SACRAMENTO, CA - After the Sacramento Kings beat the L.A. Lakers in Monday night's season opener, city officials hope to use the energy to keep the momentum going for a new arena.
At Tuesday morning's weekly news conference, Sacramento Kevin Johnson was visibly excited; saying last night was a big win for the city.
Johnson said he hopes this is a great new start for the team in the city.
"We're in negotiations now with the NBA and the Maloofs and all the parties involved," Johnson said. "So this is a critical juncture for all of us. I'll tell you what, the Maloofs are very very optimistic, they feel that we have a chance to get it done."
The excitement from Monday's game is spilling into Thursday's Kings game against the Chicago Bulls, is a sellout. This is the first time since 2007 that the Kings sold out games back-to-back.
Gautam Gambhir batted steadily as India were set 292 to win the Boxing Day Test at the MCG. (AFP Photo)
NEW DELHI: Peter Siddle had Gautam Gambhir caught by Ricky Ponting at second slip to put India under pressure on the fourth day of the Boxing Day Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Thursday.
Scorecard
Gambhir and Rahul Dravid resumed the Indian second innings after lunch in pursuit of a 292-run victory target.
The Indian run chase got off to a bad start as Michael Hussey took a sharp catch at gully to dismiss Virender Sehwag off Ben Hilfenhaus.
Sehwag (7) went for a wild swing at a wide delivery, middled it but Hussey grasped it out of thin air over his head to dismiss the dangerman for Australia.
Earlier, India bowled out Australia for 240 runs in their second innings which them left with a 292-run victory target.
Ishant Sharma took the last Australian wicket when he had Ben Hilfenhaus caught by VVS Laxman at second slip.
Zaheer Khan squared up Michael Hussey with an absolute beauty and had him caught behind by MS Dhoni.
Hussey hit 9 fours in his 89-run knock before edging a good length delivery outside the off-stump that kicked up a hint and seamed away from him.
The day's play started with Hussey and James Pattinson resuming the Australian second innings.
On a bright and sunny Day 3, during the course of which the pendulum swayed crazily and as many as 15 wickets tumbled, Hussey redeemed himself and rescued his Test career with a gallant unbeaten 79 that took Australia to 179/8.
India, having goofed up with the bat in the first innings, hit back with the ball to reduce Australia to 27/4 in their second essay before yielding ground once again to the hosts who recovered through a fine fifth-wicket stand of 115 runs between veterans Ricky Ponting (60) and Hussey.
India did manage to prise out Ponting in the final session, along with Brad Haddin, Peter Siddle and Nathan Lyon, to regain some lost ground, but the 51-run lead they conceded in the first innings could well make all the difference as the match heads for a close finish.
Things started going wrong for India from the very second ball of the day as Ben Hilfenhaus produced a beauty to square up Rahul Dravid and peg back his stumps. Dravid's dismissal sent shock waves through the Indian camp and fired up the Aussie pacers, who came hard at the Indians.
Hilfenhaus came up with his maiden five-wicket haul and got excellent support from James Pattinson (2/53) and Siddle (3/63), who had triggered the Indian collapse on Day 2 by dismissing a well-set Sachin Tendulkar.
Lacklustre batting saw India collapse sensationally from 214/3 to 282 all out. The recognised batsmen cut a sorry figure as VVS Laxman, Virat Kohli and Dhoni were all guilty of poking at deliveries outside their off stump.
But for a strong rearguard action by nightwatchman Ishant Sharma and the belligerence of R Ashwin, Australia's lead would have been much bigger. While Sharma defied the Australian pace attack for 103 minutes in making a 69-ball 11, Ashwin played a cameo (31 off 35 balls) and was the last man to be dismissed.
Australian second innings got off to a shaky start with Umesh Yadav striking twice in his fourth over to dismiss both the openers. While David Warner dragged one back on to his stumps, Ed Cowan padded up to one that was straight and full. Yadav then added a third to his kitty when Shaun Marsh did a Warner.
At 24/3, the Aussies looked vulnerable. And when the luckless Ishant, who topped 152.2 kmph on the speed gun, finally broke his wicket-drought by forcing skipper Michael Clarke to play on, the match had turned on its head. It required two men with grey hair and ample class to alter the equation for Australia.
Ponting and Hussey not only settled nerves in the dressing room with their no-frills approach, but also scored at a fair clip to demonstrate that they still have a lot to offer to the team.
While Viagra makes cavernous tissue hard, scientists at the Ruhr Universitat in Bochum, Germany, have now discovered that it can save lives too by causing the opposite effect: Viagra makes some heart muscles less stiff. More »
The United States is more a unequal society than the Roman empire was, recent research has shown.
Here is an abstract of a paper published by Cambridge Journals:
Different methods of estimating the Gross Domestic Product of the Roman Empire in the second century C.E. produce convergent results that point to total output and consumption equivalent to 50 million tons of wheat or close to 20 billion sesterces per year.
It is estimated that ?lites (around 1.5 per cent of the imperial population) controlled approximately one-fifth of total income, while middling households (perhaps 10 per cent of the population) consumed another fifth. These findings shed new light on the scale of economic inequality and the distribution of demand in the Roman world.
the top 1.5% then controlled around 20% of the assets in the Roman empire according to their estimates.
Meanwhile, in the United States the top 1% currently own over 40% of the country?s wealth.
Source: www.breakingtravelnews.com --- Saturday, December 24, 2011 Austria?s renowned wellness resort Grandhotel Lienz is hosting a charity Golf tournament in aid of SOS Children Village Osttirol, the charity dedicated to orphaned and abandoned children. ...
