and the District of Columbia. In that same CDC study, 69 percent of all drivers admitted to using their cellphone while driving.
So, how bad is texting compared with other driving distractions? Virginia Tech Transportation Institute researchers say that sending or receiving a text breaks a driver?s concentration for an average of 4.6 seconds. And as USA Today notes, at 55 mph that?s enough distance to cover the length of a football field.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/adults-text-more-while-driving-teens-205717149.html
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Legal How-To: Reviewing, Disputing Legal Bills - Law and Daily Life
You hired a lawyer and were promised one rate. But when you get your legal bill in the mail, it's much more than you expect.
That's what led to a recent case alleging overbilling by DLA Piper, the world's largest law firm. Internal emails disclosed in the case revealed lawyers joking about "churning," or running up, client bills.
While you may feel that it's easier just to pay the higher amount (after all, a lawyer charged you), you should know there are ways to dispute a legal bill -- everything from attorney's fees to miscellaneous costs like making photocopies.
What to Do
A lawyer is supposed to be honest and forthcoming, but of course, not all lawyers are. Still, a higher-than-expected legal bill may also just be an honest mistake.
Here are some tips on how to review, and dispute, your legal bill:
- First, review your fee agreement. Most states require that a lawyer give his legal billing rate in writing. If so, the fee agreement should provide details on how you will be charged, fees you can be assessed, and costs that you are responsible for. Double-check the bill you received. and make sure it conforms to what was promised in your fee agreement.
- Discuss your bill with your lawyer. Lawyers practice law and are not generally in the collections business. If you don't want to pay, it will be a giant headache for the lawyer to collect. With that in mind, you may want to discuss the billing issue with your lawyer and work out a compromise. Explain why you feel the bill is too high and negotiate a happy middle ground.
- Check with your local bar association. If your lawyer insists your bill is correct, but you believe otherwise, you do have other options. Local bar associations may provide some type of fee-dispute resolution program. This can include mediation, arbitration, or some other out-of-court arrangement.
- Report the lawyer for unethical behavior. Lawyers are governed by your state's bar association. The bar association has the power to discipline unethical lawyers and report misconduct, which can lead to penalties and potentially even disbarment. If you believe that your lawyer has cheated you, you may be able to report this conduct to the bar.
Need More Help?
Sometimes, you may need to sue your attorney. But this should be a last resort, as hiring another lawyer to sue your former lawyer over fees can wind up costing you even more money than just paying your bill in the first place.
Are you facing a legal issue you'd like to handle on your own? Suggest a topic for our Legal How-To series by sending us a tweet @FindLawConsumer with the hashtag #HowTo.
Related Resources:
Source: http://blogs.findlaw.com/law_and_life/2013/03/legal-how-to-reviewing-disputing-legal-bills.html
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Light may recast copper as chemical industry 'holy grail'
Friday, March 29, 2013
Wouldn't it be convenient if you could reverse the rusting of your car by shining a bright light on it? It turns out that this concept works for undoing oxidation on copper nanoparticles, and it could lead to an environmentally friendly production process for an important industrial chemical, University of Michigan engineers have discovered.
"We report a new physical phenomenon that has potentially significant practical implications," said Suljo Linic, an associate professor of chemical engineering, who led the study, which is published in the March 29 issue of Science.
Copper's newfound ability to shake off oxygen attached to its surface could allow it to act as a catalyst for a long-sought reaction, causing oxygen molecules to bind with propylene molecules in the way that forms propylene oxide. Propylene oxide is a precursor for making many plastics, toiletries and other household products such as antifreeze, paints and insulating foams. To meet demand for these products, the U.S. produces more than 2.4 million metric tons of propylene oxide per year, worth about $4.9 billion.
Unfortunately, producing propylene oxide involves a complex chain of reactions that generate unwanted chemicals. The process that provides about half of the propylene oxide in the U.S. also produces about twice as many tons of salt.
A catalyst that can coax propylene and oxygen to form propylene oxide in a direct reaction, avoiding the waste, has been highly sought after. Metallic copper showed promise, but it had?until now?been written off because it tends to bind itself to oxygen, forming copper oxide, which has poor catalytic properties.
"Copper in metallic form has this unique electronic structure that activates the reaction pathway for propylene oxide more than the undesired pathways," said Marimuthu Andiappan, a graduate student in chemical engineering and first author on the paper.
