North Korea says enters "state of war" against South

By Jack Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said on Saturday it was entering a "state of war" with South Korea, its latest bout of angry rhetoric directed at Seoul and Washington, but the South brushed off the statement as little more than tough talk.

The North also threatened to shut down an industrial zone it operates jointly with the South near the heavily armed border between the two sides if Seoul continued to say the complex was being kept running for money.

The two Koreas have been technically in a state of war for six decades under a truce that ended their 1950-53 conflict. Despite its threats, few people see any indication Pyongyang will risk a near-certain defeat by re-starting full-scale war.

"From this time on, the North-South relations will be entering the state of war and all issues raised between the North and the South will be handled accordingly," a statement carried by the North's official KCNA news agency said.

KCNA said the statement was issued jointly by the North's government, ruling party and other organizations.

There was no sign of unusual activity in the North's military to suggest an imminent aggression, a South Korean defense ministry official said.

The North has been threatening to attack the South and U.S. military bases almost on a daily basis since the beginning of March, when U.S. and South Korean militaries started routine drills that have been conducted for decades without incident.

Many in the South have regarded the North's willingness to keep open the Kaesong industrial zone, located just a few miles (km) north of the border, as a sign that Pyongyang will not risk losing a lucrative source of foreign currency by mounting a real act of aggression.

The Kaesong zone is a vital source of hard currency for the impoverished state and hundreds of South Korean workers and vehicles enter daily after crossing the armed border.

"If the puppet traitor group continues to mention the Kaesong industrial zone is being kept operating and damages our dignity, it will be mercilessly shut off and shut down," KCNA quoted an agency that operates Kaesong as saying in a statement.

The threat to shut it down could sharply escalate tensions because it would suspend a symbolic joint project run by the rivals. It could also trap hundreds of South Korean workers and managers of the 123 firms that have factories there.

The North has previously suspended operations at the factory zone at the height of political tensions with the South, only to let it resume operations later.

The project has been kept running despite the North's move on Wednesday to cut off a military hotline used to process the hundreds of workers and vehicles that cross the Demilitarized Zone border.

"We have been exercising extreme restraint considering the plight of medium and small companies whose livelihood depends on the Kaesong industrial project as an immediate shutdown will drive them to bankruptcy and people jobless," KCNA quoted the agency as saying.

The South's Unification Ministry, which handles political ties with the North, said earlier in the day that the Kaesong industrial park was operating as normal with workers and vehicles crossing the border both says.

"North Korea's statement today (on entering a state of war) ... is not a new threat but is the continuation of provocative threats," a ministry statement said.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Friday signed off on an order putting its missile units on standby to attack U.S. military bases in the South and the Pacific, after the United States flew two nuclear-capable stealth bombers over the Korean peninsula in a rare show of force.

U.S. officials said the B-2 bombers were on a diplomatic sortie aimed at reassuring allies South Korea and Japan and were also aimed at trying to nudge Pyongyang back to dialogue, although there was no guarantee Kim would get the message as intended.

The South Korean government brushed off the North's latest statement on entering a state of war, saying there was nothing fresh in it to cause greater alarm. South Koreans went about with daily lives as they have done through March under the North's constant threat of attack.

(Additional reporting by Sung-won Shim and Jane Chung; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/north-korea-says-enter-state-war-against-south-001304441.html

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2 in China first known deaths from H7N9 bird flu

A vendor waits for customers near chicken cages at a market in Fuyang city, in central China's Anhui province, Sunday, March 31, 2013. Two Shanghai men have died from a lesser-known type of bird flu in the first known human deaths from the strain, and Chinese authorities said Sunday that it wasn't clear how they were infected, but that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission. A third person, a woman in the nearby province of Anhui, also contracted the H7N9 strain of bird flu and was in critical condition, China's National Health and Family Planning Commission said in a report on its website. (AP Photo) CHINA OUT

A vendor waits for customers near chicken cages at a market in Fuyang city, in central China's Anhui province, Sunday, March 31, 2013. Two Shanghai men have died from a lesser-known type of bird flu in the first known human deaths from the strain, and Chinese authorities said Sunday that it wasn't clear how they were infected, but that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission. A third person, a woman in the nearby province of Anhui, also contracted the H7N9 strain of bird flu and was in critical condition, China's National Health and Family Planning Commission said in a report on its website. (AP Photo) CHINA OUT

BEIJING (AP) ? Two Shanghai men have died from a lesser-known type of bird flu in the first known human deaths from the strain, and Chinese authorities said it wasn't clear how they were infected but there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission.

A third person, a woman in the nearby province of Anhui, also contracted the H7N9 strain and was in critical condition, China's National Health and Family Planning Commission said in a report on its website Sunday.

There was no sign that any of the three, who were infected over the past two months, had contracted the disease from each other, and no sign of infection in the 88 people who had closest contact with them, the medical agency said.

H7N9 bird flu is considered a low pathogenic strain that cannot easily be contracted by humans. The overwhelming majority of human deaths from bird flu have been caused by the more virulent H5N1, which decimated poultry stocks across Asia in 2003.

The World Health Organization is "closely monitoring the situation" in China, regional agency spokesman Timothy O'Leary said in Manila.

"There is apparently no evidence of human-to-human transmission, and transmission of the virus appears to be inefficient, therefore the risk to public health would appear to be low," O'Leary said.

The 87-year-old victim became ill on Feb. 19 and died on Feb 27. The other man, 27, became ill on Feb. 27 and died on March 4, the Chinese health commission said. A 35-year-old woman in the Anhui city of Chuzhou became ill on March 9 and is being treated.

The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention conducted tests and confirmed Saturday that all three cases were H7N9, the health commission said.

