record poet: October 2012

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

How the brain controls our habits: Neuroscientists identify a brain region that can switch between new and old habits

ScienceDaily (Oct. 30, 2012) ? Habits are behaviors wired so deeply in our brains that we perform them automatically. This allows you to follow the same route to work every day without thinking about it, liberating your brain to ponder other things, such as what to make for dinner.

However, the brain's executive command center does not completely relinquish control of habitual behavior. A new study from MIT neuroscientists has found that a small region of the brain's prefrontal cortex, where most thought and planning occurs, is responsible for moment-by-moment control of which habits are switched on at a given time.

"We've always thought -- and I still do -- that the value of a habit is you don't have to think about it. It frees up your brain to do other things," says Institute Professor Ann Graybiel, a member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. "However, it doesn't free up all of it. There's some piece of your cortex that's still devoted to that control."

The new study offers hope for those trying to kick bad habits, says Graybiel, senior author of the new study, which appears this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It shows that though habits may be deeply ingrained, the brain's planning centers can shut them off. It also raises the possibility of intervening in that brain region to treat people who suffer from disorders involving overly habitual behavior, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Lead author of the paper is Kyle Smith, a McGovern Institute research scientist. Other authors are recent MIT graduate Arti Virkud and Karl Deisseroth, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University.

Old habits die hard

Habits often become so ingrained that we keep doing them even though we're no longer benefiting from them. The MIT team experimentally simulated this situation with rats trained to run a T-shaped maze. As the rats approached the decision point, they heard a tone indicating whether they should turn left or right. When they chose correctly, they received a reward -- chocolate milk (for turning left) or sugar water (for turning right).

To show that the behavior was habitual, the researchers eventually stopped giving the trained rats any rewards, and found that they continued running the maze correctly. The researchers then went a step further, offering the rats chocolate milk in their cages but mixing it with lithium chloride, which causes light nausea. The rats still continued to run left when cued to do so, although they stopped drinking the chocolate milk.

Once they had shown that the habit was fully ingrained, the researchers wanted to see if they could break it by interfering with a part of the prefrontal cortex known as the infralimbic (IL) cortex. Although the neural pathways that encode habitual behavior appear to be located in deep brain structures known as the basal ganglia, it has been shown that the IL cortex is also necessary for such behaviors to develop.

Using optogenetics, a technique that allows researchers to inhibit specific cells with light, the researchers turned off IL cortex activity for several seconds as the rats approached the point in the maze where they had to decide which way to turn.

Almost instantly, the rats dropped the habit of running to the left (the side with the now-distasteful reward). This suggests that turning off the IL cortex switches the rats' brains from an "automatic, reflexive mode to a mode that's more cognitive or engaged in the goal -- processing what exactly it is that they're running for," Smith says.

Once broken of the habit of running left, the rats soon formed a new habit, running to the right side every time, even when cued to run left. The researchers showed that they could break this new habit by once again inhibiting the IL cortex with light. To their surprise, they found that these rats immediately regained their original habit of running left when cued to do so.

"This habit was never really forgotten," Smith says. "It's lurking there somewhere, and we've unmasked it by turning off the new one that had been overwritten."

Online control

The findings suggest that the IL cortex is responsible for determining, moment-by-moment, which habitual behaviors will be expressed. "To us, what's really stunning is that habit representation still must be totally intact and retrievable in an instant, and there's an online monitoring system controlling that," Graybiel says.

The study also raises interesting ideas concerning how automatic habitual behaviors really are, says Jane Taylor, a professor of psychiatry and psychology at Yale University. "We've always thought of habits as being inflexible, but this suggests you can have flexible habits, in some sense," says Taylor, who was not part of the research team.

It also appears that the IL cortex favors new habits over old ones, consistent with previous studies showing that when habits are broken they are not forgotten, but replaced with new ones.

Although it would be too invasive to use optogenetic interventions to break habits in humans, Graybiel says it is possible the technology will evolve to the point where it might be a feasible option for treating disorders involving overly repetitive or addictive behavior.

In follow-up studies, the researchers are trying to pinpoint exactly when during a maze run the IL cortex selects the appropriate habit. They are also planning to specifically inhibit different cell types within the IL cortex, to see which ones are most involved in habit control.

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Stanley H. and Sheila G. Sydney Fund, R. Pourian and Julia Madadi, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the Gatsby Foundation.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The original article was written by Anne Trafton.

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

Journal Reference:

K. S. Smith, A. Virkud, K. Deisseroth, A. M. Graybiel. Reversible online control of habitual behavior by optogenetic perturbation of medial prefrontal cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1216264109

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/qazGk3MFov4/121031111425.htm

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Biofuel breakthrough: Quick cook method turns algae into oil

ScienceDaily (Oct. 31, 2012) ? ANN ARBOR?It looks like Mother Nature was wasting her time with a multimillion-year process to produce crude oil. Michigan Engineering researchers can "pressure-cook" algae for as little as a minute and transform an unprecedented 65 percent of the green slime into biocrude.

