128GB iPad 4 with Retina Display goes on sale on February 5

You are here: Home ? iPad ? 128GB iPad 4 with Retina Display goes on sale on February 5

Instead of having the customary product announcement event in January, Apple announced a new iPad through a press release.

iPad 4 with double the storage is available soon! Yesterday January 29, Apple announced the 128GB iPad 4 with Retina Display will be available February 5, next Tuesday:

?The new 128GB versions of the fourth generation iPad will be available starting Tuesday, February 5, in black or white, for a suggested retail price of $799 (US) for the iPad with Wi-Fi model and $929 (US) for the iPad with Wi-Fi + Cellular model.?

It?s funny that as companies such as Microsoft and BlackBerry started to copy Apple?s end of January product announcement, Apple moved away from it.

Wait, Apple made an iPad 4, and updated it? Due to the vague naming of iPad 3 and iPad 4, many people missed it.

• iPad 3 with Retina Display, officially called ?The new iPad?, was released in March 2012
• iPad 4 with Retina Display and faster Apple A6X processor, officially called ?iPad with Retina Display?, was announced at the iPad mini event and released in November 2012

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Epilepsy Drug in Pregnancy Linked to Autism Risk in Study - Health ...

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 30 (HealthDay News) ? Women taking the epilepsy drug valproate (Depakote) while pregnant are at increased risk of having children with autism and other developmental problems, according to a small British study.

Valproate is prescribed for epilepsy as well as certain psychiatric disorders and migraines. Other studies have shown its use during pregnancy is associated with birth defects and, more recently, lower IQ in school-age children.

The American Academy of Neurology advises against valproate use during pregnancy, and some experts believe it should not be used by women of childbearing age.

?Women for whom valproate is a treatment option should discuss the risks and benefits of this drug with their doctor prior to pregnancy, to ensure that their health and that of the potential child is optimized,? said Rebecca Bromley, a clinical psychologist and research associate at the University of Liverpool, who led the new study.

?Planning a pregnancy in collaboration with your doctor is important if you are taking antiepileptic drugs,? she added. And evidence suggests the damage to the fetus occurs early in pregnancy, according to the study.

But women should not alter their medication without talking to their doctor, she noted.

For the study, published online Jan. 30 in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, Bromley?s team collected data on more than 500 pregnant women between 2000 and 2004. About half had epilepsy, of whom all but 34 took medicine to control their seizures.

The drugs they took included carbamazepine (Tegretol), valproate and lamotrigine (Lamictal), the researchers noted.

Of the 415 children for whom data was available, 19 were diagnosed with a developmental problem by age 6 years. Three of them also had a physical handicap.

Twelve of these children had an autism spectrum disorder, and one was also diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the researchers found.

Three children had ADHD alone and four had dyspraxia, a condition causing poor physical coordination and clumsiness.

These neurodevelopmental problems were far more common among children whose mothers had epilepsy (7.46 percent) compared with those whose mothers didn?t have the seizure disorder (1.87 percent). And they were detected more often among children whose mothers took valproate by itself or in combination with other drugs, the study authors found.

Twelve percent of the children of mothers who took valproate alone had developmental problems as did 15 percent of those whose mothers took valproate along with other medications, the researchers reported.

Also, the likelihood of a neurodevelopmental disorder appeared to increase with higher doses of valproate, they noted.

Overall, children exposed to valproate alone or with other drugs were six times and 10 times more likely to be diagnosed with a developmental problem, respectively, compared with children of mothers who did not have epilepsy, the study authors said.

In addition, boys were three times more likely to be diagnosed with a developmental disorder than girls.

Children with autism have trouble with communication and social interactions, and its incidence is increasing.

Bromley said she hopes to continue the research in larger studies.

Meanwhile, children exposed to valproate in the womb should be monitored, the authors said. However, ?it is important to stress that not every child is affected,? Bromley said.

?Exposure to the drug is associated with an increase in the level of risk, but we do not yet understand the mechanism behind the association,? she added.

Other experts said that valproate is overused.

?There is still a lot of valproate being used in women of childbearing age, probably more than we should be using,? said Dr. Kimford Meador, a professor of neurology at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.

Valproate is known to increase the risk of birth defects in higher doses, Meador said. ?It is the antiepileptic drug that has the most risk for developmental disorders,? he added.

?We have a lot of alternate drugs that can be tried,? he said.

Only half of the prescriptions for valproate in the United States are for epilepsy; the rest are for psychiatric disorders and migraines, he noted.

Dr. Orrin Devinsky, director of the epilepsy center at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City, agreed that valproate use should be limited.

?The increased risk of poor neurodevelopmental outcomes, including autism, must be viewed in light of the similarly increased risk of major congenital malformations,? Devinsky said.

Together, he added, these risks ?should make every doctor treating a woman of childbearing age with valproate make sure it is truly essential.?

More information

For more information on pregnancy and epilepsy medications, visit the Epilepsy Foundation.

Source: http://news.health.com/2013/01/30/epilepsy-drug-in-pregnancy-linked-to-autism-risk-in-study/

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Next in BP spill saga: civil trial worth billions

FILE - In this April 21, 2010 aerial file photo taken in the Gulf of Mexico more than 50 miles southeast of Venice, La., the Deepwater Horizon oil rig is seen burning. A U.S. judge on Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2013, approved an agreement for British oil giant BP PLC to plead guilty to manslaughter and other charges and pay a record $4 billion in criminal penalties for the company's role in the 2010 oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

FILE - In this April 21, 2010 aerial file photo taken in the Gulf of Mexico more than 50 miles southeast of Venice, La., the Deepwater Horizon oil rig is seen burning. A U.S. judge on Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2013, approved an agreement for British oil giant BP PLC to plead guilty to manslaughter and other charges and pay a record $4 billion in criminal penalties for the company's role in the 2010 oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

FILE - In a Wednesday, April 20, 2011 file photo, people gather near crosses -11 for the workers who died in the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and one for the Gulf of Mexico, center - during a vigil to mark the first anniversary of the BP PLC oil spill on a beach in Grand Isle, La. A U.S. judge on Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2013, approved an agreement for British oil giant BP PLC to plead guilty to manslaughter and other charges and pay a record $4 billion in criminal penalties for the company's role in the 2010 oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)

NEW ORLEANS (AP) ? Now that a $4 billion plea deal has resolved BP's criminal liability for the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill nearly three years ago, the company will turn its focus to a trial that could potentially cost it billions of dollars more in civil penalties.

At the conclusion of a hearing Tuesday that included emotional testimony and a BP executive's apology, a federal judge agreed to let the London-based oil giant plead guilty to manslaughter charges for the April 2010 deaths of 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon rig and pay the record amount of criminal penalties.

What the plea deal approved by U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance doesn't resolve, though, is the federal government's civil claims against BP.

A trial scheduled to start Feb. 25 is designed to identify the causes of BP's well blowout, which triggered the deadly rig explosion and massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010. The first phase of the trial also is designed to assign percentages of blame to BP and its partners in the ill-fated drilling project.

BP and the Justice Department have engaged in settlement talks that could resolve the civil claims against BP by the federal government and Gulf states before trial.

David Uhlmann, a University of Michigan law professor and former chief of the Justice Department's environmental crimes section, said it's reasonable to expect a civil settlement with the Justice Department to cost BP more than twice as much as the criminal settlement.

"There is tremendous incentive for both sides to settle," Uhlmann said, noting that BP would face much larger civil penalties if the government can convince the trial judge that the company acted with gross negligence before the deadly blowout.

