Even if it's not quite as amazing as it could be, Google Voice does some wonderful things. That's what makes it hard to admit the truth: It's time for Google Voice to die.
     |
Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/ES5O3JQS_sA/its-time-to-kill-google-voice-508956713
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[Photo: Amy's Baking Company]
Amy's Baking Company ? now infamous for its Facebook freakout following a terrible showing on Kitchen Nightmares ? has cancelled a press conference on threat of legal action from Fox. Radar Online reports that Fox's lawyers sent a letter to restaurant owners Amy and Samy Bouzaglo last Friday reminding them of their agreement to not "spea[k] publicly about Kitchen Nightmares, other than to acknowledge 'the mere fact of your participation in the Series in personal publicity relating to yourself.'" The press conference was supposed to precede tonight's "Grand Re-opening." A source tells Radar Online that the conference may have also been cancelled to protect Amy and Samy from the death threats they've received.
?Amy and Samy acknowledged their NDA-type arrangement last week in an interview with CBS 5 Arizona. Despite the fact that both Amy and Samy seem to understand that they are not allowed to speak with reporters about Kitchen Nightmares, the couple just participated in a radio interview in which they discuss their negative portrayal on the show. The letter from Fox, posted online here via CBS 5 Arizona, states that if the couple breaches their contracted agreement, they might owe damages of $100,000.
Shortly after receiving the cease and desist from Fox, Amy's Baking Company was dropped by their new PR firm, Rose+Moser+Allyn Public & Online Relations. After working with the Bouzaglos for a mere five days, publicist Jason Rose tells the Phoenix Business Journal that he had and the couple had "differences" in the way they worked and that "there were differences on public relations strategies." Maybe he just pulled a Gordon Ramsay and decided the couple was too delusional to help? Today will be the firm's final day with Amy's Baking Company.
? 'Kitchen Nightmares' Lawyers Threaten Restaurant Owners: Shut Up ? Or You Owe Us $100K [Radar Online]
? Amy's Baking Company dumped by new PR firm, press conference canceled over threats [Phoenix Business Journal]
? Amy's Baking cancels presser; Cites legal threats [CBS 5 AZ]
? Kitchen Nightmares Restaurant Freaks Out on Facebook [-E-]
? Kitchen Nightmares Restaurant Will Relaunch Next Week [-E-]
? All Kitchen Nightmares Coverage on Eater [-E-]
Amy's Baking Company
7366 E Shea Blvd, Scottsdale, AZ 85260
USA
33.5822 -111.923
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Here at Maclean's, we appreciate the written word. And we appreciate you, the reader. We are always looking for ways to create a better user experience for you and wanted to try out a new functionality that provides you with a reading experience in which the words and fonts take centre stage. We believe you'll appreciate the clean, white layout as you read our feature articles. But we don't want to force it on you and it's completely optional. Click "View in Clean Reading Mode" on any article if you want to try it out. Once there, you can click "Go back to regular view" at the top or bottom of the article to return to the regular layout.
TORONTO ? Canada is lifting a nearly 30-year-old ban on gay men giving blood, though for the time being only those who are abstinent will be allowed to donate.
The new policy, which Canadian Blood Services hopes to have in place by mid-summer, will allow men to donate blood if they haven?t had sex with another man for five years before the donation.
The agency understands that the length of this deferral won?t satisfy all critics. But agency executive Dana Devine said this is the first step in what Canadian Blood Services hopes will be a continued effort to work out what is the best approach to incorporating gay men into the donation community.
?So the message to them today is to simply bear with us,? Devine, vice-president of medical, scientific and research affairs at Canadian Blood Services, said in an interview.
?We are working toward attempting to make the opportunity for additional people to donate blood ? and we just aren?t quite there yet for that group of people.?
The policy change has been in the works for several years and has involved consultation with groups representing would-be donors as well as hemophiliacs who rely on blood transfusions and those who could be harmed if screening systems aren?t adequate to keep pathogens out of the blood supply.
Health Canada gave approval to Canadian Blood Services and its Quebec equivalent, Hema-Quebec, on Wednesday.
The lifetime ban against donations by gay men was instituted in the mid 1980s by the Red Cross, which was then responsible for the blood supply system. The move was taken when it was realized that the alarming new disease AIDS, which was then untreatable, could be contracted through blood transfusions.
In fact, hundreds of Canadians were infected with HIV and-or hepatitis C in the era before tests to screen out contaminated blood were developed and adopted by the Red Cross. A Royal Commission, the Krever Inquiry, later determined the Red Cross had not moved quickly enough and recommended stripping it of authority for the blood system. It also called for compensation for people injured by tainted blood.
That history cast a long shadow over the work to lift the lifetime ban and explains the current go-slow approach.
Dr. Mark Wainberg, a McGill University HIV researcher and a former president of the International AIDS Society, welcomed the move.
?I think it is a step in the right direction regarding non-discrimination and stigmatization of gay men,? Wainberg said via an email.
Devine said this step will help the blood agencies gather safety data that may later be used to open up blood donation to more gay men. Critics of the policy have argued that gay men who are in long-term monogamous relationships should be allowed to give blood if they wish.
The change announced Wednesday will open the door to men who may have had an experimental sexual encounter with another male when they were young, as well as men who were raped when they were boys, Devine said. The lifetime ban applied to any man who had had a sexual encounter with another man, encompassing as a result some men who did not live as gay men, she noted.
A number of other countries already allow gay men to give blood, and some use a shorter deferral period than Canada has settled on.
In Britain and Australia, gay men who haven?t had sex with other men for at least a year are eligible to donate. In South Africa the deferral period is six months. But the United States still retains a lifetime ban.
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?The Importance of Video? in the NSF IGERT Online Video and Poster Competition. Video courtesy of IGERT.org.
In the Facebook age, it?s increasingly clear that scientific research and innovation simply can?t be relegated to the informational vacuums or institutional silos of yore. Long before the golden era of all networks social (and even before Alan Alda had a grad program at Stony Brook in communicating science named after him), luminaries including Sagan and Einstein recognized the value of public science communication in promoting democracy and elucidating issues relevant to the perpetuation of life and livelihood. But on a changing planet where new technologies are being churned out daily; where breaking news is flooding Twitter before it hits the earbuds of live reporters; where getting highly-specialized, multimedia content is the norm and not the exception?how are scientists keeping up in science conversations? How are they communicating with a hyper-connected public?