Scientists have been closely monitoring the H5N1 strain of the virus, fearing that it could mutate into a form that spreads easily among people, potentially sparking a pandemic. So far, most human cases have been connected to contact with infected birds.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/bbd825583c8542898e6fa7d440b9febc/Article_2013-03-31-AS-China-Bird-Flu/id-4b3191d8ae1d46979c4c970e602410e2

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Little Cyprus thumbs its nose at EU 'bullies'

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) ? The moment word broke that Cypriot lawmakers in Parliament had voted down a bailout deal that would have raided everyone's savings to prop up a collapsing banking sector, a huge cheer rose up from hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside that echoed through the building's corridors.

Many relished it as a kind of David-against-Goliath moment ? a country of barely a million people standing up to the will of Europe's behemoths who wanted it to swallow a very bitter pill to fix its broken-down economy.

"Shame on Europe for trying to snatch people's savings. It's a mistaken decision that will have repercussions on other economies and banking systems," said protester Panayiotis Violettis. "People have stopped trusting the EU which should be our protector."

Fighting back is not a new experience for Cypriots. From the 1950s guerrilla war against British rule to Greek Cypriots' defiant refusal in 2004 to accept a U.N.-backed peace plan to reunite the island, they are used to holding their own against big opponents.

Just as quickly as Cyprus' euro area partners decided that a deposit grab was the only way out, so Cypriots decided their tiny island was ground zero in Europe's new financial scorched earth policy and that it had to be resisted at all costs.

"Better die on your feet than live on your knees," one placard among the throngs of protesters read. Another said: "It starts with us, it ends with you" as a warning to other Europeans that their savings were no longer safe.

Politicians seized on the public mood. "This is another form of colonization," Greens lawmaker Giorgos Perdikis spouted in Parliament. "We won't allow passage of something that essentially subjugates the Cypriot people for many, many generations.

"Unfortunately, instead of support and solidarity, our partners offered blackmail and bitterness," said Parliamentary Speaker Yiannakis Omirou. The indignant leader of the country's Orthodox Christian Church, Archbishop Chrysostomos II, added: "This isn't the Europe that we believed in when we joined. We believed we would receive some kind of help, some support."

The country's foreign minister, Ioannis Kasoulides, even acknowledged that Cypriot negotiators had contemplated exiting the euro instead of accepting their euro area partners' terms.

In the end, Cyprus accepted a deal that would safeguard small savers but where depositors with more than 100,000 euros in the country's two most troubled banks would lose a big chunk of their money.

Nonetheless, Europe was stunned at the sheer brazenness. How could a pipsqueak country on Europe's fringes thumb its nose to continental juggernauts Germany and France and dare to turn down a deal meant to save it from economic chaos?

It's not the first time the country has pushed back in defiance, even against what many would consider as insurmountable odds. The island's majority Greek Cypriots fought former colonial ruler Britain to a draw in a four-year guerrilla campaign in the 1950s that aimed for union with Greece. That conflict ended in the country's independence in 1960.

Just 14 years later, a Turkish invasion prompted by an abortive coup by supporters of union with Greece resulted in the island's division into an internationally recognized, Greek-speaking south and a breakaway, Turkish-speaking north.

The invasion and its fallout remains an existential matter in the minds of Cypriots and it still informs many of the political and economic decisions the country and its people make.

"Greek Cypriots lost nearly everything during the 1974 invasion," said University of Cyprus History Professor Petros Papapolyviou. "So they reason, what else do we have to lose? Why accept another injustice?"

In 2004, Greek Cypriots again defied international expectations when they voted down a United Nations-backed reunification plan they believed was unfairly weighted against them.

A few days later, the island joined the European Union and some EU leaders were left fuming at what they saw as Greek Cypriot deceit for promising to sign up to a peace deal in exchange for EU membership.

Nearly a decade later and European acrimony at the Cypriot "no" hasn't entirely dissipated. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaueble told the Sunday edition of German newspaper Welt am Sonntag that "Cyprus was admitted to the EU in hopes that the plan of then-U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to overcome the (island's) divide would be honored."

"I interpret (that) as indicating a sense of vindictiveness rather than rational, result-oriented thinking." said University of Cyprus Associate Professor Yiannis Papadakis.

Were the tough bailout terms some sort of belated punishment? Whether that's true or not, such notions only feed a Cypriot proclivity for conspiracy theories. As in other small, insular societies, threats ? real or imagined ? sharpen a sense of collective victimhood.

Papadakis said Cypriots see their political culture as underpinned by personal relationships. Hence their reference to "friends" instead of "allies," which implies a more pragmatic relationship.

"That's why Greek Cypriots often complain of a 'betrayal from our friends'," he said. But it's wrong for the EU to foist all the blame on Cypriots when things go awry, Papadakis added.

"I believe that the rest of the EU has made a large share of mistakes during this arduous process."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/little-cyprus-thumbs-nose-eu-bullies-072709891--finance.html

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Egypt's 'Jon Stewart' questioned for insulting Mursi

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian prosecutors questioned Egypt's most prominent television satirist on Sunday over allegations he insulted the president and Islam, a case that has increased opposition fears of a crackdown on dissent.

Bassem Youssef turned himself in after the prosecutor general issued an arrest warrant for him on Saturday. He was released on bail of 15,000 Egyptian pounds ($2,200), an official in the prosecutor's office said.

Youssef rose to fame after the uprising that swept Hosni Mubarak from power in 2011, with a satirical online show. His program, that has been compared to the Daily Show of U.S. satirist Jon Stewart, is now broadcast on Egyptian TV.

The comedian is accused, among other things, of undermining the standing of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi. The prosecutor general issued the arrest warrant after at least four legal complaints filed by Mursi supporters.

Arriving at the prosecutor general's office, Youssef was wearing an oversized version of a graduation hat modeled on one donned by the president when he was awarded an honorary degree in Pakistan earlier in March.