Metallic copper prefers to bind oxygen with two of the propylene's carbon atoms, forming propylene oxide. Copper oxide, on the other hand, tends to break the propylene down into carbon dioxide or attach the oxygen to only one carbon atom, resulting in the herbicide acrolein.
However, Andiappan, Linic, and former chemical engineering graduate student Jianwen Zhang found that if copper is cleverly structured, light can reverse its oxidation. The team made copper nanoparticles about 40 nanometers across, or roughly one-hundredth of the thickness of a strand of spider silk. They peppered tiny particles of clear silica with the nanoparticles and then floated a gas of propylene and oxygen over the resulting dust.
In the dark, the copper oxidized, and only 20 percent of the gas converted to propylene oxide. But under white light, five times the sun's intensity, the copper stayed in the metallic state and turned 50 percent of the propylene into propylene oxide.
"To our knowledge, this is the first time anyone has shown that light can be used to switch the oxidation state from an oxide to a metallic state," Andiappan said.
The metallic copper under the oxidized surface concentrated the light, freeing electrons from copper atoms. Those electrons then broke the bonds between the copper and oxygen.
A new kind of reactor that can illuminate the catalyst will be needed to bring this potentially cheap and environmentally friendly way of making propylene oxide to industry.
"Theoretically, it is possible to use mirrors to focus sunlight and get this much intensity," Andiappan said.
"We are just scratching the surface," Linic said. "I can envision many processes that wouldn't be possible with conventional strategies, where changing the oxidation state during the reaction or driving reactions with light could affect the outcome dramatically."
###
The paper describing this work is titled "Tuning selectivity in propylene epoxidation by plasmon mediated photo-switching of Cu oxidation state."
University of Michigan: http://www.umich.edu/
Thanks to University of Michigan for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127510/Light_may_recast_copper_as_chemical_industry__holy_grail_
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Thursday, March 28, 2013
YouTube API will allow video games to more easily stream in-game content
What's YouTube doing at the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco? Talking about integration with video games, obviously. More specifically, the company is hoping to expand an idea we first noticed in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, whereby users could easily stream in-game content to YouTube. Clearly, the company worked in concert with Activision to make that possible, but forthcoming APIs will enable game developers far and wide to add the same functionality to other titles. Unfortunately, details remain murky regarding availability, but we are told that these new tools won't be limited to just consoles -- it sounds as if PC and mobile games will too be able to take advantage.
Source: The Slanted, CNET
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/28/youtube-video-game-streaming-api-gdc-2013/
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Tuition.io Consolidates All Your Student Loans for Simple, Easy Management
College tuition accounts for an enormous amount of debt, and getting out from under isn't easy?especially when your loans come from a variety of different sources. Tuition.io solves that problem by consolidating them into a powerful web interface that helps you manage your debt and find the most effective plan to eliminate it.
Last week we mentioned Student Loan Hero, which serves a similar function, but the downside is that you have to manually manage loans from most private sources. If your loans primarily comes through the government, that's not a big issue. If they don't, Tuition.io covers the ground that Student Loan Hero does not by allowing you to easily add any type of loan without manually entering the data. On top of that, it offers an incredibly versatile interface that allows you to see your progress through a comprehensive dashboard, showing all of your loans or just the ones you choose. You can quickly view your balances, payments, current statuses, interest rates, and much more without every leaving that page.
Through the loan options section you can start acting on repayment, which includes, standard repayment, consolidation, grands and forgiveness, and postponement. You can combine any tactics you want to pursue to create a repayment plan the suits you best. Overall, Tuition.io provides a very comprehensive set of tools for you to easily track and manage your student loan debt, all available for free.
Tuition.io
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Mountain pine beetle genome decoded
Mar. 26, 2013 ? The genome of the mountain pine beetle -- the insect that has devastated B.C.'s lodgepole pine forests -- has been decoded by researchers at the University of British Columbia and Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre.
This is a first for the mountain pine beetle and only the second beetle genome ever sequenced. The first was the red flour beetle, a pest of stored grains. The genome is described in a study published Tuesday in the journal Genome Biology.
"We know a lot about what the beetles do," says Christopher Keeling, a research associate in Prof. Joerg Bohlmann's lab at the Michael Smith Laboratories. "But without the genome, we don't know exactly how they do it."
"Sequencing the mountain pine beetle genome provides new information that can be used to help manage the epidemic in the future."
The genome revealed large variation among individuals of the species -- about four times greater than the variation among humans.