If they are scientists and engineers in NSF-funded IGERT graduate programs across the country?the answer is ?exceedingly well?, and they are doing it by creating and sharing immersive, science-rich video content via social networking. Furthermore, these young scientific minds are laying the groundwork for future collaborations by mentoring their peers in distilling complex research topics like biologically-inspired robotic engineering; smart textile design; nano-plasmonic engineering for energy efficiency, and more into palatable, 3-minute-or-less visual arpeggios for entry in the annual NSF IGERT Online Video and Poster Competition
The Academic Poster Session, Re-Imagined
This week, May 21st-24th, 2013, the NSF IGERT Online Video and Poster Competition is open for viewing, voting, sharing, and conversing at http://posterhall.org/igert2013.
This year marks the third year of the NSF-funded competition, created and facilitated by TERC, a non-profit research and development institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The NSF IGERT Online Poster Competition originally was launched in 2011 as an online replication of an academic poster session for the IGERT Community. In 2012, the IGERT project team proposed extending the reach and dynamism of the competition by including a video component and a ?Public Choice? Award (determined by ?Likes? on Facebook). This proposal was supported by the National Science Foundation as an effort to further the Foundation?s strategic goal of disseminating innovative scientific research to the public at large.
But in 2012, IGERT presenters needed to create videos about their work that would be accessible to the public?a radically different process from creating academic posters for topical events. It was a process that often framed ?a-ha? moments as presenters looked at their own research with different lenses. Instead of going into the kind of highly technical, contextualized detail expected by scholarly peer audiences, presenters had to situate their research in terms of real-world applicability.
Diana Graizbord, a 2012 Awardee studying social policy in developing nations, says, ?We present our research all the time, but usually in academic audiences, and more so?in academic audiences really related to the work we?re doing. I go to sociology conferences and present my work to other sociologists. So much is taken for granted. I never have to explain why or what I?m doing. With our video, we had to make very clear that our project was couched in bigger questions that go beyond sociology, that go beyond South Africa, that have broader significance.?
To Video or Not To Video? (To Video?)
Initially, presenters from the 2011 Competition were resistant to the idea of using video to communicate about their work in the 2012 Competition. But after the end of the 2012 Competition?over 90% of presenters reported that video was ?helpful in explaining scientific research to a general audience.? Anecdotal evidence suggested that while presenters found video creation to be the most challenging aspect of the competition, they also found it to be the most rewarding. And the rewards of their work were evident. With nearly 4,000 Public Choice votes cast via Facebook during the 2012 Competition and video views nearly triple that of posters among members of the public?presenters? videos were filling a very necessary gap in science conversation. Says Margery Hines, a 2012 Awardee and electrical engineer developing an automated landmine detection and localization robot, ?a lot of my friends and family are not technical people, and for once?because of my video?they understood part of what I do.?
While the inclusion of video and the ?Public Choice? Award markedly improved public involvement in the IGERT Competition, presenters were surprised by video?s reach across oceans, institutions, and even the desks of Human Resources managers. Says Kristy Jost, a 2012 Awardee investigating smart textile engineering, ?I was amazed that we had people liking our video from Australia, from China, from Europe, Eastern Europe, from Africa, and all across the United States.? Jost was one of several Awardees who received job offers from industry employers after the 2012 Competition. Additionally, many of the 2012 Awardees had opportunities to connect with big names in their respective fields, and network with colleagues, peers, and leaders across fields of study and institutions. Most of these connections were initiated by comments, questions, or accolades posted on presenters? video walls.
Communicating Science Lessons?from the Experts
Competition Awardees from years past have become mentors to 2013 and future IGERT presenters through hosting webinars and helping produce a 9-video series containing their best video-making and social networking practices. Their practitioner videos accurately portray the triumphs of succeeding at learning a new skill as well as situate the challenges to be overcome along the way?whether those challenges come in the form of script writing; film editing; or outreach via social networks. Much like the video and ?Public Choice? components, peer mentorship and support have been tightly woven into the NSF IGERT Competition fabric. Far from merely providing past Awardees opportunities for networking with future colleagues?Awardees now believe video is inextricable to their roles in communicating science. 2012 Awardee and Biologist Matthew Coopersays it best:
?The biggest advice I can give is to not look at this as a one time deal?a one time contest where you?re competing for a one-time prize for one particular project. We live in a world that is increasingly visual, we get our content online predominantly, and video is becoming the way we communicate to each other. As scientists, if you can encapsulate your project and results into a 3 minute video that?s accessible to a broader community, funding agencies, and people that need to see your results?that?s a tool that will take you a long way in your career.?
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=65f5e9b37a2279aeabfefce2aea93073
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A number of launch titles have been mentioned at the Xbox One reveal event, but Microsoft Studios announced that it has more titles in development now than ever before. In fact, 15 exclusive Xbox One titles will launch in its first year and eight of those are brand-new franchises. Of course, we're still not exactly sure when that countdown will be begin, but perhaps we'll catch a glimpse of the software goods in a few days at E3.
Filed under: Gaming, Microsoft
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Many have asked that the women who were held hostage in Cleveland be given privacy to heal. But compassion should involve more than suspending our curiosity. How we actually define people emerging from traumatic experiences can support their healing and the public?s.
A Cleveland police patrol car sits in front of the boarded up home of Ariel Castro in Cleveland May 14. Three women were rescued from the house after a decade in captivity. Op-ed contributor Kurt Shillinger writes: 'There?s something unresolvable ? and indeed unjust ? about continuing to identify an individual as wronged, harmed, threatened, or less than whole.'
Mark Duncan/AP
EnlargeFrom Cleveland, to Boston, to Newtown, Americans have been sadly and repeatedly forced to grapple with acts of incomprehensible violence and cruelty. One response is to ask probing questions in order to prevent more such tragedies ? questions that can also uncover the resilience of the human spirit. This kind of searching helps society heal.
