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Sunday, June 30, 2013
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Unemployment benefits: Which states are in the best shape?
Unemployment benefits: Nationwide, fewer Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week than the week before, a sign of a strengthening job market. Here's the state-by-state breakdown.
Jack Johnson, a state senator from Franklin, Tenn., speaks on the Senate floor in Nashville, Tenn., on April 1. Johnson was a main sponsor of a bill to do away with a weekly $15-per-child allowance as part of unemployment benefits. Tennessee's unemployment numbers are down.
Erik Schelzig/AP/File
EnlargeThe number of Americans seeking?unemployment?benefits?fell 9,000 to a seasonally adjusted 346,000 last week, evidence that the job market is still improving modestly.
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Here are the states with the biggest increases or decreases in applications for unemployment benefits, and some reasons for the changes. The state figures are for the week ended June 15, one week behind the national data.
States with the biggest decreases in new applications for unemployment benefits:
Illinois: Down 3,401, due to fewer layoffs in construction, manufacturing, and administrative support
New York: Down 2,090, due to fewer layoffs in construction, hotels and food service, and finance
Georgia: Down 1,893, due to fewer layoffs in manufacturing, administrative support, health care, and hotels and restaurants
Missouri: Down 1,591, due to fewer layoffs in transportation and warehousing, construction, hotels and restaurants, and health care
Tennessee: Down 1,542, no reason given
Oregon: Down 1,488, no reason given
States with the biggest increases:
California: Up 15,341, due to layoffs in services
Pennsylvania: Up 4,882, due to layoffs in transportation, hotels and restaurants, construction, and education
Florida: Up 4,850, due to layoffs in agriculture, construction, manufacturing, and retail
Michigan: Up 1,114, no reason given
Maryland: Up 1,065, no reason given
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Stress: It should never be ignored, experts say
June 27, 2013 ? Work pressure, tension at home, financial difficulties ? the list of causes of stress grows longer every day. There have been several studies in the past showing that stress can have negative effects on health (cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, high blood pressure and more). The Inserm researchers at unit 1018, "The Epidemiology and Public Health Research Centre," working in collaboration with researchers from England and Finland have demonstrated that it is essential to be vigilant about this and to take it very seriously when people say that they are stressed, particularly if they believe that stress is affecting their health. According to the study performed by these researchers, with 7268 participants, such people have twice as much risk of a heart attack, compared with others.
These results have been published in European Heart Journal.
Today, stress is recognized as one of the main health problems. When people face a situation that is considered stressful, they may experience several physical, emotional and behavioural symptoms (anxiety, difficulty in concentrating, skin problems, migraines, etc.). Previous studies, particularly the recent studies performed within the Whitehall II cohort[1], composed of several thousand British civil servants, have already shown that the physiological changes associated with stress can have an adverse effect on health.
Herman Nabi, Inserm researcher at Unit 1018 "The Epidemiology and Public Health Research Centre," and his team went further and studied people who declared themselves to be stressed, in order to look more closely at whether there was a link between their feeling and the occurrence of coronary disease some years later.
Using a questionnaire prepared for the Whitehall II cohort, the participants were invited to answer the following question: "to what extent do you consider the stress or pressure that you have experienced in your life has an effect on your health," the participants had the following answers to choose from: "not at all," "a little," "moderately," "a lot" or "extremely."
The participants were also asked about their stress level, as well as about other factors that might affect their health, such as smoking, alcohol consumption, diet and levels of physical activity. Arterial pressure, diabetes, body mass index and socio-demographic data such as marital status, age, sex, ethnicity and socio-economic status were also taken into account.
According to the results, the participants who reported, at the start of the study, that their health was "a lot" or "extremely" affected by stress had more than twice the risk (2.12 times higher) of having or dying from a heart attack, compared with those who had not indicated any effect of stress on their health.
From a clinical point of view, these results suggest that the patient's perception of the impact of stress on their health may be highly accurate, to the extent that it can predict a health event as serious and common as coronary disease.
In addition, this study also shows that this link is not affected by differences between individuals related to biological, behavioural or psychological factors. However, capacities for dealing with stress do differ massively between individuals depending on the resources available to them, such as support from close friends and family.
According to Hermann Nabi, "the main message is that complaints from patients concerning the effect of stress on their health should not be ignored in a clinical environment, because they may indicate an increased risk of developing and dying of coronary disease. Future studies of stress should include perceptions of patients concerning the effect of stress on their health."
In the future, as Hermann Nabi emphasizes, "tests will be needed to determine whether the risk of disease can be reduced by increasing the clinical attention given to patients who complain of stress having an effect on their health."
[1] Created in 1985, the Whitehall II cohort, consisting of British civil servants, is making a major contribution to research in social epidemiology and is considered internationally to be one of the main sources of scientific knowledge concerning social determinant factors for health.
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Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Clashes erupt in Tripoli, bomb kills Libya army officer | Morocco ...
TRIPOLI, June 26, 2013 (AFP)
Fighting erupted in Tripoli on Wednesday when gunmen tried to free comrades seized by ex-rebels, and an army officer was assassinated in Benghazi, highlighting Libya?s continuing insecurity nearly two years after dictator Moamer Kadhafi fell.
The clashes broke out in the Abu Slim area near the centre of the capital, a security official said, and gunfire from heavy weapons could be heard in several areas of the city.
Plumes of smoke could be seen rising into the sky above Abu Slim, an AFP journalist at the scene said.
?It?s a war here,? Meftah, a resident of the area, told AFP.
Rebels from Zintan first entered Tripoli in August 2011, when they helped to drive forces loyal to Kadhafi out of the capital during the uprising against his rule.
Since then, some of these groups have stayed in the capital, occupying former military bases and other state institutions.
On Tuesday, a group of gunmen from Zintan attacked the headquarters of the petrol installations guard, for reasons that are still unclear, before other ex-rebels intervened with force to stop them.