Vance noted that the company already has racked up more than $24 billion in spill-related expenses and has estimated it will pay a total of $42 billion to fully resolve its liability for the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

BP agreed in November to plead guilty to charges involving the workers' deaths and for lying to Congress about the size of the spill from its broken well, which spewed more than 200 million gallons of oil. Much of it ended up in the Gulf and soiled the shorelines of several states. The company could have withdrawn from the agreement if Vance had rejected it. The judge said the $4 billion criminal settlement is "just punishment" for BP, even though the company could have paid far more without going broke. In accepting the deal, Vance also cited the risk that a trial could result in a much lower fine for BP, one potentially capped by law at $8.2 million.

The criminal settlement calls for BP to pay nearly $1.3 billion in fines. The largest previous corporate criminal penalty assessed by the Justice Department was a $1.2 billion fine against drug maker Pfizer in 2009.

The plea deal also includes payments of nearly $2.4 billion to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and $350 million to the National Academy of Sciences. The two groups will administer the money to fund Gulf restoration and oil spill prevention projects.

The $4 billion in total penalties are 160 times greater than the $25 million fine that Exxon paid for the 1989 Valdez spill in Alaska, Vance noted.

Before she ruled, the judge heard an apology from a BP executive and emotional testimony from relatives of the 11 workers who died when BP's blown-out Macondo well triggered an explosion on the rig and started the spill.

"I've heard and I truly understand your feelings and the losses you suffered," Vance told the family members.

Keith Jones, whose 28-year-old son, Gordon, died in the rig explosion, said $4 billion isn't adequate punishment.

"It is petty cash to BP," he told Vance. "Their stock went up after this plea deal was announced."

Billy Anderson, whose 35-year-old son, Jason, of Midfield, Texas, died in the blast, recalled the trauma of watching the disaster play out on television.

"These men suffered a horrendous death," he said. "They were basically cremated alive and not at their choice."

BP America vice president Luke Keller apologized to the relatives of the workers who died and for the spill's environmental damage to the Gulf Coast.

"BP knows there is nothing we can say to diminish their loss," he said. "The lives lost and those forever changed will stay with us. We are truly sorry."

A series of government investigations have blamed the blowout on time-saving, cost-cutting decisions by BP and its partners on the drilling project.

Most of the families of rig workers who were killed or injured in the explosion already have settled their claims against BP, through a process separate from this plea deal.

BP also has separately agreed to a settlement with lawyers for Gulf Coast residents and businesses who claim the spill cost them money. BP estimates the deal with private attorneys will cost the company roughly $7.8 billion.

The Justice Department also has reached a settlement with rig owner Transocean Ltd. that resolves the government's civil and criminal claims over the Swiss-based company's role in the disaster.

Transocean agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of violating the Clean Water Act and pay $1.4 billion in civil and criminal penalties. U.S. District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo has scheduled a Feb. 14 hearing to decide whether to accept that criminal settlement. A different judge will decide whether to accept Transocean's civil settlement.

In other criminal cases, four current or former BP employees have been indicted. BP rig supervisors Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine are charged with manslaughter, accused of repeatedly disregarding abnormal high-pressure readings that should have been glaring indications of trouble just before the blowout.

David Rainey, BP's former vice president of exploration for the Gulf of Mexico, was charged with withholding information from Congress about the amount of oil that was gushing from the well.

Former BP engineer Kurt Mix was charged with deleting text messages about the company's spill response.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-01-30-Gulf%20Oil%20Spill-Settlement/id-34167a7ee65b41adbc8d96a2b5b2235c

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The Engadget Podcast is live tonight at 5PM!

RIM? RIM. RIM RIM RIM, RIM RIM RIM RIM. RIM RIM. Some other stuff happened this week, too, but let's be honestly, we're going all RIM all the time. If you've been playing a BlackBerry-based Engadget Podcast drinking game, you're going to sit this one RIM. Out, sorry, we meant to say out. Oh, and it looks like we'll never say "RIM" again. So there's that.

Update: Sorry, guys, looks like our chat client is having some issues. We're gonna have to rely on the comments for now...

Comments

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/L6mwtc0pL5c/

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Vinci Tab III M

The original Vinci Tab was one of the earliest kid-centric tablets to hit the market. Since then, there's been no shortage of options for parents, from dedicated devices like the Fuhu Nabi 2 to Amazon's Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD with their top-notch FreeTime mode for kids. The Vinci Tab III M ($169.99 direct, 8GB) has all the trappings of a child-centric-friendly device, with a kid-size 5-inch screen, a protective rubber bumper, and a strong focus on educational content, but it's not nearly as versatile as the aforementioned tablets, and additional educational content must be purchased separately for a steep price. It is, at least, a better buy than the larger Tab II for those sold on Vinci's educational content.

Design and Features
The Vinci Tab III M's biggest selling point is likely its small build. Designed around a 5-inch screen, it's a bit more manageable for the younger crowd. The M measures 5.8 by 3.5 by 0.6 inches (HWD) and weighs 8.48 ounces, which is almost a third of the weight of the Nabi 2. Wrapped around the edges is a protective rubber bumper with a handle at one end. Power and Volume buttons are built into the bumper's edge, while cut-outs allow access to the micro USB port, microSD card slot, and 3.5mm headphone jack. The protective bumper is glued onto the edges of the tablet, but leaves the back panel exposed. I was able to dislodge part of the bumper simply by picking at it. ?

The 5-inch, 800-by-480-pixel display leaves a lot to be desired. Given the small size, the lower resolution isn't as huge of an issue as it might be on a 7-inch tablet, but it's noticeably grainy and colors look a bit muted. There's also a layer over the glass screen that gives it a foggy, almost speckled quality.

Below the display are physical Menu, Home, and Back buttons with a front-facing camera of unspecified resolution next to them. On the back are a small speaker grille and a 3-megapixel rear-facing camera. The cameras here are lackluster and the speaker is a tinny mess, but that shouldn't be a dealbreaker for tablets in this category.

The Tab III M is Wi-Fi only tablet that connects to 802.11b/g/n networks on the 2.4GHz band. On a few occasions, however, I noticed the Wi-Fi would cut out and take a restart to reconnect. There's no Bluetooth or GPS here. The M comes in a single 8GB model and our 32 and 64GB SanDisk microSD cards worked fine to expand the tablet's storage.

Android and Content
This tablet isn't going to blow anyone away with its specs or performance, but it doesn't have to. Unlike the Nabi 2, which is powered by a quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, the M runs on a modest single-core 1.2GHz Cortex A8 processor. I noticed a few minor performance hiccups like app hang-ups, jerky scrolling, and slow Web page loads, but nothing serious. The Vinci-produced content ran very smoothly in my tests.

Vinci's implementation of a kid-safe, sandboxed version of Android is a bit different than, say, Fuhu or Amazon's. Parent and Kid modes look very similar, instead of large, colorful cartoonish icons for the latter on the aforementioned systems. It's all built on Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" and the kid-mode simply strips access to apps not placed on the home screen. And there are some glaring holes and easy workarounds for smart kids. For example, holding the Home button in Kid mode opens up the app switcher, allowing access to restricted apps that parents may have left running. Pulling down the notification bar also allows full access to the system settings, which curious kids can use to, say, connect to unknown Wi-Fi networks. Both Fuhu and Amazon offer more comprehensive protection that lock out features more effectively, while Amazon's FreeTime even lets you set time limits on usage.

