What to watch for in this year's Super Bowl ads

Well, we know who?s playing in the Super Bowl. Now it?s time to turn our attention to an equally pressing matter ? who?s going to win the Ad Bowl? Several brands, including Chevy, Doritos and VW, have gone into launch mode two weeks prior to the kick-off.

So since the brands have fired their first salvos, it seems like the perfect time to give you a little guide on what to look for on the NFL and Madison Avenue?s biggest stage.

Celeb-a-palooza
From the A-list to the D-list, brands are lining the pockets of celebrities and tasking them with shilling for their brands. For this year?s Super Bowl look for the following peeps: Troy Aikman, David Beckham, Mark Cuban, Jillian Michaels, Motley Crue, Apolo Ohno, Danica Patrick, Pussycat Dolls, Joan Rivers, Andy Samberg, Deion Sanders, John Stamos and a whole lot more. Also look for a surprise cameo as everyone tries to come up with the ?next Betty White? as Snickers masterfully did in last year?s game.

Car wars
We?ve come a long way from a few years ago when automakers stayed on the sidelines and licked their bankrupt wounds. This year, Detroit, the Germans, the Japanese and the Koreans will duke it out for spot supremacy. Look for ads from Audi, Cadillac, Chevy, Chrysler, Honda, Hyundai, Lexus and Toyota. Plus related car services including Bridgestone tires and Cars.com.

I screen, you screen, we all screen ?
The multi-screen era of Super Bowl watching is upon us. Now between gazing at our flat screens, sipping beer and munching chips and seven-layer dip, we?ll be tweeting and texting with our smart phones and tablets. Chevy is embracing this multi-screen reality with their downloadable Game Time app. This app will ask relevant trivia questions about the game and even the commercials. It will also connect consumers to all manner of prizes from Chevy and other brand partners.

Beyond the app, the iconic American car brand has also already launched one of its crowd-sourced spots on YouTube. Other brands like Lexus and VW have launched teasers.

The Twitterverse is already all a-flutter.

Clydesdales, dogs and meerkats, oh my!
Who let the dogs out? As mentioned above, VW has already launched some canine antics with their Star Wars-themed teaser. Look for a charming bulldog for Sketchers in the big game. There might also be some horses and hamsters too if Bud and Kia stay true to their brands. I?m also predicting there will be a new iconic animal to replace the chimp as animal rights groups are really pressuring agencies to stop using apes and monkeys. I see a resurgence of the bear. And the emergence of something new like a meerkat or a lemur.

A little song, a little dance, a whole lot of seltzer down your pants
Slapstick and visual humor will rule the day. Also look for a few examples of situational comedy with dialogue as everyone is always trying to create the next ?Whassup.?

Finally look for a few musical numbers to capitalize on the country?s obsession with shows like "Dancing with the Stars," "Glee" and "X-Factor."

Above all, look for an amazing game. The New England Patriots certainly have a score to settle with the New York Giants based on the 2008 Super Bowl. And who knows, this might be one of those years where the game is actually more exciting than the commercials.

Or not.

More from Forbes.com

America?s favorite brands

10 corny but effective cable TV ads

The most disliked NFL players

The NFL?s most valuable teams

The richest sporting events in the world

? 2012 Forbes.com

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46166110/ns/business-us_business/

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Twitter?s Dick Costolo: ?We?re Growing Faster Than We Have Ever Grown Before?

Does Twitter need Google or does Google need Twitter? It's a question complicated by recent events, such as the two companies not coming to an agreement to extend their previous partnership through which Google showed Tweets in search results. That deal wasn't renewed,and then Google decided to promote its own Google+ results in search, which didn't go over well with Twitter at all. Asked about this at by Peter Kafka at the D: Dive Into Media conference this evening, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo responded:

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/xGyxuZGieNo/

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Fear-Resistance: How Worried Should We Be about "Totally Drug-Resistant" Tuberculosis?

News | Health

An Indian clinic's claim of totally untreatable TB ignited public fears, but experts say poor disease management is the real threat

By Erica Westly ?| January 30, 2012

A few weeks ago a clinic in Mumbai claimed to have identified a dozen patients with a strain of tuberculosis (TB) resistant to all known treatments. TB is a highly contagious lung infection that kills about 1.5 million people each year worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), so the development of a totally untreatable form of the disease would be cause for alarm. "It conveys that there is no hope, that not a single drug works," says Madhukar Pai, a tuberculosis researcher at McGill University in Montreal.

Fortunately, it does not appear that the Mumbai cases are completely untreatable. After evaluating the cases last week, India's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare reported that the patients actually had "extensively drug-resistant" tuberculosis, a form of the disease that is difficult to treat, but not incurable. Although three of the 12 patients have died, the other nine are reportedly being treated with antibiotics used to treat extensively drug-resistant TB, such as clofazimine and rifabutin.

Still, the case has prompted WHO to schedule a meeting in March to discuss the merits of creating a new "totally drug-resistant? category of tuberculosis. Most likely, "extensively drug-resistant," or XDR, will remain the top level of tuberculosis threat. For one thing, current laboratory tests for determining drug-resistant TB are not reliable enough to rule out all TB drugs conclusively, particularly three of the six classes of second-line drugs. "The tests aren't highly reproducible," says Peter Cegielski, head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's drug-resistant TB program. "You can even get different results from the same patient specimen."

WHO cannot designate a new disease category without clear, quantifiable diagnostic criteria. For example, XDR-TB is defined as tuberculosis that is resistant to the main first-line TB drugs?rifampin and isoniazid?and to two or more of the second-line drugs for which there are reliable susceptibility tests.

There are also new tuberculosis drugs on the horizon, including two that will likely be available to patients in the next few years, making the timing of adding a "totally drug-resistant" TB category impractical.

That doesn't mean, however, that it is impossible for an untreatable form of TB to exist. "It's reasonable to discuss it," Cegielski says. It also does not mean that public health workers can rest easy. Drug-resistant TB remains a huge problem worldwide. Not only does it take months or, in some cases, years to treat, but once drug-resistant strains develop, they can be passed from person to person.

What the recent Indian case really highlights, rather than the potential for total drug-resistance, is the need for consistent tuberculosis management worldwide, says Carole Mitnick, a public health researcher at Harvard University who specializes in the treatment of drug-resistant TB. "It reflects the lack of equal access to quality care and treatment," she says.