Youssef has worn the hat on his widely-watched show, one of many satirical jabs at the president. Last year, he poked fun of Mursi's repeated use of the word "love" by singing a love song to a red pillow with the president's face printed on it.

The questioning of the comedian has raised fears over freedom expression in the post-Mubarak Egypt.

"It is an escalation in an attempt to restrict space for critical expression," said Heba Morayef, Egypt director at Human Rights Watch.

Prominent liberal politician Mohamed ElBaradei said it was the kind action only seen in "fascist regimes". "It is the continuation of the failed and ugly moves to thwart the revolution," he said.

Youssef's questioning came after the prosecutor general issued five arrest warrants for prominent political activists accused of inciting violence against the Muslim Brotherhood, the group that propelled Mursi to power in last year's election.

The prosecutor's office has also summoned several other prominent media figures for questioning over accusations they insulted the president.

Opposition figures say the prosecutor, Talaat Ibrahim, is biased towards Mursi, who appointed him last November, and they want him removed from office.

A court ruled last week that Ibrahim's appointment was illegal and that he must step down. Ibrahim, who denies any bias, plans to appeal the ruling.

(Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/egypt-satirist-questioned-insulting-mursi-124223025.html

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APNewsBreak: Gas trade group seeks fracking probe

FILE - In this file photo of Jan. 17, 2013, Yoko Ono, left, and her son Sean Lennon visit a fracking site in Franklin Forks, Pa., during a bus tour of natural-gas drilling sites in northeastern Pennsylvania. Ono and Lennon have formed a group called ?Artists Against Fracking,? which has become the main celebrity driven anti-fracking organization. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

FILE - In this file photo of Jan. 17, 2013, Yoko Ono, left, and her son Sean Lennon visit a fracking site in Franklin Forks, Pa., during a bus tour of natural-gas drilling sites in northeastern Pennsylvania. Ono and Lennon have formed a group called ?Artists Against Fracking,? which has become the main celebrity driven anti-fracking organization. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) ? A formal complaint filed with New York's lobbying board asks it to investigate whether Artists Against Fracking, a group formed by Yoko Ono and son Sean Lennon, is violating the state's lobbying law.

The complaint obtained by The Associated Press was made by the Independent Oil & Gas Association to the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics.

The energy trade group based its request for an investigation on an AP report that found that Artists Against Fracking and its advocates didn't register as lobbyists. Registration requires several disclosures about spending and activities.

A spokesman for Artists Against Fracking says the group's activities are protected because they were made during a public comment period. He also says celebrities involved in the group are protected because they are longtime activists, not lobbyists.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-03-30-Gas%20Drilling-Celebrities/id-8bf6492bf23f45289fe860500166181d

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16 Peep Creations That Put Your Easter Basket to Shame

It's almost Easter, a day of ham, nice outfits, obligatory church trips, and borderline abuse of baby rabbits. But most importantly, it's the time of year when there are Peeps on the shelves of your local drugstore. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/Cn0Et1btT9M/16-crazy-marshmallow-peep-creations

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Arkansas small business finance bill gets house backing - BuildMyBiz

March 29, 2013 in Finance and Accounting, Starting a Business

The New Market Jobs Act of 2013?was unanimously approved?and recommended to pass by?the House Economic Development Committee of Arkansas on March 20.?

The bill is aimed at promoting small business funding by giving investors an incentive to place money in main-street companies. The bill would allow the state to provide tax credits to investors that aid small firms with monetary contributions.

These credits may be allocated to partners or members of that company as well as transferred to other businesses. Also, the tax credits can be sold to insurance companies as long as the funds raised are used to invest in small business.

Additionally, the bill would provide tax cuts to any business that agrees to create jobs that pay 115 percent of the federal poverty level for a family of four.?

Adding that burden to the payroll for small business owners would hopefully be offset by the tax cut.?

The bipartisan bill was filed on March 7. It is sponsored by State Rep. Darrin Williams of Little Rock and State Sen. Jonathan Dismang of Searcy, both democrats. However, many of the state?s 68 co-sponsors are Republicans.

If passed, the small business legal change would be welcome news for main street business owners in the state.

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Source: http://buildmybiz.com/arkansas-small-business-finance-bill-gets-house-backing/

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Female students just as successful as males in math and science, Asian-Americans outperform all

Mar. 29, 2013 ? While compared to men, women continue to be underrepresented in math and science courses and careers, is this disparity a true reflection of male and female student ability? According to a study to be released tomorrow in Psychology of Women Quarterly, a SAGE journal, male and female students earn similar grades in math and science while Asian American students of both genders outperform all other races.

Researchers Nicole Else-Quest, Concetta Mineo and Ashley Higgins studied 367 White, African American, Latino/Latina, and Asian American 10th grade male and female students in math and science. The study results indicated that while male and female adolescents earned similar grades in math and science, Asian American students outperformed all other ethnic groups, with Asian American males in particular receiving the highest scores. Furthermore, the researchers found that Latino and African American male students received the lowest scores in math and science.

"Asian American male adolescents consistently demonstrated the highest achievement compared to other adolescents, mirroring the 'model minority' stereotype," the researchers wrote. "In contrast, the underachievement of Latino and African American males is a persistent and troubling trend."

The researchers also studied the students' perceptions of their abilities in math and science. Male students reported a greater perception of their own ability in math as well as higher expectations of success, while female students reported greater value of science than their male counterparts. These findings did not vary across ethnicities.

The researchers also took into account the effects of family income and education on school achievement. Still, self-concept, task value, and expectations of success were strong predictors of student achievement in math and science.