(NaturalNews) British scientists have developed a new variety of broccoli that contains up to three times more of a powerful heart-health nutrient than conventional varieties -- and they did so without the use of genetic modification (GM). However, the "super" broccoli, known as "Beneforte," also contains less vital sulfur than conventional varieties.
By cross-breeding traditional British broccoli with wild, bitter Sicilian broccoli, researchers from the Institute for Food Research and the John Innes Centre, both in Norwich, England, were able to produce the Beneforte variety, which contains up to three times the normal amount of glucoraphanin (GRP).
GRP is a precursor to sulforaphane (SF), which is the actual nutrient responsible for providing anticancer, anti-diabetic, and antimicrobial benefits. GRP in its standalone form provides little, if any, health benefits, and must come into contact with myrosinase (MYR), another enzyme naturally present in broccoli, in order to become metabolized into beneficial SF.
The Beneforte scientists, however, claim the extra GRP in their broccoli helps to improve the breakdown down of fat in the body, and prevent it from building up in arteries and causing heart disease. They also say that eating Beneforte helps to reduce cholesterol levels, and are currently conducting human studies to verify these claims.
"There's a lot of circumstantial evidence that points to (glucoraphanin and related compounds) as the most important preventive agents for (heart attacks) and certain cancers," Lars Ove Dragsted, a professor at the University of Copenhagen's department of human nutrition, is quoted as saying by USA Today
Since it is not GM, Beneforte is unlikely to have any negative side effects. After all, many non-GM fruits and vegetables sold in stores today are hybridized. However, unless there is extra MYR in Beneforte along with the extra GRP, it is unclear whether this so-called "super" variety of broccoli is any more beneficial to health than standard varieties.
Beneforte was introduced in the UK last month, and has been available in select stores in California and Texas for roughly the past year. And within the next couple of weeks, it is set to be introduced in stores across the US.
Time to make sure your phone is password-protected, fellas.
Taylor Kinney and Lady Gaga are smitten with one another these days, but when they first got together, he was still in a relationship with Brittany Sackett, In Touch claims.
Until he accidentally pocket-dialed her during an illicit date with Gaga.
“I could hear her telling him he was so ‘sexy and creative,’” Sackett says, adding that she'd replace those adjectives with “dishonest and disloyal.” Again ... passwords.
“In my opinion,” Brittany says as a warning to Gaga, “he’s fame-hungry.”
If so, that would be one big thing The Vampire Diaries actor has in common with the star's ex, Luc Carl, who always seemed to be in love with Lady Gaga’s fame.
Then again, ever since Lady Gaga and Taylor Kinney got together, they have kept a low profile, staying at his beach condo with roommates instead of hotels even.
You could say, in a manner of speaking, that they've got all kinds of money but they still pay rent, because you can't buy a house in heaven ... or something.
You get the point. Lessons learned from this article: 1. Don't call your significant other while you're on a date with someone else, and 2. Watch your back, Gaga.
As Tom Cruise returns as superspy Ethan Hunt, critics roundly praise eye-popping action sequences and strong supporting cast. By Eric Ditzian
Tom Cruise in "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" Photo: Paramount Pictures
Anyone wondering if the "Mission: Impossible" franchise still has life in it after more than five years away from the cinema should do a simple critical comparison. "Mission: Impossible III," which kicked off 2006's summer movie season, notched a 70 percent approval rating, according to the Rotten Tomatoes review aggregator. "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol," by contrast, is currently hovering at 93 percent freshness as it goes into wide release on Wednesday (December 21), following a limited, IMAX-only debut.
Tom Cruise, after the recent stumble of "Knight and Day," is back as an action hero at the age of 49; his IMF superspy Ethan Hunt has possibly never looked better, according to some critics. Reviewers have gone on to praise the film's eye-popping action sequences and the entertaining supporting cast. Read on for a deep dive into the "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" reviews.
The Story "IMF has been disbanded by presidential order after being blamed for a terrorist bombing that destroys the Kremlin. So, do Ethan Hunt and the remaining members of his now-rogue spy team sit around worrying about their 401(k)s? Possibly they would in real life, but not in 'Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol,' a largely successful attempt to reboot the moribund franchise that turns out to be probably the most entertaining installment since Brian De Palma's series opener from 15 years ago." — Lou Lumenick, New York Post
The Dubai Skyscraper Scene "This is a sequence so ingeniously conceived and shot that even the audience doesn't want to look down — a sequence so death-defying that it gets you laughing at your own susceptibility (especially if, like me, you happen to have a fear of heights). Shimmying up and down and around the building's surface, with the ground looking as if it must be a mile below, Cruise becomes a fearless human bug (think Spider-Man without the superpowers). Then, just as we're sure that our hearts couldn't dig any deeper into our throats, one of his gloves begins to short out and lose adhesive power." — Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
The Supporting Cast "Simon Pegg, returning from his 'M:I' debut in the last film, provides a hugely welcome dose of lightness and comic relief as Benji, a meek British computer nerd who in this installment has finally managed to score a gig in the field. Paula Patton and Jeremy Renner, as new additions to Ethan's team, hit their marks with professionalism and physical competence, with Renner in particular proving that he's ready to assume the central role in the 'M:I' franchise if and when Mr. Cruise finally hangs up his carabineers." — Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post
The Dissenters " 'Ghost Protocol' is a less a film than a vanity license plate writ large — a throwback to when all an action film needed was a bogus concept, chase scenes and a roman numeral in a title. ... Its collection of stock elements — nuclear strikes, beautiful women, exotic locales, fast cars, megalomaniac bad guy — could have been ordered from a 'when superpowers stalked the earth' clearance sale catalog. Twenty-five years ago it would have starred Roger Moore." — Duane Dudek, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The Final Word "Should you see 'Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol'? By all means, and in the big, big, biggest theater you can find. Don't watch it on TV, and for God's sake, don't download it to your phone. I recommend the LG IMAX Theater in Sydney, Australia, which is eight stories high, but your local multiplex will do. Be prepared, afterward, to feel as if the outside world is just a little bit too small." — Dan Kois, Slate
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Obama administration will keep a reduced contingent of National Guard troops working along the Mexican border for the next year, the Defense Department said Tuesday.