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But boring in on such tragedies can also have a negative effect ? on those directly involved. Many thoughtful people ? including family members ? have called on the public to grant privacy to the three Cleveland women who broke free from a decade of horrific captivity so they can rebuild their lives.
?We, the public, have to have a sense of leaving them alone, but also rooting for them,? said Frank Ochberg, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Michigan State University, in a PBS Newshour interview May 9, speaking about the Cleveland case. ?We don?t want to over-interview them. We don?t want them to define their lives as those women who were captured for that period of time.?
In the digital age of Facebook, Twitter, cell phone cameras, and a competitive, sensationalist news media, calling on the public to respect a person?s privacy seems oddly virtuous. One wonders whether both the media and their consumers have the self-restraint to resist the lure of voyeuristic reporting on victims that is often dressed up as empathy.
Even if, as a society, we can reject such prying, compassion should involve more than suspending our curiosity. How we actually define people emerging from traumatic experiences can both support their healing and the public?s, too.
Over the past 25 years, more than a dozen countries emerging from violent conflict have established truth commissions to facilitate individual and societal reconciliation and healing. In South Africa, people who were directly affected by human rights violations under white rule could register with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as victims. That designation entitled them to modest monetary compensation.
But then what? For many, the commission process wasn?t restorative enough. In the years that followed, the terminology changed. ?Victims? became ?survivors? as support groups looked for new ways to help people recover from the past.
We have much the same conversation in the United States. We talk about ?victims? and ?survivors? of violent acts, destructive storms, and disease. Accentuating the positive surely helps, but there?s something unresolvable ? and indeed unjust ? about continuing to identify an individual as wronged, harmed, threatened, or less than whole.
Dr. Ochberg, of Michigan State University, noted that the three kidnapped women in Cleveland had been deprived of mothering during their long captivity. He says they?ll need a maternal presence, which of course means unconditional love. There?s a lot to that observation. We might even see it as a challenge to rethink how we identify each other.
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Jolla's heavily teased launch day in Finland has already spilled some major news: pricing and specs for the first Sailfish OS handset. The phone seems to be called "The Other Half" -- or at least that's the working title for now -- and judging from Jolla's Facebook page it consists of a colorful plastic case, available in various shades including orange or green, which hooks onto the main chassis containing a 4.5-inch display (of unknown resolution), dual-core processor, microSD expansion with 16GB onboard, a "4G" modem, user replaceable battery and an 8MP rear camera. The chassis recognizes which case is attached and adapts the visual theme of the OS to match, creating "your other half, exactly as you want it to be."
Perhaps more usefully, the Sailfish operating system will also be Android app compliant out of the box, and we're currently on the ground in Helsinki trying to discover exactly how developers and users will be able to put that feature to work (while also chasing down the rest of the specs). Meanwhile, there's an emphatic video message from Jolla co-founder Marc Dillon after the break, seeking the world's assistance in taking the heritage of MeeGo into a new era.
Update: We now hear that the phone will simply be called the "Jolla."
Update #2: Jolla has just clarified that 4G means LTE. The display resolution has been vaguely described as "HD," which to our minds suggests 720p. Furthermore, it sounds like the way the "other half" interfaces with the main body of the device allows for much deeper functionality beyond just personalization. We've just added our own video tour with more information.
[Thanks, Toni]
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
Source: Jolla
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Public release date: 19-May-2013
Share ] Contact: Gisela Speidel
gspeidel@hawaii.edu
808-956-9252
University of Hawaii ? SOEST
Scientists look at past climates to learn about climate change and the ability to simulate it with computer models. One region that has received a great deal of attention is the Indo-Pacific warm pool, the vast pool of warm water stretching along the equator from Africa to the western Pacific Ocean.
In a new study, Pedro DiNezio of the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa, and Jessica Tierney of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution investigated preserved geological clues (called "proxies") of rainfall patterns during the last ice age when the planet was dramatically colder than today. They compared these patterns with computer model simulations in order to find a physical explanation for the patterns inferred from the proxies.
Their study, which appears in the May 19, online edition of Nature Geoscience, not only reveals unique patterns of rainfall change over the Indo-Pacific warm pool, but also shows that they were caused by the effect of lowered sea level on the configuration of the Indonesian archipelago.
"For our research," explains lead-author Pedro DiNezio at the International Pacific Research Center, "we compared the climate of the ice age with our recent warmer climate. We analyzed about 100 proxy records of rainfall and salinity stretching from the tropical western Pacific to the western Indian Ocean and eastern Africa. Rainfall and salinity signals recorded in geological sediments can tell us much about past changes in atmospheric circulation over land and the ocean respectively."
"Our comparisons show that, as many scientists expected, much of the Indo-Pacific warm pool was drier during this glacial period compared with today. But, counter to some theories, several regions, such as the western Pacific and the western Indian Ocean, especially eastern Africa, were wetter," adds co-author Jessica Tierney from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.
In the second step, the scientists matched these rainfall and salinity patterns with simulations from 12 state-of-the-art climate models that are used to also predict future climate change. For this matching they applied a method of categorical data comparison called the 'Cohen's kappa' statistic. Though widely used in the medical field, this method has not yet been used to match geological climate signals with climate model simulations.
"We were taken aback that only one model out of the 12 showed statistical agreement with the proxy-inferred patterns of the rainfall changes. This model, though, agrees well with both the rainfall and salinity indicators two entirely independent sets of proxy data covering distinct areas of the tropics," says DiNezio.
The model reveals that the dry climate during the glacial period was driven by reduced convection over a region of the warm pool called the Sunda Shelf. Today the shelf is submerged beneath the Gulf of Thailand, but was above sea level during the glacial period, when sea level was about 120 m lower.
"The exposure of the Sunda Shelf greatly weakened convection over the warm pool, with far-reaching impacts on the large-scale circulation and on rainfall patterns from Africa to the western Pacific and northern Australia," explains DiNezio.
The main weakness of the other models, according to the authors, is their limited ability to simulate convection, the vertical air motions that lift humid air into the atmosphere. Differences in the way each model simulates convection may explain why the results for the glacial period are so different.