"Despite gender similarities in math and science achievement, female adolescents tend to believe their science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) abilities are just not as strong as those of their male classmates," says Professor Else-Quest, a lead author and developmental psychologist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. "We believe these attitudes are important in students' choices about persevering in math and science and pursuing STEM careers. Moreover, we need to expand our approach to this issue and study affective variables such as anxiety, boredom or apathy, enjoyment, and pride, given prior findings of the importance of these emotions in academic achievement contexts."

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Researchers combat obesity with tech tools popular with teens

The best weapon in the battle against obesity may already be in the hands of children and teenagers.

That?s the thinking behind the work of several researchers and technologists around the country who hope to turn cell phones into devices that can help young people make healthier food and lifestyle choices.

A recent Pew Internet study found that 78 percent of teens now have a cell phone, and almost half of them ? 47 percent -- own smartphones with computing capability.

?It?s interesting because most people think using technology is part of the problem,? said Dr. Susan Woolford of the Pediatric Comprehensive Weight Management Center at the University of Michigan, pointing to video games and other uses of technology that have made teens more sedentary. ?We?re actually using this new technology to help us.?

Woolford leads a team that sends highly tailored and targeted text messages to obese adolescents to help them change their behaviors. The messages urge teens to reduce their time in front of TV and computer screens, eat a healthy breakfast and more fruits and vegetables, and reduce the number of sweets and sugary beverages in their diets.

The initial test program had bout 25 volunteer participants -- overweight teens who are participating in university's weight management program.

To get the most effective messages to individual teens, participants in the pilot program filled out an online survey with questions about their activity level, what kind of support they have, what kind of foods they prefer and what inspires them to lose weight.

From there, the team has developed a database of 100 or so unique automated messages that are sent daily. Their goal is to get the right message at the right time to the right person.

?We aren?t going to suggest you play basketball as an activity if you said your interest was in water sports,? Woolford said.

Or if a teen prefers dairy for breakfast, the team?s text might suggest low-fat yogurt.

Woolford said the feedback from the participants has been crucial in shaping the messages.

She pointed to a text suggesting alternative snacks that said, ?Instead of ice cream try frozen yogurt today." But some teens in the study were quick to point out when they see the words ?ice cream? in a message they don?t see see the healthy alternative that comes later.

So, Woolford said, the text message simply became "Try yogurt this morning."

?I think technology is definitely going to help us,? she said, ?It?s not just sending a text message, it?s send the right text message. And if we pay attention to the content the success is greater.?

In Massachusetts, Dr. Nicolas Oreskovic is using another common smartphone feature ? the Global Positioning System ? to study where in a city and when young people are active.

?What urban spaces do they use for physical activity and what spaces they do not use for physical activity?? Oreskovic asked.

Oreskovic and his team based at Massachusetts General Hospital?s Center for Child and Adolescent Health Policy had teens in Revere, Mass. wear GPS devices on their wrists and accelerometers on their hips for several months over three seasons to collect data on the location and activity of their daily routines.

By plotting the results on a city map, Oreskovic noticed that children tend to be active in outdoor spaces like parks, playgrounds, streets and sidewalks rather than indoor spaces like their home and school. He also charted when they are most active and where and when they walked to a park or playground.

Oreskovic said he hopes such studies help urban planners design cities and towns to promote a more healthy and active lifestyle in children.

If city officials had good data about how children use their sidewalks, parks and open areas, they can redesign communities with the right walking paths to the right parks, Oreskovic said. Decisions could be made using scientific data, which in turn should encourage more use of a city's parks, playscapes and open space.

Oreskovic said a next step could be to use location mapping to help teens find healthy food options and places to spend their time. The GPS on their cellphones and texting technology could be combined to point teens to a safe park to play or suggest a healthier restaurant near their favorite fast food joint.

?I think the wave of the future in these not traditional areas,? Oreskovic said. ?Intervention in schools has had a limited impact. These novel technology areas are where we can individualize obesity counseling may be helpful.?

Technology is making great strides in the fight against obesity according to Dr. Philip Schauer, director of the Bariatric and Metabolic Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. Schauer said hundreds of applications on mobile and desktop and computerized devices, like smart watches and digital jewelry, are being developed to help users maintain a healthy lifestyle.

?Some of these smart watches can help us with weight, they can keep track of the steps day we take each day, the calories burning and track our weight on daily basis," Schauer said.

"There?s all kinds of apps, more and more come out each day and it?s hard to keep track of them,? Schauer said. ?I even think they are working on one where you can take a picture of the food eating with the camera on your smartphone and an app tells you how many calories it is.?

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/researchers-combat-obesity-tech-tools-popular-teens-135530214.html

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Exclusive: Wal-Mart may get customers to deliver packages to online buyers

By Alistair Barr and Jessica Wohl

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc is considering a radical plan to have store customers deliver packages to online buyers, a new twist on speedier delivery services that the company hopes will enable it to better compete with Amazon.com Inc.

Tapping customers to deliver goods would put the world's largest retailer squarely in middle of a new phenomenon sometimes known as "crowd-sourcing," or the "sharing economy."

A plethora of start-ups now help people make money by renting out a spare room, a car, or even a cocktail dress, and Wal-Mart would in effect be inviting people to rent out space in their vehicle and their willingness to deliver packages to others.

Such an effort would, however, face numerous legal, regulatory and privacy obstacles, and Wal-Mart executives said it was at an early planning stage.

Wal-Mart is making a big push to ship online orders directly from stores, hoping to cut transportation costs and gain an edge over Amazon and other online retailers, which have no physical store locations. Wal-Mart does this at 25 stores currently, but plans to double that to 50 this year and could expand the program to hundreds of stores in the future.

Wal-Mart currently uses carriers like FedEx Corp for delivery from stores - or, in the case of a same-day delivery service called Walmart To Go that is being tested in five metro areas, its own delivery trucks.

