Vettel of Red Bull wins Malaysian GP

Red Bull driver Mark Webber of Australia, left, lifts his runner-up trophy while his teammate and the winner Sebastian Vettel of Germany applauds during the awarding ceremony for the Malaysian Formula One Grand Prix at Sepang, Malaysia, Sunday, March 24, 2013. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Red Bull driver Mark Webber of Australia, left, lifts his runner-up trophy while his teammate and the winner Sebastian Vettel of Germany applauds during the awarding ceremony for the Malaysian Formula One Grand Prix at Sepang, Malaysia, Sunday, March 24, 2013. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel of Germany, right, and teammate Mark Webber of Australia spray champagne after the awarding ceremony for the Malaysian Formula One Grand Prix at Sepang, Malaysia, Sunday, March 24, 2013. Vettel won the race and Webber finished second. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel of Germany, left, sprays champagne to Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton of Britain after the awarding ceremony for the Malaysian Formula One Grand Prix at Sepang, Malaysia, Sunday, March 24, 2013. Vettel won the race and Hamilton finished third. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso of Spain goes off the track during the Malaysian Formula One Grand Prix at Sepang, Malaysia, Sunday, March 24, 2013. (AP Photo)

Formila One drivers, from left, Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel of Germany, Ferrari's Fernando Alonso of Spain, Ferrari's Felipe Massa of Brazil and Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton of Britain race side by side during the start of the Malaysian Grand Prix at Sepang, Malaysia, Sunday, March 24, 2013. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

SEPANG, Malaysia (AP) ? Sebastian Vettel's 27th victory in Formula One didn't earn him a lot of admiration. He even had to apologize for it.

The three-time defending champion ignored team orders Sunday and overtook fellow Red Bull driver Mark Webber toward the end to win the Malaysian Grand Prix, having been told to stand down and cruise to a 1-2 finish.

The German's move left Webber fuming and had team officials remonstrating Vettel publicly after the race. Vettel apologized, but said he didn't realize he had been told to hold back.

"Mark should have won," said Vettel, who now leads the championship standings by nine points ahead of Lotus driver Kimi Raikkonen. "I made a big mistake today and we should have stayed in the position. I messed up in that situation and took the lead from Mark and can see now he is upset. Apologies to Mark. The result is there and all I can say is that I didn't do it deliberately."

Webber refused to acknowledge his teammate after the race, and said he had been told by the team to keep a slower pace to save the tires to the end.

"Seb made his own decisions and he will have protection as usual and that's the way it goes," Webber said. "It's still very raw at the moment."

Asked if the fight had him reconsidering his role at Red Bull, Webber said he had "a lot of things going through my mind."

Vettel's decision to ignore team orders was made extra glaring by the fight for third place between Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. In a similar situation, Rosberg was told repeatedly not to pass Hamilton, and obeyed ? giving the Briton his first podium finish with his new team.

"I don't feel spectacular sitting here. Nico deserved to be where I am right now," Hamilton said. "Obviously, the team thought for position in the championship it was logical to stay in the position we are in. I say congratulations to Nico. He drove a much smarter and controlled race than I did."

Vettel started from pole but Webber grabbed the lead on the ninth lap and stayed in front for much of the race. Vettel had complained over the team radio earlier that "Mark is too slow" and that they should let him pass. The team response was for the German to be "patient."

He clearly ran out of patience on the 46th lap, making an aggressive move with the cars almost touching as the German grabbed the lead ? with team officials immediately calling him "silly" over the radio.

Team Principal Christian Horner said Vettel's decision made for a "hugely uncomfortable" situation within the team.

"It's frustrating. Formula One is both a team and an individual sport and sometimes there is a conflict between a driver's desire and a team's interest," Horner said. "What happened today is something that shouldn't have happened. It's something that Sebastian has apologized for and it's something that we will discuss internally as a team."

The incident brought back memories of the 2010 Turkish Grand Prix, when Webber was also leading ahead of Vettel. That time, the two cars crashed when Vettel tried to overtake, spoiling what was a near-certain 1-2 finish.

"Let's be honest here. There has never been a great deal of trust between the two of them since Turkey in (2010) but there is a respect," Horner said. "If you think of Brazil (in 2012), Mark was told to hold his position and started racing him. They are race drivers and they will push to the limit. That is part of what their DNA is that is part of why we signed them to do the job, and why they performed so well for us as a pairing over the past five years."

Mercedes team principal Ross Brawn had more success with his orders, after imploring Rosberg to back off from Hamilton who was struggling to make his fuel last. Brawn told Rosberg that "I want to bring these cars home," and the German complied. As Brawn congratulated him over the radio, Rosberg told him to "remember this one.'

Rosberg called it a "great day" for the team but acknowledged that the finish was not ideal.

"Of course, it was disappointing for me having to hold position but I understand the team's decision to safeguard our positions and to make sure that both cars got to the end with a strong team finish, especially in light of the tough times behind us," he said.

Hamilton earlier endured an embarrassing moment when he drove into his former team McLaren's pits before correcting himself and heading to Mercedes, which he joined ahead of this season.

The finish to the race could also cause grumblings from fans, who prefer to see the drivers duel it out for the win rather than having team orders decide the result.

"You know, it's not perfect," Toto Wolff, the Mercedes team executive director, said. "From the sporting point of view, it's not what people want to see, nor what I want to see. But sometimes you have to make a call and you have to make decision and Ross did that to bring home third and fourth."

It was a disastrous day for Ferrari's Fernando Alonso, who crashed out of the race on the second lap after damaging his front wing when he bumped Vettel a lap earlier. His teammate Felipe Massa started poorly but managed to finish fifth.

"Bad luck today, as always over 19 races will be compensated and we are ready to recover good points in the next race," Alonso tweeted.

McLaren's troubles also continued, as a botched pit stop dropped 2009 champion Jenson Button to 14th. The Briton then retired with two laps remaining while his teammate, Sergio Perez, finished ninth.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-03-24-CAR-F1-Malaysian-GP/id-159587065ec745d79cd1dd46d04af814

tyler perry whitney houston r kelly r. kelly macular degeneration whitney houston funeral judi dench bobby brown leaves funeral

Southern Baptists expand north with church plants

In this Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2013 photo, Pastor Tom Cabral, of the Redemption Fellowship of Fall River, Mass., gathers loaves of bread, which he will distribute as part of a food pantry, at the former bar that now houses his church in Fall River. Four alleged crack dealers were down and bloodied in the building eight years ago, shot by a 19-year-old rival in a drug turf war. Today, kids meet there for Sunday school. The church is one dozens of churches the Southern Baptist Convention has planted around New England in the last decade. It's part of a multi-million dollar push by the nation's largest denomination into territory that's both skeptical of the south and increasingly indifferent to religion. Behind the bar organizing donations are Cabral's wife Deb, right, and church member Sue Williams. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

slideshow FALL RIVER, Mass. (AP) ? Pastor Tom Cabral still tells people to meet him at "the bar," even though it's his church now. Locals best remember his worn building as a former sports bar where a 19-year-old once walked in and shot three suspected rival crack dealers.