"Our research resolves a decades-old question of what the response of tropical climate was to glaciation," concludes DiNezio. "The study, moreover, presents a fine benchmark for assessing the ability of climate models to simulate the response of tropical convection to altered land masses and global temperatures."
###
Citation:
Pedro DiNezio and Jessica Tierney: The effect of sea level on glacial Indo-Pacific climate. Nature Geoscience, May 19 online publication at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/NGEO1823.
Funding:
Funding for this work was provided by NSF and by JAMSTEC, NASA, and NOAA, which sponsor research at the International Pacific Research Center.
Author Contacts:
Dr. Pedro DiNezio, SOEST Young Investigator, International Pacific Research Center, School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822; phone: (804) 674-4150; email: pdn@hawaii.edu.
Dr. Jessica E. Tierney, Assistant Scientist, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 360 Woods Hole Rd., MS #22 Woods Hole, MA 02543; phone: (508) 289-3775; email: tierney@whoi.edu.
International Pacific Research Center Media Contact: Gisela E. Speidel, International Pacific Research Center, School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI 96822; phone (808) 956-9252; email: gspeidel@hawaii.edu.
The International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) of the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, is a climate research center founded to gain greater understanding of the climate system and the nature and causes of climate variation in the Asia-Pacific region and how global climate changes may affect the region. Established under the "U.S.-Japan Common Agenda for Cooperation in Global Perspective" in October 1997, the IPRC is a collaborative effort between agencies in Japan and the United States.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 19-May-2013 Share ] Contact: Gisela Speidel
gspeidel@hawaii.edu
808-956-9252
University of Hawaii ? SOEST
Scientists look at past climates to learn about climate change and the ability to simulate it with computer models. One region that has received a great deal of attention is the Indo-Pacific warm pool, the vast pool of warm water stretching along the equator from Africa to the western Pacific Ocean.
In a new study, Pedro DiNezio of the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa, and Jessica Tierney of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution investigated preserved geological clues (called "proxies") of rainfall patterns during the last ice age when the planet was dramatically colder than today. They compared these patterns with computer model simulations in order to find a physical explanation for the patterns inferred from the proxies.
Their study, which appears in the May 19, online edition of Nature Geoscience, not only reveals unique patterns of rainfall change over the Indo-Pacific warm pool, but also shows that they were caused by the effect of lowered sea level on the configuration of the Indonesian archipelago.
"For our research," explains lead-author Pedro DiNezio at the International Pacific Research Center, "we compared the climate of the ice age with our recent warmer climate. We analyzed about 100 proxy records of rainfall and salinity stretching from the tropical western Pacific to the western Indian Ocean and eastern Africa. Rainfall and salinity signals recorded in geological sediments can tell us much about past changes in atmospheric circulation over land and the ocean respectively."
"Our comparisons show that, as many scientists expected, much of the Indo-Pacific warm pool was drier during this glacial period compared with today. But, counter to some theories, several regions, such as the western Pacific and the western Indian Ocean, especially eastern Africa, were wetter," adds co-author Jessica Tierney from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.
In the second step, the scientists matched these rainfall and salinity patterns with simulations from 12 state-of-the-art climate models that are used to also predict future climate change. For this matching they applied a method of categorical data comparison called the 'Cohen's kappa' statistic. Though widely used in the medical field, this method has not yet been used to match geological climate signals with climate model simulations.
"We were taken aback that only one model out of the 12 showed statistical agreement with the proxy-inferred patterns of the rainfall changes. This model, though, agrees well with both the rainfall and salinity indicators two entirely independent sets of proxy data covering distinct areas of the tropics," says DiNezio.
The model reveals that the dry climate during the glacial period was driven by reduced convection over a region of the warm pool called the Sunda Shelf. Today the shelf is submerged beneath the Gulf of Thailand, but was above sea level during the glacial period, when sea level was about 120 m lower.
"The exposure of the Sunda Shelf greatly weakened convection over the warm pool, with far-reaching impacts on the large-scale circulation and on rainfall patterns from Africa to the western Pacific and northern Australia," explains DiNezio.
The main weakness of the other models, according to the authors, is their limited ability to simulate convection, the vertical air motions that lift humid air into the atmosphere. Differences in the way each model simulates convection may explain why the results for the glacial period are so different.
"Our research resolves a decades-old question of what the response of tropical climate was to glaciation," concludes DiNezio. "The study, moreover, presents a fine benchmark for assessing the ability of climate models to simulate the response of tropical convection to altered land masses and global temperatures."
###
Citation:
Pedro DiNezio and Jessica Tierney: The effect of sea level on glacial Indo-Pacific climate. Nature Geoscience, May 19 online publication at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/NGEO1823.
Funding:
Funding for this work was provided by NSF and by JAMSTEC, NASA, and NOAA, which sponsor research at the International Pacific Research Center.
Author Contacts:
Dr. Pedro DiNezio, SOEST Young Investigator, International Pacific Research Center, School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822; phone: (804) 674-4150; email: pdn@hawaii.edu.
Dr. Jessica E. Tierney, Assistant Scientist, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 360 Woods Hole Rd., MS #22 Woods Hole, MA 02543; phone: (508) 289-3775; email: tierney@whoi.edu.
International Pacific Research Center Media Contact: Gisela E. Speidel, International Pacific Research Center, School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI 96822; phone (808) 956-9252; email: gspeidel@hawaii.edu.
The International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) of the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, is a climate research center founded to gain greater understanding of the climate system and the nature and causes of climate variation in the Asia-Pacific region and how global climate changes may affect the region. Established under the "U.S.-Japan Common Agenda for Cooperation in Global Perspective" in October 1997, the IPRC is a collaborative effort between agencies in Japan and the United States.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-05/uoh-sli051613.php
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BOUCA, Central African Republic (AP) ? Residents say armed men invaded a remote village in Central African Republic and killed six people.
The attack comes just days after rebels assaulted another nearby town, where they killed two people.
Residents in Bouca say four vehicles full of armed gunmen entered the village on Friday, where they shot six people.
Witnesses said the men did not speak Sango, the local language of Central African Republic.
Rebels overthrew the country's president in March, and for some time there have been allegations of involvement from Sudanese and Chadian fighters.
The rebels have been accused of rampant lootings, summary executions and the recruitment of child soldiers since their rebellion began in December.