Members of the country?s highest political authority, the General National Congress, said in a statement on Wednesday that clashes the night before in the Tripoli suburb of Salaheddin had killed five people.
Meanwhile, in the restive eastern city of Benghazi, an army officer died after a bomb placed in his official vehicle exploded, medical and security sources said.
The bombing took place a day after unknown gunmen killed six soldiers at a checkpoint south of Sirte, Kadhafi?s hometown.
Lieutenant Colonel Jemaa al-Misrati was ?gravely wounded and died of his injuries in the operating room,? an official at Benghazi?s Al-Jala hospital said.
Witnesses said the bomb exploded shortly after Misrati left home, with a security official saying the vehicle had been ?booby trapped?.
Eastern Libya, where the 2011 uprising began, has seen attacks against the authorities and Western interests, which have been blamed on Islamists.
Among them was an assault on the US consulate in Benghazi on September 11 last year in which ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed.
On Tuesday, a top African Union counter-terrorism official warned that post-Kadhafi Libya had become a major transit hub for terrorists on the sidelines of a regional security conference in neighbouring Algeria.
?I have many reports which say Libya has become a major transit hub for the main terrorist groups travelling from one country to another,? said Francisco Caetano Jose Madeira, the AU?s special representative in charge of counter-terrorism.
The GNC also elected independent MP Nouri Bousahmein, a member of Libya?s Berber minority, as its head, making him the country?s interim leader.
Libya?s new authorities are battling to establish military and security institutions capable of restoring law and order and state authority in the face of armed militias who fought Kadhafi?s forces.
Since the fall of Kadhafi?s regime, militia groups, mostly ex-rebels, have managed border controls, prisons, strategic facilities in the country and vital institutions.
They received salaries and other perks from the authorities, and benefitted from smuggling and extortion.
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Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Take A Trip Down Memory Lane With This Look Back At The Three Flavour Cornetto Trilogy
"The World's End" will bring the trilogy that was never supposed to be one, Edgar Wright's "Three Flavour Cornetto Trilogy," to a close. Take a look back with the featurette down below! Also, "Cinderella" gets a release date in today's Dailies! » A look back at Edgar Wright's "Three Flavour Cornetto Trilogy" [IGN] » Hilarious [...]
Source: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2013/06/24/three-flavour-cornetto-trilogy-trilogy/
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Monday, June 24, 2013
Tick-caused bobcat fever can be deadly to domestic cats
June 24, 2013 ? Kansas State University veterinarians are warning pet owners to watch out for ticks carrying a disease that could kill cats.
Cytauxzoon felis, also known as bobcat fever, is a blood parasite that infects domestic cats and has a very high death rate. Susan Nelson, a veterinarian and clinical associate professor at Kansas State University's Veterinary Health Center, says this disease was thought to be carried only by the American dog tick, but now may be carried by the lone star tick, which is quite prevalent in northeast Kansas.
"Most people have probably seen a lone star tick even if they're not familiar with them by name," Nelson said. "They're the ones that have a bright white spot on their back."
Bobcat fever does not affect humans or dogs. It is called bobcat fever because bobcats are considered the main reservoir for the disease, as it is typically not fatal for them.
Most cases of bobcat fever occur from March through September, which coincides with the times cats are most likely to encounter ticks. Late spring and early summer are the peak times for ticks in Kansas.
Nelson says cats that live outside the city boundaries are at a higher risk of getting bobcat fever because they are more likely to encounter ticks in a rural environment; however, that doesn't necessarily mean that your city-living kitty can't get the disease. If your cat has contracted the disease, it can be anywhere from five to 20 days before symptoms appear.
"First, you're probably going to notice they're going to be really lethargic and tired," Nelson said. "Their appetite is going to decrease. They may feel very hot to you as they will tend to run a high fever early in the course of the disease. As the disease progresses, you might see breathing problems, dehydration and the whites of their eyes or the inside of their ears might start looking yellow as they start getting jaundiced. Their body temperature will start to drop as they near the end stages of the disease."
A cat may be infected even if you don't see a tick on the animal, because the tick may have already fed and dropped off the cat before the animal starts showing symptoms of the disease.
No vaccine is available for this disease. Treatment can be expensive and often unsuccessful, so it is important to take precautionary steps to keep your cat from being bitten. Nelson says the best thing to do is to keep your cat indoors. If you can't do that, then keep your yard well maintained -- it's a myth that ticks from fall from trees.
"If your cat likes to stay in the yard, try to keep your grass mowed down so it's not tall," she said. "The ticks tend to like the taller grasses. Keep the shrubbery trimmed short and remove debris around your house. Do daily tick checks on the cats and remember to look between their toes. If your cat lives with a dog, make sure you are using some type of tick control on the dog as it can bring ticks into your house, which can then feed on your cat."
Nelson also suggests talking to your veterinarian about types of tick control medications to determine which is best for your pet.
Tick expert Michael Dryden, university distinguished professor of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology at Kansas State University, tracks the lone star tick and says they are mainly found in eastern Kansas and in the Southeastern states. So far, he has not found any lone star ticks west of Clay Center, Kan., but he expects its territory will expand.
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Saturday, June 22, 2013
Graphene-based system could lead to improved information processing
June 21, 2013 ? Researchers at MIT have proposed a new system that combines ferroelectric materials -- the kind often used for data storage -- with graphene, a two-dimensional form of carbon known for its exceptional electronic and mechanical properties. The resulting hybrid technology could eventually lead to computer and data-storage chips that pack more components in a given area and are faster and less power-hungry.
The new system works by controlling waves called surface plasmons. These waves are oscillations of electrons confined at interfaces between materials; in the new system the waves operate at terahertz frequencies. Such frequencies lie between those of far-infrared light and microwave radio transmissions, and are considered ideal for next-generation computing devices.
The findings were reported in a paper in Applied Physics Letters by associate professor of mechanical engineering Nicholas Fang, postdoc Dafei Jin and three others.