As far as content goes, Vinci's original apps are very polished compared with those of competitors. Vinci packages its content in curriculums and the M is preloaded with preschool levels 1 through 3. Also included are three Vinci story books and 20 music videos. The apps are almost all educational, teaching skills through voice prompts and touch interaction. My biggest complaint is that it's not always completely obvious what you're supposed to do. For example, in a number of apps, if you happen to miss the short voice prompt in the beginning, you get little additional guidance. Where other kid-friendly models preload a bunch of games and entertainment-focused content, the Vinci is decidedly focused on educating children, which many parents will likely prefer. Amazon doesn't include any educational content, while Fuhu includes some decent educational content, but it's not quite as polished as Vinci's. The Vinci curriculum targets kids as young as one-and-a-half years old, and introductory apps teach language skills. For example, the first level shows a typical child's bedroom with various items and toys scattered about. Touching an item activates a voice prompt that identifies the item.

Another issue with the content is the price. The original Vinci Tab had a subscription style content distribution system, and since it lacked Wi-Fi, you had to buy through Vinci to get anything on your tablet. Luckily, the M is not subscription based, but adding curriculums can cost anywhere from $89.99 on the low end to $179.99 at the top end. Ouch.

Thankfully, the M also offers access to the Google Play app store and its selection of hundreds of thousands of apps. Vinci's focus is on education, so if you want to add some entertaining games you can do so through Google Play. Keep in mind, however, that most graphic-intensive games, like say, racing titles, will trip the III M up.

Conclusions
When it comes to kid-centric tablets, parents have a lot of choices right now. But there are only two reasons to choose the III M over the Nabi 2 or simply using FreeTime on a Kindle Fire: The child-size 5-inch screen, which isn't of great quality, and the Vinci educational content, which, unfortunately, is astronomically priced. Aside from those two factors, that each come with major caveats, the Vinci Tab III M falls short.

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Video: Missing Mickey, Part 4

Dateline NBC

'Dateline NBC,' the signature broadcast for NBC News in primetime, premiered in 1992. Since then, it has been pioneering a new approach to primetime news programming. The multi-night franchise, supplemented by frequent specials, allows NBC to consistently and comprehensively present the highest-quality reporting, investigative features, breaking news coverage and newsmaker profiles.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3032600/vp/50634292#50634292

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Georgia College Homecoming Concert Lineup Announced

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Does Your First Time Determine Every Time? | YourTango

What was your first time like?

A new study says how you lost your virginity stays with you the rest of your love life.

You know how you mother always told you first impressions tend to stick? She might have been right ? even in ways she was certainly not referring to. According to new research, the tone set when you lose your virginity apparently stays the rest of your love life ... forever.?

More from YourTango: 10 Signs You Have Impossible Standards

University of Tennessee psychology doctoral student Matthew Schaffer and C. Veronica Smith, Ph.D., University of Mississippi assistant psychology professor, designed a study to observe the ways in which your virginity loss affects your future sex life. The study, published in the Journal of Sex and Martial Therapy, looks at whether or not there are consequences or benefits to how unpleasantly or happily you first had sex.

Researchers questioned 331 young men and women about the way they lost their virginity, including the accompanying emotional anxiety, contentment and/or regret. Then, the respondents were asked questions about their present sex life. Topics such as how much control they felt over theirs, as well as how much satisfaction and well-being they feel.

More from YourTango: Coming Out Lowers Stress In Canada, But Would It In The US?

Those who stated their first times were fulfilling and satisfying reported happier sex lives later on, while the ones who stated their virginity loss was accompanied by negative feelings reported lower sexual functioning overall. "While this study doesn't prove that a better first time makes for a better sex life in general, a person?s experience of losing their virginity may set the pattern for years to come," said Shaffer.

The strange thing is that most of us have kinda weird first times, I think. Not bad, just awkward. As I read this research, I initially thought, "That can't be right; most people have a kinda uncomfortable first time then go on to have perfectly fine sex lives." But the more I pondered it in my head, the more I started matching up my own experiences as well as those of my friends to how we behave and feel now.

I, for one, know that my first time was an overall positive experience comparatively because I'm still sort of friends with the guy (even though it happened 9 years ago). He was super sweet about it being new to me and we had been dating for just a few months so I wasn?t particularly dead inside when we broke up a couple more months thereafter. That said, it was definitely awkward, but the rest of my sex life has been overwhelmingly not awkward. Keep reading ...

More sex stories from YourTango:

Source: http://www.yourtango.com/2013172569/does-your-first-time-determine-every-time

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Ray LaHood Exit Interview: We Are Behind On High Speed Rail

WASHINGTON -- Leaving what he called "the best job I've ever had," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood took some parting shots at lawmakers, mainly his fellow Republicans, for lacking a vision on infrastructure proportional to current demands.

LaHood, who announced on Tuesday that he would be leaving his post in one month's time, made several bold predictions in an exit interview with The Huffington Post. Everyone, he argued, would own either a hybrid or a battery-powered vehicle by 2025, owing to new fuel efficiency standards; renewable energy would be a predominant fuel component for most forms of transportation; and infrastructure investment would become a second term policy priority for Congress along the lines of immigration reform.

"I hope that ... elections make a difference," said LaHood. "The president has spent four years talking about infrastructure. Every speech that he gives about putting America to work, he talks about infrastructure. And I hope that since the election, people come to realize that if you really want to get America back to work and put people to work, you have to make investments in infrastructure."

LaHood offered a few political observations as well, arguing that members of Congress needed to understand the risks they were taking by underfunding the country's infrastructure future.

"For the first time since people have been looking at infrastructure, America is behind," LaHood said. "We are behind other countries because other countries are making the investments that we used to make. We got a two-year [highway] bill because they could only find $109 billion. We need to do better and we need to make sure that America does not fall further behind when it comes to infrastructure."

Beyond their stinginess, however, LaHood criticized lawmakers -- his fellow Republicans in particular -- for lacking a comprehensive vision for improvements to infrastructure.

LaHood's views on the matter were shaped, in part, by his attempts in spring 2011 to convince Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) to accept federal funds to build high-speed rail lines in his state. Scott, in a nod to the fiscal hawks in his party, declined to take the funds, arguing that the project would have required too heavy an investment from his own budget.

"My thought was there is only one person in Florida who doesn't want this money," LaHood said of the episode. "He is a governor without a vision when it comes to transportation."

Scott's office did not return a request for comment.

In the end, the Obama administration allocated $12 billion for high-speed rail nationwide -? a historic investment in its own right. But when pressed, LaHood says that more needs to be spent.

"Look, we are behind on high-speed rail," he said. "But because of the president's vision and because of the work of those of us here at DOT, we have come a long way ... As long as President Obama is in the White House, whoever sits in this chair will have high-speed rail as one of their top priorities."

The political battles around high-speed rail, and those standoffs with Scott in particular, will undoubtedly be part of LaHood's legacy. But for transportation junkies, many policies pursued and political battles waged were more consequential. Though his tenure witnessed notable controversies over transportation safety -- the most recent involving Boeing's 787 fleet -- LaHood put a major focus on many elements of safe travel, such as pushing for pilots and bus drivers to get sufficient rest. Most notably, he was the first transportation secretary to emphasize the dangers of distracted driving, texting behind the wheel in particular.

"I think that four years ago no one even knew what distracting driving was," he said. "We've gotten people's attention with that. And I think it has made a difference and saved some lives and saved some injuries."

LaHood also became a major proponent of an environmentally friendly urban transportation agenda. He spoke out against elevated highways and in favor of "livable neighborhoods," used federal money to help build trolley lines and became a champion of bike lines and cyclist's rights. (To demonstrate his commitment, he once donned a helmet and rode a bike to work himself.)