"We're trying to mimic the process in nature that forms crude oil with marine organisms," said Phil Savage, an Arthur F. Thurnau professor and a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Michigan.

The findings will be presented Nov. 1 at the 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh.

Savage's ocean-going organism of choice is the green marine micro-alga of the genus Nannochloropsis.

To make their one-minute biocrude, Savage and Julia Faeth, a doctoral student in Savage's lab, filled a steel pipe connector with 1.5 milliliters of wet algae, capped it and plunged it into 1,100-degree Fahrenheit sand. The small volume ensured that the algae was heated through, but with only a minute to warm up, the algae's temperature should have just grazed the 550-degree mark before the team pulled the reactor back out.

Previously, Savage and his team heated the algae for times ranging from 10 to 90 minutes. They saw their best results, with about half of the algae converted to biocrude, after treating it for 10 to 40 minutes at 570 degrees.

Why are the one-minute results so much better? Savage and Faeth won't be sure until they have done more experiments, but they have some ideas.

"My guess is that the reactions that produce biocrude are actually must faster than previously thought," Savage said.

Faeth suggests that the fast heating might boost the biocrude by keeping unwanted reactions at bay.

"For example, the biocrude might decompose into substances that dissolve in water, and the fast heating rates might discourage that reaction," Faeth said.

The team points out that shorter reaction times mean that the reactors don't have to be as large.

"By reducing the reactor volume, the cost of building a biocrude production plant also decreases," Faeth said, though both she and Savage cautioned that they couldn't say for sure whether the new method is faster and cheaper until the process is further developed.

Current commercial makers of algae-based fuel first dry the algae and then extract the natural oil. But at over $20 per gallon, this fuel is a long way from the gas pump.

"Companies know that that approach is not economical, so they are looking at approaches for using wet algae, as are we," Savage said.

One of the advantages of the wet method is that it doesn't just extract the existing fat from the algae?it also breaks down proteins and carbohydrates. The minute method did this so successfully that the oil contained about 90 percent of the energy in the original algae.

"That result is near the upper bound of what is possible," Savage said.

Before biocrude can be fed into the existing refinery system for petroleum, it needs pre-refining to get rid of the extra oxygen and nitrogen atoms that abound in living things. The Savage lab also is developing better methods for this leg of biofuel production, breaking the record with a biocrude that was 97 percent carbon and hydrogen earlier this year. A paper on this work is currently under review.

Once producing biofuel from algae is economical, researchers estimate that an area the size of New Mexico could provide enough oil to match current U.S. petroleum consumption. And, unlike corn produced for ethanol?which already accounts for half that area?the algae won't need to occupy good farmland, thriving in brackish ponds instead.

The research, "The Effects of Heating Rate and Reaction Time on Hydrothermal Liquefaction of Microalgae," was funded by the Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation program of the National Science Foundation. The university is pursuing patent protection for the intellectual property, and is seeking commercialization partners to help bring the technology to market.

Abstract: https://aiche.confex.com/aiche/2012/webprogram/Paper280193.html

Savage Lab: http://savageresearchlab.wordpress.com

EDITORS: Watch and link to a video about Savage's work on biofuels at http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dvGssEM4bLg#

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Michigan.

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

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

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

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/V0aeUGUCWGE/121031123504.htm

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Wayne's Blog: Using Social Media to Help #SandyPets : The ...

October?30,?2012

A Humane Nation: Wayne Pacelle's blog

I wrote yesterday about the work of The HSUS's disaster team and state directors to coordinate with emergency officials and ready our equipment and resources to deploy in the wake of the storm. But there's so much more to a disaster response than just the professional corps of disaster planners and responders.

Rank-and-file citizens have to make the right choices to protect themselves and their animals, and that's why our communications staff have also been working nonstop to get out crucial information about pet preparedness through social media, our website, and press releases.

Social media has become especially useful during disasters to distribute information quickly and respond to specific questions from animal lovers. We've been connecting pet owners with the information and resources they need to keep their animals safe.?

Watching out for pets during Hurricane Sandy

Our staff were continuously monitoring storm-related tweets and Facebook posts over the weekend. On Saturday, our staff noticed a tweet about an agency in Connecticut that advised residents to leave their pets at home on the second floor if evacuating?when in fact The HSUS and most agencies strongly discourage leaving your pets behind (since home damage or mandatory evacuation orders can lead to a terrible outcome for your animals). Our state director and disaster team spoke with officials, reminding them to retool the message about evacuating with pets. And they did.

Please support our lifesaving work to help animals after Sandy and other disasters??

In many instances, communities are doing the right thing, and public officials are correctly advising people on how to take care of their pets in a time of crisis. This is a dramatic shift in public attitudes and the emphasis on the human-animal bond from just a few years ago, and a marker that our movement has made great strides by raising public awareness and collaborating with planning agencies and other stakeholders. For example, our staff in New York City serve on the local animal planning task force and have been working with coalition partners and municipal agencies for years to prepare for an event just like Sandy.