For example, tuberculosis medications are highly restricted in some countries, such as Brazil, but are more freely available in others. In India, where there are about two million new TB cases a year, it is possible to get some TB drugs from pharmacies without a prescription, says McGill's Pai, who is from India and has studied TB treatment there. "A lot of patients won't take the full course [of antibiotics], and then they start a new drug. That's the pattern that leads to drug resistance," he says. A study published in PLoS One last year found excessive private market sales of TB drugs in several countries, including India and Indonesia, implying misuse.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=8b0a26d74177350010623349cfb341eb

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PFT: Lions fear Best's career is over

Getty Images

For many younger football fans, the name ?Joe Namath? doesn?t conjure memories of Broadway Joe or Super Bowl III but a drunken pass at ESPN sideline reporter Suzy Kolber during a December 2003 edition of Sunday Night Football.? His ?I wanna kiss you? moment became the stuff of TV legend, even making its way into an epic auto-tune mash-up from D.J. Steve Porter, who coincidentally now crafts similar projects for the four-letter network.

In an HBO documentary on Namath?s life, which debuted at 9:00 p.m. ET on Saturday, Kolber addresses the incident for the first time.? Without saying ?don?t blame us, we didn?t know Joe was drunk,? she seems to try a little too hard to offer up not-so-subtle excuses for not knowing Joe was drunk, even though perhaps everyone involved should have known, or at least suspected, that Joe was drunk.

Especially once he started talking.

?Joe was escorted onto the field by a number of Jets personnel,? Kolber says of the subject of her eventual interview.? ?And what I recall is that he and I never really had a chance to chat, because he wouldn?t stand still.?

Kolber creates the impression that she didn?t have any opportunity to observe his behavior (Namath admits that he?d been drinking all day and night) until the interview started.? ?When we were really getting to close to when our producer wanted to have him on, I took his arm because I just didn?t want him to walk away,? Kolber says.

And even when the interview began, Kolber explains (with her trademark perky nonchalance) that no one thought anything was amiss as he gave a stumbling, incomprehensible answer to the first question:? ?What impresses you about Chad [Pennington]??

?I believe that anything anyone else has watched Chad play impresses me the same thing impresses them,? Namath said at the time, clumsily and awkwardly.

She attributed his off-kilter behavior to, yes, the weather.? ?When we first started talking and he was slow and deliberate in his speech,? Kolber says, ?what was going through my head was, ?Maybe it?s just really cold.??

But here?s the kicker from Kolber, the thing that made me think for the first time that ESPN adroitly has been able to avoid for more than eight years the question of how they put him on the air in the first place, and why they didn?t kill the interview after his initial rambling response.? ?None of the executives in the truck were alarmed either, because nobody said, ?Stop,?? Kolber says.? ?The direction in my ear was, ?Keep going.??

None of this changes the fact that Namath was at fault for drinking too much and agreeing to go on camera and then acting like a jerk by saying ?I wanna kiss you,? not once but twice.? But I?ve been involved in the TV side of this business long enough now to realize that there are (or at least should be) layers of folks who when trouble pops up can make good decisions in the blink of an eye, or even faster.? Still, until seeing Kolber?s roundabout effort to help ESPN continue to sidestep shrapnel for allowing the ?I wanna kiss you? moment to happen by not ending the interview (or by never doing it in the first place), I never made the connection.? Joe was always the bad guy, and ESPN and Kolber were always without blame of any kind.

After hearing Kolber?s explanation, I?m starting to think that maybe a few tougher questions should have been asked back in late 2003.? It?ll be interesting to see if any of those questions are asked now.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/01/28/report-many-in-lions-organization-fear-that-jahvid-bests-career-is-over/related/

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Strong quake jolts eastern Japan, no tsunami warning (Reuters)

TOKYO (Reuters) ? A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.5 jolted eastern Japan on Saturday morning, but there were no immediate reports of injury or damage and no tsunami warning was issued.

The focus of the tremor was 20 km (12 miles) below the surface of the earth, in Yamanashi prefecture, west of Tokyo, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

The quake, at 7:43 a.m., was also felt in the capital.

Earthquakes are common in Japan, one of the world's most seismically active areas. The country accounts for about 20 percent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.

On March 11, 2011, the northeast coast was struck by a magnitude 9 earthquake, the strongest quake in Japan on record, and a massive tsunami, which triggered the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years since Chernobyl. The disaster left up to 23,000 dead or missing.

(Reporting by Chris Gallagher, editing by Matthew Lewis)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120127/wl_nm/us_japan_quake

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Apple CEO responds to allegations of Chinese worker abuse (Yahoo! News)

New auditing website takes an Apple-friendly look at abuse-riddled Chinese factories

Is Apple finally getting tough on their abusive Chinese suppliers? Maybe.?Intent on stemming the increasing complaints from the public and investors alike,?Apple CEO Tim Cook fired off an email yesterday to combat claims from "people questioning Apple's values," detailing what the company is doing to find "problems" in their supply chain.

Tech giant Apple may have a?net worth greater than most first-world countries, but working conditions at their Chinese suppliers' factories are notoriously third world. Addressing this, Cook wrote an email addressed to all employees to explain what the company is doing to combat abuses.

"Earlier this month we opened our supply chain for independent evaluations by the Fair Labor Association. Apple was in a unique position to lead the industry by taking this step, and we did it without hesitation. This will lead to more frequent and more transparent reporting on our supply chain, which we welcome. These are the kinds of actions our customers expect from Apple, and we will take more of them in the future."

Apple's new website,?Supplier Responsibility, allows visitors to track the company's progress in addressing issues regarding their suppliers. There, you can learn more about Apple's requirements with regard to labor and human rights, worker health and safety, and environmental impact of the companies it contracts work out to.

Public outrage over Apple suppliers, especially notorious Chinese company?Foxconn, is nothing new. Two workers were killed in a?Foxconn iPad factory explosion in 2011, and the high rate of worker suicides has forced the contractor to install suicide-prevention netting.?The Daily Show, among others, have compared Foxconn factories to prisons.

(Source)

This article was written by Fox Van Allen and originally appeared on Tecca

More from Tecca:

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_technews/20120127/tc_yblog_technews/apple-ceo-responds-to-allegations-of-chinese-worker-abuse

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Video: Boomers Fear 'Cash Drought' in Retirement

With the prolonged environment of low interest rates, more boomers are afraid of running out of cash in retirement, reports CNBC's Sharon Epperson.

Related Links:

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Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/cnbc/46153480/

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Hope for Solo

/

By JOSEPH WHITE

updated 6:47 p.m. ET Jan. 26, 2012

VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Hope Solo stood in the net, leaned forward and grimaced. She had just dived to her right to make a save, and her injured leg was feeling the effects.

The goalkeeper for the U.S. women's soccer team was back on the practice field Thursday, one day before the game that will determine whether the Americans go to the Olympics. Whether she'll actually play was still in doubt.

"We still have quite some time to figure that out," Solo said after practice. "I have rehab scheduled right (now), another rehab session tonight, so we're just going to have to wait and see."

The U.S. plays Costa Rica on Friday to determine one of the two berths from the CONCACAF region for the London Olympics. Backup Nicole Barnhart will start if Solo can't go.