Starting in January, the force of 1,200 National Guard troops at the border will be reduced to fewer than 300 at a cost of about $60 million, said Paul Stockton, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense.
The remaining troops will shift their focus from patrolling the border on the ground looking for illegal immigrants and smugglers to aerial surveillance missions using military helicopters and airplanes equipped with high-tech radar and other gear. Exactly where those troops will fly or how many aircraft will be used has not been decided, he said.
"We are basically going from boots on the ground to boots in the air," said David Aguilar, deputy commissioner for Customs and Border Protection.
Border Patrol Chief Michael Fisher said his agency is working on identifying the "areas of greatest concern" along the border ? areas that include Arizona and South Texas ? and will station troops and aircraft accordingly.
President Barack Obama ordered a second round of Guard troops to the border last year, with the first of those troops arriving in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas in August 2010. President George W. Bush first ordered Guard troops to the southern from 2006 to 2008. They were supposed to be in place for about a year but Obama extended the deployment earlier this year. The smaller force is now expected to remain until the end of 2012.
Stockton said the remaining troops are "transitioning to much more effective support."
"This provides us with more flexibility in dealing with the persistent challenges posed by cross-border movement and illegal crossings," Stockton said.
According to the Government Accountability Office, the Pentagon has previously spent about $1.35 billion for the deployments under Bush and Obama.
Stockton said the Pentagon has budgeted about $60 million for the mission in 2012.
Congressional Republicans have objected to reducing the number of troops, arguing that the border isn't secure and reducing the number of people patrolling the area doesn't help security.
"If the Obama administration's goal is border security, their actions undermine their objective," said Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. "The administration's decision to draw down the National Guard troops along the U.S-Mexico border makes an already porous border worse."
Aguilar, who previously led the Border Patrol, said Tuesday there is still work to be done at the border but that successes in securing the frontier have allowed DHS to reduce the number of troops and change the mission.
In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 Border Patrol agents at the southern border made 327,577 arrests, the fewest since 1972. There are also more than 18,500 agents patrolling the border, the highest number in the agency's history.
When Bush first deployed the National Guard, there were just over 11,000 Border Patrol agents in the area who made more than one million arrests.
__
Follow Alicia A. Caldwell at http://www.twitter.com/acaldwellap
When a meteorite careens toward the dusty surface of the Red Planet, it kicks up dust and can cause avalanching even before the rock from outer space hits the ground, a research team led by an undergraduate student at the University of Arizona has discovered.
"We expected that some of the streaks of dust that we see on slopes are caused by seismic shaking during impact," said Kaylan Burleigh, who led the research project. "We were surprised to find that it rather looks like shockwaves in the air trigger the avalanches even before the impact."
Because of Mars' thin atmosphere, which is 100 times less dense than Earth's, even small rocks that would burn up or break up before they could hit the ground here on Earth crash into the Martian surface relatively unimpeded.
Each year, about 20 fresh craters between 1 and 50 meters (3 to 165 feet) show up in images taken by the HiRISE camera on board NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, is operated by the UA's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and has been photographing the Martian surface since 2006, revealing features down to less than 1 meter in size.
For this study, the team zoomed in on a cluster of five large craters, which all formed in one impact event close to Mars' equator, about 825 kilometers (512 miles) south of the boundary scarp of Olympus Mons, the tallest mountain in the solar system. Previous observations by the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter, which imaged Mars for nine years until 2006, showed that this cluster was blasted into the dusty surface between May 2004 and February 2006.
The results of the research, which Burleigh first took on as a freshman under former UA Regents Professor H. Jay Melosh, are published in the planetary science journal Icarus. Previous studies had looked at dark or light streaks on the Martian landscape interpreted as landslides, but none had tied such a large number of them to impacts.
The authors interpret the thousands of downhill-trending dark streaks on the flanks of ridges covering the area as dust avalanches caused by the impact. The largest crater in the cluster measures 22 meters, or 72 feet across and occupies roughly the area of a basketball court. Most likely, the cluster of craters formed as the meteorite broke up in the atmosphere, and the fragments hit the ground like a shotgun blast.
Narrow, relatively dark streaks varying from a few meters to about 50 meters in length scour the slopes around the impact site.
"The dark streaks represent the material exposed by the avalanches, as induced by the the airblast from the impact," Burleigh said. "I counted more than 100,000 avalanches and, after repeated counts and deleting duplicates, arrived at 64,948."
When Burleigh looked at the distribution of avalanches around the impact site, he realized their number decreased with distance in every direction, consistent with the idea that they were related to the impact event.
But it wasn't until he noticed a pair of peculiar surface features resembling a curved dagger, described as scimitars, extending from the central impact crater, that the way in which the impact caused the avalanches became evident.
"Those scimitars tipped us off that something other than seismic shaking must be causing the dust avalanches," Burleigh said.
As a meteor screams through the atmosphere at several times the speed of sound, it creates shockwaves in the air. Simulating the shockwaves generated by impacts on Martian soil with computer models, the team observed the exact pattern of scimitars they saw on their impact site.
"We think the interference among different pressure waves lifts up the dust and sets avalanches in motion. These interference regions, and the avalanches, occur in a reproducible pattern," Burleigh said. "We checked other impact sites and realized that when we see avalanches, we usually see two scimitars, not just one, and they both tend to be at a certain angle to each other. This pattern would be difficult to explain by seismic shaking."