Last week the United Nations envoy to the country said it "has collapsed into a state of anarchy."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rebels-attack-c-african-republic-villages-8-dead-121019684.html
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CANNES, France (AP) ? The magic and glamour of Cannes can be hard to spot on a day when rain is lashing the palm trees, roiling the gray Mediterranean and pooling in puddles along the Croisette.
But the world's leading film festival can transform careers ? something no one knows that better than actors Berenice Bejo and Tahir Rahim, stars of director Asghar Farhadi's festival entry "The Past."
Bejo shimmered on-screen in Cannes two years ago in "The Artist," her director husband Michel Hazanavicius' vivacious silent homage to Hollywood's Golden Age. It went on to win five Academy Awards, including best picture.
Rahim was the breakout star of the 2009 festival in Jacques Audiard's poetic and brutal prison drama "A Prophet," as a youth growing to manhood behind bars.
Cannes exposure helped boost both performers onto the international stage. While once most European actors could choose between stay at home and playing Hollywood villains, their paths suggest a more globalized movie world.
"It was quite a miracle for me," Bejo said Saturday, as rain drummed remorselessly on a Cannes rooftop lounge. "Two years ago my life changed a little bit in Cannes.
"I don't think Asghar Farhadi would have cast me in this movie if I hadn't done 'The Artist.'"
It's hard to think of two movie styles further apart than the flamboyant artifice of "The Artist" and the anatomically detailed domestic drama of "The Past"
Bejo plays Marie, a harried Frenchwoman with two children, a new boyfriend with a young son, and an Iranian ex who has returned after four years to finalize their divorce. Rahim is her boyfriend Samir, a man with complex family ties of his own.
All the characters are trying to move on ? but the past keeps dragging them back.
Bejo said she did a screen test for Farhadi, then didn't hear from him for a month, so initially thought she hadn't got the part.
"He said to me, I was looking into your face if I could see the doubt," she said. "I guess because he saw me in movies where I was quite positive, quite sunny, quite glamorous. He needed to see if I could show another part of myself ? and I guess he found it."
For Bejo, as for Rahim, working with the Iran director was a dream come true. "The Past" is the first film Farhadi has shot outside his homeland, and the actors say they loved his working methods ? two months of rehearsal to delve into character, break down barriers and forge bonds, followed by a four-month shoot.
With its Iranian director and largely French cast, it's one of several border-hopping movies at Cannes this year. French director Arnaud Desplechin's made-in-America "Jimmy P.: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian" stars France's Mathieu Amalric and Puerto Rican actor Benicio Del Toro. Another French filmmaker, Guillaume Canet, has a multinational cast including Clive Owen, Billy Crudup and Marion Cotillard in his New York crime drama "Blood Ties."
It's a trend Bejo is happy to embrace.
"In America you have Christoph Waltz, you have Marion Cotillard," she said. "In France we have Italian and Spanish actors. ... I think it's great. We are used to strangers and foreign accents, and it's great that we can see that in our movies now."
Both she and Rahim have been busy since their Cannes breakthroughs. Bejo recently made French heist movie "The Last Diamond" and soon starts filming Hazanavicius' next project, a war movie set in Chechnya.
Rahim's projects include the English-language Roman-era adventure "The Eagle" and another movie appearing at Cannes this year, the nuclear power plant romance "Grand Central."
Coming up, he plays a cop in the French movie "The Informant," and is currently shooting a globe-spanning 1920s-set drama with Turkish-German director Fatih Akin, another pillar of culture-crossing cinema.
Despite the busy international career ? and post-"Prophet" expressions of interest from the United States ? Rahim says Hollywood remains a hard nut to crack for non-Anglophone actors.
"It's not what you expect at first," Rahim said. "You'd like to be with Michael Mann or (directors) like this, but you don't have those parts that easily. Because first you have to speak English, you have to erase your accent."
For now, he's just happy to be back in Cannes, an experience that is easier the second time around.
"The difference is that now I'm not afraid when I come here," he said. "I'm (saying) 'OK I'm going to take every good vibe and keep it.'"
___
Jill Lawless can be reached at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cannes-helps-actors-bejo-rahim-cross-borders-165726670.html
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May 18, 2013 ? Chronic trauma can inflict lasting damage to brain regions associated with fear and anxiety. Previous imaging studies of people with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, have shown that these brain regions can over-or under-react in response to stressful tasks, such as recalling a traumatic event or reacting to a photo of a threatening face. Now, researchers at NYU School of Medicine have explored for the first time what happens in the brains of combat veterans with PTSD in the absence of external triggers.
Their results, published in Neuroscience Letters, and presented today at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatry Association in San Francisco, show that the effects of trauma persist in certain brain regions even when combat veterans are not engaged in cognitive or emotional tasks, and face no immediate external threats. The findings shed light on which areas of the brain provoke traumatic symptoms and represent a critical step toward better diagnostics and treatments for PTSD.
A chronic condition that develops after trauma, PTSD can plague victims with disturbing memories, flashbacks, nightmares and emotional instability. Among the 1.7 million men and women who have served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an estimated 20% have PTSD. Research shows that suicide risk is higher in veterans with PTSD. Tragically, more soldiers committed suicide in 2012 than the number of soldiers who were killed in combat in Afghanistan that year.
"It is critical to have an objective test to confirm PTSD diagnosis as self reports can be unreliable," says co-author Charles Marmar, MD, the Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Psychiatry and chair of NYU Langone's Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Marmar, a nationally recognized expert on trauma and stress among veterans, heads The Steven and Alexandra Cohen Veterans Center for the Study of Post-Traumatic Stress and Traumatic Brain Injury at NYU Langone Medical Center.
The study, led by Xiaodan Yan, a research fellow at NYU School of Medicine, examined "spontaneous" or "resting" brain activity in 104 veterans of combat from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars using functional MRI, which measures blood-oxygen levels in the brain. The researchers found that spontaneous brain activity in the amygdala, a key structure in the brain's "fear circuitry" that processes fearful and anxious emotions, was significantly higher in the 52 combat veterans with PTSD than in the 52 combat veterans without PTSD. The PTSD group also showed elevated brain activity in the anterior insula, a brain region that regulates sensitivity to pain and negative emotions.