Solo pulled her right quadriceps during a workout Sunday and aggravated it during Tuesday's game against Mexico. The injury came about as part of the extra training she had been doing to get back into soccer shape after appearing on "Dancing With the Stars" after last year's World Cup.

Solo had her right thigh heavily wrapped by a trainer Rick Guter before taking the field Thursday on the artificial turf at BC Place. She worked through routine footwork, catching and stretching drills during the one-hour practice. She stopped to remove the thigh wrap about halfway through.

"I never like tape or bandages, even on my shoulder," she said. "I don't like it on my wrist. It is hard to get used to."

Solo said she wants to play against Costa Rica, but she'll understand if coach Pia Sundhage goes with Barnhart.

"Honestly, we have to do what's best for the team," Solo said. "This isn't a friendly. You get three subs, and nobody wants to waste a sub on the goalkeeper. We don't want to see me back there grimacing and holding my leg."

___

Joseph White can be reached at http://twitter.com/JGWhiteAP

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/46155707/ns/sports-olympic_sports/

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Origin of ancient jade tool baffles scientists

The discovery of a 3,300-year-old tool has led researchers to the rediscovery of a "lost" 20th-century manuscript and a "geochemically extraordinary" bit of earth.

Discovered on Emirau Island in the Bismark Archipelago (a group of islands off the coast of New Guinea), the 2-inch (5-centimeters) stone tool was probably used to carve, or gouge, wood. It seems to have fallen from a stilted house, landing in a tangle of coral reef that was eventually covered over by shifting sands.

The jade gouge may have been crafted by the Lapita people, who appeared in the western Pacific around 3,300 years ago, then spread across the Pacific to Samoa over a couple hundred years, and from there formed the ancestral population of the people we know as Polynesians, according to the researchers.

Jade gouges and axes have been found before in these areas, but what's interesting about the object is the type of jade it's made of: it seems to have come from a distant region. Perhaps these Lapita brought it from wherever they originated.

Green rocks
Jade is a general term for two types of tough rock ? those made of jadeite jade and another group of nephrite jade. The stones are both greenish in color, but nephrite jade is slightly softer, while jadeite jade is scarcer, mostly found in cultures from Central America and Mexico before Europeans arrived.

"In the Pacific, jadeite jade as ancient as this artifact is only known from Japan and its usage in Korea," study researcher George Harlow, of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said in a statement. "It's never been described in the archaeological record of New Guinea."

Researchers from American Museum of Natural History studied the artifact with X-ray micro-diffraction, which bounces a small beam of X-rays off the specimen in order to find its atomic structure, and in turn, the minerals within the rock. A rock's mineral composition varies depending on what chemicals are in the ground when it forms. The signatures are so specific researchers can sometimes pinpoint the origin of rocks.

Surveying stone
"When we first looked at this artifact, it was very clear that it didn't match much of anything that anyone knew about jadeite jade," Harlow said. The artifact's chemical composition "makes very little sense based on how we know these rocks form."

The jadeite in the rock is different from the jadeite jades found in Japan and Korea at the time. It's missing certain elements and has more-than-expected amounts of others; the stone came from another geological source, but the researchers aren't sure where. The only chemical match the researchers knew of was a site in Baja California Sur, Mexico.

The researchers don't think it's likely that Neolithic people of thousands of years ago could have transported it across the Pacific, but they couldn't find any other explanations for its composition. That is, until they came across an unpublished 20th-century German manuscript.

The manuscript's author, C.E.A. Wichmann, collected some curious rocks from Indonesia in 1903 ? about 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) from the site where the jade tool was found ? and the chemical properties he reported seem very similar to that of the artifact. Researchers are now investigating those samples to see if modern techniques can prove that the tool came from Indonesia.

The jadeite jade source, if found, would be "something geochemically extraordinary," the authors write in the paper, to be published in an upcoming issue of the European Journal of Mineralogy.

You can follow LiveScience staff writer Jennifer Welsh on Twitter @microbelover. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

? 2012 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46156141/ns/technology_and_science-science/

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Molten blobs create moon flashes

Mysterious lunar lights are the superhot remains of meteorites pelting the surface

Web edition : 4:28 pm

Meteorites colliding with the moon sometimes set off tiny lights dancing across its surface. Now scientists think they know what powers these lunar lightbulbs, in the absence of any atmosphere that would otherwise set incoming meteors ablaze: The flashes result from superhot material kicked up by the tiny objects striking the moon?s surface.

?You have just a small piece of cometary material or asteroid, about 10 centimeters, that can do a very bright flash visible from the Earth,? says study coauthor Sylvain Bouley, a planetary scientist at the Paris Observatory.

The study, which will appear in March in Icarus, settles an old debate about where the twinkling lunar lights come from. Observed for more than half a millennium, lunar impacts occur hundreds of times each year. Meteor showers, like the Leonids in November, can dump as many as 20 objects on the moon in one night.

At first, scientists didn?t think the flashes necessarily came from the moon; they might have been reflections from tumbling satellites or some other kind of phenomenon. Then, debate revolved around whether impacts or something within the moon such as volcanism produced the transient flashes. Most recently, researchers couldn?t decide between hot, charged particles or liquid droplets kicked up by impacts as the culprit.

To answer the question, Bouley and his colleagues looked at lunar flashes recorded between 1999 and 2007. They calculated the brightness of each flash, plus the probable sizes and speeds for 54 collisions. Most impactors were around 10 centimeters in size and traveled at speeds of up to 72 kilometers per second, Bouley says.

Knowing the ingredients and brightness allowed the scientists to estimate the temperature and energy produced during each collision. They found that impacts were hot enough to release a mix of gas and liquid from the destroyed impactor. Some of that liquid, called melt droplets, produces light as it cools, creating the flash.

?Something is melting, and because it?s so hot, it radiates in the visible wavelength until it cools down,? says planetary scientist Carolyn Ernst of Johns Hopkins University?s Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.

Astronomer Bill Cooke, who leads NASA?s Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., has created impact flashes in the laboratory by shooting aluminum spheres into simulated lunar dirt. The new study ?pretty much confirms what we were suspecting,? he says. ?But these guys are the first to put that suspicion into hard numbers.?

Lunar impacts have been studied closely only over the past decade, says Ernst, but they are important for several reasons. The impacts produce measurable seismic waves, allowing scientists to fine-tune their understanding of the moon?s seismic activity. Knowing how often objects hit the moon improves estimates of the ages of features on the lunar surface.

And characterizing impact hazards is useful for anyone thinking about developing a future moon base, says study coauthor and planetary scientist David Baratoux of the University of Toulouse in France. ?It will be important to know how much of this impact will form on the moon,? Baratoux says. ?How big are the projectiles, and how fast they go and so on.??

Found in: Atom & Cosmos

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/337908/title/Molten_blobs_create_moon_flashes

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Google+ now will allow alternate names

By Suzanne Choney

Google is reversing its you-must-use-your-real-name policy for Google+, saying during the next week, it will start allowing "alternate names ? be they nicknames, maiden names, or names in another script?? alongside your common name" on the social network.