In the absence of plate tectonic processes and water-caused erosion, the authors conclude that small impacts might be more important in shaping the Martian surface than previously thought.
"This is one part of a larger story about current surface activity on Mars, which we are realizing is very different than previously believed," said Alfred McEwen, principal investigator of the HiRISE project and one of the co-authors of the study. "We must understand how Mars works today before we can correctly interpret what may have happened when the climate was different, and before we can draw comparisons to Earth."
###
University of Arizona: http://uanews.org
Thanks to University of Arizona 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.
This Saturday, Dec. 17, 2011 surveillance photo provided by the New York (City) Police Dept. shows a suspect wanted in connection with a homicide, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. A woman burned to death in the elevator of her Brooklyn apartment building Saturday afternoon after a man ambushed her, sprayed her with liquid and set her afire with a Molotov cocktail, police said. (AP Photo/New York Police Dept.)
This Saturday, Dec. 17, 2011 surveillance photo provided by the New York (City) Police Dept. shows a suspect wanted in connection with a homicide, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. A woman burned to death in the elevator of her Brooklyn apartment building Saturday afternoon after a man ambushed her, sprayed her with liquid and set her afire with a Molotov cocktail, police said. (AP Photo/New York Police Dept.)
Police arrive at the scene where a woman burned to death in the elevator of her apartment building after a man ambushed her, sprayed her with liquid and set her afire with a Molotov cocktail, Saturday, Dec. 17, 2011 in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (AP Photo/Jaime Holguin)
Police arrive at the scene where a woman burned to death in the elevator of her apartment building after a man ambushed her, sprayed her with liquid and set her afire with a Molotov cocktail, Saturday, Dec. 17, 2011 in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (AP Photo/Jaime Holguin)
NEW YORK (AP) ? A man who reeked of gasoline when he entered a police station implicating himself in the death of a woman set afire in an elevator was charged Sunday with dousing her in a flammable liquid and tossing a Molotov cocktail on her.
Jerome Isaac, of Brooklyn, was arrested on murder and arson charges in the death of 73-year-old Deloris Gillespie, police said. The 47-year-old Isaac walked into a police precinct overnight and told authorities he had started a fire, New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne said.
Browne wouldn't comment on a motive but had said before the arrest that the suspect knew Gillespie. It wasn't immediately clear if Isaac had an attorney.
Gillespie was ambushed in the elevator of her Brooklyn apartment building on Saturday afternoon, doused with an accelerant and set afire with a Molotov cocktail, Browne said. The suspect had been waiting for her when the elevator doors opened to the fifth floor of her apartment building in Prospect Heights, police said.
"It was apparent he knew she was on the elevator," he said Saturday.
The attack happened shortly after 4 p.m., lasted about a minute and was recorded by two video cameras, including one inside the small elevator.
Police released still images of the suspect Saturday night, showing him in a black jacket, wearing what appear to be surgical gloves and with a white dust mask perched atop his head like a pair of sunglasses. He is holding what appears to be a canister with a nozzle and spraying as he steps into the elevator.
Jaime Holguin, the manager of news development for The Associated Press and who lives on the same floor as Gillespie, said he and his girlfriend had taken the elevator on their way out of the building shortly before the attack. They didn't see anyone on the floor with them but did notice an odd smell, as if someone was painting, he said.
Holguin said police told them later that the assailant was already in the building and perhaps had hidden on another floor when they left their apartment.
He remembered Gillespie as nice but sometimes a little off. "At least with me, some days she'd be very, very pleasant, and then the next time, she would almost ignore me," he said.
Gillespie also went through a period this year where she would place duct tape over her apartment door whenever she left.
He said the man in the photos released by police looked like a man who had lived with Gillespie for about 6 months or so toward the end of 2010.
"It seemed like during the time he was here, he was kind of helping her out in her apartment," Holguin said.
He said he had exchanged hellos with the man, and they talked occasionally about Holguin's dog.
The man seemed to stop staying there around the beginning of 2011, but Holguin said he spotted him on the street near the building months after that.
"When we started to see him on the street, he looked a lot more disheveled," Holguin said.
Holguin said that when he and his girlfriend saw the images of the suspect, "We were like, 'Oh, my God!'"
In the video, the elevator doors opens to the floor where Gillespie's apartment was located and the assailant steps in and sprays her, Browne said.
Gillespie, who had grocery bags in her arms, turned about 180 degrees and then crouched to protect herself, he said. But the man sprayed her directly in the face and continued to spray her "sort of methodically" over her head and parts of her body as the bags draped off her arms, Browne said. She turned and retreated to the back of the elevator.
Then, Browne said, Isaac pulled out a barbecue-style lighter, used it to ignite a rag in a bottle and then waited for a few seconds before using the flames to set her afire, causing smoke to fill the elevator.
The man backed out as she fell to the floor of the elevator, Browne said, and seemed to pause before tossing the bottle inside the elevator and onto her.
Neighbors reported a fire in the building, unaware that the woman was burning to death in the elevator.
Residents were evacuated and kept away from the six-story building for hours Saturday night as police investigated.
On Sunday, Holguin said the fifth floor was a mess, with a melted elevator door and a layer of water on the floor.
___
Associated Press writer Deepti Hajela contributed to this report from New York.
BILLINGS, Mont. ? Montana officials on Thursday announced environmental approval for a major oil pipeline from Canada's tar sands to the Gulf Coast, but the proposal still needs approval from the federal government and Nebraska.
TransCanada's 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline would carry oil from western Canada to refineries in Texas, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.
The project has been fiercely opposed by environmental groups and some landowners along the route, and the Obama administration last month said it was postponing its decision on Keystone XL until after the next election.