Moreover, the PTSD group had lower activity in the precuneus, a structure tucked between the brain's two hemispheres that helps integrate information from the past and future, especially when the mind is wandering or disengaged from active thought. Decreased activity in the precuneus correlates with more severe "re-experiencing" symptoms -- that is, when victims re-experience trauma over and over again through flashbacks, nightmares and frightening thoughts.
Key scientific contributors include researchers at NYU School of Medicine, the University of California at San Francisco, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, and the Center for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Diseases at the VA Medical Center in San Francisco.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/fADMLxhJrxg/130518153257.htm
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CHICAGO (AP) ? In case they weren't aware already, the Chicago Blackhawks now know they're going to have to earn it if they want to get past Detroit.
The Red Wings hammered home that message on Saturday.
Damien Brunner and Brendan Smith scored in the second period and Detroit beat the Blackhawks 4-1 in Game 2 to even their Western Conference semifinal series.
It was a strong response by the Red Wings after Chicago handled them easily in the series opener, 4-1.
"We've got a real good club now," Detroit coach Mike Babcock said. "And we haven't been good all year. We've just gotten better."
Their confidence got a big jolt after they knocked off the Presidents' Trophy winners and avoided falling into a deep hole. It was another big win by a team that finished seventh in the conference, only to knock off second-seeded Anaheim in the first round.
Now, they're even with a team that's been rolling along all season and is eyeing its second Stanley Cup in four years.
"Both teams would be stupid if they thought they were going to come in here and either team win four straight," Chicago's Brent Seabrook said.
Just as the Blackhawks did in Game 1, Detroit took control in the second period and put the game away in the third. Now, the Red Wings have a chance to take the lead when this series between Original Six rivals shifts to Detroit for Game 3 on Monday.
"Overall, I think we had more energy," the Red Wings' Henrik Zetterberg said. "We did a lot of the little things better than we did in Game 1 and when we got our chances we were able to put the puck in the net."
Patrick Kane gave Chicago a 1-0 lead late in the first, but did things ever change after that.
Brunner tied it when he deflected a wrist shot by Jakub Kindl early in the second, and Smith gave the Red Wings the lead when he scored off a feed from Zetterberg on a 3-on-1 late in the second.
Johan Franzen made it 3-1 in the third when he fired a rising shot past Crawford after a perfect pass from Jonathan Ericsson in the Detroit zone. And Valtteri Filppula closed out the scoring with 7:57 left in the game.
That was enough for Jimmy Howard, who stopped 19 shots.
Crawford made 26 saves for Chicago and played well at times even though things got out of hand down the stretch. When it was over, coach Joel Quenneville insisted his faith in his goalie hasn't wavered.
"Not at all," he said. "Across the board, we should all assume responsibility."
The Red Wings were simply a step faster and were more physical in this one after the Blackhawks ran away from them in the opener.
"I think just by taking care of our own end first, making good plays, you end up playing a faster game that way," Smith said. "By taking away their speed, it helps out ours. You want to get a lot of contact on these types of teams, and it works out for us."
The Blackhawks still struck first thanks to a lucky bounce after Detroit's Kyle Quincey sprawled out to block a pass across the slot by Patrick Sharp that was intended for Kane on a 2-on-1 rush. The puck bounced to a trailing Michal Handzus, who immediately fed it to a wide open Kane in the right slot. He fired it into the net at the 14:05 mark for a 1-0 lead and his first goal of the playoffs.
About a minute later, with the Red Wings on a power play, Crawford made a nice save on Zetterberg before Pavel Datsyuk ripped a shot high off the right post.
Detroit tied it early in the second when a wrist shot by Kindl from just inside the blue line deflected off Brunner and past a screened Crawford, who didn't even react as the puck went past him on the glove side.
But Chicago's goalie had the fans chanting his name midway through the period with two great saves, stopping Zetterberg from the slot and sprawling out to foil Daniel Cleary on the rebound.
The Red Wings took a 2-1 lead with 3:52 left in the second after Chicago's Niklas Hjalmarsson fell racing Zetterberg for a loose puck. Zetterberg then dished to Smith on a 2-on-1 rush for the go-ahead goal.
"He creates a lot of stuff, sometimes for both teams," Zetterberg said in a nod to Smith's struggles in Game 1.
There weren't many mistakes by the Red Wings in this one. Other than Kane's goal, they contained the Blackhawks' stars and made it look easy over the final two periods.
"They kind of used our own style against us as far as holding onto the puck and keeping it away from us," Kane said.
NOTES: LW Drew Miller was in the Red Wings' lineup for the first time since April 20. He had been sidelined by a broken bone in his right hand. ... F Viktor Stalberg was a healthy scratch for the Blackhawks, just as he was in Game 1. "I don't like changing too much, but we wanted to get (Dave Bolland) in our lineup," Quenneville said before the game. "It's comparable to what we've done during season. But we'll see. We can adapt and change at any moment." ... Quenneville on the early start: "I think the guys, once they get in, they don't mind playing in the afternoon."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/red-wings-beat-blackhawks-4-1-even-series-194445803.html
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? Political scandals cause collateral damage and Republicans are hoping the furor over federal tax enforcers singling out conservative groups will snag some really big game ? President Barack Obama's health care law.
The Internal Revenue Service has a major role in carrying out the health care law. Financial aid to help the uninsured afford coverage will be funneled through the tax system. The IRS is also responsible for penalties on individuals and employers who fail to comply with the law.
And it turns out the former head of the IRS office that subjected tea-party groups to tougher scrutiny for tax exemptions is now running the agency's health care division.
The red-meat associations appear irresistible, but no one appears to have the facts yet that could connect the dots.
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The first rule of being cool is not telling people you want to be cool. Yahoo is not following this rule, with its M&A team in full pray-and-spray?acquisition?mode post-Marissa Mayer hire, hitting on everything that walks, or at least has traction. Deals I have heard rumors Yahoo was trying to get into over the past couple of months: Foursquare (at an $800 million asking price). Path (at a $2 billion asking price). Pinterest. Hulu. Zynga.?Daily Motion. And at a smaller scale: Gdgt. Wavii. Media Ocean (?). A spate of others. And now Tumblr. "Literally they talk to everyone," said one person familiar with the matter on the matter.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/r9gXVQEQL6c/
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As part of a documentary TV series, a young male actor took to the streets of downtown Cairo dressed as a woman and experienced sexual harassment firsthand.