"Established pseudonyms, from +trench coat to +Madonna," will also be allowed."

The search giant is in quite a push mode to up the number of users of G+. Last week it said it?will make new Google account users join Google+ and Gmail. Now, the backflip on names.

"With Google+, we aspire to make online sharing more like sharing in the real world. And during the Google+ signup process, we've asked users to select the name they commonly use in real life," writes Bradley Horowitz, vice-president Product, G+, on his G+ page. "Since launch we've listened closely to community feedback on our names policy, as well as reviewed our own data regarding signup completion. The vast majority of users sail through our signup process ? in fact, only about 0.1 percent submit name appeals."

After analyzing those appeals, 60 percent of them are from people who "want to simply add nicknames," he said. Another 20 percent are businesses that are "inadvertently trying to set up their business as a Profile, rather than using Google+ Pages which were intended for this purpose." The remaining 20 percent say they'd "either prefer to use a pseudonym or another unconventional name."

Adding an alternate name should be easy, Horowitz said: You'll go to your Google+ profile, click "Edit Profile," select your name and click on ?More options.?

It's not all a cakewalk, though: Google will be reviewing the names and "typically get back to you within a few days," he said.

"We may also ask for further information, such as proof that you control a website you reference. While a name change is under review, your old name will continue to be displayed. For new accounts without an old name, your profile will be in a non-public, read-only state during the review. Either way, you'll be able to see the status of your review by going to your profile."

To learn more, read the Google+ Names Policy.

Related stories:

Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on?Facebook,?and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

Source: http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/23/10218685-google-now-will-allow-alternate-names

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Oscar prospects span the century as noms near

FILE- In this file film publicity image released by The Weinstein Company, Jean Dujardin portrays George Valentin, left, and Berenice Bejo portrays Peppy Miller in a scene from "The Artist." (AP Photo/The Weinstein Company, FILE)

FILE- In this file film publicity image released by The Weinstein Company, Jean Dujardin portrays George Valentin, left, and Berenice Bejo portrays Peppy Miller in a scene from "The Artist." (AP Photo/The Weinstein Company, FILE)

FILE- In this file film publicity image released by Disney, Viola Davis is shown in a scene from "The Help." (AP Photo/Disney, Dale Robinette, FILE)

FILE- In this file image released by Fox Searchlight Films, George Clooney, left, and Shailene Woodley are shown in a scene from "The Descendants." (AP Photo/Fox Searchlight Films, Merie Wallace, FILE)

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) ? Prospective Academy Awards nominees have pretty much every decade of the last century covered, from the World War I epic "War Horse" through modern times with the family drama "The Descendants."

In between at Tuesday morning's nominations are such contenders as the 1920s and '30s tales "The Artist" and "Hugo," the 1950s movie-making story "My Week with Marilyn," the 1960s Deep South drama "The Help," the 1970s Cold War thriller "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" and the Margaret Thatcher chronicle "The Iron Lady," spanning decades from her youth in World War II through her 1980s and '90s career as Britain's prime minister.

The Oscar nominations will be announced by Jennifer Lawrence at a 10-minute, predawn ceremony at the headquarters of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The best-picture prize on Oscar night could become a tussle between the top films at the Golden Globes: best drama recipient "The Descendants," starring George Clooney as a Hawaii father trying to keep his family together after a boating accident puts his wife in a coma; and best musical or comedy winner "The Artist," with Jean Dujardin as a silent-movie star whose career crumbles as talking pictures take over.

Clooney and Dujardin, who won the lead-actor Globes in their respective categories, are likely best-actor nominees at the Oscars.

Another performer with strong prospects is Globe dramatic actress winner Meryl Streep as Thatcher in "The Iron Lady." Two-time Oscar winner Streep would pad her record as the most-nominated actress, raising her total to 17 nominations, five more than Katharine Hepburn and Jack Nicholson, who are tied for second-place.

Also in the running: Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer as Mississippi maids in "The Help"; Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe and Kenneth Branagh as Laurence Olivier in "My Week with Marilyn"; Leonardo DiCaprio as FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover in "J. Edgar"; Glenn Close as a woman masquerading as a male butler in "Albert Nobbs"; Brad Pitt as Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane in "Moneyball"; and Michael Fassbender as a sex addict in "Shame."

Winners of the 84th annual Oscars will be announced at a Feb. 26 ceremony aired live on ABC from Hollywood's Kodak Theatre, with Billy Crystal returning as host for the first time in eight years.

The most-beloved Oscar host of the last two decades, Crystal agreed to lead the show for the ninth time after Eddie Murphy bowed out in support of his pal, filmmaker Brett Ratner, who quit as Oscar producer amid the uproar over a gay slur he uttered in front of an audience at a screening of his and Murphy's comedy "Tower Heist."

Crystal's return could bump up the TV ratings for the show, which have been on a general decline over the last couple of decades.

What usually results in big TV ratings, though, is a blockbuster such as eventual Oscar champs "Titanic" or "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" in the thick of the best-picture contest. More fans tune in because they have a stake in the outcome.

But there are no colossal films such as that in the mix this time. "The Help" and best-picture longshot "Bridesmaids" are solid hits, both taking in about $170 million domestically, while "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is closing on the $100 million mark. So far, other best-picture prospects are well under that level, ranging from $75 million for "Moneyball" to $12 million for "The Artist."

___

David Germain reported from Park City, Utah.

___

Online:

http://www.oscars.org

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2012-01-24-Oscar%20Nominations/id-6cfe38b7ae42446da7c0ac304ba53c20

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Tears, joy as woman sets Antarctic crossing record (AP)

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina ? British adventurer Felicity Aston became the first woman to ski alone across Antarctica on Monday, hauling two sledges around crevasses and over mountains into endless headwinds, past the South Pole and onward to the coastal ice shelf, persevering for 59 days in near-total solitude.

She made it to her destination ahead of schedule, using nothing but her own strength to cover 1,084 miles (1,744 kilometers) from her starting point on the Leverett Glacier on Nov. 25 to Hercules Inlet.

The most surprising thing about her journey, she said, was how emotional it proved to be, from the moment she was dropped off alone, through every victory and defeat along the way.

"I'm not a particularly weepy person, and yet anyone who has been following my tweets can see me bursting into tears," she said in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday while waiting for a plane to pick her up.

"When I saw the coastal mountains that marked my end point for the first time, I literally just stopped in my tracks and bawled my eyes out," she added. "All these days I thought there was no chance I was going to make it in time to make that last flight off Antarctica, and yet here I am with three days to spare."

Aston also set another record: the first human to ski solo, across Antarctica, using only her own muscles. A male-female team earlier skied across Antarctica without kites or machines, but Aston is the first to do this alone.