"As the beetles' range expands and as they head into jack pine forests where the defensive compounds may be different, this variation could allow them to be more successful in new environments," says Keeling.
Researchers isolated genes that help detoxify defence compounds found under the bark of the tree -- where the beetles live. They also found genes that degrade plant cell walls, which allow the beetles to get nutrients from the tree.
Keeling, Bohlmann and their colleagues also uncovered a bacterial gene that has jumped into the mountain pine beetle genome. This gene codes for an enzyme that digests sugars.
"It might be used to digest woody tissue and/or the microorganisms that grow in the beetle's tunnels underneath the bark of the tree," said Keeling. "Gene transfers sometimes make organisms more successful in their environments."
This study involved researchers from the University of Northern British Columbia and the University of Alberta.
Characteristics of the mountain pine beetle genome
- 12 pairs of chromosomes
- Approximately 13,000 genes
- The mountain pine beetle separated from the red flour beetle -- the only other beetle genome sequenced to date -- about 230 million years ago. According to Keeling, "the two insects have about the same relatedness as a pine tree and a head of lettuce."
- The mountain pine beetle is closely related to other significant pests in North American forests such as the southern pine beetle, Douglas-fir beetle, eastern larch beetle, and spruce beetle. Insights gained from sequencing the mountain pine beetle genome can be transferred to these beetles, and other forest insect pests around the world.
Mountain pine beetle epidemic
The mountain pine beetle has infested over 18 million hectares of lodgepole pine in British Columbia -- an area more than five times larger than Vancouver Island -- causing enormous damage to the environment and forest industry. In recent years, the insect has moved further north and east, over the Canadian Rockies, and is now approaching the Alberta-Saskatchewan border. It is also beginning to infest other pine trees -- jack pine, a jack-lodgepole hybrid, limber pine, and the endangered whitebark pine. Jack pine boreal forests extend from Alberta to the Atlantic provinces. The mountain pine beetle also lives in Colorado, Wyoming, Arizona and South Dakota.
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of British Columbia.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Christopher I Keeling, Macaire MS Yuen, Nancy Y Liao, T Roderick Docking, Simon K Chan, Greg A Taylor, Diana L Palmquist, Shaun D Jackman, Anh Nguyen, Maria Li, Hannah Henderson, Jasmine K Janes, Yongjun Zhao, Pawan Pandoh, Richard Moore, Felix AH Sperling, Dezene PW Huber, Inanc Birol, Stephen JM Jones, Joerg Bohlmann. Draft genome of the mountain pine beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins, a major forest pest. Genome Biology, 2013; 14 (3): R27 DOI: 10.1186/gb-2013-14-3-r27
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/6phY8FTccr8/130327093612.htm
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Soros to Give $1 Million to NAACP Legal Fund - NYTimes.com
George Soros, the billionaire financier and philanthropist, has pledged $1 million to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the country?s leading civil rights legal advocacy group, officials there said Tuesday.
The gift, which Mr. Soros is making through his Open Society Foundations, is the largest grant the group has received from a named donor in recent decades.
It comes as the fund and other legal advocacy groups are locked in battles around the country over states? efforts to impose tighter restrictions on voting.
The fund is closely involved with a case now before the Supreme Court, Shelby County v. Holder, which challenges the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act. The group is also active in cases involving the death penalty, classroom integration and housing discrimination.
Mr. Soros and his family were among the largest donors in the country to Democratic ?super PACs? during the 2012 elections. He is also a longtime supporter of voting rights and voter registration initiatives, a major focus of the NAACP fund.
In a statement, Mr. Soros said, ?We need bold and courageous civil rights strategies if we are to achieve racial equality in this country.?
Sherrilyn Ifill, who took over as the legal defense fund?s top official last year, was previously the board chairwoman for United States programs at Open Society Foundations.
?L.D.F. is a great American institution that remains vigorously engaged in the fight for justice in the areas of voting rights, access to economic and educational opportunity and in challenging injustice in the criminal justice system,? Ms. Ifill said in a statement.
Source: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/soros-to-give-1-million-to-naacp-legal-fund/
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Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Developer Choice Of Games gives you story options on Android
Life of a Wizard is more or less a legitimate RPG, in book form. The story is told in first person text, but you get to make all the important decisions, and those decisions shape what kind of person you will be and what your strengths and weaknesses are as well as how the story plays out. It's an awesome concept, and those of us who like to play engrossing games, specifically because we like the stories, will find a lot to love here.