From Katrina to Sandy, animal-friendly policies

After Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, we worked to pass the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards (PETS) Act in Congress and to pass laws in 16 states on pets in disasters, and those efforts have paid off.

Over the last few days, we've used Twitter and contacts with local animal control agencies to help many people find pet-friendly shelters in their areas, as well as providing information about how to help feral cats and other non-companion animals during the storm. We followed up with local authorities about reports of dogs left outside, and we're helping to publicize requests from local shelters in need of supplies.

Read more of Wayne Pacelle's blog ?

Each of these questions we answer about pet-friendly shelters, or each phone call we make to alert authorities about an animal in need, adds up and can mean a lot to someone.

One woman in New York contacted us to say she needed to evacuate with her dog, but she didn't have a car, and the subways were slated to close early. We let her know that taxis and buses were required to accept pets during the storm and what time public transportation would be closing. She later sent us a?photo of her dog cuddled up safely from the storm.

You and The HSUS's disaster relief work

Communications is vital on the front end of a natural event, and during. We?ll continue to emphasize this work, as well as have our first responders ready to help whenever and wherever animals and people are in crisis.?

Follow us on Twitter (@HumaneSociety) for up-to-the-minute information on pet-friendly shelters, organizations in need of assistance, and other disaster-related resources.?You can also donate $10 to our Disaster Relief Fund by texting ANIMALS to 20222 (message and data rates apply).

Source: http://www.humanesociety.org/news/blog/2012/10/hurricane_sandy_social_media_waynesblog.html

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Friday, October 26, 2012

Internet Hosting And Design Companies | My Six Strings Blog

Web-sites are automobiles to provide you the would-be achievement you possess been trying to get. They are able to talk a concept to the hungry promote in search of solutions. Various in a specified sector are certainly ready to shell out you for offering the solutions they may have been trying to get so make your personal web site and soar into your ocean of possibility.

Absent will be the times of billboards, troublesome tv commercials as well as in your confront advertising and marketing. Whilst, they go on to exist their efficiency dwindles in any time as various tune out those people systems of promoting that could quickly turn into extinct.

You can find extra humans who get on the web and they may have end up being significantly self-assured in creating on the web buys. This really is magnificent information for yourself considering that whenever you make your personal webpage you turn into a channel to some prospect?s desires.

Internet marketing has altered promotion from getting into your deal with promoting to your smiling tone of, ?How could quite possibly we enable you to?? It will make commencing your own private web based business that significantly more delightful.

In case you have already got a web based online business and request better successes, visualize your small business being an ocean of chance not merely for yourself personally, but on your prospective clients, who?ll discover your helpful internet marketing strategy totally refreshing.

The benefit of an on-line commerce is you carry out your small business at your very own leisure, which happens to be an additionally to assist loosen up your selling mindset. In reality after you make your very own online site you?re able to perform your enterprise in the comfort and ease of the own residence and give you the option to achieve a worldwide promote of hungry prospective clients.

A good increased benefit, having a several tweaks, you will established your small business on autopilot. In this manner you keep on to deliver an cash flow even even when you are sleeping. The comforts of the web business are simply your decision this means you have unrestricted salary capability.

Quite expensive company overheads or startup value will become an idea belonging to the earlier far too. After you begin the process of a company on-line, specifically in your personal property, you?ll learn that you have got considerably more dough to additionally your expand and make your very own blog greater user-friendly to higher accommodate your potential clients and client?s specifications.

Minus the might need for overpriced overhead you?re going to have the option to begin investing an entire ton faster than the usual brick and mortar venture would, as that which you simply will be needing for an internet based organisation is known as a computer system, a web link, e-mail, web pages, a domain title together with a need to be successful all of which may be carried out with little if any fee for you.

Merge that which includes a suitable system of motion to improve your on line organization will give you which has a continual salary stream offering you the personal flexibility you are actually attempting to find. You?re going to even be equipped for making your own personal homepage even more highly effective inside the neighborhood of individual liberty if you faucet in to the tricks of outsourcing your web business jobs.

Because you have entry to a worldwide sector you can realize that outsourcing can be carried out with nominal value. You can give you the option to create your online business on the spending plan by selecting freelancers who will be prepared to do the job with a presented venture inside your advised funds, after once more all finished through the comfort and ease of the own residence.

For more info on World Wide Web Web Hosting: What To Look And Feel For in The Net Host, at your convenience kindly view Selecting The Best Web Hosting Provider.

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Source: http://mysixstringsblog.com/internet-hosting-and-design-companies/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=internet-hosting-and-design-companies

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Thursday, October 25, 2012

The Top 10 Up And Coming European Startups Of 2012 | Addicted 2 ...

european startups The major up and coming startup companies in Europe will be the driving force supporting the region?s financial upturn.

Within the walls of these companies, innovation is moving, changing, mixing, and creating some of the top startup companies now and of the future. Some articulate that European investor?s do not have enough courage, while others feel that entrepreneurs may not be daring enough. Whether this is true or not, is of no importance. The point is that startups throughout Europe are overflowing with unique ideas and creativity.