Eight years later, the mirrored walls, parquet dance floor and bar remain. But the worst trouble may be found around the Sunday school table, where kids try to heed a handwritten list of rules including: "We will walk indoors, not run."

Redemption Fellowship of Fall River is one of dozens of churches the Southern Baptist Convention has planted around New England in the last decade with a multi-million dollar push into territory skeptical of the South and increasingly indifferent to religion.

Cabral seems unfazed. He's "indigenous," he explains, a native of nearby Somerset. He's so eager to share his faith that he regularly carries a wood cross asking, "Are You Ready?" to a traffic island in this southeastern Massachusetts city and evangelizes to anyone who rolls down their window.

"I really believe that God wants to change this city," he said.

Since 2002, the Southern Baptists have spent roughly $5 million to plant churches around the region, and have another $800,000 committed for this year, said Jim Wideman, executive director of the Baptist Convention of New England, the Southern Baptist's regional church-planting arm.

They've started 133 new churches in that time, a nearly 70 percent increase that brings their regional total to 325.

No denomination is investing as much in New England church planting, though Hartford Seminary professor Scott Thumma notes that attendance isn't growing as fast as the number of churches.

Thumma said the roughly 30,500 members the denomination had in New England 2010 is a 20 percent increase from a decade ago, according to the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies. That growth is about the same as another religiously conservative group, the Assemblies of God, which hasn't emphasized church planting.

Thumma said Southern Baptists are drawing immigrants and new residents, but there's little proof they've reaching area lifers, including the large Roman Catholic population and increasing numbers of secularists.

"I don't see a third Great Awakening happening at the moment," Thumma said.

A Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life study last year found that since 2007, the Northeast had the largest percentage increase nationwide of people who describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated. Meanwhile, a 2012 Gallup poll indicates the six-state New England region hosts the country's five least religious states (Connecticut is No. 11).

Southern Baptists, the nation's largest Protestant group with about 16 million members, have been trying since the late 1950s to build a northern presence. But their vigorous, recent church-planting is part of a broader, denomination-wide emphasis at a time when overall membership is declining.

Wideman said research indicates that the unchurched are far more likely to be drawn to a new church than one that already exists. And multiple church plants in neighborhood-centric urban areas, though unlikely to draw huge numbers, aim to create enduring Southern Baptist communities, he said.

A similarity among the New England church plants is that none of their names include the words "Southern Baptist."

Thumma said it's a clear effort to avoid some of the stereotypes about Southerners, such as negative perceptions of their racial views or reputed "damn-us-all-to-hell" fundamentalism. It's not malicious, he said, but "they're church-planting by stealth."

Wideman said they never deny they're Southern Baptist, but if it's a barrier to sharing the faith, why broadcast it? The Southern Baptist Convention itself has acknowledged this problem by approving an optional alternative name last summer: Great Commission Baptists.

The main concern, Wideman said, is that Northerners will see the churches as excluding them. And he has a question for Southern friends who complain about the tactic: "How well do you think First Yankee Baptist Church would go over in Alabama?"

With a thick North Carolina accent, Lyandon Warren can't hide his roots. But in seven years planting churches in West Pawlet and Poultney, Vt., he finds showing a commitment to the local community is more important.

Many New Englanders have zero familiarity with the Bible, so you can't just throw open the doors of a new church and expect people to come in, he said. Instead, his group reached out with novel approaches like offering water and a diaper-changing station at a town-wide tag sale. In Norwich, Conn., Pastor Shaun Pillay's group volunteers for various tasks, from filling sand bags to snow shoveling. It creates a foothold and trust in the community, if not converts, he said.

"They say, 'We like what you do, but we don't like your God,'" Pillay said.

Persistence is critical, said Pillay and Warren, who emphasize showing up at the same place, at the same times, with the same Christian message, like Cabral with his cross at the Fall River intersection.

Cabral's consistency paid off with Angelique Vargas, who was so drunk she didn't remember the first three times she met her future pastor. But on a sober day, the 39-year-old was surprised when a stranger called her by name as she crossed the street. She listened to his message, Vargas said, "for the simple fact that he remembered me on my darkest day."

On a recent February afternoon, horns honked and a middle finger flew as Cabral walked the traffic island. Drivers also kept engaging him, trying to answer the question on his cross, which he'd explain meant, "Are you ready to face God when you die?" Cabral would share how he knew that he was, then hand out a card with a gospel message and his church's address.

"God bless you!" he'd call as the light changed. "I want you to go to heaven!"

Cabral's church has 35 members, barely enough to cast a decent shadow in the annex of larger Southern Baptist churches. But Cabral says he's not going anywhere. He says he wants to love people, give them a chance to let God change them and see how this church plant goes.

"It's like growing a garden," he said. "You've got to plant the seed, you've got to water it and you've got to be faithful."

Source: http://calhountimes.com/bookmark/22024252

gavin degraw gavin degraw alec time 100 bob beckel anna paquin warren buffett

TENNIS PLAY DAY RALLY FOR KIDS | Annapolis Sports ...

Sunday, April 21, 2013, 2:00 pm

5200 Paint Branch Pkwy, College Park, MD | Get?Directions??
$20.00

Kids ages 10 and Under are invited to play in a Tennis Play Day Rally to benefit The Children's Inn at NIH. Join,? Kids Play For Good ambassador Henry Ko, on court Sunday, April 21st from 2:00-5:00 pm. at the Tennis Center College Park.?
Three hours of non-stop fun, games and friendly round robin competition. ?All ability levels are welcome! Loaner racquets provided for beginning players. You don't need a partner to sign up! ?Click here to REGISTER?! ?

Sideline activity too: Artist Len Garon will be taking live action photos (and orders) to create personalized tennis portraits/posters. To learn more and to order your portrait ?Click Here . ?

Proceeds from the Tennis Rally benefit The Children's Inn at the National Institutes of Health. ?The Inn is a residential "place like home" for sick children and their families. ?

Join us for a special day of Tennis Kids Making a Difference on April 21st at the Tennis Center at College Park!

38.97685

-76.923629

primary

/events/tennis-play-day-rally-for-kids-a0b50454

/locations/9083339

Source: http://annapolis.patch.com/events/tennis-play-day-rally-for-kids-a0b50454

spinal stenosis the forgotten man mike jones just friends chronicle george lopez bedtime stories

Can Arizona stop driver's licenses to immigrant given temporary legal status?