He said, in a prior interview with The Huffington Post, that he didn't know if his defense of bikers made him a hipster. But as he gets set to leave the Department of Transportation, he argued that the Obama agenda would ultimately prove to be the trendsetter.

"As members of Congress understand that the people are way, way ahead of them on this -- they are way ahead of most members, certainly on the Republican side, when it comes to high speed rail, or walking and biking paths, or livable, sustainable communities, green energy, the people are so far ahead of the politicians on this -- eventually it will catch up with them," he said.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/29/ray-lahood-interview-high-speed-rail_n_2576995.html

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Professional training 'in the wild' overrides laboratory decision preferences

Jan. 29, 2013 ? Many simulation-based studies have been conducted, and theories developed, about the behaviors of financial market traders. New work by human factors/ergonomics (HF/E) researchers suggests that decision-making research on the behavior of traders conducted "in the wild" (i.e., real-world situations) can offer an alternative lens that extends laboratory insights and provokes new questions.

In their article in the Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making, "Understanding Preferences in Experience-Based Choice," authors Claire McAndrew (University College London) and Julie Gore (University of Surrey) examined the gap between the decision-making preferences of financial traders "in the wild" compared to laboratory experimentation where the probabilities of outcomes are known (prospect theory).

The authors conducted in-depth interviews about past financial trading decisions with eight traders to understand how decisions were made. All participants were employed by firms authorized and regulated by the UK Financial Services Authority and had, on average, 10.9 years of experience. The traders' decision-making processes were tracked step by step, focusing on their risk-seeking or risk-adverse behavior with respect to the probability of gains and losses.

"What we found is that professional training provides distinct objectives and goals that override preferences generated in the laboratory," said McAndrew. The study found that traders were risk adverse to three of the four scenarios compared with only two of four in the same scenarios suggested by prospect theory.

"Recognition of the interplay of the professional, task, and environment are clearly documented, which is often simply not possible in laboratory settings," said McAndrew. Whereas laboratory studies can be designed to emulate real-world conditions, trading markets are complicated and dynamic systems. The shifting, ill-defined, or competing issues that characterize trader environments are difficult to reproduce in laboratory studies. Many previous lab-based studies on financial traders could be augmented by "in the wild" examination.

This insight into real-world decision-making behavior has consequences for the design of instructional training for novices and has the potential to minimize costly mistakes. Changes in professional training might extend to other complex sociotechnical systems, such as aviation, the military, and nursing -- domains where experts, like stock traders, are similarly risk averse except when faced with large-probability gains.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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

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Journal Reference:

1. C. McAndrew, J. Gore. Understanding Preferences in Experience-Based Choice: A Study of Cognition in the "Wild". Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making, 2012; DOI: 10.1177/1555343412463922

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

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/mind_brain/consumer_behavior/~3/SibiLh7nNuk/130129190307.htm

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Antibiotics cut death rate for malnourished children

Jan. 30, 2013 ? Severely malnourished children are far more likely to recover and survive when given antibiotics along with a therapeutic peanut-based food than children who are simply treated with the therapeutic food alone, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found.

"The findings are remarkable," says Indi Trehan, MD, lead author of the research, published Jan. 31 in The New England Journal of Medicine. "Based on previous research, we didn't think there would be much benefit from antibiotics. We did not at all expect to see a drop in the death rate -- but there was, and it is significant."

The study involved nearly 2,800 children in Malawi, in sub-Saharan Africa, with severe malnutrition. Each child was given an average of 30 days of therapeutic food and a placebo or an oral antibiotic -- either amoxicillin or cefdinir -- for seven days.

Overall, 88.3 percent of the children enrolled in the study recovered from severe malnutrition. Deaths accounted for the largest proportion of children who did not recover, with the mortality rate considerably higher among those who received placebo than among those given antibiotics.

The researchers found a 44 percent drop in mortality with the use of cefdinir and a 36 percent drop with amoxicillin, compared with the use of no antibiotics.

Early last year, Trehan and Mark Manary, MD, senior author of the study, presented their findings to the World Health Organization, which establishes international guidelines for the treatment of malnutrition and other diseases.

"The addition of antibiotics has a profound impact that we hope will change how these children are treated worldwide," says Manary, the university's Helene B. Roberson Professor of Pediatrics. "This trial provided very solid, very objective, top-of-the-line scientific evidence to answer the question of whether antibiotics should be added to severely malnourished children's treatment regimen. The answer is yes. This is a game-changer. This will save more lives."

Adds Trehan: "Because of the large number of children who get this disease, the addition of antibiotics could impact potentially hundreds of thousands of children a year."

More than a decade ago, Manary became a key player in introducing a simple but revolutionary peanut butter-based therapeutic food to battle severe malnutrition, an affliction that contributes to the death of 1 million children each year. This ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) proved to be a lifesaver, with recovery rates at 85 to 90 percent. Consequently, RUTF is now used to treat malnourished children throughout the world. In Malawi, the epicenter of Manary's and Trehan's research and intervention, Manary's "Project Peanut Butter" serves hundreds of thousands of malnourished children.

Still, despite markedly better outcomes for children treated with RUTF, 10 percent to 15 percent of children do not recover and many of them die, the new study notes. Those children were the impetus that led to the study involving adding antibiotics to the treatment regimen.

"You might think that something as simple as getting sick from not having enough to eat would be easily fixed by restoring a normal diet, but it's not," Manary says. "Starvation renders the body very vulnerable and susceptible to many infections. Just providing food so that children have enough nutrients to recover only goes so far."

The study took place at 18 clinics in rural Malawi from December 2009 through January 2011. It involved 2,767 children ages six months to five years with uncomplicated severe acute malnutrition, meaning they were diagnosed as severely malnourished but still had good appetites, were not hospitalized and did not show signs of severe infection.

The children were randomly prescribed amoxicillin, cefdinir or a placebo, in addition to the fortified peanut butter food. Neither the researchers nor the caregivers knew whether a child was receiving an antibiotic or a placebo. The death rate was highest -- 7.4 percent -- among children who received a placebo, compared with 4.8 percent for those treated with amoxicillin and 4.1 percent for cefdinir, the researchers found. They noted no serious side effects from the antibiotics.

Trehan and Manary, both Washington University physicians at St. Louis Children's Hospital, say the findings already have changed how they treat children at the field clinics they operate in Malawi. They stress that adding antibiotics to the treatment of severely malnourished children would involve using easily accessible, inexpensive, low-risk medications that can be administered by a child's own family.

"It doesn't involve complicated medical procedures to go after the biggest killer of children in the world -- something that kills more kids than malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis -- to reduce that death rate among those kids," Manary says. "That's what is so important about this. The practical implications are huge."

An internationally regarded expert in malnutrition, Manary is also director of the Global Harvest Alliance, a joint venture between Children's Hospital, Washington University and the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center that is, among other goals, working to eradicate childhood malnutrition.

Trehan, a clinical fellow in the university's Department of Pediatrics, spent the last three years in Malawi conducting malnutrition research and served for more than a year on the faculty of the University of Malawi and as a consultant physician, teaching medical students and pediatric registrars at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Washington University School of Medicine. The original article was written by Elizabethe Holland Durando.