1. Soundcloud ? Berlin, Germany

Soundcloud Startup Europe Founded in 2007 by Alex Ljung, Soundcloud is a sound-platform that permits anyone to grab, create, and share sounds throughout the web, somewhat like YouTube but strictly focusing on sound. With more than 8 million users, they broadcast their partnership with Song Kick & Foursquare,?winning the media and audio classification of the telegraph-start-up 100 prize. This year of 2012 is said to be an even bigger year for the company.

2. Tradeshift ? Copenhagen, Denmark

Tradeshift was Founded in 2009, and introduced in 2010 by?Christian Lanng, Mikkel Hippe Brun and Gert Sylvest.

Their trade is an online invoicing feature for businesses to construct a conglomeration of partners on the Internet for sharing invoices.?This company has experienced a speedy rise lately as Tradeshift was able to?raise $7 million and announced collaborations with both the Italian and French governments in 2011. This year is only getting better for these creative Danes.

3. iZettle ? Stockholm, Sweden

iZettle, which is?founded by Magnus Nilsson & Jacob De Geer allows anyone to make card payments anyplace, anytime, anywhere with the use of an iPhone-app and mini-chip card-reader that can be linked to a phone. Founded in 2010 in beta form, the company has successfully raised ?11.2 million.

What an awesome idea, this could be the hottest thing out of Sweden since IKEA & Skype.

4. LikeOurselves ? London, UK

LikeOurselves startup Started by Pardeep Kullar & Steve Lai, This Web and mobile app assists individuals to find people with similar interests while they are out on the town. Users can choose the kind of individuals they would prefer to meet in various categories like hobbies, spontaneous dates, and students. Anything that brings the right people closer must be good right? Join LikeOurselves today.

5. House Trip ? Lisbon, Portugal

House Trip was introduced in 2010 by Arnaud Bertrand and Junjun Chen. It is an apartment hunting Internet website were any person can reserve a villa or apartment, and property-owners can also place their accommodations on the site. They have recently expanded beyond London, Berlin, and Paris, making their way around the whole of Europe and a growing number of countries around the globe, with nearly 60,000 properties listed.

With more than 500,000 nights reserved thus far, they have developed from a staff of 20 to 70 full-time staffers.

6. Radionomy ? Brussels, Belgium

Radionomy permits individuals to develop and listen-to radio stations on the web gratis, while sharing a tailored radio-show complete with jingles, music programming, and commercials, with bespoke pod casts and reports to share with friends, family, and strangers around the world community. The company has expanded quickly in 2011 since its creation?by?Van Kan Cedric,?Baudechon Yves,?Alexandre Saboudijan?and?Bindets Gilles?back in 2008.

Radionomy has the ability to stream 30 million-hours of online radio per month. Presently, they are securing financing of about $15 million with the assistance of a French investment bank.

7. 6wunderkinder ? Berlin, Germany

6wunderkinder german startup This German start-up is a multi-platform efficiency solutions company for businesses, groups, and individuals. Founded by Serial Entrepreneur Christian Reber.?The company?s main product Wunderlist task-management software, has one million users. They raised $4.2 million in support from Atomico, an investment firm from the entrepreneurs of Skype, one of the largest web-based communication companies in the world. Nearly 40% of their users are in the United States.

8. Fon ? Madrid, Spain

Martin Varsavsky, the founder of?Fon is determined to supply free wifi across the globe. When someone signs up with Fon, they agree to safely share a small amount of their wifi-bandwidth with Fon. The company has 4 million users and 7 million hotspots. They have managed to raise ?10 million in backing and obtained various large partnerships like Belgium?s biggest telecommunications business, Belgacom.

9. Shutl ? London, UK

Shutl founder Tom Allason?wants to offer delivery times for online orders to as little as 90 minutes. Basically, Shutl will propose its service, which combines capability across local-courier businesses into one web-service for retailers.

10. Storific ? Paris, France

storific startup france Many feel that this start-up has the possibility to modify the job of waiters-inside restaurants completely. To make dining-out more convenient, users with Storific?s mobile-app can check the menu-card of the restaurant they are in and place their orders whenever they choose without waiting for staff to come to see them and take their order. Storific states that the app substantially adds to the amount of orders created-by one table and therefore a positive influence on the restaurant?s revenue. I think Storific?s founder?Michael Cohen is on to something here.

Article By Joel Brown | Addicted2Success.com

Source: http://addicted2success.com/news/the-top-10-up-and-coming-european-startups-this-year/

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S&P indicates it may upgrade Rosneft after BP deal

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/p-indicates-may-upgrade-rosneft-bp-deal-064156587--finance.htmlnikki haley stan van gundy navy jet crash virginia beach crash stephen hawking marion barry virginia beach jet crash

Iran sees conspiracy in box office success of Ben Affleck's 'Argo' (+video)

Based on true events surrounding the 1979 takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran, 'Argo' opened this weekend at No. 2 and rose to the top spot on Monday. Iranians are less enthused.