Aston, 34, grew up in Kent, England, and studied physics and meteorology. A veteran of expeditions in subzero environments, she worked for the British weather service at a base in Antarctica and has led teams on ski trips in the Antarctic, the Arctic and Greenland.

But this was the first time she traveled so far, so alone, and she said the solitude posed her biggest challenge. In such an extreme environment, the smallest mistakes can prove treacherous. Alone with one's thoughts, the mind can play tricks. Polar adventurers usually take care to watch their teammates for signs of hypothermia, which is easier to diagnose in others than yourself, she said.

She thought she was done for when her two butane lighters failed high in the Transantarctic Mountains, where it got "really very cold."

"Suddenly I realized that without a lighter working, I can't light my stove, I can't melt snow to make water, and I won't have any water to drink, and that becomes a very serious problem," she said. "It's quite stressful. It was just a matter of every single day, looking at my kit, and thinking what could go wrong here and what can I do to prevent it?"

She did have a small box of safety matches, and counted and re-counted every one until the lighters started working again at lower altitude, she said.

This Antarctic summer has seen the centennial of Roald Amundsen's conquest of the South Pole, where Britons still lament that R.F. Scott's team arrived for England days later, demoralized to see Norway's flag. Scott and his entire team then died on their way out, and some of their bodies weren't found for eight months.

Aston had modern technology in her favor: She kept family and supporters updated and received their responses via Twitter and Facebook, and broadcast daily phone reports online. She carried two satellite phones to communicate with a support team, and a GPS device that reported her location throughout. She also had two supply drops ? one at the pole and one part way to her finish line ? so that she could travel with a lighter load. Otherwise, her feat was unassisted.

While others have traveled farther using kites, sails, machinery or dogs (now banned for fear of infecting wildlife with canine diseases), she did it on her own strength.

"She's pretty average really, stands about 5-foot-6 I suppose, with an athletic build, but nothing outstanding," said Brian Dorsett-Bailey, a trustee with the British Antarctic Monument Trust. "It's only when you talk to her that she stands out. ... Whatever she wants to do, she'll do. She's a very determined lady."

Aston, whose journey also helped raise money for monuments to the 29 Britons killed on Antarctica since Scott, had to fight near-constant headwinds across the vast central plateau to the pole. Then she turned toward Hercules Inlet, pushing through thick, fresh snow, until she reached her goal on the Ronne Ice Shelf, a spot within a small plane's reach of a base camp on Union Glacier where the Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions company provides logistical support to each summer's expeditions.

With skies clearing Monday, Aston tweeted that she's been promised red wine and a hot shower after she gets picked up. "A very long, very hot shower," she emphasized. "It's something I haven't had in quite a long time now!"

From there, she'll join dozens of other Antarctic adventurers on the last flight out, a huge Russian cargo plane that will take her to Chile. Then she will fly home next week to Kent, in southeast England.

There, after two months of little but freeze-dried food, she can look forward to chicken pie, her mother said.

"I think there will be lots of cuddles, lots of hugs, it will be quite emotional," said Jackie Aston, 61.

Felicity Aston, pondering her last hours of solitude Monday, told the AP she felt both joy and overwhelming sadness at finishing.

"I'm still reeling from the shock of it that I've made it this far. I honestly didn't think I'd be getting here," she said.

What remains, she hopes, will be a message about perseverance.

"If you can just find a way to keep going, either metaphorically or literally, whether you're running a marathon or facing financial problems or have bad news to deliver or it's tough at work or whatever, if you can just find a way to keep going, then you will discover that you have potential within yourself that you never never realized," she said.

"Keeping going is the important thing, persevering, no matter how messy that gets. I mean, for me, sometimes I'll be sitting in my tent in the morning bawling my eyes out, having tantrums. It's not been pretty. But I've kept going, and that is the important thing because at some point in the future you'll look back and just be amazed at how far you've come."

___

Associated Press writers Ed Donahue in Washington, D.C., and Meera Selva in London contributed to this report.

___

Online:

Aston's expedition site: http://www.kasperskyonetransantarcticexpedition.com

Aston on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/felicity(underscore)aston

Aston on ipadio: http://www.ipadio.com/broadcasts/TransantarcticExpedition/2012/1/22/Transantarctic-Expedition--63rd-phonecast

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/britain/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120123/ap_on_re_au_an/aa_antarctica_solo_crossing

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Scientists produce world's first magnetic soap

ScienceDaily (Jan. 23, 2012) ? Scientists from Bristol University have developed a soap, composed of iron rich salts dissolved in water, that responds to a magnetic field when placed in solution. The soap?s magnetic properties were shown with neutrons at the Institut Laue-Langevin to result from tiny iron-rich clumps that sit within the watery solution. The generation of this property in a fully functional soap could calm concerns over the use of soaps in oil-spill clean ups and revolutionise industrial cleaning products.

Scientists have long been searching for a way to control soaps (or surfactants as they are known in industry) once they are in solution to increase their ability to dissolve oils in water and then remove them from a system. The team at Bristol University have previously worked on soaps sensitive to light, carbon dioxide or changes in pH, temperature or pressure. Their latest breakthrough, reported in Angewandte Chemie, is the world?s first soap sensitive to a magnetic field.

Ionic liquid surfactants, composed mostly of water with some transition metal complexes (heavy metals like iron bound to halides such as bromine or chlorine) have been suggested as potentially controllable by magnets for some time, but it had always been assumed that their metallic centres were too isolated within the solution, preventing the long-range interactions required to be magnetically active.

The team at Bristol, lead by Professor Julian Eastoe produced their magnetic soap by dissolving iron in a range of inert surfactant materials composed of chloride and bromide ions, very similar to those found in everyday mouthwash or fabric conditioner. The addition of the iron creates metallic centres within the soap particles.

To test its properties, the team introduced a magnet to a test tube containing their new soap lying beneath a less dense organic solution. When the magnet was introduced the iron-rich soap overcame both gravity and surface tension between the water and oil, to levitate through the organic solvent and reach the source of the magnetic energy, proving its magnetic properties.

Once the surfactant was developed and shown to be magnetic, Prof Eastoe?s team took it to the Institut Laue-Langevin, the world?s flagship centre for neutron science, and home to the world?s most intense neutron source, to investigate the science behind its remarkable property.

When surfactants are added to water they are known to form tiny clumps (particles called micelles). Scientists at ILL used a technique called ?small angle neutron scattering (SANS)? to confirm that it was this clumping of the iron-rich surfactant that brought about its magnetic properties.

Dr Isabelle Grillo, responsible of the Chemistry Laboratories at ILL: ?The particles of surfactant in solution are small and thus difficult to see using light but are easily revealed by SANS which we use to investigate the structure and behaviour of all types of materials with typical sizes ranging from the nanometer to the tenth of micrometer.?