"I see a path to where this is crowd-sourced," Joel Anderson, chief executive of Walmart.com in the United States, said in a recent interview with Reuters.

Wal-Mart has millions of customers visiting its stores each week. Some of these shoppers could tell the retailer where they live and sign up to drop off packages for online customers who live on their route back home, Anderson explained.

Wal-Mart would offer a discount on the customers' shopping bill, effectively covering the cost of their gas in return for the delivery of packages, he added.

"This is at the brain-storming stage, but it's possible in a year or two," said Jeff McAllister, senior vice president of Walmart U.S. innovations.

Indeed, the likelihood of this being broadly adopted across the company's network of more than 4,000 stores in the United States is low, according to Matt Nemer, a retail analyst at Wells Fargo Securities.

"I'm sure it will be a test in some stores," he added. "But they may only keep it for metro markets and for higher-priced items."

LEGAL BOUNDARIES

Start-ups such as TaskRabbit and Fiverr already let individuals rent out their time and expertise to companies and people looking for small jobs to be completed.

Zipments was founded in 2010 as a crowd-sourced delivery network that allowed anyone over 18 years old with a vehicle, a text-enabled phone, and a PayPal account to bid on courier services for local businesses.

Such online match-making businesses often push legal boundaries - and a Wal-Mart crowd-sourced delivery program would be no different, according to Nemer.

Online packages delivered by customers may never reach their destination, either through theft or fraud, the analyst said.

Such a crowd-sourced delivery service may not be as reliable as FedEx or United Parcel Service, which have insured drivers, he added.

"You are comfortable with a FedEx or UPS truck in your driveway, but what about a stranger knocking on your door?" Nemer said.

ZIPMENTS EVOLVES

While Zipments started out with a pure crowd-sourcing approach, the company now does more screening of drivers before allowing them to be part of its delivery network, Chief Executive and co-Founder Garrick Pohl said in an interview. It now serves big cities including New York and Chicago.

Theft, fraud and late deliveries have never been a problem, but insurance and licenses were an obstacle, Pohl explained.

Drivers often need personal liability insurance to cover package delivery activities. Cargo insurance is also needed. Zipments self-insures this risk up to $250, but the firm encourages its couriers to buy additional coverage for higher-value packages, Pohl said.

In some areas, like downtown Chicago, people also need a courier license to deliver things, he added.

"Zipments now helps people get all these things set up before allowing them to deliver goods," Pohl said.

Still, he said the issues are not insurmountable, citing pizza restaurants, which have used part-time drivers to deliver pies for years.

"It's a great solution for large retailers like Wal-Mart," Pohl said. "We'd like to see them move quicker, but it's great that they are considering it."

Zipments is trying to provide such services to retailers, although Pohl declined to say which companies the start-up is talking to about this.

(Reporting by Alistair Barr and Jessica Wohl; Editing by Jonathan Weber, Martin Howell and Leslie Gevirtz)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-wal-mart-may-customers-deliver-packages-online-050124872--sector.html

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Google offers same-day delivery service (with a few catches)

Google Shopping Express is a challenge to competitors such as Amazon.?

By Matthew Shaer / March 28, 2013

Google Shopping Express will be rolled out initially to residents of the Bay Area.

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Google has launched a same-day shopping and delivery service for residents of the Bay Area.?

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Dubbed Google Shopping Express, the platform includes products from big-box stores such as Target, Staples, and Walgreens, and smaller, boutique outlets such as Blue Bottle Coffee. Users will place an order, select a delivery window, and see the product on their doorstep the same day.

?

In a blog post,?Tom Fallows, a director at Google Shopping Express, said Google was "still working out our long-term pricing plan." But beginning this week, testers will get free delivery for a full six months. Some caveats: You've got to live in or around San Francisco, and you'll have to fill out this online form in order to be selected. No word yet on when Google might attempt a wider roll-out of Shopping Express, but later this year seems like a safe bet to us.?

So what's Google ? which remains, with a few notable exceptions, mostly a Web services company ? doing dabbling in delivery? Well, the short answer is that the Mountain View giant is attempting to head off similar ventures from its competitors. Amazon, for instance, has long sold and shipped a wide range of non-book items, from deodorant to trash bags and Ninja Blenders.?

"[We] see Google over time expanding toward a more traditional e-commerce marketplace model," Baird Equity Research analyst Colin Sebastian wrote in a note to investors obtained by?Investor's Business Daily.?"We believe the new service is consistent with Google's ambitions to create a larger commerce platform, bring more local product inventory into search, and also counter competition from Amazon and eBay."?

Google Shopping Express will be a boon to couch potatoes who can't be bothered to drive to Walgreens to get a can of shaving cream ? that much is clear. But?as Alexis Tsotsis of TechCrunch notes, Google Shopping Express will also help retailers. The benefits, she writes, include?"increasing purchase volume from existing customers because of convenience."?

For?more tech news, follow us on?Twitter @venturenaut.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/2Me-eWiR9qc/Google-offers-same-day-delivery-service-with-a-few-catches

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New Soyuz route cuts travel time to ISS from two days to six hours

Normally, a trip from Earth to the ISS takes about two days. Thursday, a Soyuz capsule docked with the orbiting laboratory after less than six hours of flight time, setting a record. Accelerating the trip wasn't an issue of newer technology or more powerful engines, necessarily, but of better math and planning. The Russian vehicle essentially took a shortcut that required precisely timed steering over the course of four orbits, putting three crew members (including one American astronaut) on the space station at 10:28pm ET -- just five hours and 45 minutes after takeoff from Kazakhstan. Russian engineers are already looking at ways to trim more time off the trip, by cutting two more orbits from the route. Obviously the human cargo appreciates spending less time in the cramped quarters of the Soyuz. But getting equipment and materials for experiments to the ISS quicker should also yield better and more reliable scientific results. For a few clips of liftoff and the docking itself check out the NASA link in the source.