By Tim Gaynor

PHOENIX (Reuters) - Lawyers will ask a federal judge on Friday to prevent Arizona from denying driver's licenses to young illegal immigrants granted temporary legal status by the federal government in the southwest state's latest court clash over the Obama administration's immigration policies.

Civil rights groups filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Phoenix last November against Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and two state transport department officials on behalf of five immigrants from Mexico who qualify for deferred deportation status under President Barack Obama's program.

The suit challenges the legality of an executive order issued by Brewer in August that denied young migrants licenses, saying that the federal government program did not give them lawful status or entitle them to public benefits.

The lawyers say that Brewer's order is preempted by the federal government's authority to regulate immigration and violates the constitutional rights of the plaintiffs. They will seek to have the measure enjoined while the case is pending.

"We want the judge to block the governor ... from continuing to discriminate against these students," said Victor Viramontes, national senior counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, one of the groups that brought the suit.

The court battle is the latest for Brewer, a Republican who has become a major antagonist of Obama's Democratic administration and its immigration policies.

About 40 states and the District of Columbia have confirmed that they are granting driver's licenses or plan to do so for undocumented youths who received a short-term reprieve from Obama under the program in June.

'DEFENDING ARIZONA LAW'

While Republicans in some states have opposed drivers licenses for illegal immigrants, only Arizona and Nebraska have said outright that young immigrants are not eligible.

Under Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, immigrants who came to the United States as children and meet certain other criteria can apply for a work permit for a renewable period of two years. They also can obtain Social Security numbers.

An estimated 1.7 million youths are potentially eligible for the program, of whom about 80,000 live in Arizona. As of mid-February, about 200,000 applicants nationwide been granted deferred action, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

They are considered to be lawfully present during that period, although they do not have full legal status. But Brewer maintained that the president's policy did not "confer upon them any lawful or authorized status and does not entitle them to any additional public benefits."

Her spokesman, Matthew Benson, said state law requires individuals to have "federally authorized presence" to qualify for a license, and Obama's action did not amount to that.

"Governor Brewer is intent on defending Arizona law, and is confident the court will uphold the state's action," Benson said.

Brewer signed a controversial bill cracking down on illegal immigrants into law in 2010, setting up a clash with the Obama administration. The law's centerpiece that requires police to check the immigration status of people they stop if they suspect they are in the country illegally was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in June.

The hearing comes as Obama is pushing Congress to pass him a bill overhauling the U.S. immigration system, granting millions of illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, as well as tightening security on the Mexico border.

Bipartisan groups in both chambers of the U.S. Congress are close to completing work on a draft bill.

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Eric Walsh)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/judge-hear-arizona-immigrant-drivers-license-ban-suit-100319638.html

Steelers Schedule tory burch Al Smith Dinner Herman Melville Books Kyna Treacy megan fox Bb&t

Get lighter in spring-detoxing 360 degrees in your life - Genieve Burley

Spring has finally arrived (well the date anyhow, we are waiting for the weather to catch up) and this is a time of shedding layers. Winter tends to be a time where we accumulate and spring provides the light and energy to focus on refining and losing the things we don?t need. Here is a small list of ways in which we can do this over the next few weeks:

Diet: Trade in your heavier foods such as starches and unhealthy fats for lighter meals: salads, lightly roasted veggies and juices/smoothies. Instead of big meals try eating more often with lighter fare. And most importantly, stay away from refined sugars to let the body wean off any sugar addiction. Lightening up the foods we eat will put an extra spring in your step!

Relationships: I think this is an area that we are ruled by fear. We are very scared of letting people go in our lives even if the relationship is in a toxic state. Fear stems from adolescence and the worries about gossip, isolation and popularity. We need to recognize that we are imprisoned by a toxic relationship-and freedom is the only solution. It?s taken me a long time to realize that it?s not about who is right or who is causing the conflict-that actually doesn?t matter. It?s the fact that the relationship isn?t working. My suggestion is to take inventory of relationships that make you feel stressed or hurt, and try to walk away from them in peace.

Belongings: Time to clean out the closets. We put this off because it takes a lot of time and when we begin we usually realize there is more work than we thought. But the reward is well worth the wait. Be ruthless with your things: clothes, shoes, kitchen items, towels, sheets, books, papers etc. You can recycle, consign and donate your way to happiness.

Toxins: Spring weather allows for more outdoors activity. Try spending more time getting your exercise outdoors, running, gardening and cycling. Sweat those Christmas toxins out!

Brain: Winter can bring a lot of time watching TV or using our computers. The brain gets heavy with overstimulation through advertisements and internet surfing. Giving a little brain detox by setting time limits on computer work and tv watching will give your brain a little lift. Try meditating or picking up a book.

I hope spring brings a little light to your life!

Source: http://www.genieveburley.com/chiropractic/well-being/get-lighter-in-spring-detoxing-360-degrees-in-your-life/

florida primary results black history groundhogs day paula abdul cinnamon challenge lou dobbs rock salt

Obama ending Israel visit with symbolic stops

JERUSALEM (AP) ? President Barack Obama is wrapping up a three-day visit to Israel by paying his respects to heroes of the Jewish state and victims of the Holocaust as well as touring the Biblical birthplace of Jesus Christ.

Obama was laying wreaths at the graves of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism who died in 1904 before realizing his dream of a Jewish homeland, and former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated in 1995. He will then visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial before touring the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

The stops are a culmination of the main portion of the president's Mideast trip on which he has vowed unwavering support for Israel and appealed for new peace talks with the Palestinians. He next travels to Jordan.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-03-22-Obama/id-b0211cc0e5f64130b9f243f7cf0c4151

oscars jane fonda halle berry abc bradley cooper channing tatum Jennifer Aniston

Misregulated genes may have big autism role

Friday, March 22, 2013

A new study finds that two genes individually associated with rare autism-related disorders are also jointly linked to more general forms of autism. The finding suggests a new genetic pathway to investigate in general autism research.

The genes encode the proteins NHE6 and NHE9, which are responsible for biochemical exchanges in the endosomes of cells. Mutations in the NHE6 gene are a direct cause of Christianson Syndrome, while mutations in the NHE9 gene lead to a severe form of autism with epilepsy. In the new study, a statistical analysis published online this week in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, Brown University researchers and their colleagues found a specific pattern of misregulation of those two genes ? NHE9 is up-regulated and NHE6 is down-regulated ? in the brains of children with autism compared to the brains of non-autistic children.

"These genes play a role, not just in the rare forms of autism but also in the generalized pathology of autism," said Dr. Eric Morrow, professor of biology and professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University, the paper's senior author. "In autism I think people get overwhelmed because there are hundreds of different genes. One of the important things is to find points of convergence where there are events that might be common across different forms."