The system would provide a new way to construct interconnected devices that use light waves, such as fiber-optic cables and photonic chips, with electronic wires and devices. Currently, such interconnection points often form a bottleneck that slows the transfer of data and adds to the number of components needed.
The team's new system allows waves to be concentrated at much smaller length scales, which could lead to a tenfold gain in the density of components that could be placed in a given area of a chip, Fang says.
The team's initial proof-of-concept device uses a small piece of graphene sandwiched between two layers of the ferroelectric material to make simple, switchable plasmonic waveguides. This work used lithium niobate, but many other such materials could be used, the researchers say.
Light can be confined in these waveguides down to one part in a few hundreds of the free-space wavelength, Jin says, which represents an order-of-magnitude improvement over any comparable waveguide system. "This opens up exciting areas for transmitting and processing optical signals," he says.
Moreover, the work may provide a new way to read and write electronic data into ferroelectric memory devices at very high speed, the MIT researchers say.
Dimitri Basov, a professor of physics at the University of California at San Diego who was not connected with this research, says the MIT team "proposed a very interesting plasmonic structure, suitable for operation in the technologically significant [terahertz] range. ? I am confident that many research groups will try to implement these devices."
Basov cautions, however, "The key issue, as in all of plasmonics, is losses. Losses need to be thoroughly explored and understood."
In addition to Fang and Jin, the research was carried out by graduate student Anshuman Kumar, former postdoc Kin Hung Fung (now at Hong Kong Polytechnic University), and research scientist Jun Xu. It was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/4eQl1-5Fu_M/130621095620.htm
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Friday, June 21, 2013
Football: Italy edge Japan to make Confederation Cup semis
Last updated at 12:05 pm
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Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Scientists date prehistoric bacterial invasion still present in today's plant and animal cells
June 19, 2013 ? Long before Earth became lush, when life consisted of single-celled organisms afloat in a planet-wide sea, bacteria invaded the ancient ancestors of plants and animals and took up permanent residence. One bacterium eventually became the mitochondria that today power all plant and animal cells; another became the chloroplast that turns sunlight into energy in green plants.
A new analysis by two University of California, Berkeley, graduate students more precisely pinpoints when these life-changing invasions occurred, placing the origin of photosynthesis in plants hundreds of millions of years earlier than once thought.
"When you are talking about these really ancient events, scientists have estimated numbers that are all over the board," said coauthor Patrick Shih. Estimates of the age of eukaryotes -- cells with a nucleus that evolved into all of today's plants and animals -- range from 800 million years ago to 3 billion years ago.
"We came up with a novel way of decreasing the uncertainty and increasing our confidence in dating these events," he said. The two researchers believe that their approach can help answer similar questions about the origins of ancient microscopic fossils.
Shih and colleague Nicholas Matzke, who will earn their Ph.Ds this summer in plant and microbial biology and integrative biology, respectively, employed fossil and genetic evidence to estimate the dates when bacteria set up shop as symbiotic organisms in the earliest one-celled eukaryotes. They concluded that a proteobacterium invaded eurkaryotes about 1.2 billion years ago, in line withearlier estimates.
They found that a cyanobacterium -- which had already developed photosynthesis -- invaded eukaryotes 900 million years ago, much later than some estimates, which are as high as 2 billion years ago.
Previous estimates used hard-to-identify microbial fossilsor ambiguous chemical markers in fossils to estimate the time when bacteria entered ancestral eurkaryotic cells, probably first as parasites and then as symbionts. Shih and Matzke realized that they could get better precision by studying today's mitochondria and chloroplasts, which from their free-living days still retain genes that are evolutionarily related to genes currently present in plant and animal DNA.
"These genes, such as ATP synthase -- a gene critical to the synthesis of the energy molecule ATP -- were present in our single-celled ancestors and present now, and are really, really conserved," Matzke said. "These go back to the last common ancestor of all living things, so it helps us constrain the tree of life."
Since mitochrondrial, chloroplast and nuclear genes do not evolve at exactly the same rate, the researchers used Bayesian statistics to estimate the rate variation as well as how long ago the bacteria joined forces with eukaryotes. They improved their precision by focusing on plant and animal fossils that have more certain dates and identities than microbial fossils.
The paper appeared online on June 17 in advance of publication in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Matzke also is a member of UC Berkeley's Center for Theoretical Evolutionary Genomics.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/MhdJw9nXF84/130619164804.htm
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Tuesday, June 18, 2013
New way to improve antibiotic production
June 17, 2013 ? An antibiotic has been found to stimulate its own production. The findings, to be published in PNAS, could make it easier to scale up antibiotic production for commercialisation.
Scientists Dr Emma Sherwood and Professor Mervyn Bibb from the John Innes Centre were able to use their discovery of how the antibiotic is naturally produced to markedly increase the level of production.
"We have shown for the first time that an antibiotic with clinical potential can act as signalling molecule to trigger its own synthesis," said Professor Bibb.
The antibiotic called planosporicin is produced by a soil bacterium called Planomonospora alba. When nutrients become limited, a small amount of the antibiotic is produced. The antibiotic is then able to trigger a mechanism which coordinates its own production throughout the bacterial population resulting in high levels.
"A frequent stumbling block in developing a natural product for commercialisation is being able to provide enough material for clinical trials," said Professor Bibb.
"Our work shows with the right understanding it is possible to increase productivity very dramatically in a targeted and knowledge-based manner."
With knowledge of this signalling mechanism in hand, the scientists were able to increase production by overexpressing two positively acting regulatory genes and deleting one that acts negatively. Planosporicin is similar to the antibiotic NAI-107 that is about to enter clinical trials for Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) infections. The knowledge gained from this study is being used to increase NAI-107 production.
Commercial manufacturers of antibiotics may be able to use the results to reduce production times and therefore reduce costs. Bacteria often have to be grown for days and sometimes weeks before they start to make effective amounts of an antibiotic. Sherwood and Bibb were able to trigger production essentially from the beginning of growth.