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Source: Discovery, NASA

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/tE4uQHg9oBU/

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Biological transistor enables computing within living cells

Mar. 28, 2013 ? When Charles Babbage prototyped the first computing machine in the 19th century, he imagined using mechanical gears and latches to control information. ENIAC, the first modern computer developed in the 1940s, used vacuum tubes and electricity. Today, computers use transistors made from highly engineered semiconducting materials to carry out their logical operations.

And now a team of Stanford University bioengineers has taken computing beyond mechanics and electronics into the living realm of biology. In a paper to be published March 28 in Science, the team details a biological transistor made from genetic material -- DNA and RNA -- in place of gears or electrons. The team calls its biological transistor the "transcriptor."

"Transcriptors are the key component behind amplifying genetic logic -- akin to the transistor and electronics," said Jerome Bonnet, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in bioengineering and the paper's lead author.

The creation of the transcriptor allows engineers to compute inside living cells to record, for instance, when cells have been exposed to certain external stimuli or environmental factors, or even to turn on and off cell reproduction as needed.

"Biological computers can be used to study and reprogram living systems, monitor environments and improve cellular therapeutics," said Drew Endy, PhD, assistant professor of bioengineering and the paper's senior author.

The biological computer

In electronics, a transistor controls the flow of electrons along a circuit. Similarly, in biologics, a transcriptor controls the flow of a specific protein, RNA polymerase, as it travels along a strand of DNA.

"We have repurposed a group of natural proteins, called integrases, to realize digital control over the flow of RNA polymerase along DNA, which in turn allowed us to engineer amplifying genetic logic," said Endy.

Using transcriptors, the team has created what are known in electrical engineering as logic gates that can derive true-false answers to virtually any biochemical question that might be posed within a cell.

They refer to their transcriptor-based logic gates as "Boolean Integrase Logic," or "BIL gates" for short.

Transcriptor-based gates alone do not constitute a computer, but they are the third and final component of a biological computer that could operate within individual living cells.

Despite their outward differences, all modern computers, from ENIAC to Apple, share three basic functions: storing, transmitting and performing logical operations on information.

Last year, Endy and his team made news in delivering the other two core components of a fully functional genetic computer. The first was a type of rewritable digital data storage within DNA. They also developed a mechanism for transmitting genetic information from cell to cell, a sort of biological Internet.

It all adds up to creating a computer inside a living cell.

Boole's gold

Digital logic is often referred to as "Boolean logic," after George Boole, the mathematician who proposed the system in 1854. Today, Boolean logic typically takes the form of 1s and 0s within a computer. Answer true, gate open; answer false, gate closed. Open. Closed. On. Off. 1. 0. It's that basic. But it turns out that with just these simple tools and ways of thinking you can accomplish quite a lot.

"AND" and "OR" are just two of the most basic Boolean logic gates. An "AND" gate, for instance, is "true" when both of its inputs are true -- when "a" and "b" are true. An "OR" gate, on the other hand, is true when either or both of its inputs are true.

In a biological setting, the possibilities for logic are as limitless as in electronics, Bonnet explained. "You could test whether a given cell had been exposed to any number of external stimuli -- the presence of glucose and caffeine, for instance. BIL gates would allow you to make that determination and to store that information so you could easily identify those which had been exposed and which had not," he said.

By the same token, you could tell the cell to start or stop reproducing if certain factors were present. And, by coupling BIL gates with the team's biological Internet, it is possible to communicate genetic information from cell to cell to orchestrate the behavior of a group of cells.

"The potential applications are limited only by the imagination of the researcher," said co-author Monica Ortiz, a PhD candidate in bioengineering who demonstrated autonomous cell-to-cell communication of DNA encoding various BIL gates.

Building a transcriptor

To create transcriptors and logic gates, the team used carefully calibrated combinations of enzymes -- the integrases mentioned earlier -- that control the flow of RNA polymerase along strands of DNA. If this were electronics, DNA is the wire and RNA polymerase is the electron.

"The choice of enzymes is important," Bonnet said. "We have been careful to select enzymes that function in bacteria, fungi, plants and animals, so that bio-computers can be engineered within a variety of organisms."

On the technical side, the transcriptor achieves a key similarity between the biological transistor and its semiconducting cousin: signal amplification.

With transcriptors, a very small change in the expression of an integrase can create a very large change in the expression of any two other genes.

To understand the importance of amplification, consider that the transistor was first conceived as a way to replace expensive, inefficient and unreliable vacuum tubes in the amplification of telephone signals for transcontinental phone calls. Electrical signals traveling along wires get weaker the farther they travel, but if you put an amplifier every so often along the way, you can relay the signal across a great distance. The same would hold in biological systems as signals get transmitted among a group of cells.

"It is a concept similar to transistor radios," said Pakpoom Subsoontorn, a PhD candidate in bioengineering and co-author of the study who developed theoretical models to predict the behavior of BIL gates. "Relatively weak radio waves traveling through the air can get amplified into sound."

Public-domain biotechnology

To bring the age of the biological computer to a much speedier reality, Endy and his team have contributed all of BIL gates to the public domain so that others can immediately harness and improve upon the tools.

"Most of biotechnology has not yet been imagined, let alone made true. By freely sharing important basic tools everyone can work better together," Bonnet said.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Stanford University Medical Center.

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

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Journal Reference:

1. Jerome Bonnet, Peter Yin, Monica E. Ortiz, Pakpoom Subsoontorn, and Drew Endy. Amplifying Genetic Logic Gates. Science, 28 March 2013 DOI: 10.1126/science.1232758

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/matter_energy/technology/~3/ED1fLVQ-WsM/130328142400.htm

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Posted on Thursday, March 28th, 2013

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Stomping on students? consciences (Powerlineblog)

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Tilda Swinton Sleeps in Box: Is This Art?