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

---

Journal Reference:

1. Indi Trehan, Hayley S. Goldbach, Lacey N. LaGrone, Guthrie J. Meuli, Richard J. Wang, Kenneth M. Maleta, Mark J. Manary. Antibiotics as Part of the Management of Severe Acute Malnutrition. New England Journal of Medicine, 2013; 368 (5): 425 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1202851

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

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/2cSZYiDUcwQ/130130184312.htm

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High School Sports: Hockinson hires new football coach

By Tim Martinez (Columbian Staff)

January 29, 2013

Brian Schott has been hired to become the second high school football coach at Hockinson High School.

Schott, a Mountain View High School graduate, is a French teacher at West Linn (Ore.) High School, where he also served as the offensive coordinator on the freshman team. He has also served as a coach in football, basketball and baseball at Madison of Portland, Evergreen and Mountain View, as well as in Yuma, Ariz.

He also served as a coach consultant and player for Les Tigres de Nancy, an organization of American-style football in France. He is a graduate of Lewis and Clark College in Portland, where he also played football.

?In addition to his breadth of coaching experience in multiple programs, we were most impressed with Brian?s deep level of passion for the student-athletes and vision for the program,? Hockinson principal Brian Lehner said. ?We are confident that he will continue to strengthen the program that Rick Steele left in excellent shape.?

Schott replaces Rick Steele, who served as Hockinson's first coach when the program was launched in 2004 through the 2012 season, leading the Hawks to three Class 2A Greater St. Helens League titles.

Lehner said 15 people applied for the position, of which three were interviewed for the job. The selection process was completed Monday night meeting of the Hockinson School Board.

Source: http://www.columbian.com/weblogs/highschoolsports/2013/jan/29/hockinson-hires-new-football-coach/

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Payroll tax cuts may boost the economy more than you think

Payroll tax cuts might play a bigger role than many thought in reversing economic slumps, Gleckman writes, according to new research by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

By Howard Gleckman,?Guest blogger / January 29, 2013

The US Capitol building is shown in Washington. A new study shows that payroll tax cuts may do a better job stimulating demand than many economists think, Gleckman writes.

Carolyn Kaster/AP/File

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Just as Congress allowed the 2011-12 payroll tax cut to expire,?new research?by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York suggests that such tax breaks may significantly boost consumer spending. As a result, raising workers? take-home pay this way might play a bigger role than many thought in reversing economic slumps.

Skip to next paragraph Howard Gleckman

Howard Gleckman is a resident fellow at The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, the author of Caring for Our Parents, and former senior correspondent in the Washington bureau of Business Week. (http://taxvox.taxpolicycenter.org)

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The study by Grant Graziani, Wilbert van der Klaauw, and Basit Zafar of the New York Fed staff was based on two surveys of about 200 workers. The first (in February and March, 2011?just after the tax cut kicked in) asked what they planned to do with their extra take-home pay. The second (in December, 2011) asked the same workers what they actually did with it. The results: While workers on average said they?planned?on spending only about 14 percent of added income, they reported months later they actually?had spent?36 percent. ?

One especially interesting finding: High-income workers were more likely to spend the extra cash than their lower-paid counterparts. This contradicts the widely-held theory that cash-strapped low-income households will spend a tax cut while high-income workers will save those extra dollars. If these results turn out to be correct, they suggest that payroll tax cuts may do a better job stimulating demand than many economists think.

The Obama Administration designed the payroll tax cut as a temporary one-year stimulus (though it did extend it for an extra year). It cut taxes by as much as $2,200 per worker and by an average of about $1,000 for a middle-income household. The study found that those workers who thought the tax cut would last longer than a year were somewhat more likely to plan to spend the extra income than those who believed it was only a one-year break.?

Real angry birds 'flip the bird' before a fight: Biologists use robots to study attacks of male swamp sparrows

Jan. 28, 2013 ? Male sparrows are capable of fighting to the death. But a new study shows that they often wave their wings wildly first in an attempt to avoid a dangerous brawl.

"For birds, wing waves are like flipping the bird or saying 'put up your dukes. I'm ready to fight,'" said Duke biologist Rindy Anderson.

Male swamp sparrows use wing waves as an aggressive signal to defend their territories and mates from intruding males, Anderson said. The findings also are a first step toward understanding how the birds use a combination of visual displays and songs to communicate with other males.

Anderson and her colleagues published the results online Jan. 28 in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.

Scientists had assumed the sparrows' wing-waving behavior was a signal intended for other males, but testing the observations was difficult, Anderson said. So she and her co-author, former Duke engineering undergraduate student David Piech ('12), built a miniature computer and some robotics, which the team then stuffed into the body cavity of a deceased bird. The result was a 'robosparrow' that looked just like a male swamp sparrow, which could flip its wings just like a live male.

Anderson took the wing-waving robosparrow to a swamp sparrow breeding ground in Pennsylvania and placed it in the territories of live males. The robotic bird "sang" swamp sparrow songs using a nearby sound system to let the birds know he was intruding, while Anderson and her colleagues crouched in the swampy grasses and watched the live birds' responses. She also performed the tests with a stuffed sparrow that stayed stationary and one that twisted from side to side. These tests showed that wing waves combined with song are more potent than song on its own, and that wing waves in particular, not just any movement, evoked aggression from live birds.

The live birds responded most aggressively to the invading, wing-waving robotic sparrow, which Anderson said she expected. "What I didn???t expect to see was that the birds would give strikingly similar aggressive wing-wave signals to the three types of invaders," she said. That means that if a bird wing-waved five times to the stationary stuffed bird, he would also wing-wave five times to the wing-waving robot.

Anderson had hypothesized that the defending birds would match the signals of the intruding robots, but her team's results suggest that the males are more individualistic and consistent in the level of aggressiveness that they want to signal, she said.

"That response makes sense, in retrospect, since attacks can be devastating," Anderson said. Because of the risk, the real males may only want to signal a certain level of aggression to see if they could scare off an intruder without the conflict coming to a fight and possible death.

Still, the risk of severe injury or death didn't keep the studly males from swooping in and clawing at the robotic intruder, whether it wing-waved or not. "It's high stakes for these little birds. They only live a couple of years, and most only breed once a year, so owning a territory and having a female is high currency," Anderson said.

She and her team had planned to test how the sparrows use wing waves combined with a characteristic twitter called soft-song to show aggression and fend off competition. But the experiment may be on hold indefinitely because robosparrow's motor seems to be burned out, and its head was ripped off in an attack, a true fight to the death.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Duke University. The original article was written by Ashley Yeager.

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

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Journal Reference:

1. R. C. Anderson, A. L. DuBois, D. K. Piech, W. A. Searcy, S. Nowicki. Male response to an aggressive visual signal, the wing wave display, in swamp sparrows. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 2013; DOI: 10.1007/s00265-013-1478-9

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

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

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/ojdyQhq8B7c/130129100253.htm

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ARGUS drone spots you from 20,000 feet ? with camera-phone sensors

9 hrs.

Devin Coldewey , NBC News

Paranoid delusions about black helicopters hovering over an area will soon be out of date: The latest scary spy apparatus lives 20,000 feet up, turning 30 or more square miles into live video sharp?enough to spot individual people walking around.

The system is called ARGUS, after the 100-eyed god of Greek myth, and fittingly, it works by hooking together hundreds of inexpensive image sensors like those found in mobile phones.?The non-classified parts were featured last week in an episode of the PBS show "Nova"?all about drones and surveillance (the ARGUS segment starts at the half-hour mark).

ARGUS has appeared in earlier reports, but in a much less detailed fashion. The "Nova"?program shows how it might actually appear in action.