The work was funded through JIC's core strategic grant from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/_AqpXED2Qnw/130617160900.htm
Monday, June 17, 2013
Voices may not trigger brain's reward centers in children with autism
June 17, 2013 ? In autism, brain regions tailored to respond to voices are poorly connected to reward-processing circuits, according to a new study by scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
The research could help explain why children with autism struggle to grasp the social and emotional aspects of human speech. "Weak brain connectivity may impede children with autism from experiencing speech as pleasurable," said Vinod Menon, PhD, senior author of the study, published online June 17 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Menon is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford and a member of the Child Health Research Institute at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital.
"The human voice is a very important sound; it not only conveys meaning but also provides critical emotional information to a child," said Daniel Abrams, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in psychiatry and behavioral sciences who was the study's lead author. Insensitivity to the human voice is a hallmark of autism, Abrams said, adding, "We are the first to show that this insensitivity may originate from impaired reward circuitry in the brain."
The study focused on children with a high-functioning form of autism. They had IQ scores in the normal range and could speak and read, but had difficulty holding a back-and-forth conversation or understanding emotional cues in another person's voice.
The scientists compared functional magnetic resonance imaging brain scans from 20 of these children with scans from 19 typically developing children, paying particular attention to a portion of the brain that responds selectively to the sound of human voices. Prior research has shown that adults with autism had low voice-selective cortex activity in response to speech. But until this study by Menon and his colleagues, no one had looked at connections between the voice-selective cortex and other brain regions in individuals with autism.
The new study found that in children with a high-functioning form of autism, the voice-selective cortex on the left side of the brain was weakly connected to the nucleus accumbens and the ventral tegmental area -- brain structures that release dopamine in response to rewards. The voice-selective cortex on the right side of the brain, which specializes in detecting vocal cues such as intonation and pitch, was weakly connected to the amygdala, which processes emotional cues.
The weaker these connections in children with autism, the worse their communication deficits, the study showed. The researchers were able to predict the children's scores on the verbal portion of a standard test of autism severity by looking at the degree of impairment in these brain connections.
The findings may help to validate some autism therapies already in use, said co-author Jennifer Phillips, PhD, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford who also treats children with autism at Packard Children's. For instance, pivotal-response training aims to increase social use of language in children who can speak some words but who usually do not talk to others.
"Pivotal-response training goes after ways to naturally motivate kids to start using language and other forms of social interaction," Phillips said. Future studies could test whether brain connections leading from voice to reward centers are strengthened by autism therapies, she added.
The findings also help resolve a long-standing debate about why individuals with autism show less-than-normal interest in human voices. The team investigated two competing theories to explain the phenomenon: that individuals with autism have a deficit in their social motivation, or, alternatively, that they have sensory-processing deficits which impair their ability to fully hear human voices. The new study found normal connections between voice-selective cortex and primary auditory brain regions in children with high-functioning autism, suggesting that these children do not have sensory-processing deficits.
The next steps for researchers include studying the consequences of the weak voice-to-reward circuit in autism. "It is likely that children with autism don't attend to voices because they are not rewarding or emotionally interesting, impacting the development of their language and social communication skills," Menon said. "We have discovered an aberrant brain circuit underlying a core deficit in autism; our findings may aid the development of new treatments for this disorder."
Other Stanford co-authors are social science research assistants Charles Lynch and Katherine Cheng; postdoctoral scholar Kaustubh Supekar, PhD; research associate Srikanth Ryali, PhD; and instructor Lucina Uddin, PhD.
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Trans-US solar plane reaches Dulles
16 June 2013
Last updated at 04:57 ET
A solar-powered plane has touched down in Washington DC, ending the penultimate leg of a first-of-its-kind bid to cross the US on solar power.
The Solar Impulse vehicle landed at the capital's Dulles airport at 00:15 local time (04:15 GMT).
The plane will remain in Washington until early July, when it will take off bound for New York - the final leg of the "Across America" project.
On Sunday, the plane will be on view to the public at Dulles Airport.
This is the location of the US National Air and Space Museum's Steven F Udvar-Hazy Center.
The fourth leg of the journey from St Louis was re-routed via Cincinnati at the last minute, as high winds and air traffic would have made the direct journey longer than the team's prescribed limit of 24 hours for one pilot to be at the controls.
After a 15-hour, 14-minute hop, the HB-SIA prototype craft landed at Cincinnati's Municipal Lunken airport on Friday evening in order to allow a change of pilots - Bertrand Piccard taking over from Andre Borschberg.
Continue reading the main storyThe Solar Impulse HB-SIA
- Wingspan - 63m (208ft)
- Weight - 1,600kg (3,500lb)
- Covered with 11,628 solar cells
- Carries 400kg (900lb) of lithium-ion batteries
- Maximum cruising altitude of 8,500m (28,000ft)
The segment from Cincinnati's Municipal Lunken airport to Dulles lasted 14 hours and four minutes.
On landing, Andre Borschberg said that "with the successful completion of these last four US flights, we have shown that we are capable of coping with challenging meteorological conditions for our weather-sensitive plane and for our ground operations, and that we could find each time the right solutions to move forward. It has been a succession of fruitful learnings preparing us for the 2015 world tour."
Piccard's and Borschberg's intention is to build a bigger plane than the HB-SIA prototype and fly if first across an ocean and then around the globe.
The HB-SIA craft already holds the world record for the longest manned solar-powered flight at 26 hours. The aeroplane's other records include the first international flight of a manned solar-powered plane in 2011, and first inter-continental flight in 2012.
The Across America project coincides with Piccard's and Borschberg's Clean Generation Initiative, an effort to encourage policy-makers and businesses to develop and adopt sustainable energy technologies.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22902402#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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Shock lingers after Nazi unit leader found in US
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) ? The revelation that a former commander of a Nazi SS-led military unit has lived quietly in Minneapolis for the past six decades came as a shock to those who know 94-year-old Michael Karkoc. World War II survivors in both the U.S. and Europe harshly condemned the news and prosecutors in Poland have said they'll investigate.