The new study suggests that misregulation of NHE6 and NHE9 is one such event.

The research is based on a statistical analysis of messenger RNA samples from a bank of brain tissue donated posthumously by some children who had autism and some who did not. Messenger RNA is a key molecular player in the process of gene expression, making it an indicator of how gene expression was regulated in the cerebral cortex of each of the children.

Guided by Morrow, who studies autism genomics and sees autism patients at the E.P. Bradley Hospital in East Providence, lead author Matthew Schewede spent the summer of 2012 poring over the raw data, which was made available from a 2011 study led by co-author Daniel Geschwind and Irinia Voineagu of the University of California?Los Angeles.

Schwede, who studied statistics as an undergraduate at Harvard, is now a second-year student in the Warren Alpert Medical School. His classes are a block away from Morrow's lab, making the collaboration easy.

"We kind of stumbled on this," Schwede said. "At first we were just identifying what was up- and down-regulated in autism cerebral cortex in this data set."

But Schwede's findings about the NHE genes caught Morrow's attention in particular, because Morrow has been studying the NHE6 and NHE9 genes and the rare autism forms they cause.

"When we realized that some genes of interest for our lab were altered in the cerebral cortex, we focused the analysis on these genes in particular and how they were related to other processes," Schwede said.

Schwede made a second key finding: a strong and significant correlation between the misregulation of the NHE genes and the down-regulation of synapse genes, which is known to occur in autism.

Schwede's purely statistical analysis does not explain the physiology of how up-regulation of NHE9 and down-regulation NHE6 would affect synapse formation or general autism, but Morrow's biology group has a clear next step: to observe the neural and behavioral effects in the lab of misregulation of those genes in various experimental systems.

"That's a hypothesis that we can take to the mouse," Morrow said. "When we knock out these genes, how do the synapses change?"

The statistical results point out the value of studying rare forms of autism, not only for the sake the patients who have those conditions, Morrow said, but also because doing so can inform research about other forms of autism.

"We argue that it's relevant but sometimes, in fairness, we wonder about that," Morrow said. "A study like this really conveys strongly that that's a fair argument."

###

Brown University: http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau

Thanks to Brown University 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 press release has been viewed 46 time(s).

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127406/Misregulated_genes_may_have_big_autism_role

blue moon ann romney farrah abraham Paul Ryan Speech chris cooley chris cooley condoleezza rice

Cyber attack on South Korea said to come from Chinese address

Handout / Reuters

Employees of the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) check computers as they try to recover a server of the company's network at main office of KBS in Seoul, on March 21.

By Jack Kim, Reuters

SEOUL -?A hacking attack on the servers of South Korean broadcasters and banks originated from an IP address based in China, officials in Seoul said on Thursday, raising suspicions the intrusion came from North Korea.

An unnamed official from South Korea's presidential office was quoted by the Yonhap news agency as saying the discovery of the IP address indicated Pyongyang was responsible for the attack on Wednesday.

A previous attack on a South Korean newspaper that the government in Seoul traced back to North Korea also used a Chinese IP address.

---

"We've identified that a Chinese IP is connected to the organizations affected," a spokesman for South Korea's Communications Commission told a press conference.?

The attack brought down the network servers of television broadcasters YTN, MBC and KBS as well as two major commercial banks, Shinhan Bank and NongHyup Bank. South Korea raised its alert levels in response.

Investigations of past hacking incidents on South Korean organizations have been traced to Pyongyang's large army of computer engineers trained to infiltrate the South's computer networks.

"There can be many inferences based on the fact that the IP address is based in China," the communications commission's head of network policy, Park Jae-moon said. "We've left open all possibilities and are trying to identify the hackers."

It took the banks hours to restore operations. Damage to the servers of the TV networks was believed to be more severe, although broadcasts were not affected.

About 32,000 computers at the six organizations were affected, according to the South's state-run Korea Internet Security Agency, adding it would take up to five days to fully restore their functions.

Earlier story: South Korea on alert after hackers strike banks, broadcasters

North Korea has in the past targeted South Korea's conservative newspapers, banks and government institutions.

The biggest hacking effort attributed to Pyongyang was a 10-day denial of service attack in 2011 that antivirus firm McAfee, part of Intel Corp, dubbed "Ten Days of Rain". It said that attack was a bid to probe the South's computer defenses in the event of a real conflict.

North Korea last week said it had been a victim of cyber attacks, blaming the United States and threatened retaliation.

?

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653387/s/29cf27d5/l/0Lworldnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A30C20A0C1739360A90Ecyber0Eattack0Eon0Esouth0Ekorea0Esaid0Eto0Ecome0Efrom0Echinese0Eaddress0Dlite/story01.htm

gary carter this means war bobby brown suzanne somers colbert colbert report legionnaires disease

Obama: Mideast peace possible but difficult

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) ? President Barack Obama says a Mideast peace with two independent states is still possible but says it is difficult to achieve.

Obama said politics in Palestinian territories and in Israel complicate the search for peace.

Obama spoke at a joint news conference in the West Bank Thursday with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-03-21-ML-Obama-Mideast-Peace/id-426138017ac347b2b213ba8cee875b8a

small business saturday small business saturday best cyber monday deals best cyber monday deals macaulay culkin Larry Hagman macys

House averts government shutdown, backs Ryan budget

By David Lawder

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives eliminated the threat of a government shutdown next week, approving on Thursday a stop-gap funding bill that temporarily eases partisan tensions after months of bitter fights over budgets.

In a rare show of cooperation, the Republican-controlled House voted 318-109 to approve legislation that keeps government agencies and programs funded through the end of the fiscal year on September 30.

The debate over how to reduce the deficit will now focus on rival budget plans for fiscal 2014, that begins October 1, put forward by Republicans and Democrats.

While the two parties' proposals are vastly different, lawmakers were encouraged by the bipartisan collaboration shown in avoiding a damaging government shutdown.

Both parties have been chastened by bruising budget fights like the "fiscal cliff" negotiations that went down to the wire in January, and the failure by Congress and the White House to halt the automatic spending cuts triggered on March 1.

"We proved that when we set our mind to it, we can get complicated, hard things done," said House Appropriations Committee chairman Harold Rogers, a Kentucky Republican.

The vote gives Congress some breathing room to argue over which party has the better budget vision, but another showdown looms this summer over raising the federal debt limit.

House Speaker John Boehner said he would use the next debt limit increase deadline - likely in late July or early August - to demand more spending cuts and major changes to the federal healthcare and retirement programs.

'DOLLAR FOR DOLLAR'

He wants any increase in the federal borrowing cap to be matched by an equal amount of spending cuts, setting up potential repeat of the 2011 debt limit brawl that cost the United States its top-tier credit rating.

"Dollar for dollar is the plan," Boehner told reporters after the House votes.