Yiannis Antoniades of BAE Systems, the British company that makes the ARGUS system (with help and funding from DARPA), told PBS that although BAE?would have liked to design a whole new sensor, it was cheaper and more practical to use an array of smaller, off-the-shelf ones.

The current version uses 368 five-megapixel sensors, for a total of 1.8 gigapixels. But unlike other gigapixel camera systems, this one doesn't record still images ? it produces video. That means that from four miles up, it can watch a?roughly circular area up to six miles wide, tracking every car and person in real time.

The amount of data produced by the system is, naturally, immense, around 6?petabytes per day according to earlier reports.

ARGUS has yet to be deployed, although there were plans to send three to Afghanistan onboard a helicopter-like hovering unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)?called the Hummingbird, now defunct. The future of the system?is, for now, classified.

Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBCNews Digital. His personal website is?coldewey.cc.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/futureoftech/argus-drone-spots-you-20-000-feet-camera-phone-sensors-1C8149730

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Scottsdale police arrest actor Jason London after fight in bar

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Source: http://www.azcentral.com/community/scottsdale/articles/20130129scottsdale-police-arrest-actor-jason-london-fight-bar-abrk.html

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Missile launcher shows up at Seattle gun buyback

SEATTLE (AP) ? Seattle police worked with Army officials Monday to track down the history of a nonfunctional missile launcher that showed up at a weapons buyback program and determine whether it was legal or possibly stolen from the military.

A man standing outside the event Saturday bought the military weapon for $100 from another person there, according to Detective Mark Jamieson.

The single-use device is a launch tube assembly for a Stinger portable surface-to-air missile and already had been used. As a controlled military item, it is not available to civilians through any surplus or disposal program offered by the government, according to Jamieson.

Seattle police have contacted Army officials at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma deputy chief Nick Metz said Monday.

"Once it's brought on base and investigators have a chance to look at it, they'll see what they can determine," Army spokesman Joe Kubistek said Monday. "It's too early to give any information on it until we have hands-on access to see it and take a look at it."

Police witnessed the private exchange of the military launch tube near the gun buyback event, where gun buyers tempted those standing in long lines to turn in their weapons with cash.

"It was absolutely crazy what we saw out there," Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn said at a news conference Monday where officials announced they had collected a total of 716 weapons, including four confirmed as stolen.

Officers saw guns changing private hands without knowing whether the person buying the gun had the legal right to buy it, and those transactions are occurring all the time, McGinn said.

He added that the private sales of the missile launch tube and other weapons illustrate the need for comprehensive background checks as proposed by President Barack Obama, as well as other regulations at the state level.

While there were private gun buyers at the periphery of Saturday's event, Metz said a large majority of people chose to wait in line and get less money because they wanted to make sure they got the weapons off the streets.

"These are very dangerous weapons," Metz said. "They may not have looked very pretty, but (they're) definitely operable."

The firearms collected included 348 pistols, 364 rifles and three so-called street sweepers, or shotguns that include a high capacity magazine capable of holding twelve 12-gauge shotgun shells.

The program allowed people to anonymously turn in their weapons for a shopping gift card worth up to $200 -- $100 for each handgun, rifle or shotgun turned in, and $200 for each gun classified as an assault weapon under state law. Officials distributed about $70,000 in gift cards at Saturday's event.

Police took possession of the launch tube Saturday. Police said the man who had purchased it agreed to accept a gift card as compensation if the launch tube is not returned to him, though the man indicated he wanted to keep it if he was legally able to do so.

McGinn said he wanted to plan another buyback event soon and urged more donations to the program.

Meanwhile, police said people who wanted to turn in guns could do so at any time outside a buyback program, though they wouldn't be compensated for it.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/missile-launcher-shows-seattle-gun-buyback-174331546.html

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PFT: Eagles' unlikely to decide on Vick soon

AP

We mentioned earlier today that 49ers wide receiver Randy Moss declared himself the best wideout in the history of the game.

You?ll likely see much more about him in the coming days, in many outlets, because he was so open and forthcoming and illuminating about many topics during his appearance at Media Day.

When Moss is on, he?s extremely interesting, he just chooses not to be on often.

But among the gems today was a candid admission that he didn?t particularly care for the way the 49ers used him this year.

In the past, it could have been a Keyshawn-level ?Just Give Me the Damn Ball? routine, but Moss said it so matter-of-factly it was easy to miss.

?I don?t like my role; I don?t,? he said. ?I like to be out there playing football. One thing that I?ve always had to really understand was being a decoy. It was put to me, Coach Dennis Green just said, ?Even though the football is not in your hand, you?re still out there dictating how the defense is playing the offense.? It took me awhile to really understand where he was coming from. Later on and now in my career, I understand that my presence out on the field, I don?t always have to touch the ball to be able to help the offense score touchdowns.

?Like I said, I don?t really like that, but it?s something that I?m used to. I have to grow to understand and grow to like it. I?ve always been a team player. I?ve never been about self. Anything that is going to push our team to victory and hopefully win a Super Bowl, I?m willing to do.?

No, that was Moss, who hasn?t always been accused to giving freely of himself for the greater good.

But 49ers offensive coordinator Greg Roman said Moss had been nothing but professional.

?He?s been great,? Roman said. ?I think he?s a great team player, and a mentor for all the guys, really.?

His love of competition has never been in doubt. Moss joked about past arguments, even fights, he?s had with coaches and players. But his role with the 49ers, as much as he might not like it, remains a valuable one, as Roman insisted Moss could still ?get behind a defense in a hurry.?

?When I hear people talk about how talented I am and how easy I make it look, I can honestly tell you people that it?s very hard work,? Moss said. ?I work out five times a week. I put the work in and for me to be able to go out there and have results it something I am proud of. It?s not always the individual results that I?m proud of. For me to be able to talk to a Michael Crabtree or talk to a Frank Gore or Percy Harvin and for them to go out there and have a good game that week, that?s something I can be proud of. That?s just me giving back to the NFL.

?I?ve always said, I don?t like what the NFL does for me because I?m very blessed. My family is blessed. I?ve always been the type of person to know what I can do to make the League better. At this point in my career, if I?m able to be vocal, to share a little knowledge and also to go out there and play, if that?s what it takes to win a championship, then I?m willing to do that. I?ve always been that way.?

Maybe so, but he hasn?t been quite the way he was Tuesday too often, or the perception of his career would likely be very different.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/01/29/decision-on-michael-vick-likely-not-coming-soon/related/

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Family Party: 30 Great Games Obstacle Arcade Review - Nintendo Life

Obstacle to fun, maybe

If you were to poll gamers at large and ask them what they felt were the worst things about the Wii, chances are you'd hear "waggle" and "bad minigame collections" pretty frequently. In fact they often went hand in hand, and Family Party: 30 Great Games Obstacle Arcade is trying its hardest to make sure both of things carry over into the Wii U generation. We can only hope that they don't.

Family Party: 30 Great Games Obstacle Arcade ? it just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? ? is, as you might guess, a collection of short games that you can play with up to three friends. You might also guess that the games would revolve around an "obstacle" theme, but you'd be wrong; many of them are standard rounds of target practice, hide and seek, or, erm, picking the balloon with the number two on it after the game tells you to pick the balloon with the number two on it. That last one's not much of a game really, but there you go.

The collection is given a sort of theme park approach, with the games broken up into smaller, unlockable areas. Again, you'd expect the space area to contain space-themed games and the Western area to host games with a cowboy flair but by and large everything is just thrown at the wall with no regard for where it lands, and there's no telling what you'll encounter where. Fortunately, we guess, whatever you encounter will be reliably awful, so there's that to look forward to.