But what I discovered later was that Life of a Wizard is the product of a company called Choice Of Games, and they have made a whole bunch of games like this for Android. And so for the last week I found myself doing little but playing through these games just to see what kind of stuff I could get into.
Also on Android Apps
The Indianapolis 500 is one of the world?s oldest auto races. You can learn more about the cars and the people who race them thanks to this Guest Post from Zinio.
My favorite of these text-based Android games is called Choice of Romance, about a young boy or girl (your choice) who goes to court in a light fantasy universe to try to find a suitable suitor. I chose to be a lady, and as it begins things are fairly typical of this kind of story. Your family wants you to marry the rich yet not particularly interesting or attractive guy, because it will be good for both you and all your relatives. Meanwhile, there is also a dashing man with little money but who seems pretty cool, and also the king is making eyes at you.
In my version of the tale, I chose to court the dashing man while also having an affair with the king, eventually, my suitor found out I was cheating and dumped me, and so I was left to be one of the king's consorts. Eventually, I gained great power in that role, but I wanted it all. So I conspired to kill the queen and take her place. Unfortunately, due to my earlier character-shaping choices I did a poor job of this, and while the queen did end up dead I was found out. Thus, I was beheaded, and so was my father.
That a seemingly mundane story about going to court for the first time could end up with my character being executed was quite thrilling. I always enjoyed those Choose Your Own Adventure novels because I wanted to see how my character could die, and so I found this result to be a positive experience.
I also tried out one called Choice of Zombies, and in that one you go on a grand quest through a world infested by, you guessed it, zombies. This one was a bit different from the others I played, in that the story is dictated by the number of side quests. Yes, even?a text adventure like this has side quests. As you drive around looking for shelter, you can take detours and collect party members, or you can play it safe and try to get through it alone. In this story, outcomes are dictated almost entirely by the yes or no decisions you make, rather than behind the scenes stats you've collected.
I can't say I prefer one method or another. I would say I like both ways of telling the stories. Having complete control over everything you do is fun, but also having these things be a real game of sorts in which what you can do is dictated by our skills is also fun. Hurrah for having both options.
Life of a Wizard, to bring us back to the beginning, is heavily stats-based. You have and develop skills as you grow up and go on adventures, and while it seems every choice has a ton of options you will only be able to take a few or maybe even none of them. That can be frustrating every once in a while, but it also adds to replayability. I've gone through that one three times just to see how it plays out if I choose different skills.
There are still many more of these games I have yet to play, and you'd better believe I'll continue to try them out. I encourage you to do so as well, as these can be quite interesting and fun. Now, if only some ambitious developer would take story structures like these and combine them with real gameplay, and we might have an honest-to-god mobile gaming paradise on our hands. But for now, I'll be happy that these text-based games exist for my enjoyment.
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Tuesday, March 26, 2013
US eyes anti-piracy effort along west Africa coast
FILE - In this Feb. 13, 2010 file photo, a crew of U.S. sailors and Nigerian special forces fighters prepares to board the NNS Burutu for a training exercise off the Nigerian coast. The U.S. Navy offered training to the Nigerian navy as worries mount of increasingly violent pirate attacks along the West African coast. The U.S. and some of its allies are considering plans to increase anti-piracy operations along Africa?s west coast, spurred on by concerns that money from the attacks is funding a Nigerian-based insurgent group that is linked to one of al-Qaida?s most dangerous affiliates. (AP Photo/Jon Gambrell, File)
FILE - In this Feb. 13, 2010 file photo, a crew of U.S. sailors and Nigerian special forces fighters prepares to board the NNS Burutu for a training exercise off the Nigerian coast. The U.S. Navy offered training to the Nigerian navy as worries mount of increasingly violent pirate attacks along the West African coast. The U.S. and some of its allies are considering plans to increase anti-piracy operations along Africa?s west coast, spurred on by concerns that money from the attacks is funding a Nigerian-based insurgent group that is linked to one of al-Qaida?s most dangerous affiliates. (AP Photo/Jon Gambrell, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The U.S. and some of its allies are considering plans to increase anti-piracy operations along Africa's west coast, spurred on by concerns that money from the attacks is funding a Nigerian-based insurgent group that is linked to one of al-Qaida's most dangerous affiliates.
Piracy in the Gulf of Guinea has escalated over the past year, and senior U.S. defense and counter-piracy officials say allied leaders are weighing whether beefed up enforcement efforts that worked against pirates off the Somalia coast might also be needed in the waters off Nigeria.