An Associated Press investigation found that Karkoc served as a top commander in the Ukrainian Self-Defense Legion during World War II. The unit is accused of wartime atrocities, including the burning of villages filled with women and children.
"I know him personally. We talk, laugh. He takes care of his yard and walks with his wife," his next-door neighbor, Gordon Gnasdoskey, said Friday.
"For me, this is a shock. To come to this country and take advantage of its freedoms all of these years, it blows my mind," said Gnasdoskey, the grandson of a Ukrainian immigrant himself.
Karkoc told American authorities in 1949 that he had performed no military service during World War II, concealing his work as an officer and founding member of the legion and later as an officer in the SS Galician Division, according to records obtained by the AP through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Though records do not show that Karkoc had a direct hand in war crimes, statements from men in his unit and other documentation confirm the Ukrainian company he commanded massacred civilians, and suggest that Karkoc was at the scene of these atrocities as the company leader. Nazi SS files say he and his unit were also involved in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, in which the Nazis brutally suppressed a Polish rebellion against German occupation.
No one answered the door Friday morning at Karkoc's house on a residential street in northeast Minneapolis. Karkoc had earlier declined to comment on his wartime service when approached by the AP, and repeated efforts to arrange an interview through his son were unsuccessful.
Late Friday, Karkoc's son, Andriy Karkos, read a statement accusing AP of defaming his father. Karkoc became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1959.
"My father was never a Nazi," said Karkos, who uses a different spelling for his last name. He also said the family wouldn't comment further until it has obtained its own documents and reviewed witnesses and sources.
Polish prosecutors announced Friday they will investigate Karkoc and provide "every possible assistance" to the U.S. Department of Justice, which has used lies in immigration papers to deport dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals.
The AP evidence of Karkoc's wartime activities has also prompted German authorities to express interest in exploring whether there is enough to prosecute. In Germany, Nazis with "command responsibility" can be charged with war crimes even if their direct involvement in atrocities cannot be proven.
Efraim Zuroff, the lead Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, said that based on his decades of experience pursuing Nazi war criminals, he expects that the evidence of Karkoc's lies as well as the unit's role in atrocities is strong enough for deportation and war crimes prosecution in Germany or Poland.
Former German army officer Josef Scheungraber ? a lieutenant like Karkoc ? was convicted in Germany in 2009 on charges of murder based on circumstantial evidence that put him at the scene of a Nazi wartime massacre in Italy as the ranking officer.
Members of Karkoc's unit and other witnesses have told stories of brutal attacks on civilians.
One of Karkoc's men, Vasyl Malazhenski, told Soviet investigators that in 1944 the unit was directed to "liquidate all the residents" of the village of Chlaniow in a reprisal attack for the killing of a German SS officer, though he did not say who gave the order.
"It was all like a trance: setting the fires, the shooting, the destroying," Malazhenski recalled, according to the 1967 statement found by the AP in the archives of Warsaw's state-run Institute of National Remembrance, which investigates and prosecutes German and Soviet crimes on Poles during and after World War II.
In a background check by U.S. officials on April 14, 1949, Karkoc said he had never performed any military service, telling investigators that he "worked for father until 1944. Worked in labor camp from 1944 until 1945."
However, in a Ukrainian-language memoir published in 1995, Karkoc states that he helped found the Ukrainian Self Defense Legion in 1943 in collaboration with the Nazis' feared SS intelligence agency, the SD, to fight on the side of Germany ? and served as a company commander in the unit, which received orders directly from the SS, through the end of the war.
It was not clear why Karkoc felt safe publishing his memoir, which is available at the U.S. Library of Congress and the British Library and which the AP located online in an electronic Ukrainian library.
Karkoc currently lives in a modest house in an area of Minneapolis that has a significant Ukrainian population. He recently came to the door without help of a cane or a walker. He would not comment on his wartime service: "I don't think I can explain," he said.
Karkoc and his family are longtime members of the St. Michael's and St. George's Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
"All the time I am here, I know him as a good man, a good citizen," said the Rev. Evhen Kumka, the church's pastor. "He's well known in the congregation."
Kumka moved from Ukraine to Minnesota 19 years ago to lead the congregation, and said Karkoc was already active in the church. Kumka wouldn't say whether he'd spoken to Karkoc about his past, but said he was skeptical.
"I don't think everything is correct," Kumka said. "As I know him, he is a good example for many people."
Karkoc worked as a carpenter in Minneapolis, and appeared in a 1980 issue of Carpenter magazine among a group celebrating 25 years of union membership. He was a member and a secretary in the local branch of the Ukrainian National Association, a fraternal organization, and voting records obtained by the AP show he regularly voted in city, state and general elections.
Karkoc's name surfaced when a retired clinical pharmacologist who researched Nazi war crimes in his free time came across it while looking into members of the SS Galician Division who immigrated to Britain. He tipped off the AP when an Internet search showed an address for Karkoc in Minnesota.
The AP located Karkoc's U.S. Army intelligence file, which was declassified by the National Archives in Maryland through a FOIA request. The Army was responsible for processing visa applications after the war under the Displaced Persons Act.
The intelligence file said standard background checks found no red flags that would disqualify Karkoc from entering the United States. But it also noted that it lacked key information from the Soviet side regarding the verification of his identity.
Wartime documents located by the AP also confirm Karkoc's membership in the Self Defense Legion. They include a Nazi payroll sheet found in Polish archives, signed by an SS officer on Jan. 8, 1945 ? only four months before the war's end ? confirming that Karkoc was present in Krakow, Poland, to collect his salary as a member of the Self Defense Legion.
He joined the regular German army after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and fought on the Eastern Front in Ukraine and Russia, according to his memoirs, which say he was awarded an Iron Cross for bravery.
He was also a member of the Ukrainian nationalist organization OUN; in 1943, he helped negotiate with the Nazis to have men drawn from its membership form the Self Defense Legion, according to his account. In 1945, the legion was dissolved and folded into the SS Galician Division.