Republicans chose not to use the March 27 expiration of spending authority and a potential agency shutdown as a leverage point to demand more spending cuts. Instead, they want to wage a campaign for deficit reduction centered on proposals from House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

Shortly before approving the spending bill, the House backed a budget blueprint offered by Ryan to eliminate U.S. deficits within 10 years through deep cuts in healthcare and spending on other social safety net programs.

The funding bill for the rest of this fiscal year, which the Democratic-led Senate approved on Wednesday, keeps in place $85 billion in automatic spending cuts, known as the "sequester."

But it takes some of the sting out of those cuts by allowing the military and several domestic agencies to shift some money within their reduced budgets to higher priority activities.

The Defense Department, for example, will be able to shift to operations and maintenance some $10 billion that would otherwise be locked in outdated, unwanted budget accounts.

The House vote prompted the Pentagon to announce a two-week delay in any decisions on how much of its 800,000-strong civilian workforce would be put on unpaid leave due to its $46 billion share of the automatic cuts. Officials want to analyze the measure's impact.

The funding measure will now be sent to President Barack Obama to be signed into law.

COMPETING VISIONS

Ryan's budget, marked by repeal of President Barack Obama's health care reforms and deep spending cuts to Medicaid for the poor and other programs, will define Republicans' positions in the rest of this year's fiscal battles and in congressional elections in 2014.

It will be matched by a Democratic budget expected to be passed on Friday by the Senate. That plan, from Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray, calls for $1 trillion in additional tax revenues, $100 billion in new infrastructure and jobs spending and modest cuts to health care programs.

And during the week of on April 8, President Barack Obama will finally weigh in with his own budget request, two months after it was due. Some analysts suggest this could try to cut a middle path between the Democratic and Republican visions.

The House voted 221-207, largely along party lines, to approve Ryan's non-binding budget resolution, with all Democrats and 10 Republican conservatives opposing it.

The Ryan plan aims to drastically shrink deficits over the next decade and reach a small surplus by 2023 without raising any additional tax revenue.

Like previous budgets that solidified his position as the Republicans' fiscal guru and helped him become the party's vice presidential candidate last year, it proposes major changes to the Medicare health care program for the elderly.

This popular but increasingly expensive program would be converted to a voucher-like system of subsidies for seniors to buy private health insurance or coverage through the traditional Medicare program.

Democrats complained the Ryan plan will crush near-term economic growth for the sake of an arbitrary goal of reaching balance in 10 years.

CREATING JOBS

"It adopts the European-style austerity approach that we've seen slow down economies in many parts of Europe," said Democratic Representative Chris Van Hollen, the top Budget Committee Democrat. "We should instead be focusing on job growth and putting people back to work."

Ryan countered that his plan draws a deep contrast with Democrats, whom he says are not serious about taming the growing U.S. debt of $16.7 trillion.

"It reveals each side's priorities. It clarifies the divide that exists between us," Ryan said of his plan. "We want to balance the budget. They don't. We want to restrain spending, they want to spend more money."

The Democrats' budget plan envisions deficits in the $400-600 billion range through the next decade, but maintains that these will average 2.4 percent of U.S. economic output, a level many economists view as sustainable.

The Democrats' budget seeks $1 trillion in new tax revenues by sharply curbing tax breaks for the wealthy and proposes $100 billion in new spending on infrastructure and job training.

It aims to replace the automatic spending cuts, half with revenues and the rest with other cuts, and offers only modest, undefined spending reductions to healthcare, while keeping the structure of social safety net programs largely unchanged.

(Additional reporting by Rachelle Younglai; Editing by Alistair Bell, Tim Dobbyn and Todd Eastham)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/house-averts-government-shutdown-backs-ryan-budget-001830725--business.html

obama speech Art Modell Frank Ocean Gay bill clinton andy roddick Costa Rica Earthquake sandra fluke

New method developed to expand blood stem cells for bone marrow transplant

Mar. 21, 2013 ? More than 50,000 stem cell transplants are performed each year worldwide. A research team led by Weill Cornell Medical College investigators may have solved a major issue of expanding adult hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) outside the human body for clinical use in bone marrow transplantation -- a critical step towards producing a large supply of blood stem cells needed to restore a healthy blood system.

In the journal Blood, Weill Cornell researchers and collaborators from Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center describe how they engineered a protein to amplify adult HSCs once they were extracted from the bone marrow of a donor. The engineered protein maintains the expanded HSCs in a stem-like state -- meaning, they will not differentiate into specialized blood cell types before they are transplanted in the recipient's bone marrow.

Finding a bone marrow donor match is challenging and the number of bone marrow cells from a single harvest procedure are often not sufficient for a transplant. Additional rounds of bone marrow harvest and clinical applications to mobilize blood stem cells are often required.

However, an expansion of healthy HSCs in the lab would mean that fewer stem cells need to be retrieved from donors. It also suggests that adult blood stem cells could be frozen and banked for future expansion and use -- which is not currently possible.

"Our work demonstrates that we can overcome a major technical hurdle in the expansion of adult blood stem cells, making it possible, for the first time, to produce them on an industrial scale," says the study's senior investigator, Dr. Pengbo Zhou, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Weill Cornell.

If the technology by Weill Cornell passes future testing hurdles, Dr. Zhou believes bone marrow banks could take a place alongside blood banks.

"The immediate goal is for us to see if we can take fewer blood stem cells from a donor and expand them for transplant. That way more people may be more likely to donate," Dr. Zhou says. "If many people donate, then we can type the cells before we freeze and bank them, so that we will know all the immune characteristics. The hope is that when a patient needs a bone marrow transplant to treat cancer or another disease, we can find the cells that match, expand them and use them."

Eventually, individuals may choose to bank their own marrow for potential future use, Dr. Zhou says. "Not only are a person's own blood stem cells the best therapy for many blood cancers, but they may also be useful for other purposes, such as to slow aging."

A Scrambled Destruction Signal

Bone marrow is the home of HSCs that produce all blood cells, including all types of immune cells. One treatment for patients with blood cancers produced by abnormal blood cells is to remove the unhealthy marrow and transplant healthy blood stem cells from a donor. Patients with some cancers may also need a bone marrow transplant when anticancer treatments damage the blood. Bone marrow transplantation can also be used to treat other disorders, such as immune deficiency disorders.

The process of donating bone marrow, however, can be arduous and painful, requiring extraction of marrow with a needle from a large bone under general anesthesia. A donor may also need to undergo the procedure multiple times in order to provide enough stem cells for the recipient.

Because of these issues of extracting donor bone marrow, there have been a number of attempts to expand HSCs that have focused on the transcription factor HOXB4, which stimulates HSCs to make copies of themselves. "The more HOXB4 protein there is in stem cells, the more they will self-renew and expand their population," Dr. Zhou says.