A veiled Egyptian woman is photographed outside Moustafa Mahmoud Mosque in a neighborhood of Cairo. As part of a TV documentary series a male Egyptian actor dressed as a woman and found that he was harassed and propositioned by Egyptian men, even when wearing a traditional niqab (full veil).
Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters/File
EnlargeWould men stop sexually harassing women, or at least understand what it feels like to be verbally and physically abused, if they were to experience it themselves?
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One TV program in Egypt has looked at the issue of sexual harassment by doing just that.
?Awel el Khayt? ? roughly translated as ?The Thread??- is a seven-episode series aimed at covering longstanding socio-political and economic problems in the North African country.
A team of 17 staffers works on the program ? a co-production between?Belail Media Production and Consulting and Egyptian TV network ONTV.
In a recently aired 30-minute episode titled ?Sexual Harassment in Egypt,? young actor Waleed Hammad took to the streets of downtown Cairo dressed as a woman in order to experience harassment firsthand.
In the report, Hammad ? who went out both veiled and unveiled to see whether that would make a difference ? said he was followed by fancy cars with men in suits who would try to lure him into the vehicle.
On another occasion, he was followed by a man who seemed to be talking on the phone. The actor realized after a while that the man was in fact cautiously addressing him, proposing a paid appointment with another man in a hotel room.
?I realized that simply walking on the street, for a woman, is such a huge effort, a psychological effort and a bodily effort. It?s like women are besieged,? Hammad said.
?As a man [Hammad] takes to the streets to go about his daily business without much thought for what he is wearing, who is looking at him, and without the fear of being physically or verbally harassed,? Ramy Aly, the editorial consultant for the program told Thomson Reuters Foundation.
?So dressing up as a woman was a real eye opener, an exercise in empathy.? Finding an actor willing to put on women?s clothing and walk the streets of Cairo wasn?t easy, Aly said.
Producers went to a number of casting agencies, but most actors refused. It took them two months to find Hammad.
Aly said the series is meant to fill a void in current affairs programming on Egyptian television, which has long been dominated by talk shows and TV debates but lacks factual programming formats.
?We decided to go for a mixed format where we would produce documentaries investigating issues like sexual harassment, food security, health care, and education, which we would use as a way of laying the ground for informed debate,? he said. ?We wanted try and tackle some of the longstanding problems that Egypt faces in a different way.?
Sexual harassment is an endemic, longstanding, highly controversial, and sensitive subject in Egypt. A string of high-profile incidents of mass sex attacks in recent months has drawn global attention to the phenomenon.
?However,? Aly said, ?society has by and large turned a blind eye to the everyday forms of sexual harassment that millions of Egyptian women experience every day on the street, public transport, and at work.?
Moreover, some men remain unsympathetic toward women who have been harassed, blaming them for dressing provocatively and calling the abuse upon them.
According to Aly, the reasons for sexual harassment are complex and include a number of stereotypes. It is fuelled by unemployment, poverty, lower chances of marriage, the Internet, pornography, and women going beyond their traditional roles as housewives and mothers.
However, none of the above provides an exhaustive, comprehensive explanation of the phenomenon, he said.
?We realized that we could not find a root cause, and so instead, the film engages in a kind of myth-busting exercise. [We found that] many perpetrators are married, they are both wealthy and poor men, and that women who are veiled in various degrees from niqab [full veil] to hijab [headscarf] are harassed in equal measure.?
They even came across a case in which a brother accidentally harassed his own sister.
In addition to Hammad?s experiment, the TV program also gathered testimonies of women who were victims of harassment. And, Aly said, it wasn?t easy getting them to open up.
?It is still a challenge to find nonactivist women who are willing to speak candidly about their experiences of sexual harassment because it is such a social taboo.?
One woman who took her harasser to court and got him convicted recounted being pressured to drop the charges during the first court hearing, and subsequently being threatened by his family, who said they would throw acid on her face.
?Nobody supported me, and to this day, not many people in my family know that I took him to court, and those that do know say, ?How will you get married after what you have done?? ? the woman said.
Hammad, after switching gender roles for the TV program, felt some empathy.
?I would say to all the women out there, God be with you. I know that it is such a devastating experience, and even as a man dressed as a woman, I don?t think I can claim to really understand what it feel like to be a woman under these circumstances,? Hammad said.
? This article originally appeared at Thomson Reuters Foundation, a source of news, information, and connections for action. It provides programs that trigger change, empower people, and offer concrete solutions.
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JOHANNESBURG (AP) ? Twenty-three youths have died in the past nine days at initiation ceremonies that include circumcisions and survival tests, South African police said Friday.
Police have opened 22 murder cases in the deaths in the northeastern province of Mpumalanga, according to spokesman Lt. Col. Leonard Hlathi. He said an inquest is being held into the 23rd death, of a youth who complained of stomach pains and vomited.
Initiation ceremonies are common in South Africa, where youths partake in various activities as a rite of passage into adulthood, usually over the course of three weeks. Some 30,000 youths signed up for initiation this year.
In addition to being circumcised, the boys and young men are put through a series of survival tests which sometimes include exposure to South Africa's chilly winter conditions with skimpy clothing. Their faces are painted with red clay and they also are given herbal concoctions to drink.
Nelson Mandela, the first democratically elected president of South Africa, described the experience in his autobiography as "a kind of spiritual preparation for the trials of manhood."
Hlathi said that all the deaths occurred at government-registered initiation sites where medical practitioners usually are present. The government became involved to prevent such unnecessary deaths.
Mathibela Mokoena, chairman of the House of Traditional Leaders in Mpumalanga, says the Department of Health was alerted before the initiation ceremonies began, but only showed up after the first few deaths were reported. He said the department has now agreed to have officials present for the remainder of the ceremony.
It was not immediately possible to get a response from the department. The department spokesman was on a plane, an assistant said. The minister's spokesman did not answer his phone or respond to a telephone message.