Policy at the time of Karkoc's immigration application ? according to a declassified secret U.S. government document obtained by the AP from the National Archives ? was to deny a visa to anyone who had served in either the SS Galician Division or the OUN.
Justice Department spokesman Michael Passman in Washington said the agency could was aware of the AP story and could not confirm or deny an investigation.
News of Karkoc's past prompted anger from World War II survivors in countries where the Ukrainian Self-Defense Legion was active. In Poland, Honorata Banach told the AP she wants Karkoc to apologize. She was 20 when she fled the Polish village of Chlaniow before it was burned down by the legion.
"There was so much suffering, so many orphans, so much pain," Banach said. She and her mother returned the day after the attack, she said, to see that "everything was burned down, even the fences, the trees. I could not even find my house."
Survivors told her the Ukrainian legion did it, she said.
Sam Rafowitz, an 88-year-old Jewish resident of the Minneapolis suburb of Minnetonka, grew up in Warsaw, Poland, and spent four years working in concentration camps. He took a hard line after hearing the news about Karkoc.
"I think they should put him on trial," said Rafowitz, who lost his mother and other relatives at the Majdanek concentration camp in Lublin, Poland. He said soldiers in the camp were German but that it was run by Ukrainians.
"You don't forget," Rafowitz said. "For me, it's been almost close to 70 years those things happened, but I still know about it. I still remember everything."
Menachem Rosensaft, who was born in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, now teaches the law of genocide and war crimes at several New York universities. He said Karkoc is a reminder that the Holocaust and other genocides "cannot be viewed as abstract history."
"I have every confidence that if Mr. Karkoc was not already on the Justice Department's radar screen, he now is," Rosensaft said.
___
Rising reported from Berlin, Herschaft from New York, Scislowska from Warsaw and Condon from Minneapolis. Associated Press writers Maria Danilova in Kiev, Ukraine; Efrem Lukatsky in Pidhaitsi, Ukraine; Svetlana Fedas in Lviv, Ukraine; Amy Forliti, Doug Glass and Brian Bakst in Minneapolis; and Pete Yost in Washington contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/shock-lingers-nazi-unit-leader-found-us-135442792.html
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Saturday, June 15, 2013
Smartisan OS goes pre-alpha, available for international Galaxy S III only
You may recall that a Chinese startup dubbed Smartisan promised to offer its first custom Android ROM on June 15th. Well, the time has come and the company stuck to its word, but there's a catch: the software is currently still in pre-alpha status, so it's neither stable nor speedy -- definitely not recommended for daily use just yet. That said, the release apparently includes most of the features demonstrated at the three-hour-long launch event.
The other catch is that you'll need an international Samsung Galaxy S III (i9300, WCDMA) plus Windows (presumably non-RT) to flash this early version of Smartisan OS. If you're game then head to the source link for the download and the instructions (but in Chinese). If not, you can wait for the upcoming release for the HTC One X, Samsung Galaxy S II, Xiaomi Phone 2 and Samsung Galaxy Note II. Or you can just wait for Smartisan's very own phone due next year, if you don't mind testing your patience.
Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile
Via: Engadget China
Source: Smartisan
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The National Enquirer has a backstory worthy of the National Enquirer
The National Enquirer, like the salacious stories it publishes, has a juicy backstory?one filled with scandal and blackmail.
Some of that dark history is revealed by John Connolly in next month's issue of DuJour magazine. It delves into the alleged mob ties of the tabloid's former owner, Gene Pope Jr., who acquired the then-New York Enquirer in the early 1950s, and the magazine's shifting mission: gore in the late '50s to-mid-'60s; "fallen angels" in the '60s and '70s; the targeting of celebrities and politicians like Ted Kennedy and Sylvester Stallone in the '70s and '80s; and an increasing emphasis on celebrity.
From the article:
When Senator Ted Kennedy was suspected of having extramarital affairs in the 1970s, Pope dispatched a squad of his most tenacious reporters to get the story. [Former staffer Bill] Sloan remembers four or five ?very nasty? stories on Kennedy in those years. It is widely rumored that an emissary from Kennedy approached Pope with an offer to become a confidential source for the Enquirer if the paper would leave the senator alone. Pope agreed.
Over the years, scores of celebrities and politicians were rumored to be making deals with the National Enquirer to conceal all manner of indiscretions, be it a DWI or other arrest on a minor charge, an intimate photo or video, fear of an affair being aired (particularly if it involved the spouse of another star), a gay or lesbian encounter, or an out-of-wedlock child. In exchange for information on someone else or agreeing to an exclusive interview, stars were able to keep their secrets out of the spotlight. Confidential sources confirmed to DuJour that celebrities were essentially blackmailed to work with the Enquirer or else risk their improprieties appearing on the front page. It is alleged that Sylvester Stallone was told to cooperate or have a nasty expos? published. As agreed, such a story was not written.
Pope, Connolly reports, encouraged his reporters to pay sources for stories:
Enquirer reporters were allowed to pay up to $2,500 to a source without any approval needed from the home office, say several ex-employees. But Pope was willing to go way higher. In 1977, after Elvis Presley died, he chartered a jet to rush a task force to Memphis. According to Tony Brenna, who worked for the Enquirer for 18 years, ?We took over a hotel and had special telephone lines installed so that we could not be bugged by other papers. I was assigned to get information on the Elvis physician who had prescribed him all the drugs. Others on our team were charged with getting a photo of the dead Elvis. We bought every miniature camera that was for sale in Memphis. One reporter found a distant cousin who, for a guarantee of more than $5,000, agreed to go to Graceland and try to get a photo.? The issue featuring that photo of Elvis lying in a white suit in his copper coffin became the biggest seller in the history of the National Enquirer, selling 6.5 million copies.