The potential applications of magnetic surfactants are huge. Their responsiveness to external stimuli allows a range of properties, such as their electrical conductivity, melting point, the size and shape of aggregates and how readily its dissolves in water to be altered by a simple magnetic on and off switch. Traditionally these factors, which are key to the effective application of soaps in a variety of industrial settings, could only be controlled by adding an electric charge or changing the pH, temperature or pressure of the system, all changes that irreversibly alter the system composition and cost money to remediate.

Its magnetic properties also makes it easier to round up and remove from a system once it has been added, suggesting further applications in environmental clean ups and water treatment. Scientific experiments which require precise control of liquid droplets could also be made easier with the addition of this surfactant and a magnetic field.

Professor Julian Eastoe, University of Bristol: ?As most magnets are metals, from a purely scientific point of view these ionic liquid surfactants are highly unusual, making them a particularly interesting discovery. From a commercial point of view, though these exact liquids aren?t yet ready to appear in any household product, by proving that magnetic soaps can be developed, future work can reproduce the same phenomenon in more commercially viable liquids for a range of applications from water treatment to industrial cleaning products.?

Peter Dowding an industrial chemist, not involved in the research: ?Any systems which act only when responding to an outside stimulus that has no effect on its composition is a major breakthrough as you can create products which only work when they are needed to. Also the ability to remove the surfactant after it has been added widens the potential applications to environmentally sensitive areas like oil spill clean ups where in the past concerns have been raised.?

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), via AlphaGalileo.

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

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Journal Reference:

1. Paul Brown, Alexey Bushmelev, Craig P. Butts, Jing Cheng, Julian Eastoe, Isabelle Grillo, Richard K. Heenan, Annette M. Schmidt. Magnetic Control over Liquid Surface Properties with Responsive Surfactants. Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 2012; DOI: 10.1002/anie.201108010

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

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

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/uAy8Guff0NY/120123174840.htm

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Rep. Giffords to resign and focus on recovery, setting up wide-open race for Ariz. seat (Star Tribune)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories Stories, News Feeds and News via Feedzilla.

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NW storm cuts power, thousands try to stay warm

A U.S. flag is shown encrusted with ice, Friday, Jan. 20, 2012, near Lacey, Wash. Heavy layers of ice brought down trees and power lines across the Northwest Friday, following two days of snow and ice storms. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

A U.S. flag is shown encrusted with ice, Friday, Jan. 20, 2012, near Lacey, Wash. Heavy layers of ice brought down trees and power lines across the Northwest Friday, following two days of snow and ice storms. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

A tree branch that feel as a result of a heavy coating of ice is shown resting on a house, Friday, Jan. 20, 2012, near Lakewood, Wash. Heavy layers of ice brought down trees and power lines across the Northwest Friday, following two days of snow and ice storms. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

A deep snow pile made things a bit challenging for an Intercity Transit rider while boarding the bus on Friday, Jan. 20,2012 in Olympia, Wash. Thick ice brought down trees and power lines in the region overnight, following two days of snow and ice storms. A powerful Pacific Northwest storm knocked out power to about 250,000 electric customers around Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia after it coated much of Washington in ice and swelled Oregon rivers, killing a child and two adults. Besides the outages, the big concern now is more flooding in both states with warmer temperatures and rain. (AP Photo/The Olympian, Steve Bloom)

A truck drives past downed trees and low-hanging power lines, Friday, Jan. 20, 2012, near Lacey, Wash. Heavy layers of ice brought down trees and power lines across the Northwest Friday, following two days of snow and ice storms. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Vehicles drive past downed trees and low-hanging power lines, Friday, Jan. 20, 2012, near Lakewood, Wash. Heavy layers of ice brought down trees and power lines across the Northwest Friday, following two days of snow and ice storms. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

SEATTLE (AP) ? Tens of thousands of Pacific Northwest residents faced the prospect of a chilly weekend after a powerful storm brought snow and ice and left a tangle of fallen trees and damaged power lines. Several Oregon counties saw their worst flooding in more than a decade.

The National Weather Service forecast more rain and winds gusting as high as 40 mph Saturday in Western Washington, a combination that could bring down even more snow-laden and ice-damaged trees.

Nearly 230,000 customers were without power late Friday night in Western Washington, about 220,000 of them Puget Sound Energy customers.

The utility has brought in repair crews from across the West and planned to field more than 800 linemen on Saturday, in addition to tree-trimming crews, spokesman Roger Thompson said.

"The wind is a wild card that could set us back," he said, adding PSE hoped to have the majority of the outages restored by Sunday, although some customers will probably be without power into early next week.

The Weather Service predicted weekend lows in the mid-30s.

Several warming shelters have been opened in the area to aid people whose homes are without heat.

Despite warnings from emergency officials, the first cases of possible carbon monoxide poisoning surfaced Friday night. Two families in the Seattle suburb of Kent were taken to hospitals after suffering separate cases of possible poisoning. Both had been using charcoal barbecues indoors for heat.

The storm was already blamed for three deaths. A mother and her 1-year-old son died after torrential rain on Wednesday swept away a car from an Albany, Ore., grocery store parking lot. An elderly man was fatally injured Thursday by a falling tree as he was backing an all-terrain vehicle out of a backyard shed near Seattle.

On Washington's Mount Rainier, a blizzard kept rescuers from searching Friday for two campers and two climbers missing since early this week. Just east of that region, about 200 skiers and workers were able to leave the Crystal Mountain ski resort after transportation officials reopened the area's main highway, closed two days earlier by fallen trees.

Near Tacoma, three people escaped unharmed Friday when a heavy snow and ice load on the roof of an Allied Ice plant caused the building to collapse. West Pierce Fire and Rescue Battalion Chief Hallie McCurdy said they heard loud noises and got out just in time.

As floodwaters receded, residents of Oregon's Willamette Valley began taking stock of damage in soaked cities.

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber paid a visit Friday to the hard-hit town of Turner, where 100 homes were damaged or still underwater.

Friday's mainly dry streets belied a morning of terror barely 24 hours earlier, when emergency crews conducted 55 boat rescues as water filled streets, homes and businesses.

"You just watch the water rise hour by hour, and there's nothing you can do about it," Mayor Paul Thomas said. "It's a long, slower sort of torture."

Kitzhaber said the state would work with local and federal officials to try and get disaster funding to Turner and other communities hard-hit by flooding.

The governor praised residents' strong sense of community as neighbors helped each other.

Nancy Ko saw that spirit first-hand. From the safety of higher ground, she watched a live feed from a security camera as water rose over the curb and lapped against the front door of the convenience store and cafe she owns just feet from Mill Creek.

Out of the blue, five strangers showed up and plopped sandbags in front of the door, preventing damage that she believes would have otherwise been far more severe.

"Just a godsend," said Ko, a Korean immigrant who has owned the store for six years. "Good person, amazing persons."