There has been growing coordination between Nigeria-based Boko Haram and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, which was linked to the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, last September that killed four Americans, including the ambassador. Military leaders say AQIM has become the wealthiest al-Qaida offshoot and an increasing terrorist threat to the region.
It has long been difficult to track whether there are terrorist ties to piracy in the waters off Africa. But officials are worried that even if Boko Haram insurgents aren't directly involved in the attacks off Nigeria and Cameroon, they may be reaping some of the profits and using the money for ongoing terrorist training or weapons.
No final decisions have been made on how counter-piracy operations could be increased in that region, and budget restrictions could hamper that effort, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about emerging discussions between senior U.S. military commanders and other international leaders.
But officials say the solution could include continued work and counter-piracy training with African nations. The U.S. participated last month in a maritime exercise with European and African partners in the Gulf of Guinea.
"Maritime partnerships and maritime security and safety are increasingly important in the Gulf of Guinea region to combat a variety of challenges including maritime crime, illicit trafficking and piracy," said Gen. Carter Ham, head of U.S. Africa Command.
In recent weeks, Ham and other U.S. military commanders have bluntly warned Congress that the terrorist threat from northern Africa has become far more worrisome.
"If the threat that is present in Africa is left unaddressed, it will over time grow to an increasingly dangerous and imminent threat to U.S. interests, and certainly could develop into a threat that threatens us in other places," Ham told Congress earlier this month. "We've already seen from some places in Africa, individuals that ? from Nigeria, for example ? attempt to enter our country with explosives."
A Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was sentenced to life in prison last year for trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner with a bomb sewn into his underwear on Christmas 2009. The bomb failed.
Piracy in the Gulf of Guinea has escalated from low-level armed robberies to hijackings and cargo thefts and kidnappings. Last year, London-based Lloyd's Market Association ? an umbrella group of insurers ? listed oil-rich Nigeria, neighboring Benin and nearby waters in the same risk category as Somalia.
Pirates have been more willing to use violence in their robberies, at times targeting the crew for ransom. And experts suggest that many of the pirates come from Nigeria, where corrupt law enforcement allows criminality to thrive and there's a bustling black market for stolen crude oil.
Typically, foreign companies operating in Nigeria's Niger Delta pay cash ransoms to free their employees after negotiating down kidnappers' demands. Foreign hostages can fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece.
Lately, however, the attacks, which had traditionally focused on the Nigerian coast, have spread, hitting ships carrying fuel from an Ivory Coast port. In January pirates made off with about $5 million in cargo from a fuel-laden tanker near the port of Abidjan, and two weeks later a French-owned fuel tanker was hijacked in the same area.
Just days after that, three sailors were kidnapped off a U.K.-flagged ship off the coast of Nigeria, and late in February six foreigners were taken off an energy company vessel in that same region.
The International Maritime Bureau has raised alarms about the Ivory Coast attacks, calling the first January incident a "potential game changer" in piracy in the region because was the farthest ever from Nigeria in the Gulf of Guinea. And U.S. Navy Capt. Dave Rollo, who directed the recent naval exercise in the Gulf of Guinea that involved as many as 15 nations, said piracy in that area is not just a regional crime issue, it's "a global problem."
Meanwhile, over the past year, piracy off Somalia's coast has plummeted, as the U.S.-led enforcement effort beefed up patrols and encouraged increased security measures on ships transiting the region. After repeated urgings from military commanders and other officials, shipping companies increased the use of armed guards and took steps to better avoid and deter pirates.
According to data from the combined maritime force, nearly 50 ships were taken by pirates in 2010 in the Gulf of Aden and Somali Basin and there were another close to 200 unsuccessful attempts. Last year, just seven ships were pirated there along with 36 failed attacks.
Even as defense officials warn about the growing threat, they acknowledge that increasing counter-piracy operations around the Gulf of Guinea presents a number of challenges.
In recent weeks, the U.S. Navy has had to postpone or cancel a number of ship deployments because of budget cuts, including a decision not to send the aircraft carrier USS Harry S Truman to the Persian Gulf. The U.S. has maintained two carrier groups in the Gulf for much of the past two years, as tensions with Iran have escalated.
U.S. Africa Command has no ships of its own, so any U.S. vessels needed for operations would have to come from other places, such as Europe or America.
And defense officials also note that it may be difficult to build as much international interest in the Gulf of Guinea attacks as those in the more heavily traveled shipping lanes on the northeastern side of the continent.