The games are hosted by a dead-eyed teddy bear with a stare so cold and creepy that we were constantly on edge for that inevitable moment when he'd pull out a knife. Half of his face is frozen in a bizarre semblance of what we can only assume is the developer's attempt at "'tude", while the other half just passively smiles. This, combined with the fact that his lips don't move when he talks, makes it seem like we've walked in on the bear in the middle of a massive coronary that's doomed to go untreated.

The entire package feels like a holdover from the previous generation; none of the graphics come anywhere near the capabilities of Nintendo's newest console, and the Wii U GamePad barely factors in at all, with each of the games requiring instead a Wii Remote and, often, Nunchuk. This means Family Party: 30 Great Games Obstacle Arcade plays identically to every other poorly-responsive, uninteresting, lazily slapped together mini-game collection you've been doing your best to avoid since 2006.

Every game supports four players; if there are fewer human players than that, the CPU will fill the void. Human players can enter any name for themselves that they like, but oddly the game also requires you to choose a separate name for the bear to call you by. This is because the developers only gave the bear a limited bank of audio files from which to draw, so you may tell the game that your name is William, but then you'll have to choose whether it calls you Chano or Shamus or Julio instead. It's bizarre to say the least.

In each game you'll compete against the other three for points. This nearly always involves waggling as quickly as possible, but sometimes it can rely on maneuvering crosshairs around the screen instead. No game is any more complicated than that, and it often feels as though the developer went out of its way to assign the most frustrating control schemes possible. Some games, for instance, are races that see you hopping from platform to platform. Despite the fact that each player has a perfectly good D-Pad and A button to use, Family Party: 30 Great Games Obstacle Arcade requires you to thrust the Wii Remote in the direction you wish to jump. Not that it cares where you actually thrust; it's a crapshoot whether or not the game will ever recognise your input. It's a needless and mandatory use of the least reliable control scheme possible, which is pretty much par for the course here.

The Wii U GamePad only comes into play during the bonus rounds. The rest of the time it features the glass-eyed bear glowing creepily at you and loudly narrating minor gameplay developments without moving his mouth. During the bonus rounds the winner of the previous game spins a roulette wheel, which determines what the bonus game will be. Here the GamePad is used differently than the Wii Remotes, but it's certainly no more fun, and it really does feel like a tacked on addition to what's essentially a low budget Wii cash-in.

The sound effects are beyond terrible, as the four players on-screen avatars laugh and hoot and holler over each other throughout every event, turning everything into a clamorous, cluttered aural monstrosity. The bear barks meaningless platitudes about every minor thing that happens ? from a player grabbing a coin to a player not grabbing a coin ? and while you're not likely to come away from this game feeling fulfilled you're more or less guaranteed a headache.

We'd like to close on a positive note of some kind, but we genuinely can't. This is an absolutely terrible game, and you don't want it. Trust us.

As clunky and poorly considered as its title, Family Party: 30 Great Games Obstacle Arcade is awful. Relying entirely on the shallow and repetitive waggle that should have died along with Wii, there's absolutely no reason to recommend this obnoxious, screaming, clattering monstrosity at all. It's mindless entertainment at its worst, but, on the bright side, it might be the perfect way to cure your childrens' burgeoning video game addiction.

Source: http://www.nintendolife.com/reviews/wiiu/family_party_30_great_games_obstacle_arcade

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Why are there redheads? Birds might hold the clues

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Red coloration?historically seen as costly in vertebrates?might represent some physiological benefit after all, according to research published in the journal Physiological and Biochemical Zoology.

Pheomelanin, which is responsible for red hair and freckles in humans and orange and chestnut coloration in other animals, is known to increase the damage to skin cells and melanoma risk when present in large amounts. Furthermore, its creation involves the consumption of glutathione, a beneficial antioxidant.

In an attempt to unearth the factors favoring the evolution of pheomelanin in spite of its costs, Ismael Galv?n and Anders P. M?ller of the University of Paris-Sud examined the survival from one breeding season to the next of a wild European population of barn swallows, as well as the annual survival rates of 58 species of American birds.

A recent hypothesis claims that the consumption of cysteine (a component of glutathione) that occurs when pheomelanin is produced can be beneficial under conditions of low stress. Cysteine, which is mainly acquired through diet, can be toxic at high levels, so the production of pheomelanin may help to sequester excess quantities of this amino acid.

Galv?n and M?ller measured birds' blood levels of uric acid and analyzed the coloration of their chestnut throat feathers (an indication of pheomelanin content). When they compared birds that had similar uric acid levels (and therefore similar capacities to excrete excess amino acids), they found that both the European barn swallows and the American birds with larger amounts of pheomelanin in their feathers survived better.

This study is the first to propose that the costs/benefits of pheomelanin may depend on prevailing environmental conditions, and its results suggest that the production of this pigment may even be beneficial in some circumstances. Given that all higher vertebrates, including humans, present pheomelanin in skin, pelage, and plumage, Galv?n and M?ller's findings increase the scant current knowledge on the physiological consequences of pheomelanin and open new avenues for research that will help us understand the evolution of pigmentation.

###

Ismael Galv?n and Anders P. M?ller, "Pheomelanin-Based Plumage Coloration Predicts Survival Rates in Birds." Physiological and Biochemical Zoology 86:2 (March/April 2013). Available ahead of print at http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/668871.

University of Chicago Press Journals: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu

Thanks to University of Chicago Press Journals for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/126506/Why_are_there_redheads__Birds_might_hold_the_clues

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For early-stage breast cancer surgery, less is more | MNN - Mother ...

Women with early stage breast cancer who undergo breast-conserving surgery do just as well, and perhaps better, in terms of survival, than those who have their breasts removed, a new study suggests.

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In the study, early stage breast cancer patients who were treated with lumpectomy ? a surgery that removes the tumor and part of the surrounding tissue ? were 19 percent less likely to die from any cause over a nine-year period compared with those who received a mastectomy.

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The advantage was seen even after researchers took into account factors that could affect survival, such as age, size of the tumor before surgery, and the aggressiveness of the cancer.

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However, experts caution the apparent survival benefit might have been due to differences between the two groups of women that the researchers were not able to take into account, such as access to health care.

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Regardless of this issue, the study provides reassurance to breast cancer patients who opt for more conservative surgery. In recent years, mastectomies have risen among certain groups of patients, such as young women, the researchers said.

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Many women think "they may do better the more surgery they do," said study researcher Dr. E. Shelley Hwang, chief of breast surgery at Duke Cancer Institute. "They need to be aware that lumpectomy gives them excellent long-term outcomes."

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The researchers note lumpectomy is not for everyone. It is not recommended for women with large tumors or multiple tumors in the same breast, those who have had previous chest radiation, or those who have certain genetic mutations, such as the BRCA1 mutation. But the majority of women diagnosed with early stage breast cancer (over 80 percent) are candidates for lumpectomy, Hwang said.

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Breast cancer surgery

Hwang and colleagues analyzed information from 112,154 women in California diagnosed with early stage breast cancer between 1990 and 2004 who received either a lumpectomy followed by radiation, or a mastectomy.

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During the study period, there were 31,416 deaths, about 39 percent of which were due to breast cancer.

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Women who were 50 years and older and who had tumors that were sensitive to the hormones estrogen and progesterone showed the biggest benefit from lumpectomy. They were 13 percent less likely to die from breast cancer, and 19 percent less likely to die from any cause, compared with those undergoing mastectomy.