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/03/tilda-swinton-sleeps-in-box-is-this-art/

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Gay Marriage and States' Rights: A Reason.com Debate - Reason.com

Credit: Library of CongressOn Tuesday morning the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Hollingsworth v. Perry, the case arising from the legal challenge to Proposition 8, the 2008 California initiative that amended the state constitution in order to forbid same-sex marriage. At issue is whether Prop. 8 violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, which says, ?No State shall...deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.? Although the case is largely focused on the proper scope of the fundamental right to marry, it also raises significant questions about federalism. Should the Supreme Court be in the business of reviewing the marriage policies set by the states? Does California have the lawful power to outlaw same-sex unions without federal interference?

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To help answer these questions, Reason.com invited Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, and Jonathan H. Alder, the Johan Verheij Memorial professor of Law at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law, to debate federalism and gay marriage. In the first essay below, Shapiro argues that federalism is beside the point in the Prop. 8 case. In response, Adler argues that while state opposition to same-sex marriage may be unwise, it is not unconstitutional.

Federalism Is Beside the Point in Gay Marriage Lawsuits

Ilya Shapiro

Some libertarians are conflicted over what the U.S. Supreme Court should do when presented with challenges to state laws that don?t allow for same-sex marriage. While consenting adults should be allowed to do whatever they want if it doesn?t harm others, isn?t family law a core function of state sovereignty with which the federal government?including the judiciary?shouldn?t interfere?

That intuition isn?t surprising, because libertarians generally like federalism. Particularly in this age of an overweaning federal government and unaccountable executive branch, we pound our pocket Constitutions and demand respect for the Commerce Clause, the 10th Amendment, and other structural protections for liberty.

Indeed, federalism ?is more than an exercise in setting the boundary between different institutions of government for their own integrity,? wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for a unanimous Supreme Court in the 2011 case of United States v. Bond (which is returning to the Court this fall). ?By denying any one government complete jurisdiction over all the concerns of public life,? Kennedy continued, ?federalism protects the liberty of the individual from arbitrary power.? If the federal government acts outside the scope of its delegated and carefully enumerated powers, then it?s no better than an armed mob.

I?ve therefore been proud to file federalism-based briefs on the Cato Institute?s behalf on issues ranging from the civil commitment of sex offenders to Obamacare?s individual mandate to the Voting Rights Act. I yield to no one in fighting to keep the federal government within its constitutional bounds.

And yet all that federalism talk is an irrelevant red herring when it comes to gay marriage because there?s no claim here that the federal government is exceeding its lawful authority. Instead, in Hollingsworth v. Perry, the plaintiffs argue that California?s Proposition 8 improperly denies them the fundamental right to marry under the 14th Amendment.

In other words, Perry involves claims that a state government is violating individual constitutional rights, not that the federal government is exercising powers it doesn?t have.?

The lawsuit isn?t some novel invention designed to avoid implicating the Constitution?s structural provisions, but the sort of thing that libertarians get behind without controversy in areas ranging from gun rights to property rights to the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. And just as there wasn?t a federalism problem when the Supreme Court struck down Chicago?s gun ban in McDonald v. Chicago, there would be no federalism problem if it now struck down California?s ban on same-sex marriage.

Now, I don?t mean to suggest that Perry is a slam-dunk case that the plaintiffs will easily win. What I?m simply saying is that the case turns on whether treating couples differently on the basis of sexual orientation is constitutionally valid. Perry asks whether the Due Process or Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment protect the claimed right to marry someone of the same sex. (Full disclosure: Cato filed a brief, which I signed, arguing that the Equal Protection Clause does indeed require states to allow same-sex couples to marry?though in my ideal world the government would get out of the marriage-licensing business altogether.)

Let me state the background principle: If a state law violates a constitutionally protected right, the federal judiciary has the constitutional authority to strike down that law. Indeed, if federal courts decline to do so?if they engage in judicial ?abdication? or ?pacifism??they fail their constitutional duty. Of course, if the state action doesn?t rise to the level of constitutional injury, then courts should rule for the state.

And so if it?s unconstitutional for California to discriminate based on sexual orientation when doling out marriage licenses, then a ruling against Prop 8 would simply vindicate individual constitutional rights. If, however, there?s a compelling reason for making the distinction?because, say, it promotes child-rearing?then California can keep doing what it?s doing. Either way, California?s power to regulate marriage isn?t implicated?just like its power over criminal law wasn?t in doubt in 2011 when the Court found the state?s ban on violent videogames to violate the First Amendment.

In sum, those who argue that federal courts have no business policing state marriage laws are forgetting that the Civil War Amendments, particularly the 14th, fundamentally changed?perfected?our federalism. Since 1868, when states violate individual rights, they have to answer to federal courts.

Source: http://reason.com/archives/2013/03/25/gay-marriage-and-states-rights

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Writer Quits After Loss, Blasts New Mexico Basketball

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/03/writer-quits-after-loss-blasts-new-mexico-basketball/

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Video: Decoding the genetic history of the Texas longhorn

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Texas Longhorn cattle have a hybrid global ancestry, according to a study by University of Texas at Austin researchers published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study of the genome of the Longhorn and related breeds tells a fascinating global history of human and cattle migration. It traces back through Christopher Columbus' second voyage to the New World, the Moorish invasion of Spain and the ancient domestication of the aurochs in the Middle East and India.

"It's a real Texas story, an American story," said Emily Jane McTavish, a doctoral student in the lab of biology professor David Hillis. "For a long time people thought these New World cattle were domesticated from a pure European lineage. But it turns out they have a more complex, more hybrid, more global ancestry, and there's evidence that this genetic diversity is partially responsible for their greater resilience to harsh climatic conditions."