But all previous efforts are limited in their applicability. HSCs are notoriously refractory to gene transfer. Virus-based vehicles are thus far the most efficient means to deliver therapeutic genes into HSCs in the laboratory setting. In the past, scientists used a virus as a vehicle to deliver a therapeutic gene into patients with severe combined immunodeficiency disease (SCID) to correct their immune deficiency. However, four children receiving SCID gene therapy developed treatment-related leukemia due to the inability to control where the virus inserts itself in the genome, often on the so-called "hot spots" that activate oncogenes or inactivate tumor suppressor genes. Also, other investigators have shown that it is possible to directly insert HOXB4 protein into extracted bone marrow stem cells. "All you do is add a little tag to the protein, which acts like a vehicle, driving the proteins through the cell membrane, directly into the nucleus," Dr. Zhou says. "But the half-life of the natural protein is very short -- about one hour. So that means that in order to expand blood stem cells, these HOXB4 proteins have to be added all the time. Because the proteins are very costly, this process is both expensive and impractical."

Dr. Zhou and his team, in collaboration with Dr. Malcolm A. S. Moore's group from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, took a different approach. They examined why HOXB4 protein doesn't last long in HSCs, once these cells are removed from the protective stem cell niche that they nest quietly in. They found that HOXB4 is targeted for degradation so that stem cells can start differentiating -- that is, turn into different kinds of adult blood cells. "HOXB4 prevents blood stem cells from differentiating, while, at the same time, allows them to renew themselves," Dr. Zhou says.

The researchers found that a protein, CUL4, is tasked with recognizing HOXB4 and tagging it for destruction by the cell's protein destruction apparatus. They discovered that CUL4 recognizes HOXB4 because it "sees" a set of four amino acids on the protein. "HOXB4 carries a destruction signal that CUL4 recognizes and acts on," Dr. Zhou says.

The research team engineered a synthetic HOXB4 protein with a scrambled destruction signal. They produced large quantities of the protein in bacteria, and then delivered the protein into human blood stem cells in the laboratory. "When you mask the CUL4 degradation signal, HOXB4's half-life expands for up to 10 hours," Dr. Zhou says. "The engineered HOXB4 did its job to expand the stem cell, while keeping all its stem cell properties intact. As a result, cells receiving the engineered HOXB4 demonstrated superior expansion capacity than those given natural HOXB4 protein. Animal studies demonstrated that the transplanted engineered human stem cells can retain their stem cell-like qualities in mouse bone marrow."

Dr. Zhou says the engineered protein HOXB4 can potentially be administered every 10 hours or so to make the quantity of blood stem cells necessary for patient transplant and for banking. "This is the ultimate goal for what we are trying to achieve," he says. "There are likely many roadblocks ahead to reach our goals, but we appear to have found ways to deal with one major hurdle of adult hematopoietic stem cell expansion."

Cornell Center for Technology Enterprise and Commercialization (CCTEC), on behalf of Cornell University, has filed a patent application that covers the work described here. Other co-authors include Dr. Jennifer Lee, Dr. Jianxuan Zhang, Dr. Liren Liu, Dr. Yue Zhang, and Dr. Jae Yong Eom from Weill Cornell Medical College; Dr. Giovanni Morrone from the University of Catanzaro "Magna Graecia," Catanzaro, Italy; and Dr. Jae-Hung Shieh from the Cell Biology Program, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

The study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (CA118085, CA098210 and NIHA12008023), the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Scholar Award and the Irma T. Hirschl Career Scientist Award.

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

---

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Weill Cornell Medical College.

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

---

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

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

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/uXU_eBShvYg/130321151923.htm

pekingese tcu football westminster bonnaroo 2012 lineup twisted metal sea lion si swimsuit

Learn to See Like an Artist

One of the best presents of art education, designer and educator Inge Druckrey says, is "to enjoy seeing. Suddenly you begin to see things in your daily life that you never noticed." In this acclaimed video, Inge explains how she teaches design students to see.

It's a long, 38-minute video (bookmark it if you don't have time now), but it contains many lessons on creativity, such as how limitations can be a structure for finding creative solutions and why just staring can help you see what's possible. It's also a beautifully made film.

Whether you're an aspiring artist or not, the video can teach you how to really look, notice and appreciate design details, and become more critical and curious in the process.

Teaching to See | via 99u

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/-JDPB3zrOJ4/learn-to-see-like-an-artist

football score ron paul nevada buffalo chicken dip super bowl 2012 soul train nevada caucus ufc 143

Jeff Bezos Has Rescued the Apollo 11 Rockets From the Ocean Floor

Ever since July 16, 1969, the rockets that pushed Apollo 11 into the atmosphere mankind to the moon have lain at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean. Jeff Bezos has been keen to get them back, and now, thanks to his hard work and vast fortune of book money, they're seeing the light of day for the first time in decades. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/rHW_LyXvowA/jeff-bezos-has-rescued-the-apollo-11-rockets-from-the-ocean-floor

nhl playoffs masters 2012 masters shroud of turin the borgias the masters warren sapp

Model allows engineers to test fuel systems on computers

Mar. 18, 2013 ? Engineers will be able to design better fuel systems for everything from motorcycles to rockets faster and more inexpensively because of a mathematical fuels model developed at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.

The fuels model will increase the pace of injector design for greater efficiency, better gas mileage and more horsepower in cars and trucks. But the beauty of this approach is that it works for all combustion processes and fuels, from mopeds to missiles and from gasoline, ethanol and diesel fuel to decane/hexadecane.

Instead of costly real-world modeling, which requires the design, machining and production of parts before they can be bench tested and performance modeled, the mathematical model lets designers test their ideas on computers first. The model also brings research into alternative fuels into the computer before it needs to be prototyped.

"That's the reason we are so excited about this research, is that it cuts down on the expense of the calculations to model fuel efficiency," said Dr. Chien-Pin Chen, chair of UAHuntsville's chemical engineering department, who along with graduate student Omid Samimi Abianeh wrote a research paper on the fuels model ("A discrete multicomponent fuel evaporation model with liquid turbulence effects," International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, Vol. 55, Issues 23-24, November 2012, Pages 6897-6907). Chemical engineering professor, Dr. Ramon Cerro (see also: "Batch disillation: The forward and Inverse Problems," Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., Vol. 51, 12435-12488, 2012) and Dr. Shankar Mahalingam, dean of the College of Engineering, are also involved in the research.

"If somebody wants to do a numerical diagram of an internal combustion engine -- and I'm a numbers guy? -- the first thing they need to study is the fuel," Dr. Chen said. But because fuel is a highly complex substance, a researcher would need a supercomputer to do that. Gasoline, for example, contains hundreds of substances with different evaporation rates and ignition points.