By Roshanak Taghavi,?Correspondent / October 17, 2012

This film image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Bryan Cranston (l.) as Jack O?Donnell and Ben Affleck as Tony Mendez in 'Argo,' a rescue thriller about the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis.

Claire Folger/Warner Bros./AP

Enlarge

American moviegoers flocked to theaters this weekend to see Ben Affleck's long-anticipated thriller Argo, which has been generating headlines since it was first screened at the Toronto Film Festival last month.?

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Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Review: First Look: ASUS ET2300 - The Windows 8 All-In-One done right

One of the real take home messages behind Windows 8 is that it is fantastic for touch devices like tablets. On the desktop however it swings between confusing and business as usual ? touch on a vertical screen may work for ATMs and shopping centre kiosks but for day to day use pawing at a vertical screen is a novelty at best and an ergonomic nightmare at worst.

PC manufacturers know this, which has led to Windows 8 driven trend towards All-In-one PCs that tilt back for more comfortable touching. It is a concept that we found intriguing when first seen on HP?s 2011 touchsmart system, which was merely a taste of what we are seeing nowadays.

ASUS has been doing some serious innovation in its mobile devices in recent years, with devices like the padfone and transformer series of tablets. It is now bringing this kind of innovative design to the All-In-One space, and the 23in ET2300 is a fantastic example of this.

This revolves around an articulated hinge that allows the ET2300?s multitouch screen to move from vertical to horizontal, and be usable at any point during that journey. It means that you can find a comfortable position to take advantage of Windows 8 touch features, or use it as a traditional keyboard and mouse based PC.

To achieve this, while keeping the whole unit stable, ASUS has opted for a heavy base for the design. This base holds most of the PC componentry inside it, and is where the expansion ports are located. It features a gunmetal grey covering, with swirls reminiscent of the Zenbook Ultrabook design, and makes for a good looking and highly functional PC.

Under the hood sits an Intel Core i5-3330 CPU, 8GB DDR3 RAM, Nvidia GT630M, 1TB HDD and a DVD Burner. It also features dual thunderbolt ports, card reader, four USB 3, eSATA, Gigabit Ethernet and HDMI in and out (which enables the All-In-One to be used as a screen for other HDMI devices). It also features 802.11 b/g/n and supports Intel?s Wireless Display (WiDi) technology.

The screen itself uses a 23in 1920 x 1080 IPS panel, which means that viewing angles aren?t an issue when folding the screen flat. It makes for a remarkably vibrant and crisp display, and Windows 8 looks quite wonderful on it. It does, unfortunately, suffer from the unavoidable problem that it gets covered in fingerprints in no time flat. This isn?t too noticeable when the screen is active, however because Windows 8 relies heavily on touch gestures that move from the bezel into the screen, it quite rapidly becomes smudged and smeared around the black screen edges.

By being capable of laying completely horizontal the ET2300 potentially opens up new usage models. It was interesting playing the touch enabled games on the flat screen, but one can?t help but wonder whether it would just be easier to buy a deck of cards for a fraction the price. This is where the real sticking point with the ET2300 comes in ? it is a beautifully designed, highly powerful and capable All-In-One PC, but there just aren?t the apps to make it truly shine.

Given the sheer number of All-In-Ones being launched that have the ability to fold back to some degree, we?d expect enterprising developers will take advantage of the fact, and that apps will arrive that merge form and function. But they just don?t seem to exist yet, and that alone means that the ET2300 is going to be a leap of faith for most users.

With the ET2300 ASUS has quite consciously made a well-rounded, highly featured Windows 8 design. If you are looking for something relatively future proof then this is a very tempting offering, even if you do end up paying a premium for the fancy features. We really can?t fault the design or aesthetics of the ET2300, and ASUS has delivered a hardware platform intrinsically tied to the best and worst of Windows 8.

We were only able to spend a day with the ET2300 in the office, so we haven?t had a chance to run our real world benchmarks on the unit. We did, however spend our time with the All-In-One exploring the form factor and the Windows 8 touch experience. At the time of writing there also wasn?t any pricing available for the system, which will play a major factor in whether or not this is a device to buy. We?ll revisit the ET2300 once we have a chance to benchmark it fully, but for now it receives our excellence award ? it is by far the best quality and most innovative Windows 8 All-In-One that we have encountered.

Source: http://www.pcauthority.com.au/Review/320440,first-look-asus-et2300-the-windows-8-all-in-one-done-right.aspx?utm_source=feed&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=PC+&+Tech+Authority+Reviews+feed+-+Latest+Articles

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Nuance launches Siri-esque Dragon Mobile Assistant

Android Central

Today Nuance kicked off the beta for a new app called Dragon Mobile Assistant. It lets users talk to their phones in a natural human voice for a variety of tasks, including booking calendar appointments, dictating messages, updating Facebook and Twitter, getting GPS directions, finding businesses, and checking the weather. It even has an S-voice style audio wake-up command so you don't have to press a button to initiate a query. Sure, Personal Assistant has a lot in common with Dragon Go, but this is packaged in a way to more directly offer an Android version of Siri.