Republicans in Congress are trying to speed up a decision by linking approval to a measure renewing a payroll tax cut.
The $7 billion project would include a loading point for domestic crude as it passes through Montana near the booming Bakken oil field.
"Some people say this pipeline is just about the oil sands, it is not. It is also about Bakken oil in Montana," Gov. Brian Schweitzer said after announcing the approval. Schweitzer said the project would generate $60 million in property taxes annually in the state.
TransCanada would have to post a $100 million bond to cover any future problems with the line in Montana.
Montana's announcement that it intends to issue a permit to the project under the state's Major Facility Siting Act means the pipeline could proceed with construction under state law.
But TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard said there were no immediate plans to begin work in Montana while federal approval is pending.
He said construction has started on a tank farm connected to the project in Hardisty, Alberta, but not on any sections of pipe. The company has asked the State Department if it can begin work on a section of Keystone XL from Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast, but Howard said no decision has been made.
"We don't have plans to construct other portions of the line at this time," he said.
The line already has approval from South Dakota under its major facilities act. Such approvals are not needed in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, Howard said, leaving only Nebraska and the federal government.
A law passed by the Nebraska lawmakers during a recent special session gave the state the authority to conduct an environmental review of a new pipeline route that TransCanada is now developing. The state wants the line to go around the environmentally sensitive Sandhills region in Nebraska.
Once TransCanada submits a new route plan, the state's review is expected to take six to nine months.
The ZTE Score ($69.99 direct) is a low-cost, low-end Android smartphone?for Cricket Wireless that supports Cricket's Muve Music plan.
The Score is powered by a 600MHz Qualcomm MSM7627 processor and is running Android 2.3.4 (Gingerbread). It comes with 110MB of free internal memory, along with a 4GB microSD card that can be expanded to 32GB. There's a 3.2-megapixel camera that can record QVGA video.
The phone measure 4.4 by 2.5 by 0.5 inches and weighs 4.5 ounces. The biggest story here is the support for?Muve Music, which is an affordable, unlimited mobile music plan. It includes millions of tracks from Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony Music, and EMI. We found it to be a bit buggy, but promising.
The Score runs on Cricket's 3G network, which works on the 850-, 1,900-, and 1,700-MHz bands, depending upon your location. Coverage is somewhat limited, so make sure to check the maps at?www.mycricket.com before buying in.
While the ZTE Score is only an average smartphone, it's worth a look for music lovers that are interested in Muve.
More Cell Phone Reviews: ??? LG Optimus Slider (Virgin Mobile) ??? Samsung Focus S (AT&T) ??? Apple iPhone 4S (AT&T) ??? T-Mobile myTouch Q ??? T-Mobile myTouch ?? more
No. Sociologists started using the word cult with some regularity in the 1970s, to distinguish emerging groups like the Jesus Movement, the Children of God, and Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church from more established religions, but academics were never able to settle on a clear definition. For many at the time, the essential feature of a cult was that its ideology and structure opposed those of the larger society in which it resided. Where mainstream society is rational, for example, cults are mystical. If most members of a society are individualists, cult members practice collectivism. Other scholars argued that cult members had to be in active conflict with other religions, or that cults always had charismatic leaders who were aggressively recruiting new members. No matter which definition you prefer, no one would ever have referred to the Latter-day Saints as a cult. It has millions of members; its ideology and organizational structure are similar to those of mainstream churches; and an average Mormon?s way of life isn?t radically different from that of any other American.
CALGARY, Alberta ? TransCanada Corp. said Thursday that it has received customer support to undertake an extension of its stalled Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL oil pipeline pending regulatory approval in the U.S.
Russ Girling, TransCanada's president and chief executive officer, said in a statement that the potential 50-mile (80-kilometer) expansion of the Keystone XL pipeline would increase the capacity of the pipeline to 830,000 barrels per day from 700,000 barrels.
Instead of ending in Port Arthur, Texas, the pipeline will reach into the Houston market, known as the Houston Lateral, as well. That will more than double the U.S. Gulf Coast refining market capacity the pipeline can access if it's approved.
"This significant demand and additional long-term customer commitments confirm the continued strong shipper support of TransCanada and the need for Keystone XL to move forward," said Girling.
"Proceeding with the extension of the Keystone XL system to Houston and increasing capacity on the pipeline system will further enhance the connection of a secure, growing and reliable supply of Canadian crude oil and domestic U.S. crude oil with the largest refining market in North America, while providing additional flexibility to our shippers," he added.
The Houston Lateral is within the original scope of the regulatory process that is currently under way, TransCanada said.
The U.S. State Department was originally set to announce its final decision by year-end, but in November said more time was needed to weigh a new route for the pipeline to take through Nebraska, in order to avoid environmentally sensitive areas.
The pipeline would carry oil from western Canada to refineries in Texas, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma and Houston if the expansion is approved.
Montana state officials on Thursday announced environmental approval for the pipeline.
But TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard said there were no immediate plans to begin work in Montana while federal approval is pending.
The U.S. State Department ? which has final say because Keystone XL would cross an international border ? now expects to make its decision in early 2013. If it's approved, TransCanada expects Keystone XL, including the Houston Lateral, to be in service by the end of 2014.
Republicans in Congress are trying to speed up a decision by linking approval to a measure renewing a payroll tax cut.
Keystone XL is one of several pipeline projects to draw the ire of environmental groups waging a wider war against the development of "dirty" oilsands crude. Heavy crude from Alberta's oilsands takes a lot of work to process and has a long way to travel to U.S. refineries that can handle it. Critics say Keystone XL could bring risks of oil spills to the central United States and foster more development of carbon-intensive tar sands production.
It's a battle pitted against those who argue the pipeline will provide massive job opportunities at a time when the economy is in dire need of jobs on both sides of the border.