The Enquirer has always had a fascination with death. And according to Connolly, it was born out of an epiphany Pope had in 1957 during a traffic jam:
As his car reached the cause of the delay?a violent crash?he realized that the drivers all slowed down to get a good look at the carnage. This kicked off the paper's gore stage, which lasted almost a decade. Headlines screamed about one tragedy after another: "I'm Sorry I Killed My Mother, but I'm Glad I Killed My Father." Circulation soared, and Pope took the newspaper national, changing its name to the National Enquirer. Gruesome stories and photos were the order of the day. But two subjects were strictly off-limits: the CIA and the Mafia.
In the late 1960s, after John F. Kennedy's death, the formula shifted from gore rubbernecking to supermarket-friendly "fallen angels," namely, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
"Pope had standing orders that there was to be a cover story or cover line on Jackie in every issue," Sloan, who worked at the Enquirer from 1968 to 1970, told Du Jour.
While the Enquirer is now almost entirely celebrity focused, there are some notable exceptions (John Edwards).
The current print issue has a cover story on Paris Jackson ("FROM $300 MILLION HEIRESS TO PSYCH WARD!") while NationalEnquirer.com is leading with reports on Katie Holmes, Robert Downey Jr., Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Danica Patrick and Justin Bieber (headline: "BIEBER, SIZZURP AND ME: 'WHEN I?M DOING THAT SH**T I FEEL GOOD'").
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/national-enquirer-dark-history-203859156.html
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Bioenergy potential unearthed in leaf-cutter ant communities
June 14, 2013 ? As spring warms up Wisconsin, humans aren't the only ones tending their gardens.
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Bacteriology, colonies of leaf-cutter ants cultivate thriving communities of fungi and bacteria using freshly cut plant material.
While these fungus gardens are a source of food and shelter for the ants, for researchers, they are potential models for better biofuel production.
"We are interested in the whole fungus garden community, because a lot of plant biomass goes in and is converted to energy for the ants," says Frank Aylward, a bacteriology graduate student and researcher with the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center.
Aylward is the lead author of a study identifying new fungal enzymes that could help break down cellulosic -- or non-food -- biomass for processing to fuel. His work appears on the cover of the June 15 issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
"All the enzymes that we found are similar to known enzymes, but they are completely new; no one had identified or characterized them until now, " Aylward says.
Building on Aylward's previous study of these gardens, the researchers relied on genome sequencing provided by the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (JGI) and support from Roche Applied Science's 10 Gigabase Grant Program to understand the unique roles of fungi and bacteria. In addition to sequencing the genome of Leucoagaricus gongylophorous, the fungus cultivated by leaf-cutting ants, the researchers looked at the genomes of entire, living garden communities.
"We really tried as thoroughly as possible to characterize the biomass degrading enzymes produced," Aylward says. "Identifying all these new enzymes really opens the door to technological applications, because we could potentially mix and match them with others that we already know about to achieve even better biomass degradation."
In a symbiotic relationship, L. gongylophorous provides food for the leaf-cutter ant Atta cephalotes by developing fruiting bodies rich in fats, amino acids and other nutrients. To fuel production of these fruiting bodies, the fungus needs sugar, which comes in the form of long cellulose molecules packed inside the leaf clippings the ants deliver. To get at the sugars, the fungus produces enzymes that break the cellulose apart into glucose subunits.
After sequencing the L. gongylophorous genome, the researchers noticed that the fungus seemed to be doing the lion's share of cellulose degradation with its specialized enzymes. However, they also realized that it was by no means working alone: in fact, the gardens are also home to a diversity of bacteria that may help boost the fungus's productivity.
"We think there could potentially be a division of labor between the fungus and bacteria," says Garret Suen, co-author of the study and a UW-Madison assistant professor of bacteriology and Wisconsin Energy Institute researcher.
The researchers have a few leads in their investigation of the mysterious role of bacteria in leaf-cutter ant communities, which they are pursuing in collaboration with JGI. In addition to providing nitrogen and key vitamins, the bacteria appear to help the fungus access energy-rich cellulose by breaking apart other plant polymers that encase it, such as hemicellulose.
Accessing and deconstructing cellulose is also the goal of GLBRC researchers, who want to ferment the stored sugars to ethanol and other advanced biofuels. Enzymes such as those of the leaf-cutting ants' fungus specialize in breaking down leaves, but understanding how they work in the context of the ant community could help researchers create similar methods for processing cellulosic biofuel feedstocks, such as corn stalks and grasses.
The researchers are discovering, however, that both the beauty and the challenge of the leaf-cutter ant garden lie in its complexity. A peek into UW-Madison's resident colony in the Microbial Sciences Building reveals a metropolis of brown insects bustling around the pale, pitted surface of the fungus garden, many with leaf sections held aloft. The strong resemblance to a small city drives home the point that energy production in such a meticulously coordinated system would be difficult to replicate in a lab or a bio-refinery.
"In an industrial setting, you need a system that's reproducible, sustainable, controlled -- and that produces a consistent level of ethanol," Suen says.
A potential alternative to re-creating these natural processes is to extract, replicate and purify biomass-degrading enzymes synthetically. New enzymes could be added to known combinations and tested for their ability to break down biofuel feedstocks. However, this process can be time-consuming and costly.
To put their findings in perspective, the researchers plan to study other insects in addition to ants, including certain species of termites and beetles, which also act as gardeners in fungal communities. They hope that a better understanding of these complex systems will help them share their biomass-degrading secrets with bioenergy researchers.
"It's difficult to think that we can actually find a process that improves on nature," says Aylward, "so it probably makes sense to learn from it."
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/krKSHJOiOjA/130614125647.htm
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Thursday, June 13, 2013
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
New kind of variable star discovered: Minute variations in brightness reveal whole new class of stars
June 12, 2013 ? The Swiss are justly famed for their craftsmanship when creating extremely precise pieces of technology. Now a Swiss team from the Geneva Observatory has achieved extraordinary precision using a comparatively small 1.2-metre telescope for an observing programme stretching over many years. They have discovered a new class of variable stars by measuring minute variations in stellar brightness.