Nuance is in a good spot for launching a voice activated personal assistant given its pedigree (especially now that they've acquired Vlingo), but it's hardly the only show in town. A small start-up called Maluuba has a very sharp-looking app that focuses on specific silos of content. Of course Samsung's S-voice is an option on pretty much all of their newer phones, plus the latest version of voice search built into Jelly Bean can handle a lot. There's Evi, though it wasn't particularly great the last time we used it.

Dragon Personal Assistant is free, but it's only available in English in the U.S. for devices running Android Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0. They're expecting to launch more broadly before the end of the year, at least. Which voice-activated personal assistant do you use on Android? Are there any that are fast enough to be more practical than just typing in a query or manually navigating to something on your device? How do you think these options stack up against what's available on iOS?

Source: Nuance

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/nl8miSUlaic/story01.htm

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Influence in times of crisis: How do men and women evaluate precarious leadership positions?

ScienceDaily (Oct. 23, 2012) ? We've all heard of the "glass ceiling" but the recent economic crisis has illuminated another workplace phenomenon: the "glass cliff." Women seem to be overrepresented in precarious leadership positions at organizations going through crisis. Evidence is growing that more feminine leadership traits, such as being understanding and tactful, are believed to be desirable under such circumstances, causing people to make a "think crisis -- think female" association.

But is it that women are always passively selected into these jobs or do they sometimes also actively seek them out? A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that it's not the precarious positions per se that attract women leaders, but perhaps the social resources that come with them.

In the study, psychological scientists Floor Rink and Janka Stoker of the University of Groningen and Michelle Ryan of the University of Groningen and the University of Exeter investigated how men and women evaluate these glass-cliff positions. The researchers speculated that, all else being equal, women wouldn't be more attracted to a precarious position, but they would be more sensitive to certain aspects of the position.

Rink and her colleagues hypothesized that, following gender norms, women would be more attentive to communal aspects of precarious leadership roles, focusing on social resources, while men would attend to aspects related to authority and hierarchy, focusing on financial resources.

In the first study, Rink and colleagues asked Dutch business students to imagine working for a large company in financial crisis. They were offered a top leadership position at the hypothetical company, where they would be in charge of resolving the crisis. All of the students read a passage containing information about the social and financial resources that came with the position. One group read that they had employee support (social resources) and financial investment from management (financial resources), a second group read that they had financial investment but no employee support, and a third group read that they had employee support but no financial investment.

Comparing across genders, women generally seemed less likely than men to evaluate any of the positions positively. Yet comparing across the three scenarios, women were particularly less likely to accept the position that lacked social resources, while men were less inclined to accept the position that lacked financial resources, confirming the researchers' hypotheses.

A second study suggests these findings may have been driven by internalized gender stereotypes about leadership. The researchers found that women viewed employee acceptance as a factor that would lead to influence, while men viewed influence as an attribute that would lead to employee acceptance.

"Since the discovery of the glass cliff, researchers and practitioners have questioned whether women are simply more likely than men to accept precarious leadership positions, thereby -- albeit unintentionally -- putting themselves at a disadvantage in their careers," the researchers note. "Our findings make it clear that the glass cliff cannot be attributed to women's failure to recognize the precariousness of glass-cliff positions."

Taken together, the findings from the two studies suggest that societal expectations about gender and leadership play a key role in driving women's and men's evaluations of glass cliff positions.

The researchers argue that these findings may be useful for organizations searching for new leaders to guide them through crises. "In order to get the right person for the right job, it is probably important for organizations to recognize which aspects of a crisis they want their future leader to solve and to give him or her the appropriate means with which to do so," says Rink.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Association for Psychological Science.

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Journal Reference:

F. Rink, M. K. Ryan, J. I. Stoker. Influence in Times of Crisis: How Social and Financial Resources Affect Men's and Women's Evaluations of Glass-Cliff Positions. Psychological Science, 2012; DOI: 10.1177/0956797612453115

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/LqqVlneEmug/121023134816.htm

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Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Storm brings tornado, rain and snow to Northern California

Click photo to enlarge

Don Camy of Chico enjoys a dip in Sycamore Pool at the One-Mile Recreation Area after his jog through Bidwell Park on Monday. Camy said he had a wonderful run between rain showers and the water was surprisingly warm. "It felt really neat to swim through the mat of leaves" that covered the pool, he said. Besides bringing down leaves, a storm in Northern California also brought a tornado, rain and snow.(Ty Barbour/Staff Photo)<p class='dotPhoto'>All Chico E-R photos are available <a href='http://chicoer.mycapture.com/'>here</a>.</p>

Northern California finally got weather to match the calendar, as a storm smacked the area Monday bringing rain, snow and at least one tornado.

The twister touched down about 3:15 p.m. a couple of miles south of Yuba City, and bounced from Sutter County into Yuba.

It took shingles off houses and hit the Mallard Lake Golf Course, where a golfer told the Marysville Appeal Democrat that it snapped a tree that struck him.