A University of Calgary report released Thursday said the Canadian oilsands industry's improved access to international markets could add as much as US$126.73 (CA$131) billion to Canada's gross domestic product between 2016 and 2030, which could garner US$26 billion (CA$27 billion) more in government tax receipts.
"The rewards of additional pipelines for all of Canada are too great to ignore," said report co-author Michal Moore. "Pipelines must be a national priority."
TransCanada Corp. is looking to relieve the bottleneck at Cushing, Oklahoma, a massive storage hub that has become a major choke point.
The report said producers stand to gain US$10 for every barrel they produce if they can get their oil past Cushing to the Gulf Coast, where it would displace imported crude like Mexico's Maya.
"It seems to me that the right role of government is to make it clear that this resource is a world product and should be allowed to get access to world markets and, where possible, they can seek out the help to do that."
NORWALK, Conn. ? The Multiple Myeloma Research Consortium today announced that it has expanded its clinical research network to include the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit.
Following a rigorous evaluation, this NCI-designated?comprehensive cancer center joins the existing MMRC?member institutions in promoting and facilitating collaborative research and accelerating drug development in multiple myeloma, an incurable blood cancer.
?We are proud to join such a highly respected model for accelerating the development of new treatment options for multiple myeloma?patients,? said Jeffrey Zonder, M.D., associate professor of Medicine and Oncology, Karmanos Cancer Institute and Wayne State University School of Medicine. ?We are very much looking forward to collaborating with the MMRC, its elite member institutions, and its partners in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries to bring patients the next generation of multiple myeloma treatments.?
As an MMRC?member institution, Karmanos will participate in all clinical research activities of the consortium, including the conduction of Phase I?and II clinical trials of promising myeloma?treatments. In this role, Karmanos will also contribute multiple myeloma?patient tissue samples to the MMRC Tissue Bank, a cutting-edge resource that bridges laboratory and clinical research.
Said Beverly Harrison, vice president of clinical development at the consortium: ?Like all MMRC?Member Institutions, Karmanos was selected to join this exclusive network based on its outstanding reputation for clinical excellence, its demonstrated commitment to rigorous research, and its true spirit of collaboration and team-science. We have no doubt that Karmanos will prove to be an invaluable asset in our efforts to rapidly shepherd the next generation of treatments through the MMRC.?
The Multiple Myeloma?Research Consortium (MMRC) is a 509(a)3 non-profit organization that integrates leading academic institutions to accelerate drug development in multiple myeloma. It is led from MMRC offices in Norwalk, Conn., and comprises 16 member institutions. More at www.themmrc.org.
The Karmanos Cancer Institute is one of 40 National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer centers in the United States.
WASHINGTON ? Senate defeat of competing Democratic and Republican plans to extend a cut in the Social Security payroll tax has punted the issue to the House, where GOP leaders are facing ideological divisions within the party over whether to pass the tax holiday.
The focus is on the GOP-controlled House after Senate votes Thursday exposed wide reluctance by Republicans to go along with the costly proposal ? a centerpiece of President Barack Obama's jobs agenda.
As expected, Senate Republicans defeated Obama's plan to extend the payroll tax cut through the end of next year while also making it more generous for workers.
But in a vote that exposed rare divisions among Senate Republicans, more than two dozen of the GOP's 47 lawmakers also voted to kill an alternative plan backed by their leader, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to renew an existing 2 percentage point payroll tax cut.
A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Republicans weren't planning on negotiating with Democrats before unveiling a payroll tax cut plan ? and the spending cuts to pay for it ? next week. But the Senate vote would seem to indicate that House Republicans will be hard-pressed to muscle a payroll tax cut through without Democratic support. And those votes could be hard to come by if the GOP plan contains spending cuts Democrats dislike.
Many Republicans and even some Democrats say the payroll tax cut hasn't worked to boost jobs and is too costly with the deficit requiring the government to borrow 36 cents of every dollar it spends.
"I can't find many people who even know that they're getting it, OK?" said Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who opposed both plans. "So with that being said, we're going to double down on something that we thought should have worked that didn't work."
Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., said after Thursday night's vote that previous tax rebates "stimulated little and increased the debt a lot" and that it would be better to simply cut spending than turn around and use spending cuts on stimulus-style tax cuts.
The defeat of the competing Senate plans came as Boehner said for the first time that renewing the payroll tax cut would boost the lagging economy. Boehner also promised compromise on a renewal of long-term jobless benefits through the end of 2012.
The payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits are at the center of a costly, politically-charged year-end agenda in which Democrats seem poised to prevail in renewing a tax cut that many Republicans back only reluctantly. But Republicans are insisting ? in a switch from last year ? that the payroll tax cut and jobless benefits be paid for by cutting spending.
Both parties are seeking the political high ground as next year's elections loom, with Democrats accusing Republicans of siding with the rich, and Republicans countering that Democrats were taxing small business owners who create jobs.
The first payroll tax plan to fall was a Democratic measure that was at the heart of the jobs package Obama announced in September. It would cut the Social Security payroll tax from 6.2 percent to 3.1 percent next year and also extend the cut to employers, with its hefty $265 billion cost paid for by slapping a 3.25 percent surtax on income exceeding $1 million.
Republicans and a handful of Democrats combined to kill the measure on a 51-49 tally that fell well short of the 60 votes required under Senate rules. For the first time, a Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, voted to support the millionaires' surcharge.
In a surprising result, Democrats and more than two dozen Republicans then voted 78-20 to kill the $120 billion GOP alternative that would have simply extended the existing 2 percentage point payroll tax cut, financed by freezing federal workers' pay through 2015 and reducing the government bureaucracy.