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Slickdeals' best in tech for March 25th: Nest Learning Thermostat and more
Looking to save some coin on your tech purchases? Of course you are! In this round-up, we'll run down a list of the freshest frugal buys, hand-picked with the help of the folks at Slickdeals. You'll want to act fast, though, as many of these offerings won't stick around long.
Mondays serve as a cruel reminder that the weekend is over, but a few gadget deals could ease the transition a bit. Nest's first-gen Learning Thermostat hits the list today alongside a 42-inch LG 3D HDTV and much more. A quick jaunt past the break will reveal all of the selections and the requisite purchase info.
Filed under: Displays, Misc, Home Entertainment, Household
Source: Slickdeals
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/25/slickdeals-best-in-tech-for-march-25th/
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My journey to a peaceful garden | MNN - Mother Nature Network
A few years ago, when I went in for my yearly check-up (okay, I?m not that good. It had been a couple years since I?d been to the doctor), I was a bit surprised to see that I had high blood pressure. The doctor said that it wasn?t at a super concerning level, but that I should search for ways to relax, and be sure to engage in healthy living habits. He gave me a list of activities that are supposed to be soothing and help lower blood pressure. I looked at the list skeptically. Meditation, yoga, exercise, gardening. If I was overly stressed, it was because I was low on time. Trying to make time for this extra stuff wasn?t going to help anything.
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I?ll admit it. I didn?t start working out after that. The thought of working out made me feel good for a couple of days. Then it started making me feel horrible because I hadn?t followed through. Then I stopped thinking about it and went back to my day-to-day activities. Life went on, and every time I thought about my blood pressure, it probably experienced a little spike.?
Then spring came. The grass started growing, and my lawn started to need attention. I was looking into my backyard and thought that maybe I would plant some shrubs, since the yard was looking a little sparse. Yard work is supposed to be good for you, so maybe I could get some healthy activity done while making my yard look better.
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Then I made the mistake that has probably had the most positive impact on my life out of all the other choices I?ve made. I went to the home and garden store to get some supplies and a couple plants. What I didn?t know is that I was entering my new second home.
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I had looked up a couple things about landscaping before I went to the store. Certain plants did better in certain soils, look for native plants, blah blah blah. I had helped my mom in the garden when I was a kid. I had helped friends with landscaping projects before. I could figure it out.
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Ha.
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Having never actually planned a landscaping project, I ended up standing in the store?s greenroom staring at my options for quite some time. I denied several offers of assistance before finally saying. ?I?m looking for ? plants? To put in my ? backyard?? I felt like a self-conscious teenage girl. I was sure the attendant was judging me, thinking, ?What is this guy even doing here? He doesn?t have a clue.??
But she wasn?t. The nice lady had dealt with probably 100 other people every month who were just as clueless as I was. She started asking me questions. ?What kind of soil is in your yard?? ?Um?? ?What color is it? Does it feel like sand, or is it more gravelly??
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She asked me a million questions. How much time did I plan on spending on maintenance? Did I want a flowering bush or just something green? I had to think. I had to make decisions. I had to buy something instead of giving up. She was that awesome.
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That weekend I dug up a corner of my lawn. I drank a lot of water. I planted my newly acquired shrubbery. I gave it the proper amount of water, as well as putting down the special soil I had purchased. I stepped back and admired my work. Then my eye was drawn to a section of my lawn to my right. It looked kind of shabby comparatively.
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That whole summer I kept coming up with yard projects. I planted trees. I put flower beds against my house. I replaced my front sidewalk with stepping stones shaped like paw prints. My creativity was sparked, and the completion of one project always led to the anticipation of the next one.
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I started reading about gardening. It was too late to start a garden, but I could prepare for next year. I read about which plants benefitted each other. I spent weeks trying to find the perfect tomato cage. I had caught a disease, and it was saving my life.
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Okay, that last line was a bit cheesy. Don?t worry. I didn?t start dating the lady from the plant store or anything else rom-com like. But I did have an amazing summer, and it has led to me having a beautiful yard, a productive garden, and a great way to reduce stress in my life.
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So for those who say that they don?t have time to garden, I say yes. It is a lot of work. It is a time commitment. But it?s a great way to bring beauty and relaxation to the stressful world we live in.
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Daniel Novak is a writer and lifelong learner. He maintains a vegetable garden and several flower beds and is always looking for new ways to add plants to his home. Because of this, he has a shameful amount of indoor and outdoor plant stands.?