To reconstruct the genetic history of Texas Longhorns, McTavish, Hillis and colleagues from the University of Missouri-Columbia analyzed almost 50,000 genetic markers from 58 cattle breeds. The most comprehensive such analysis to date, it was funded in part by the Cattlemen's Texas Longhorn Conservancy, which helped the scientists get access to samples used by ranchers.

Among the findings was that the Texas Longhorn breed are direct descendants of the first cattle in the New World. The ancestral cattle were brought over by Columbus in 1493 to the island of Hispaniola. They traveled the rest of the way to the continent in 1521 on the ships of later Spanish colonists.

Over the next two centuries the Spanish moved the cattle north, arriving in the area that would become Texas near the end of the 17th century. The cattle escaped or were turned loose on the open range, where they remained mostly wild for the next two centuries.

"It was known on some level that Longhorns are descendants from cattle brought over by early Spanish settlers," said Hillis, the Alfred W. Roark Centennial Professor in the College of Natural Sciences, "but they look so different from the cattle you see in Spain and Portugal today. So there was speculation that there had been interbreeding with later imports from Europe. But their genetic signature is co mpletely consistent with being direct descendants of the cattle Columbus brought over."

The study reveals that being a "pure" descendant of cattle from the Iberian peninsula indicates a more complicated ancestry than was understood. Approximately 85 percent of the Longhorn genome is "taurine," descended from the ancient domestication of the wild aurochs that occurred in the Middle East 8,000-10,000 years ago. As a result, Longhorns look similar to purer taurine breeds such as Holstein, Hereford and Angus, which came to Europe from the Middle East.

The other 15 percent of the genome is "indicine," from the other ancient domestication of the aurochs, in India. These indicine cattle, which often have a characteristic hump at the back of the neck, spread into Africa and from there up to the Iberian peninsula.

"It's consistent with the Moorish invasions from the 8th to the 13th centuries," said Hillis. "The Moors brought cattle with them, and brought these African genes, and of course the European cattle were there as well. All those influences come together in the cattle of the Iberian peninsula, which were used to stock the Canary Islands, which is where Columbus stopped and picked up cattle on his second voyage and brought them to the New World."

Once in the New World, most of the cattle eventually went feral. Under the pressures of natural selection they were able to re-evolve ancient survival traits that had been artificially bred out of their European ancestors. Selection for longer horns allowed them to defend against wild predators. They became leaner and more able to survive heat and drought.

"The Longhorns that were in the area when Anglo settlers arrived almost looked more like the ancestral aurochsen than like modern cattle breeds," said McTavish. "Living wild on the range, they had to become very self sufficient. Having that genetic reservoir from those wild ancestors made it possible for a lot of those traits to be selected for once again."

McTavish said it's possible the indicine heritage in particular helped, because the climate in India and Africa tended to be hotter and drier than in Europe.

The Longhorns remained wild on the range, or very loosely managed, until after the Civil War, when Texans rounded up the wild herds and began supplying beef to the rest of the country. Since then the fortunes of the Longhorns have waxed and waned depending on how their unique genetic profile intersects with the changing needs of American consumers.

"The Longhorns almost went extinct starting in the late 19th century," said Hillis. "A lot of the value of cattle at that time had to do with the fat they had, because the primary lighting source people had was candles, made of tallow, and Texas Longhorns have very low fat content. Ranchers began fencing off the range and importing breeds from Europe that had higher fat content. That's when Americans began developing their taste for fatty beef, so then the other cattle became valuable in that respect as well. The only reason the Longhorns didn't go extinct was because half a dozen or so ranchers kept herds going even though they knew that these other breeds were more valuable in some sense. They appreciated that the Longhorns were hardier, more self-sufficient."

Hillis, who raises Longhorns of his own out at the Double Helix Ranch, said that the winds of history now seem to be blowing in the Longhorns' direction. They can survive in hotter, drier climates, which will become increasingly important as the world warms. They provide lean and grass-fed beef, which is seen as healthier by many consumers. And their genes may prove valuable to ranchers, who can use the increasingly sophisticated genetic information to selectively breed the Longhorns' toughness into other breeds of cattle.

"It's another chapter in the story of a breed that is part of the history of Texas," he said.

###

University of Texas at Austin: http://www.utexas.edu

Thanks to University of Texas at Austin for this article.

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Happy Monday!

Happy Monday!

Tilda Swinton Sleeps in a Glass Box?[The Frisky] Justin Timberlake Gets Wasted on TV?[HollyWire] Pink Comforts Crying Girl During Concert?[Right Celebrity] Snooki Celebrates Lorenzo’s Baptism?[The Celebrity Cafe] Kate Upton Accepts a Prom Proposal??[The Blemish] David Beckham Unveils New Tatt in China?[The Huffington Post] Amanda Knox Heading Back to Court??[Celeb Dirty Laundry] Jesse James Gets Hitched ...

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Source: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2013/03/happy-monday-21/

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Fed's Bernanke sees mixed picture in euro zone

LONDON (Reuters) - The situation in the euro zone has shown the difficulties of operating a single currency across several countries, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Monday.

"There is a basic question - what is the right size for a single monetary policy?" Bernanke said in response to a question at a panel discussion in London.

While some aspects of the euro zone were optimal, including the credibility of its central bank to deliver low inflation, there were also differences across countries in terms of competitiveness and their different stages in the economic cycle, he said.

"So I think it is a mixed picture," Bernanke said.

(Reporting by Marius Zaharia and Marc Jones, writing by William Schomberg; editing by Ron Askew)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/feds-bernanke-sees-mixed-picture-euro-zone-191732406--business.html

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