Republicans offered a simple one-year continuation of the existing law, jettisoning Obama's call to deepen the cut to 3.1 percentage point on workers' first $106,800 in earnings, while expanding it to cut in half employers' Social Security contributions for their $5 million in payroll.
To pay for the measure, Senate Republicans proposed freezing federal workers' pay through 2015 ? extending a two-year-freeze recommended by Obama ? and reducing the bureaucracy by 200,000 jobs through attrition.
The Democratic plan would give a worker earning $50,000 a more than $1,500 tax cut; the GOP plan would provide a $1,000 tax cut for such an earner. A two-income family making $200,000 would reap a $6,000-plus tax cut under the Democratic plan and a $4,000 tax cut under the GOP version.
Outwardly, life seems normal; but as drug war kidnappings, extortion, and violence brush closer to the average citizen, experts say, the mental terrain looks like post-traumatic stress.
It was not a stifling evening, so Carolina Gomez, a pretty and petite kindergarten teacher in this Gulf coast city, turned off her air-conditioning unit and slid open the window over her bed. The tropical breeze lulled her to sleep by 11 p.m.
Skip to next paragraph
But not three hours later, she was jolted awake by a rumbling, like rocks being dumped on asphalt. As her head cleared, alarm dawned: The air of her neat middle-class neighborhood was thick with automatic weapons fire and explosions.
Wishing she could hide under her bed, she lay immobile, partly due to a sprained ankle she was nursing and partly assessing her fears: How close was the shooting? Could bullets stray into her window? Worse, could a fleeing gunman enter her home, her bedroom?
Her cellphone rang: It was her parents in the room next door. "Are you OK? Stay put," they advised.
Next, they placed a call to their son, Enrique, who lives on the ground floor of a two-story apartment building next door. "Get in your bathroom," they told him, because there are no windows there.
He and his new wife crouched for 40 minutes on the tiled floor as gunfire continued to pierce the air, interrupted finally by the arrival of authorities in helicopters flying so low that Carolina's father, Sergio, says he saw one pilot's face through his window.
Even now, six months later, the bullet-pocked commercial street six blocks from the Gomez home is a testament to the collateral damage of the drug war ? the imprint of fear on ordinary lives and what it can do to the civic fabric, from choices as simple as changing shopping habits to changing the nation's presidential politics.
A culmination of months of creeping insecurity, the April shootout here was a defining moment for the extended Gomez family: They began arranging an escape ? to immigrate to Spain.
The family agreed to explore their experience with the Monitor if they could use pseudonyms they felt would assure their safety.
The shootout itself seems almost statistically ordinary in a nation that in 2010 saw 14 mayors assassinated, a surge in kidnappings and extortion acknowledged by the government, and cautionary beheadings become a new standard of criminal threat.
Indeed, here in Veracruz it was hardly the first time Carolina had had a brush with violence; and it wouldn't be the last. In the past 22 months, a corpse was left outside her school, family members of her kindergarten students have been kidnapped, and she had to undergo security training in how to survive in the event of a shootout at the school.
"But," she explains, "it was the first time I did not feel safe in my bed. I used to go to sleep with confidence. I have become totally convinced that there is not a single safe place in Veracruz."
It's a new prism through which an increasing number of Mexicans see their world. The fight against organized crime, begun by Mexican President Felipe Calder?n when he took office in December 2006, has cost more than 40,000 lives. The government maintains that 90 percent of victims are rival traffickers.
'Just chill?' Relaxing can make you fatterPublic release date: 1-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: George Hunka ghunka@aftau.org 212-742-9070 American Friends of Tel Aviv University
50 percent more fat can be produced by sustained stretching, Tel Aviv University researchers say
Conventional wisdom says that exercise is a key to weight loss a no-brainer. But now, Tel Aviv University researchers are revealing that life as a couch potato, stretched out in front of the TV, can actually be "active inactivity" and cause you to pack on the pounds.
Such inactivity actually encourages the body to create new fat in fat cells, says Prof. Amit Gefen of TAU's Department of Biomedical Engineering. Along with his Ph.D. student Naama Shoham, Prof. Gefen has shown that preadipocyte cells the precursors to fat cells turn into fat cells faster and produce even more fat when subject to prolonged periods of "mechanical stretching loads" the kind of weight we put on our body tissues when we sit or lie down.
The research, which has been published in the American Journal of Physiology Cell Physiology, demonstrates another damaging effect of a modern, sedentary lifestyle, Prof. Gefen notes. "Obesity is more than just an imbalance of calories. Cells themselves are also responsive to their mechanical environment. Fat cells produce more triglycerides, and at a faster rate, when exposed to static stretching."
Stretching the fat
Prof. Gefen, who investigates chronic wounds that plague bed-ridden or wheelchair-bound patients, notes that muscle atrophy is a common side effect of prolonged inactivity. Studying MRI images of the muscle tissue of patients paralyzed by spinal cord injuries, he noticed that, over time, lines of fat cells were invading major muscles in the body. This spurred an investigation into how mechanical load the amount of force placed on a particular area occupied by cells could be encouraging fat tissue to expand.
In the lab, Prof. Gefen and his fellow researchers stimulated preadipocytes with glucose or insulin to differentiate them into fat cells. Then they placed individual cells in a cell-stretching device, attaching them to a flexible, elastic substrate. The test group of cells were stretched consistently for long periods of time, representing extended periods of sitting or lying down, while a control group of cells was not.
Tracking the cultures over time, the researchers noted the development of lipid droplets in both the test and control groups of cells. However, after just two weeks of consistent stretching, the test group developed significantly more and larger lipid droplets. By the time the cells reached maturity, the cultures that received mechanical stretching had developed fifty percent more fat than the control culture.
They were, in effect, half-again fatter.