Elsewhere in the Willamette Valley, a 35-year-old woman who drove a Ford Mustang into 4 feet of floodwater was plucked from the roof Friday by deputies who arrived by boat to save her. It was one of a number of dramatic rescues in western Oregon, left sodden by as much as 10 inches of rain in a day and a half that has brought region's worst flooding in 15 years.

Interstate 5, the main road connecting Seattle and Portland, was briefly closed near Centralia so crews could remove fallen power lines.

Much of Washington's capital, Olympia, was without power.

Gov. Chris Gregoire's office, legislative buildings and other state agencies in Olympia lost electricity for several hours before power was restored. The governor thanked repair crews late Friday by hand-delivering peanut butter cookies.

The storm was "a constant reminder of who's in charge. Mother Nature is in charge, she gives us a wake-up call every once in a while, this is one of those," Gregoire said.

It was still snowing in the Cascades, with up to 2 feet possible in the mountains over the weekend.

At Sea-Tac Airport in Seattle, airlines were trying to accommodate passengers whose flights were canceled Thursday. The airport's largest carrier, Alaska Airlines, canceled 50 of its 120 daily departures Friday. On Thursday, Alaska and sister airline Horizon canceled 310 flights to and from Seattle, affecting 29,000 passengers.

In Seattle, Carly Nelson was negotiating an icy sidewalk on her way to Starbucks. Nelson has been frequenting her neighborhood coffee shop to avoid cabin fever.

"I'm pretty tired of it. It gets old pretty fast. All my friends are stranded in little pockets and you can't get together to go to yoga," she said. "I'm just looking forward to being able to go wherever I want to go."

___

Cooper reported from Oregon. Associated Press writers Doug Esser, Ted Warren, Rachel La Corte, Nigel Duara and Nicholas K. Geranios contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-01-21-Northwest%20Storm/id-6e081f52ffb44728ad794493051a9717

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Explosions rock Nigeria's Kano, at least six killed (Reuters)

KANO, Nigeria (Reuters) ? At least six people were killed in a string of bomb blasts on Friday in Nigeria's second city Kano and the authorities imposed a curfew across the city, which has been plagued by an insurgency led by the Islamist sect Boko Haram.

Smoke billowed from the police headquarters for the north in Kano after one blast blew out its windows, collapsed its roof and triggered a blaze that firefighters struggled to control.

A Reuters reporter counted three bodies at the scene and three more at the local passport office, which was surrounded by flaming debris.

Some residents ran around shouting and screaming following the attacks. There were at least four other explosions across the city in quick succession.

"I was on the roadside and I just heard a 'Boom!'. As I came back, I saw the building of the police zonal headquarters crashing down and I ran for my life," said local man Andrew Samuel.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the apparently coordinated attacks, which prompted the government to announce a dusk-to-dawn curfew.

Kano, like other northern cities in Nigeria, has been plagued by an insurgency led by Islamist sect Boko Haram, blamed for scores of bombings and shootings against mostly government targets that are growing in scale and sophistication.

Boko Haram became active around 2003 and is concentrated in the northern states of Yobe, Kano, Bauchi, Borno and Kaduna.

Boko Haram, which in the Hausa language of northern Nigeria means "Western education is sinful," is loosely modeled on the Taliban movement in Afghanistan.

The group considers all who do not follow its strict ideology as infidels, whether they be Christian or Muslim. It demands the adoption of sharia, Islamic law, in all of Nigeria.

FLAMES AND SMOKE

Witnesses said the bomber of the police headquarters, which covers most of northern Nigeria, pulled up at the building on a motorbike then got off and ran at it holding a bag.

"We tried to stop him but he ran in forcefully with his bag. All of a sudden there was a blast. You can see for yourself the building is damaged," said a policeman at the scene.

Police said a second blast had hit Kano's passport office and another hit Zaria Road police station in the city.

"The ground was shaking with the explosion. We saw flames and smoke at the police station," said witness Umaru Ibrahim.

A source at the State Security Service said another bomber had tried to attack there but was gunned down before he could detonate his bomb.

Police and military roadblocks were erected in the city within minutes.

"We are trying to reach the scenes of these heavy blasts. Many of the roads are blocked now by security agents," said Abubaker Jibril, head of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) for Kano, told Reuters.

A bomb attack on a Catholic church just outside the capital Abuja on Christmas Day, claimed by Boko Haram, killed 37 people and wounded 57.

The main suspect in that attack escaped from police custody within 24 hours of his arrest, and police have offered a 50 million naira ($309,600) reward for information leading to his recapture.

Police arrested Kabiru Sokoto on Tuesday and while they were taking him from police headquarters to his house in Abaji, just outside Abuja, to conduct a search there, their vehicle came under fire.

Last August a suicide bomber blew up the U.N. Nigeria headquarters in Abuja, killing at least 24 people.

(Additional reporting by Tim Cocks in Lagos; writing by Tim Cocks and James Jukwey; Editing by Jon Boyle)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120120/wl_nm/us_nigeria_blast

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Hurry: HTC EVO View 4G still on sale at 1SaleADay for only $229

Who wouldn't want to save $510 on a HTC EVO View 4G Android tablet? That's what I thought, just about everyone loves to save money and 1SaleADay has it priced out at $229 for today only. You got a few hours more to save nearly 70 percent on this tablet, which runs Android 2.3 which isn't ideal but hey you can always root it! The 7-inch form factor is a great on the go size, the 1.5GHz processor brings some nice speed to it, and it has 32GB of on board storage. Lots of positives to be seen here, so hit the link below to grab one for yourself.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/kfsVjC38FjE/story01.htm

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Leap Second Granted Extra Time

Image: Tom Grill/Getty

From Nature magazine

Clocks around the world are routinely adjusted to keep them ticking in synchrony with the rising and setting of the Sun ? but is that effort just a waste of time? That was the issue under debate this week by the World Radiocommunication Assembly of the International Telecommunication Union in Geneva, Switzerland.

Delegates from about 150 countries discussed whether to stop adding a second ? called a leap second ? to calendars every year or so, a practice that keeps atomic clocks in step with Earth's rotation and the position of the Sun in the sky. But participants reached a state of confusion, rather than consensus, so the decision about the leap-second's fate has been deferred to 2015.

Since 1972, international time zones have been defined against Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which is based on signals averaged from around 400 atomic clocks. Leap seconds are added in at a rate of about one minute every 60-90 years. But nations disagree about whether the second is actually needed

Opening Thursday's debate was the US delegate, Paul Najarian, Director of Telecommunications and Standards at the United Nations' International Telecommunication Union (America). Najarian pointed out some of the technical headaches that leap seconds cause: they cannot be preprogrammed into software, for example, because they are typically announced only six months in advance by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service in Frankfurt, Germany. Introducing them manually raises the risk of inconsistencies between computer systems, which can cause them to crash. To avoid the safety hazards associated with losing crucial time-keeping signals, most satellite navigation systems already maintain their own internal clocks, and they don't use the leap second.