Related gardening stories on MNN:
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Do you want to be a?guest?columnist??Send your pitch to?bcohen@mnn.com?with "I want to be a?guest?columnist" in the headline.?Plus,?visit our?guest column archive?to find a variety of topics and opinions.?
Photo provided courtesy of Daniel Novak.
Source: http://www.mnn.com/home-blog/guest-columnist/blogs/my-journey-to-a-peaceful-garden
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Monday, March 25, 2013
Parkinsons' drug helps older people to make decisions
Mar. 24, 2013 ? A drug widely used to treat Parkinson's Disease can help to reverse age-related impairments in decision making in some older people, a study from researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging has shown.
The study, published today in the journal Nature Neuroscience, also describes changes in the patterns of brain activity of adults in their seventies that help to explain why they are worse at making decisions than younger people.
Poorer decision-making is a natural part of the aging process that stems from a decline in our brains' ability to learn from our experiences. Part of the decision-making process involves learning to predict the likelihood of getting a reward from the choices that we make.
An area of the brain called the nucleus accumbens is responsible for interpreting the difference between the reward that we're expecting to get from a decision and the reward that is actually received. These so called 'prediction errors', reported by a brain chemical called dopamine, help us to learn from our actions and modify our behaviour to make better choices the next time.
Dr Rumana Chowdhury, who led the study at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL, said: "We know that dopamine decline is part of the normal aging process so we wanted to see whether it had any effect on reward-based decision making. We found that when we treated older people who were particularly bad at making decisions with a drug that increases dopamine in the brain, their ability to learn from rewards improved to a level comparable to somebody in their twenties and enabled them to make better decisions."
The team used a combination of behavioural testing and brain imaging techniques, to investigate the decision-making process in 32 healthy volunteers aged in their early seventies compared with 22 volunteers in their mid-twenties. Older participants were tested on and off L-DOPA, a drug that increases levels of dopamine in the brain. L-DOPA, more commonly known as Levodopa, is widely used in the clinic to treat Parkinson's.
The participants were asked to complete a behavioural learning task called the two-arm bandit, which mimics the decisions that gamblers make while playing slot machines. Players were shown two images and had to choose the one that they thought would give them the biggest reward. Their performance before and after drug treatment was assessed by the amount of money they won in the task.
"The older volunteers who were less able to predict the likelihood of a reward from their decisions, and so performed worst in the task, showed a significant improvement following drug treatment," Dr Chowdhury explains.
The team then looked at brain activity in the participants as they played the game using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), and measured connections between areas of the brain that are involved in reward prediction using a technique called Diffusor Tensor Imaging (DTI).
The findings reveal that the older adults who performed best in the gambling game before drug treatment had greater integrity of their dopamine pathways. Older adults who performed poorly before drug treatment were not able to adequately signal reward expectation in the brain -- this was corrected by L-DOPA and their performance improved on the drug.
Dr John Williams, Head of Neuroscience and Mental Health at the Wellcome Trust, said: "This careful investigation into the subtle cognitive changes that take place as we age offers important insights into what may happen at both a functional and anatomical level in older people who have problems with making decisions. That the team were able to reverse these changes by manipulating dopamine levels offers the hope of therapeutic approaches that could allow older people to function more effectively in the wider community."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Wellcome Trust, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Rumana Chowdhury, Marc Guitart-Masip, Christian Lambert, Peter Dayan, Quentin Huys, Emrah D?zel, Raymond J Dolan. Dopamine restores reward prediction errors in old age. Nature Neuroscience, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/nn.3364
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.
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MI5 spy chief to step down
By Guy Faulconbridge
LONDON (Reuters) - The MI5 spy chief, who oversaw a safe Olympics and helped transform the Security Service's counter-terrorism operations in the wake of the 2005 London bombings, will step down next month.
Sir Jonathan Evans, appointed director general of the domestic intelligence service less than two years after the July 7 bombings, presided over an expansion anti-terrorism operations. There were no major attacks on his five-year watch.
"He has experienced the service evolving over the years and as director general has led the service through particularly challenging times of change and unrest, including the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings," said Theresa May, the home secretary.
"I would like to pay tribute to Sir Jonathan for the 33 years he has dedicated to the service," May told parliament.
A successor was not announced though local media have reported one of Evans's deputies who commands counter-terrorism operations could be appointed. MI5 chiefs, who were not publicly named until the 1990s, typically serve for about 5 years.