"So we designed a surrogate fuel with three components instead of hundreds," Dr. Chen said. "It performs the same but it is not as complex to study." While it can be created as a physical substance, in the model the fuel is represented mathematically. "That model is our contribution," he said, and it works across all fuels, from rocket fuel to common ethanol/gasoline mixtures and the new E85 ethanol fuels. Their research has been funded by NASA and Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative grants.

In modern engines, injectors spray fuel into the combustion chamber at precisely timed intervals for combustion. The size, composition, behavior, temperature and pressure of those droplets all determine how efficiently the fuel will perform, Dr. Chen said. The model can demonstrate how fuel droplets from different injector designs will behave as far as their evaporation characteristics and combustion efficiency in the combustion chamber. All fuel types are certified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and that was the database used to validate the research results, Dr. Chen said.

"We are already changing the injector designs," Dr. Chen said, adding that the fuels model allows engineers to better answer the question, "What is the best injector design to give you the best flame propagation?

The new model has led to additional research in fuel turbulence, the rich to lean swirl of fuel in a combustion chamber that provides for even flame propagation.

In car and truck engines, it is important that fuel burns and expands in a controlled fashion rather than exploding. Explosions cause detonation, that pinging or clunking sound drivers sometimes hear that leads to premature engine wear and failure.

To accomplish even propagation, modern gasoline engines are designed to layer the fuel so that it has a higher density in relation to the available air (a rich mixture) near the spark plug and swirls to a lower density (a lean mixture) near the top of the piston. The plug's spark can more easily start combustion in the rich fuel, and the leaner mix underneath is more efficiently burned. Injector nozzle design and placement in the chamber are both important to this process. This summer at a Korean conference, Dr. Chen will present a paper and discuss the research done at UAHuntsville on how the turbulent swirling process affects the fuel droplet evaporation process.

The UAHuntsville researchers are also working to develop a combustion flame propagation model that could bring that process, too, inside the computer first before real-world testing is undertaken and result in gains in efficiency. "We are studying the flame front and how they wrinkle as the fuel burns," said Dr. Chen, who plans to submit a proposal to the U.S. Dept. of Energy to further that study. The research could increase the efficiency of future combustion chamber designs.

"The long-term goal," Dr. Chen said, "is to find a way to burn fuel more efficiently for more power and cleaner combustion."

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

---

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Alabama Huntsville, via Newswise.

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

---

Journal Reference:

1. O. Samimi Abianeh, C.P. Chen. A discrete multicomponent fuel evaporation model with liquid turbulence effects. International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 2012; 55 (23-24): 6897 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2012.07.003

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/computers_math/information_technology/~3/i2b5Q-Ct8os/130318104735.htm

sugarland 16 and pregnant ludwig mies van der rohe jamie lynn sigler mega millions jackpot black panther party frank martin

China, US: Stop hacking accusations, says official

Terril Yue Jones , Reuters ? ? ? 9 hrs.

BEIJING ? China and the United States should avoid "groundless accusations" against each other about cyber security and hacking into each other's computer systems, newly installed Premier Li Keqiang said on Sunday.

Li's comments, at the close of China's annual meeting of parliament and a day after he assumed the premiership, come amid a war of words between Beijing and Washington over cyber attacks and national security.

A U.S. computer security company said last month that a secretive Chinese military unit was likely behind a series of hacking attacks mostly targeting the United States.

Responding to a reporter at a news conference, Li said he "sensed the presumption of guilt" in the question.

"I think we should not make groundless accusations against each other, and spend more time doing practical things that will contribute to cyber security," Li said.

"This is a worldwide problem. In fact, China itself is a main target of such attacks," he said. "China does not support, indeed we are opposed to, such activities."

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew will press China to investigate and stop cyber attacks on U.S. companies and other entities when he visit China this week, a senior U.S. official said on Friday.

President Barack Obama also raised U.S. concerns about computer hacking in a phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, the same day Xi took office.

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/china-us-should-stop-war-words-hacking-says-new-chinese-1C8912386

donovan mcnabb lottery ticket megga millions what is autism the giver march 30 rimm

Pope Francis connects with crowd after first window appearance

Breaking with tradition, Pope Francis delivered off-the-cuff remarks about God's power to forgive instead of reading from a written speech for the first Sunday window appearance of his papacy.

He also spoke only in Italian ? beginning with "buon giorno" (Good day) and ending with "buon pranzo" (Have a good lunch) ? instead of greeting the faithful in several languages as his last few predecessors had done.

His comments and humor delighted a crowd of more than 150,000 in St. Peter's Square, drawing cheers and laughter.

RECOMMENDED: Becoming Pope Francis

But Francis did tweet in English and other languages, saying: "Dear friends, I thank you from my heart and I ask you to continue to pray for me. "

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said it was likely Francis, at least for the moment, given the off-the-cuff style, was sticking with Italian, a language he's comfortable with. Lombardi left open the possibility that other languages would be used in the appearances with the public in the future.

In just five days, Francis' straightforward, spontaneous style has become immediate hallmark of his papacy.

Earlier Sunday, he made an impromptu appearance before the public from a side gate of the Vatican, startling passers-by and prompting cheers, before delivering a six minute homily ? brief by church standards ? at the Vatican's tiny parish church.

Before he entered St. Anna's church to celebrate Mass, he heartily shook hands with parishioners and kissed babies.

After Mass, Francis put his security detail to the test as he waded into the street just outside St. Anna's Gate. As the traffic light at the intersection turned green, Francis stepped up to the crowd, grasping outstretched hands. The atmosphere was so casual that several people even gripped Francis on the shoulder.

A few minutes later as the traffic light turned red, Francis ducked back inside the Vatican's boundaries to dash upstairs for the window appearance from the papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace.

The studio window was opened for the first time since Francis' predecessor, Benedict XVI, gave his last window blessing on Sunday, Feb. 24. Four days later, Benedict went into retirement, the first pontiff to do so in nearly 600 years.

The crowd was cheering wildly when the white curtain at the window of his apartment was parted, and Francis appeared, but fell into rapt silence when he began to speak. Some people's eyes welled up. Many people waving the blue-and-white flags of Argentine, the homeland of the world's first Latin American pope. Some people help their children aloft or on their shoulders to get a better look.

Said Ivana Cabello, 23, from Argentina: "We are so proud. He is Argentine, but also belongs to the rest of the world."

Angela Carreon, a 41-year-old Rome resident originally from the Philippines, estimated the crowd was twice as big as for Benedict's last appearance on Feb. 28.

"I think he looks like John Paul II. I hope he is like him," she said. "He has a heart."

Francis, the first pope from Latin America, was elected on March 13. He has been staying in a hotel on the Vatican's premises until the papal apartment in the palace is ready.