But the British delegation leapt to the leap-second's defence. "The United Kingdom is strongly opposed to coming up with a new conception of time, without good reason," says Peter Whibberley, a physicist at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington.

Both sides had a handful of backers from other nations, but many of the delegates ? a mixture of government represenatives and technical experts ? were simply not prepared for the proposal, and said they needed more information before deciding.

This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on January 20, 2012.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=09f36fdc9b8a48667bebd145765b93ea

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Tupac Created 'Juice' Character From Life Experience

'Bishop didn't make Tupac; Tupac made Bishop,' Treach tells 'RapFix Live' 20 years after film's release.
By Rob Markman, with additional reporting credit by Sway Calloway

"Juice"
Photo: Paramount

When "Juice" was released 20 years ago on January 17, 1992, the performance of noted rapper but first-time actor Tupac Shakur took critics by surprise. The socially aware, politically driven MC lit up the screen as fiery, gun-crazed thug Bishop. It was a departure from the rapper hip-hop had come to know through more positive songs like "Brenda's Got a Baby."

A year after "Juice" premiered, 'Pac went on to release his second album, Strictly 4 My N.-.-.-.A.Z., before experiencing legal trouble, then a serious rap beef with the Notorious B.I.G. a few years after that and, of course, his murder in 1996. Some believe that after "Juice," Tupac took on the persona of the fictional and troublesome Bishop, and as a result, his life experienced a downward spiral.

Not the case, said 'Pac's friend, "Juice" co-star and Naughty by Nature rapper Treach. "I would definitely disagree with it," Treach said without reservation when he appeared on Wednesday's (January 18) episode of "RapFix Live." "Bishop didn't make Tupac; Tupac made Bishop."

Treach — who appeared in the film and, along with Naughty by Nature, contributed the '90s rap hit "Uptown Anthem" to the movie's soundtrack — revealed that he originally read for the role of Bishop. Things didn't go so well, however, and when Shakur auditioned immediately after him, Treach knew his buddy would get the film's starring role.

Tupac's mother and father were both members of the Black Panther Party, and Treach believes that 'Pac's exposure to the progressive and militant movement helped prep him for the role."He grew up a soldier; he grew up learning different lessons on the streets that not even I had known about," he said.

"He knew different stuff from different facets of life," Treach added. "That's what made him be able to get into that character like that and make that character seem so real, because he had his own life experiences that made him phenomenal at bringing that out through the music and through the film."

What do you think of 'Pac's performance in "Juice"? Let us know in the comments.

Check out everything we've got on "Juice."

For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

Related Videos

• 'RapFix Live' Celebrates 20 Years Of 'Juice' With Treach

Related Artists

• Tupac
• Naughty By Nature

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1677509/rapfix-live-tupac-juice-naughty-by-nature-treach.jhtml

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Slow response to East Africa hunger 'cost lives'

(AP)? NAIROBI, Kenya ? Aid agencies say thousands of Africans died needlessly and millions of dollars were wasted because the international community did not respond to early warnings of an impending food crisis in East Africa.

A report released Wednesday by Oxfam and Save the Children says that rich donor nations waited until the crisis was in full swing before donating money. A food shortage was predicted as early as August 2010, but most donors did not respond until famine was declared in parts of Somalia in July 2011.

The report says the delays caused increased costs for aid agencies and thousands of deaths.

The British government estimates that between 50,000 and 100,000 people have died from the famine, mostly in Somalia.

Source: http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~r/CBSNewsGamecore/~3/fUxuQA3vsDY/

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House rejects debt limit hike in protest vote (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? The House of Representatives rejected a $1.2 trillion increase in the federal debt limit on Wednesday in a largely symbolic vote that allowed Republicans to stake out election-year positions to bash President Barack Obama's spending record.

The Republican-controlled House voted 239 to 176 along party lines in favor of a "resolution of disapproval" against the increase sought by Obama, a Democrat, but the winning tally fell far short of the two-thirds majority needed to override a presidential veto.

The Republican effort to deny the debt limit hike - seen by Democrats as political posturing - is expected to die in the Senate, which reconvenes in Washington next week. But should it pass, Obama is poised to veto it.

The vote was also largely an academic exercise, for Congress gave Obama the authority to increase the debt limit last August as part of a deal to end a rancorous budget battle that brought the United States to the brink of default and cost it its coveted top-tier credit rating from Standard & Poor's.

Republican lawmakers used Wednesday's vote to go on record as opposing more spending increases and to cast Obama as the architect of a massive spending binge. Exploiting voter worries over the ballooning federal debt, now over $15 trillion, is a central theme of Republicans' election campaign strategy.

SPENDING MORAL HIGH GROUND

During several hours of debate, a procession of Republican lawmakers railed against spending they said was ruining the U.S. economy.

"This president, I believe thinks that government has the answers and he wants to give the bureaucrats a blank check to move forward and spend this country into oblivion," said Ann Marie Buerkle, a freshman Republican from upstate New York.

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul even left a contentious primary race in South Carolina to come back to Washington to vote against the higher borrowing cap.

"We ought to face up to the reality and live within our limits," Paul, a Texas congressman, said on the House floor.

Democrats countered that Republicans were mounting a political "charade" that could again put investors' faith in U.S. Treasury debt at risk.

"If the Unites States of America were to renege on the full faith and credit of its obligations, it would be a disaster on the international economy, but that is the course of action being advocated by our Republican colleagues today," said Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee.

Other Democrats pointed out that 174 Republicans voted in favor of the budget deal last year that authorized $2.1 trillion in new borrowing capacity in three stages. Yet there were 233 Republican votes against the final $1.2 trillion portion of this and only one in favor of it.

The increase would push the U.S. debt ceiling to $16.394 trillion. The U.S. Treasury essentially reached the prior limit at the end of December, but has been using special accounting maneuvers to delay the increase to allow for the vote.

In each of Obama's three years in office, the government has run up record deficits in the $1.3 trillion-plus range.

The White House argues that Obama inherited a deficit on track to exceed $1 trillion, and was forced to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to stimulate the economy to prevent the worst recession since the 1930s from becoming another Great Depression.

Obama is expected next month to try to use his 2013 budget plan to turn the tables on Republicans and cast himself as working against an obstructionist Congress to tackle deficits by reviving his proposals to slash deficits by $4 trillion.

Those plans, which were stopped in their tracks when deficit reduction talks collapsed last year, relied partly on tax hikes for the wealthy, an idea that Republicans have staunchly opposed.

(Reporting By David Lawder; Editing by Sandra Maler and Philip Barbara)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/uscongress/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120119/pl_nm/us_usa_debt_vote

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