The deaths are the highest recorded in Mpumalanga, surpassing the previous highest toll of eight some years ago, Mokoena said. He said early investigation by the House of Traditional Leaders showed some schools were negligent, leaving the youths in the care of young men instead of experienced adults.
Mokoena said some of the initiates were not in ideal health when they enrolled. He said new legislation is being introduced outlining procedures to be followed, and including a punishment of a life ban for those found negligent.
The suspected causes of the deaths were not released pending the results of post-mortems. Most deaths in the past have been caused by infection and loss of blood after circumcision.
Government spokeswoman Phumla Williams said the government is sending condolences to the families and urged creation of "better and safe initiation schools that will ensure the safe passage of young initiates to manhood and prevent the unfortunate loss of lives."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/23-dead-initiation-rites-south-africa-131938573.html
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Looks like a Galaxy Note 8 that lots its S PenSamsung's continuing its Android tablet push with the Galaxy Tab 3 series, and it looks like there might be an 8-inch variant on the way alongside the current 7-incher. SamMobile obtained the shot you see above, which it claims shows the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 8.0.
According to a spec sheet released alongside the image, the 8-incher will come in Wifi-only and 3G flavors, and run Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean on a 1280x800 panel. On the inside, it's supposedly an unnamed 1.5GHz dual-core CPU doing the number-crunching, with 1GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage and a microSD slot. A 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera and 5-megapixel rear shooter are also listed. The dimensions are also a point of interest, with a thickness of just 6.95mm being reported, potentially making this an extremely thin tablet.
The shot itself appears to be little more than a mock-up, but if accurate it would indicate that the 8-inch Tab 3 is running a the latest version of TouchWiz, and is also lacking the earpiece of its 7-inch counterpart. No release date is reported just yet, but we imagine it'll appear sometime after the 7-inch Tab 3's roll-out, due to take place over the next month.
Source: SamMobile
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/japMA6lJyy0/story01.htm
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May 16, 2013 ? "Spring is like a perhaps hand," wrote the poet E. E. Cummings: "carefully / moving a perhaps / fraction of flower here placing / an inch of air there... / without breaking anything."
With the hand of nature trained on a beaker of chemical fluid, the most delicate flower structures have been formed in a Harvard laboratory -- and not at the scale of inches, but microns.
These minuscule sculptures, curved and delicate, don't resemble the cubic or jagged forms normally associated with crystals, though that's what they are. Rather, fields of carnations and marigolds seem to bloom from the surface of a submerged glass slide, assembling themselves a molecule at a time.
By simply manipulating chemical gradients in a beaker of fluid, Wim L. Noorduin, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and lead author of a paper appearing on the cover of the May 17 issue of Science, has found that he can control the growth behavior of these crystals to create precisely tailored structures.
"For at least 200 years, people have been intrigued by how complex shapes could have evolved in nature. This work helps to demonstrate what's possible just through environmental, chemical changes," says Noorduin.
The precipitation of the crystals depends on a reaction of compounds that are diffusing through a liquid solution. The crystals grow toward or away from certain chemical gradients as the pH of the reaction shifts back and forth. The conditions of the reaction dictate whether the structure resembles broad, radiating leaves, a thin stem, or a rosette of petals.
It is not unusual for chemical gradients to influence growth in nature; for example, delicately curved marine shells form from calcium carbonate under water, and gradients of signaling molecules in a human embryo help set up the plan for the body. Similarly, Harvard biologist Howard Berg has shown that bacteria living in colonies can sense and react to plumes of chemicals from one another, which causes them to grow, as a colony, into intricate geometric patterns.
Replicating this type of effect in the laboratory was a matter of identifying a suitable chemical reaction and testing, again and again, how variables like the pH, temperature, and exposure to air might affect the nanoscale structures.
The project fits right in with the work of Joanna Aizenberg, an expert in biologically inspired materials science, biomineralization, and self-assembly, and principal investigator for this research.
Aizenberg is the Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Materials Science at Harvard SEAS, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology in the Harvard Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and a Core Faculty Member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard.
Her recent work has included the invention of an extremely slippery material, inspired by the pitcher plant, and the discovery of how bacteria use their flagella to cling to the surfaces of medical implants.
"Our approach is to study biological systems, to think what they can do that we can't, and then to use these approaches to optimize existing technologies or create new ones," says Aizenberg. "Our vision really is to build as organisms do."
To create the flower structures, Noorduin and his colleagues dissolve barium chloride (a salt) and sodium silicate (also known as waterglass) into a beaker of water. Carbon dioxide from air naturally dissolves in the water, setting off a reaction which precipitates barium carbonate crystals. As a byproduct, it also lowers the pH of the solution immediately surrounding the crystals, which then triggers a reaction with the dissolved waterglass. This second reaction adds a layer of silica to the growing structures, uses up the acid from the solution, and allows the formation of barium carbonate crystals to continue.
"You can really collaborate with the self-assembly process," says Noorduin. "The precipitation happens spontaneously, but if you want to change something then you can just manipulate the conditions of the reaction and sculpt the forms while they're growing."
Increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide, for instance, helps to create 'broad-leafed' structures. Reversing the pH gradient at the right moment can create curved, ruffled structures.
Noorduin and his colleagues have grown the crystals on glass slides and metal blades; they've even grown a field of flowers in front of President Lincoln's seat on a one-cent coin.
"When you look through the electron microscope, it really feels a bit like you're diving in the ocean, seeing huge fields of coral and sponges," describes Noorduin. "Sometimes I forget to take images because it's so nice to explore."
In addition to her roles at Harvard SEAS, the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and the Wyss Institute, Joanna Aizenberg is Director of the Kavli Institute for Bionano Science and Technology at Harvard and Director of the Science Program at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
Coauthors included Alison Grinthal, a research scientist at Harvard SEAS, and L. Mahadevan, who is the Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics at SEAS, Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and of Physics, and a Core Faculty Member at the Wyss Institute.
The project was supported by National Science Foundation grants to the Harvard Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (DMR-0820484) and the Harvard Center for Nanoscale Systems (ECS-0335765); and by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research.
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