His successor's first big test is likely to be the Group of Eight meeting due to be held in Northern Ireland in June. An earlier G8 summit, held in Scotland in 2005, was overshadowed by the July 7 bombings on the London transport system.
Separately on Monday, a militant nationalist group in Northern Ireland said the hotel where G8 leaders are due to meet was the intended target of a bomb intercepted by Northern Irish police and defused last weekend.
The successor will also have to grapple with cost-cutting and public complacency about the threat from militants who security officials say have hatched at least one major plot a year since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
THREATS
Evans, who joined MI5 - also known as the Security Service - in 1980 after graduating from Bristol University with a degree in classics, appeared in public only about once a year for a carefully worded speech about the threats to the realm.
At the service, Evans initially focused on the threat from Northern Irish militants in the 1980s. He was charged with directing international counter-terrorism operations just 10 days before the September 11 attacks.
He warned last year that al Qaeda militants were using the countries which toppled their leaders in the Arab Spring protests as bases to train radical Western youths for potential attacks on Britain.
British officials say one of the biggest threats is likely to come from a domestic cell of militants who have received training or support from al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia or Yemen.
"In back rooms and in cars and on the streets of this country there is no shortage of individuals talking about wanting to mount terrorist attacks here," Evans said in June. "It is essential that we maintain pressure on al Qaeda."
Evans warned against complacency, quipping that when intelligence folk smell roses they look for the funeral.
MI5 employs about 3,800 people - up from 1,800 at the time of the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York.
Given the formidable task of helping secure the 2012 Olympics, the first Games hosted by a prominent partner in the U.S.-led coalition formed after the September 11 attacks, Evans helped keep the Games safe with a light touch.
"His tireless work helped ensure the delivery of a safe and successful Olympic and Paralympic Games last year. I commend and thank him for his invaluable contribution to public safety and national security," May said.
(Additional reporting by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Pravin Char)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/britains-mi5-spy-chief-step-down-next-month-174957791.html
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NASA: Boulder-size asteroid caused East Coast meteor
The dramatic fireball that lit up skies over the U.S. East Coast Friday evening (March 22) was caused by an asteroid just 3 feet (0.9 meters) or so wide, scientists say.
Such boulder-size asteroids slam into Earth's atmosphere every two or three days, so Friday's "Manhattan meteor" ? which shone as brightly as the full moon and was apparently visible from Maine to North Carolina ? isn't a terribly rare event. But the sensation it created on Twitter and other social media outlets is understandable nonetheless, said NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke.
"When you have something like this occur at 8 o'clock at night over one of the most populated regions of the United States, it's going to get people's attention," Cooke, head of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., told reporters today (March 23).
Indeed, a similar meteor?caused a stir last month when it blazed through the skies above California's densely populated Bay Area. [5 Amazing Fireball Videos]
The Manhattan meteor entered our planet's atmosphere over eastern Pennsylvania Friday and streaked southeast from there, flaming out over the Atlantic Ocean. While space rocks of this size sometimes produce meteorites (rocks that survive to reach Earth's surface), Cooke said, it's unlikely that scientists or collectors will snag any pieces of this one.
"The eyewitness accounts indicate that this meteor was last seen about 70 kilometers [43 miles] into the Atlantic, so I do not believe there are any meteorites on land from this event," Cooke said.
Some eyewitnesses have posted videos of the meteor to YouTube, which Cooke and his colleagues have been poring over. NASA runs a network of fireball cameras, but the instruments were apparently all clouded out or too far away to observe the event, Cooke said.
Friday's meteor follows closely on the heels of several other dramatic space rock events. For example, a huge fireball detonated?without warning over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk on Feb. 15, wounding more than 1,200 people. Just hours later, a 130-foot-wide (40 m) asteroid called 2012 DA14 gave Earth an uncomfortably close shave, coming nearer than our planet's ring of geosynchronous satellites.
But people shouldn't start worrying that the sky is falling, Cooke stressed.
"If you look at the actual number of fireballs for this month so far, it's normal ? it's the same as every other year before this one," he said. "It's just that people are paying more attention and looking up, I think, because of recent events."
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter?@michaeldwall.?Follow us?@Spacedotcom,?Facebook?or?Google+. Originally published on?SPACE.com.
Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Source: http://news.yahoo.com/boulder-size-asteroid-caused-fridays-east-coast-meteor-194918370.html
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