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For women who were under 50 with hormone-sensitive tumors, survival was about the same whether they received a lumpectomy or mastectomy, the researchers said.

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Survival benefit?

"It's good news in that a lot of women sometimes come in and feel that a mastectomy must be better than breast conservation," said Dr. Stephanie Bernik, chief of surgical oncology at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, who was not involved in the study. But breast surgeons have had confidence based on previous studies that breast conservation surgery is equivalent to mastectomy for early stage cancer, Bernik said.

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Bernik cautioned against interpreting the findings to mean that lumpectomy offers a survival benefit.

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As a group, those who had mastectomies had some key differences compared with those who had a lumpectomy: They tended to have larger, more aggressive tumors, and they were more likely to have undergone surgery earlier in the study period, when treatment options were different, Bernik said.

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Although the researchers tried to account for these differences by using statistics, "that's not perfect," Bernik said.

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The researchers also could not directly determine whether participants had other conditions, besides breast cancer, that could have influence their survival.

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Women who have lumpectomies need to be monitored in case their cancer reoccurs, an issue that may factor in to a women's decision to undergo the surgery, Hwang said. Because the study only looked at patient survival, it could not determine how likely lumpectomy patients were to have their cancer reoccur.

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Related on MyHealthNewsDaily and MNN:

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This story was originally written for MyHealthNewsDaily and is reprinted with permission here. Copyright 2013 MyHealthNewsDaily, a TechMediaNetwork company.

Source: http://www.mnn.com/health/fitness-well-being/stories/for-early-stage-breast-cancer-surgery-less-is-more

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Obama on immigration overhaul: 'Now is the time'

President Barack Obama speaks about immigration reform Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2013, at Del Sol High School in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Isaac Brekken)

President Barack Obama speaks about immigration reform Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2013, at Del Sol High School in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Isaac Brekken)

President Barack Obama speaks about immigration reform Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2013, at Del Sol High School in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Isaac Brekken)

President Barack Obama turns to leave after shaking hands and speaking about immigration at Del Sol High School, Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2013, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Barack Obama points to someone in the crowd as he arrives to speak about immigration at Del Sol High School, Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2013, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.. center, answers a reporter's question as he and a bipartisan group of leading senators announce that they have reached agreement on the principles of sweeping legislation to rewrite the nation's immigration laws, during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, Jan. 28, 2013. From left are Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J. The deal covers border security, guest workers and employer verification, as well as a path to citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants already in this country. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

LAS VEGAS (AP) ? Declaring "now is the time" to fix the nation's broken immigration system, President Barack Obama on Tuesday outlined broad proposals for putting millions of illegal immigrants on a clear path to citizenship while cracking down on businesses that employ people illegally and tightening security at the borders. He hailed a bipartisan Senate group on a similar track but left unresolved key details that could derail the complex and emotional effort.

Potential Senate roadblocks center on how to structure the avenue to citizenship and on whether legislation would cover same-sex couples ? and that's all before a Senate measure could be debated, approved and sent to the Republican-controlled House where opposition is sure to be stronger.

Obama, who carried Nevada in the November election with heavy Hispanic support, praised the Senate push, saying Congress is showing "a genuine desire to get this done soon." But mindful of previous immigrations efforts that have failed, he warned that the debate would be difficult and vowed to send his own legislation to Capitol Hill if lawmakers don't act quickly.

"The question now is simple," Obama said during a campaign-style event in Las Vegas, one week after being sworn in for a second term in the White House. "Do we have the resolve as a people, as a country, as a government to finally put this issue behind us? I believe that we do."

Shortly after Obama finished speaking, cracks emerged between the White House and the group of eight senators, which put out their proposals one day ahead of the president. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, faulted Obama for not making a citizenship pathway contingent on tighter border security, a central tenet of the lawmakers' proposals.

"The president's speech left the impression that he believes reforming immigration quickly is more important than reforming immigration right," Rubio said in a statement.

House Speaker John Boehner also responded coolly, with spokesman Brendan Buck saying the Ohio Republican hoped the president would be "careful not to drag the debate to the left and ultimately disrupt the difficult work that is ahead in the House and Senate."

Despite possible obstacles to come, the broad agreement between the White House and bipartisan lawmakers in the Senate represents a drastic shift in Washington's willingness to tackle immigration, an issue that has languished for years. Much of that shift is politically motivated, due to the growing influence of Hispanics in presidential and other elections and their overwhelming support for Obama in November.

The separate White House and Senate proposals focus on the same principles: providing a way for most of the estimated 11 million people already in the U.S. illegally to become citizens, strengthening border security, cracking down on employers who hire illegal immigrants and streamlining the legal immigration system.

A consensus around the question of citizenship could help lawmakers clear one major hurdle that has blocked previous immigration efforts. Many Republicans have opposed allowing illegal immigrants to become citizens, saying that would be an unfair reward for people who have broken the law.

Details on how to achieve a pathway to citizenship still could prove to be a major sticking point between the White House and the Senate group.

Obama and the Senate lawmakers all want to require people here illegally to register with the government, pass criminal and national security background checks, pay fees and penalties as well as back taxes and wait until existing immigration backlogs are cleared before getting in line for green cards. Neither proposal backs up those requirements with specifics.

After achieving legal status, U.S. law says people can become citizens after five years.

The Senate proposal says that entire process couldn't start until the borders were fully secure and tracking of people in the U.S. on visas had improved. Those vague requirements would almost certainly make the timeline for achieving citizenship longer than what the White House is proposing.

The president urged lawmakers to avoid making the citizenship pathway so difficult that it would appear out of reach for many illegal immigrants.

"We all agree that these men and women have to earn their way to citizenship," he said. "But for comprehensive immigration reform to work, it must make clear from the outset that there is a pathway to citizenship."

"It won't be a quick process, but it will be a fair process," Obama added.

Another key difference between the White House and Senate proposals is the administration's plan to allow same-sex partners to seek visas under the same rules that govern other family immigration. The Senate principles do not recognize same-sex partners, though Democratic lawmakers have told gay rights groups that they could seek to include that in a final bill.

John McCain of Arizona, who is part of the Senate immigration group, called the issue a "red flag" in an interview Tuesday on "CBS This Morning."

Washington last took up immigration changes in a serious way in 2007, when then-President George W. Bush pressed for an overhaul. The initial efforts had bipartisan support but eventually collapsed in the Senate because of a lack of GOP support.

Cognizant of that failed effort, the White House has readied its own immigration legislation. But officials said Obama will send it to the Hill only if the Senate process stalls.

Most of the recommendations Obama made Tuesday were not new. They were included in the immigration blueprint he released in 2011, but he exerted little political capital to get it passed by Congress, to the disappointment of many Hispanics.

Some of the recommendations in the Senate plan are also pulled from past immigration efforts. The senators involved in formulating the latest proposals, in addition to McCain and Rubio, are Democrats Charles Schumer of New York, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Michael Bennet of Colorado, and Republicans Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Jeff Flake of Arizona.

Also Tuesday, in another sign of Congress' increased attention to immigration issues, a group of four senators introduced legislation aimed at allowing more high-tech workers into the country, a longtime priority of technology businesses. The bill by Republicans Rubio and Orrin Hatch and Democrats Amy Klobuchar and Chris Coons would increase the number of visas available for high-tech workers, make it easier for them to change jobs once here and for their spouses to work and aim to make it easier for foreigners at U.S. universities to remain here upon graduation.

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Julie Pace reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Erica Werner contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-01-29-Immigration/id-3d87297e12ce438fab03e0688e08195e

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