The new results are based on regular measurements of the brightness of more than three thousand stars in the open star cluster NGC 3766* over a period of seven years. They reveal how 36 of the cluster's stars followed an unexpected pattern -- they had tiny regular variations in their brightness at the level of 0.1% of the stars' normal brightness. These variations had periods between about two and 20 hours. The stars are somewhat hotter and brighter than the Sun, but otherwise apparently unremarkable. The new class of variable stars is yet to be given a name.
This level of precision in the measurements is twice as good as that achieved by comparable studies from other telescopes -- and sufficient to reveal these tiny variations for the first time.
"We have reached this level of sensitivity thanks to the high quality of the observations, combined with a very careful analysis of the data," says Nami Mowlavi, leader of the research team, "but also because we have carried out an extensive observation programme that lasted for seven years. It probably wouldn't have been possible to get so much observing time on a bigger telescope."
Many stars are known as variable or pulsating stars, because their apparent brightness changes over time. How the brightness of these stars changes depends in complex ways on the properties of their interiors. This phenomenon has allowed the development of a whole branch of astrophysics called asteroseismology, where astronomers can "listen" to these stellar vibrations, in order to probe the physical properties of the stars and get to know more about their inner workings.
"The very existence of this new class of variable stars is a challenge to astrophysicists," says Sophie Saesen, another team member. "Current theoretical models predict that their light is not supposed to vary periodically at all, so our current efforts are focused on finding out more about the behaviour of this strange new type of star."
Although the cause of the variability remains unknown, there is a tantalising clue: some of the stars seem to be fast rotators. They spin at speeds that are more than half of their critical velocity, which is the threshold where stars become unstable and throw off material into space.
"In those conditions, the fast spin will have an important impact on their internal properties, but we are not able yet to adequately model their light variations," explains Mowlavi. "We hope our discovery will encourage specialists to address the issue in the hope of understanding the origin of these mysterious variations."
Notes
*This star cluster is one of several included in this major monitoring programme. NGC 3766 lies about 7000 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur) and is estimated to be about 20 million years old.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/cIug60WAHkE/130612093718.htm
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Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Google Will Soon Launch Google Web Designer, A Free HTML5 Development Tool For Creating Web Apps, Sites And Ads
Google will soon launch Google Web Designer, an HTML5 development tool for "creative professionals." The service, Google says, will launch within "the coming months" and is meant to "empower creative professionals to create cutting-edge advertising as well as engaging web content like sites and applications - for free."Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/G8BqCaeKR30/
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Meeting online leads to happier, more enduring marriages ...
More than a third of marriages between 2005 and 2012 began online, according to new research at the University of Chicago, which also found that online couples have happier, longer marriages.
Although the study did not determine why relationships that started online were more successful, the reasons may include the strong motivations of online daters, the availability of advance screening and the sheer volume of opportunities online.
?These data suggest that the Internet may be altering the dynamics and outcomes of marriage itself,? said the study?s lead author, John Cacioppo, the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology at the University of Chicago.
The results were published in the paper, ?Marital Satisfaction and Breakups Differ Across Online and Offline Meeting Venues,? in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Meeting online has become an increasingly common way to find a partner, with opportunities arising through social networks, exchanges of email, instant messages, multi-player games and virtual worlds, in which people "live" on the site through avatars. The research shows that couples who met online were more likely to have higher marital satisfaction and lower rates of marital breakups than relationships that began in face-to-face meetings.
Marriage breakups were reported in about 6 percent of the people who met online, compared with 7.6 percent of the people who met offline. Marriages for people who met online reported a mean score of 5.64 on a satisfaction survey, compared with a score of 5.48 for people who met offline. The survey was based on questions about their happiness with their marriage and degree of affection, communication and love for each other.
For the study, Cacioppo led a team that examined the results of a representative sample of 19,131 people who responded to a survey by Harris Interactive about their marriages and satisfaction.
The study found a wide variety of venues, both online and offline, where people met. About 45 percent met through an online dating site. People who met online were more likely to be older (30 to 39 is the largest age group represented); employed and had a higher income. The group was diverse racially and ethnically.
People who met offline found marriage partners at various venues including work, school, church, social gatherings, clubs and bars, and places of worship. Among the least successful marriages were those in which people met at bars, through blind dates and in online communities that function as virtual worlds, the researchers found.
Relationships that start online may benefit from selectivity and the focused nature of online dating, the authors said. The differences in marital outcomes from online and offline meetings persisted after controlling for demographic differences, but ?it is possible that individuals who met their spouse online may be different in personality, motivation to form a long-term marital relationship, or some other factor,? said Cacioppo.
Meeting online also may provide a larger pool of prospective marriage partners, along with advance screening in the case of dating services. And although deception often occurs online, studies suggest that people are relatively honest in online dating encounters; the lies tend to be minor misrepresentations of weight or height.
?Marital outcomes are influenced by a variety of factors. Where one meets their spouse is only one contributing factor, and the effects of where one meets one?s spouse are understandably quite small and do not hold for everyone,? Cacioppo said. ?The results of this study are nevertheless encouraging, given the paradigm shift in terms of how Americans are meeting their spouses.?
The survey was commissioned by eHarmony.com, and Cacioppo is paid as a scientific advisor for eHarmony. Joining him as authors in the study were Stephanie Cacioppo, a research associate and assistant professor in psychology at the University of Chicago; Gian Gonzaga, a researcher with Gestalt Research, who is a former director of the eHarmony Labs; and statisticians Elizabeth Ogburn, a research fellow in Harvard School of Public Health, and Tyler VanderWeele, a professor in epidemiology and biostatistics at Harvard.
An agreement with eHarmony prior to data analysis ensured the company would not affect the publication of the study. To ensure integrity, the research team performed their study following procedures specified by JAMA, which included oversight by independent statisticians.
Source: http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2013/06/03/meeting-online-leads-happier-more-enduring-marriages
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