Sutter County Fire Department Battalion Chief John Shalowitz said firefighters could see the tornado touch down from their station in a mostly rural area about two miles south of Yuba City.

"It's a lot of telephone and cable lines down, but thankfully nobody was hurt," he told The Associated Press. "We have some roofing material that has been stripped from a couple of houses. A lot of trees down in the area."

The tornado followed earlier reports from the National Weather Service that it's radar had picked up a possible twister about nine miles southeast of Palermo. A number of funnel cloud sightings were reported as the storm moved northeast, including a call from the area of Loafer Creek on Lake Oroville.

As of deadline, there was no conformation that funnel had touched down.

Even those distant from the wildest weather experienced something missing from the area for a long time: rain.

Chico saw 1.06 inches of rain, Oroville 0.85 inch and Paradise 1.78 inches.

It was the first time there's been measurable precipitation in Chico since

June 4, when 0.14 inch fell.

In the mountains as much as two feet of snow fell. The road through Lassen Volcanic National Park was closed, and snowplows were needed to keep Interstate 80 open.

Source: http://www.chicoer.com/ci_21833995/storm-brings-tornado-rain-and-snow-northern-california?source=rss_viewed

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Insight: Village cafe shootout spells trouble for Assad

AMMAN (Reuters) - A warm autumn day in the Syrian village of Qardaha and a man walks in to a cafe where two customers are arguing. He pulls a gun; shots are fired. The newcomer is wounded and one of the other men killed.

But this is no obscure local feud; it reveals frictions among President Bashar al-Assad's core supporters. For Qardaha is the ancestral home of the ruling dynasty. And the man who strode in with a pistol was the beleaguered president's cousin.

Accounts vary of what happened next. But the cafe gunfight and subsequent bloodshed in the village involved only Alawites, the religious minority on which Assad has depended in his civil war against mainly Sunni rebels. The violence shows that fear and anger over his policies may be eroding that support.

Some locals say Mohammed al-Assad, known as the "Mountain Sheikh" for his powerful family ties, argued in the cafe about smuggling and other rackets that underpin the economy of the Alawite hill towns around the port of Latakia; others believe he took exception to complaints about his cousin's conduct of the war and about the rising death toll the community is suffering.

President Assad's father Hafez, who led Syria from 1970 until his death in 2000, lies in a grandiose mausoleum at Qardaha, a town of 5,000 nestled amid pine-clad hilltops.

His rule brought wealth and advantage, not least jobs in the army and police, to the long disadvantaged Alawite community, which makes up about 10 percent of Syria's population. But tribal and other internal tensions have been exacerbated by a war that his son portrays as a battle for survival, not just for himself but for all fellow Alawites against sectarian enemies.

LOYALTY IN QUESTION?

Recent events around Qardaha, however, suggest to some observers, including Western diplomats, that clan rivalries, thousands of deaths among Alawite fighters and economic crisis could break the loyalty of leading Alawite commanders, even as the community finds itself increasingly a target of rebel anger.

With the government severely restricting media access, there is a lack of independent information within Syria but several residents of Latakia region gave similar accounts of events.

One Alawite who has joined the opposition to Assad, Majd Arafat, said there was growing resentment at the suffering of the local population while elite families remained aloof: "The talk all over the mountains is that Alawites are being killed in droves, but none of them are called Assad, Makhlouf or Shalish."

The latter two families are closely related to the Assads.

A Western diplomat, noting the failure of defections by Sunni generals to sap the strength of Assad's forces, speculated that were even a less senior Alawite to break ranks, it might raise expectations of a more damaging split: "The defection of one, even a colonel, would be significant," he said.

Estimates of casualties are hard to establish in Syria. One activist group which compiles reports has said some 7,300 Assad loyalists have been killed, out of a total of 30,000 war dead.

But many believe the overall toll is higher. One who thinks so is a Syrian businessman, not himself an Alawite, who says he funds units of the mostly Alawite "shabbiha" militia, partly to protect his businesses in the area. Speaking to Reuters anonymously, he reckoned the Alawite community in the coastal mountains alone might have lost 15,000 fighters since last year.

In the immediate area of Qardaha, residents estimated that as many as 300 men may have died in the past year, either in battles with rebels or in sectarian ambushes and assassinations.

UNEQUAL DIVISIONS

But the burden, as the riches of the past 40 years, has not been shared equally among the Alawite clans.

The likes of the Makhlouf and Shalish families are cousins of the Assads, and rose from humble beginnings to make fortunes by virtue of winning government tenders - much to the chagrin of more established Alawites sidelined by Assad and his father.

Now those divisions seem to be resurfacing in an environment where the wealth some Alawite mountain leaders have built up through officially sanctioned smuggling and other illicit trades is being threatened by the anti-Assad uprising - and now that many Alawites fear collective retribution from Assad's enemies.

"Qardaha and its mountains used to be an incubator for regime support. But Assad's relatives may now have to think twice before walking in the streets," said the Alawite opposition activist Arafat. "The Alawites are starting to ask themselves 'why we should back the Assads?'."