According to Prof. Gefen, this is the first study that looks at fat cells as they develop, taking into account the impact of sustained mechanical loading on cell differentiation. "There are various ways that cells can sense mechanical loading," he explains, which helps them to measure their environment and triggers various chemical processes. "It appears that long periods of static mechanical loading and stretching, due to the weight of the body when sitting or lying, has an impact on increasing lipid production."
Counting more than calories
These findings indicate that we need to take our cells' mechanical environment into account as well as pay attention to calories consumed and burned, believes Prof. Gefen. Although there are extreme cases, such as people confined to wheelchairs or beds due to medical conditions, many of us live a too sedentary lifestyle, spending most of the day behind a desk. Even somebody with healthy diet and exercise habits will be negatively impacted by long periods of inactivity.
Next, Prof. Gefen and his fellow researchers will be investigating how long a period of time a person can sit or lie down without the mechanical load becoming a factor in fat production. But in the meantime, it certainly can't hurt to get up and take an occasional stroll, he suggests.
###
This research was done in collaboration with TAU's Ruth Gottlieb, Dr. Uri Zaretsky, and Dr. Orna Shaharabani-Yosef from the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Prof. Dafna Benayahu from the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology.
American Friends of Tel Aviv University (www.aftau.org) supports Israel's leading, most comprehensive and most sought-after center of higher learning. Independently ranked 94th among the world's top universities for the impact of its research, TAU's innovations and discoveries are cited more often by the global scientific community than all but 10 other universities.
Internationally recognized for the scope and groundbreaking nature of its research and scholarship, Tel Aviv University consistently produces work with profound implications for the future.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
'Just chill?' Relaxing can make you fatterPublic release date: 1-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: George Hunka ghunka@aftau.org 212-742-9070 American Friends of Tel Aviv University
50 percent more fat can be produced by sustained stretching, Tel Aviv University researchers say
Conventional wisdom says that exercise is a key to weight loss a no-brainer. But now, Tel Aviv University researchers are revealing that life as a couch potato, stretched out in front of the TV, can actually be "active inactivity" and cause you to pack on the pounds.
Such inactivity actually encourages the body to create new fat in fat cells, says Prof. Amit Gefen of TAU's Department of Biomedical Engineering. Along with his Ph.D. student Naama Shoham, Prof. Gefen has shown that preadipocyte cells the precursors to fat cells turn into fat cells faster and produce even more fat when subject to prolonged periods of "mechanical stretching loads" the kind of weight we put on our body tissues when we sit or lie down.
The research, which has been published in the American Journal of Physiology Cell Physiology, demonstrates another damaging effect of a modern, sedentary lifestyle, Prof. Gefen notes. "Obesity is more than just an imbalance of calories. Cells themselves are also responsive to their mechanical environment. Fat cells produce more triglycerides, and at a faster rate, when exposed to static stretching."
Stretching the fat
Prof. Gefen, who investigates chronic wounds that plague bed-ridden or wheelchair-bound patients, notes that muscle atrophy is a common side effect of prolonged inactivity. Studying MRI images of the muscle tissue of patients paralyzed by spinal cord injuries, he noticed that, over time, lines of fat cells were invading major muscles in the body. This spurred an investigation into how mechanical load the amount of force placed on a particular area occupied by cells could be encouraging fat tissue to expand.
In the lab, Prof. Gefen and his fellow researchers stimulated preadipocytes with glucose or insulin to differentiate them into fat cells. Then they placed individual cells in a cell-stretching device, attaching them to a flexible, elastic substrate. The test group of cells were stretched consistently for long periods of time, representing extended periods of sitting or lying down, while a control group of cells was not.
Tracking the cultures over time, the researchers noted the development of lipid droplets in both the test and control groups of cells. However, after just two weeks of consistent stretching, the test group developed significantly more and larger lipid droplets. By the time the cells reached maturity, the cultures that received mechanical stretching had developed fifty percent more fat than the control culture.
They were, in effect, half-again fatter.
According to Prof. Gefen, this is the first study that looks at fat cells as they develop, taking into account the impact of sustained mechanical loading on cell differentiation. "There are various ways that cells can sense mechanical loading," he explains, which helps them to measure their environment and triggers various chemical processes. "It appears that long periods of static mechanical loading and stretching, due to the weight of the body when sitting or lying, has an impact on increasing lipid production."
Counting more than calories
These findings indicate that we need to take our cells' mechanical environment into account as well as pay attention to calories consumed and burned, believes Prof. Gefen. Although there are extreme cases, such as people confined to wheelchairs or beds due to medical conditions, many of us live a too sedentary lifestyle, spending most of the day behind a desk. Even somebody with healthy diet and exercise habits will be negatively impacted by long periods of inactivity.
Next, Prof. Gefen and his fellow researchers will be investigating how long a period of time a person can sit or lie down without the mechanical load becoming a factor in fat production. But in the meantime, it certainly can't hurt to get up and take an occasional stroll, he suggests.
###
This research was done in collaboration with TAU's Ruth Gottlieb, Dr. Uri Zaretsky, and Dr. Orna Shaharabani-Yosef from the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Prof. Dafna Benayahu from the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology.
American Friends of Tel Aviv University (www.aftau.org) supports Israel's leading, most comprehensive and most sought-after center of higher learning. Independently ranked 94th among the world's top universities for the impact of its research, TAU's innovations and discoveries are cited more often by the global scientific community than all but 10 other universities.
Internationally recognized for the scope and groundbreaking nature of its research and scholarship, Tel Aviv University consistently produces work with profound implications for the future.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Avastin can stabilize tumors in ovarian cancer, studies find lat.ms/vJkfbf 
LATimesmost 
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 1-Dec-2011
Share ]