The non-Alawite businessman who funds some loyalist militia said abuses in the clandestine economy run by shabbiha chiefs was turning other Alawites against their rulers: "The regime has been turning a blind eye to the criminality of the shabbiha," the businessman said. "And it is beginning to hurt it."

Nonetheless, many Alawites, whose religion is an offshoot of the Shi'ite Islam practiced in Assad's ally Iran, still support the armed forces and the militia units blamed for sectarian atrocities. Many see them as a bulwark for self-preservation:

"They are afraid of the other side, which has also proved capable of massacres," Arafat said. "They still see the Assad regime as providing them with a sort of immunity."

Details of the cafe shootout at Qardaha on September 29, show internal strains are surfacing as the community suffers losses.

The man killed in the gunfight was Sakher Othman. Among prominent members of his family was Isper Othman, a cleric killed in a crackdown by the elder Assad in the 1970s. At Sakher Othman's funeral, a mourner shouted a demand that Assad quit, prompting loyalist gunmen to open fire, killing four people.

Alawite opposition activists said several pro-Assad fighters were also killed and wounded as fighting spread.

Since then thousands of shabbiha loyal to the president and commanded by Assad relatives have imposed their order on Qardaha and surrounding villages, but anger and disputes have continued.

Activists list members of a number of prominent families which now oppose Assad, including from the Othman, Qouzi, Muhalla, Iskandar, Issa, Khayyer and al-Jadid clans. Homes have been ransacked and several shops owned by anti-Assad Alawites in Qardaha were torched this month, local residents said.

Among notable clan hostilities is that opposing the Khayyers to the Assads. Abdelaziz al-Khayyer, a doctor from Qardaha, spent 12 years as a political prisoner under Hafez al-Assad. He was detained again in September and has not been heard of since.

A delegation arrived from Damascus to try calm passions. It was headed by another prominent Alawite, Walid Othman, father-in-law of Assad's cousin and Syria's richest man Rami Makhlouf.

Yet within days there was further trouble, with local people saying youths from rival Alawite families clashed in Qardaha.

RECRUITMENT PROBLEMS?

These tensions may spell problems ahead for the unity of the Alawite officer corps. And Assad's forces may also be finding difficulties recruiting in their Alawite heartland - opposition activists say more young Alawites are evading conscription.

"They are seeing that the rebels are getting stronger and that their friends are getting killed," said activist Lubna Merei, from the coastal town of Jableh, south of Latakia.

However, for all that Alawite communal cohesion may face problems, some believe that the way the civil war has taken on such a bitter sectarian dimension - helped in part by the way Assad himself treated his opponents - may mean the moment has passed when many Alawites might side with the rebels.

Munther Bakhos, a veteran Alawite member of the exile Syrian opposition in France, said the rebels lost an opportunity to make allies in the Alawite heartlands in the early stages of the conflict and he believed that it would now be harder for the mainly Sunni opposition to benefit from the in-fighting there.

"It is naive to think the regime is protecting the Alawites. They are hostage. The regime is using them to defend itself," Bakhos said. But the sectarian bitterness of the war had made it harder to persuade Alawites to ditch Assad:

"There was an opportunity to pull the rug from under its feet in the first few months of the revolution," he said. "But now the picture has gotten complicated."

(Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/insight-village-cafe-shootout-spells-trouble-assad-133920836.html

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Monday, October 22, 2012

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Children with mental health disorders more often identified as bullies

ScienceDaily (Oct. 22, 2012) ? Children diagnosed with mental health disorders were three times more likely to be identified as bullies, according to new research presented Oct. 22 at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference and Exhibition in New Orleans.

Bullying is a form of youth violence defined as repetitive, intentional aggression that involves a disparity of power between the victim and perpetrator. A 2011 nationwide survey found 20 percent of U.S. high school students were bullied during the preceding 12 months. And while it is well-established that victims of bullying are at increased risk for mental health illness and suicide, few studies have investigated the mental health status of those who do the bullying.

In the study, "Association Between Mental Health Disorders and Bullying in the United States Among Children Aged 6 to 17 Years," researchers reviewed data provided by parents and guardians on mental health and bullying in the 2007 National Survey of Children's Health, which included nearly 64,000 children.

In 2007, 15.2 percent of U.S. children were identified as bullies by a parent or guardian. Overall, children with mental health disorders were three times more likely to bully other children. A sub-analysis by type of mental health disorder found that children with a diagnosis of depression were three times more likely to bully, while a diagnosis of Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) was associated with a six fold increase in the odds of being identified as a bully.

"These findings highlight the importance of providing psychological support not only to victims of bullying, but to bullies as well," said study author Frances G. Turcotte-Benedict, MD, a Brown University master's of public health student and a fellow at Hasbro Children's Hospital in Providence, RI."

"In order to create successful anti-bullying prevention and intervention programs, there certainly is a need for more research to understand the relationship more thoroughly, and especially, the risk profile of childhood bullies."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Academy of Pediatrics.

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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.