Hundreds of extra traffic police were deployed Sunday morning to control crowds and vehicles, for it was also the day of Rome's annual marathon.

Bus routes were rerouted and many streets were closed off in an attempt to channel the curious and faithful up the main boulevard from the Tiber river to St. Peter's square.

Giant video screens were set up so the huge crowd could get a close-up look at Francis, and dozens of medical teams were on hand for any emergencies.

After the Mass, the pope stepped out jauntily from St. Anna's Church and waved to a crowd of hundreds kept behind barriers across the street, and then greeted the Vatican parishioners one by one. One young man patted the pope on the back ? an indication of the informality that has been evident from the first moment of his papacy.

"Francesco! Francesco!" children shouted his name in Italian from the street. As he patted one little boy on the head, he asked "Are you a good boy?" and the child nodded.

"Are you sure?" the pope quipped.

In his homily, Francis said the core message of God is "that of mercy." He said God has an unfathomable capacity to pardon and noted that people are often harder on each other than God is toward sinners.

Edgardo Chapur, 42, an Argentine in Rome for first time, said it was very "emotional" to come to St. Peter's Square to listen to Francis.

"It's fantastic for us. I think it can change a lot of things in Argentina. It gives us hope," he said. "It has given us new strength."

RECOMMENDED: Becoming Pope Francis

Related stories

Read this story at csmonitor.com

Become a part of the Monitor community

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pope-francis-connects-crowd-first-window-appearance-132803139.html

Olympic Schedule 2012 NBC Olympics NBC Olympics schedule 2012 Olympics Chad Everett London Olympics Kristen Stewart Rupert Sanders Photos

China replaces Britain in world's top five arms exporters: report

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has become the world's fifth-largest arms exporter, a respected Sweden-based think tank said on Monday, its highest ranking since the Cold War, with Pakistan the main recipient.

China's volume of weapons exports between 2008 and 2012 rose 162 percent compared to the previous five year period, with its share of the global arms trade rising from 2 percent to 5 percent, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said.

China replaces Britain in the top five arms-dealing countries between 2008 and 2012, a group dominated by the United States and Russia, which accounted for 30 percent and 26 percent of weapons exports, SIPRI said.

"China is establishing itself as a significant arms supplier to a growing number of important recipient states," Paul Holtom, director of the SIPRI Arms Transfers Program, said in a statement.

The shift, outlined in SIPRI's Trends in International Arms Transfers report, marks China's first time as a top-five arms exporter since the think tank's 1986-1990 data period.

Now the world's second-largest economy, China's rise has come with a new sense of military assertiveness with a growing budget to develop modern warfare equipment including aircraft carriers and drones.

At the Zhuhai air show in southern China in November, Chinese attack helicopters, missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles and air defenses were on public show for the first time.

SIPRI maintains a global arms transfers database base that tracks arms exports back to the 1950s. It averages data over five-year periods because arms sales vary by year.

"Pakistan - which accounted for 55 percent of Chinese arms exports - is likely to remain the largest recipient of Chinese arms in the coming years due to large outstanding and planned orders for combat aircraft, submarines and frigates," SIPRI said.

Myanmar, which has been undergoing fragile reforms that the United States thinks could help counter Beijing's influence in the region, received 8 percent of China's weapons exports.

Bangladesh received 7 percent of the arms, and Algeria, Venezuela and Morocco have bought Chinese-made frigates, aircraft or armored vehicles in the past several years.

Beijing does not release official figures for arms sales.

Germany and France ranked third and fourth on the arms exporter list. China followed only India in the acquisition of arms, though its reliance on imports is decreasing as it ramps up weapons production capabilities at home.

After decades of steep increases in military spending and cash injections into domestic defense contractors, experts say some Chinese-made equipment is now comparable to Russian or Western counterparts, though accurate information about the performance of Chinese weapons is scarce.

China faces bans on Western military imports, dating back to anger over its crushing of pro-democracy protests in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989. That makes its domestic arms industry crucial in assembling a modern military force that can enforce claims over Taiwan and disputed maritime territories.

China has faced off recently with its Southeast Asian neighbors and Japan over conflicting claims to strings of islets in the South China Sea and East China Sea, even as the United States executes a military pivot towards the Pacific.

(Reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/china-replaces-britain-worlds-top-five-arms-exporters-003324632.html

read across america vikings stadium breitbart dead db cooper fafsa branson missouri davy jones dead

The Original "Legacy" Megazord Is Back, And Completely Awesome

Hell yes! The original Mighty Morphin' Megazord is back as a toy. This is everything you ever wanted 18 years ago and also probably right now, now that you remembered it. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/RgGBpcdYkww/the-original-legacy-megazord-is-back-and-completely-awesome

shepard fairey is snooki pregnant snooki pregnant gbc hedy lamarr kowloon walled city ronda rousey vs miesha tate

Mass strandings of pilot whales may not be driven by kinship, DNA profiles show

Mar. 14, 2013 ? Biologists since Aristotle have puzzled over the reasons for mass strandings of whales and dolphins, in which groups of up to several hundred individuals drive themselves up onto a beach, apparently intentionally. Recent genetic research has shed some light on whether family relationships play a role in these enigmatic and often fatal beachings of otherwise healthy whales.

One hypothesis regarding the reason for strandings is that "care-giving behavior," mediated largely by family relationships, plays a critical role. In this scenario, the stranding of one or a few whales, because of sickness or disorientation, triggers a chain reaction in which healthy individuals are drawn into the shallows in an effort to support their family members.

A recent study published in the Journal of Heredity questions this explanation, using genetic data to describe the kinship of individual long-finned pilot whales involved in mass strandings in New Zealand and Tasmania. The largest of these strandings included more than 150 whales, all of which died.

The study found that stranded groups are not necessarily members of one extended family, evidence that contradicts the hypothesis that stranding groups all descend from a single ancestral mother. Further, many stranded calves were found with no mother in evidence.

Long-finned pilot whales are the most common species to strand en masse and it has long been assumed this tendency was related to the species' social organization. Previous studies have shown that pilot whales have a matrilineal social organization, in which neither males nor females disperse from the group into which they were born. This group structure is also found in killer whales, but is otherwise thought to be rare in mammals.

"If kinship-based social dynamics were playing a critical role in these pilot whale strandings, first, we would expect to find that the individuals in a stranding event are, in fact, all related to each other. Second, we would expect that close relatives, especially mothers and calves, would be found in close proximity to each other when they end up on the beach during a stranding event," explained Marc Oremus of the University of Auckland and first author of the study.

Researchers analyzed both mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited exclusively from the mother, and microsatellite genotypes, which are inherited from both parents, from 490 whales involved in 12 stranding events. Contrary to the hypothesis that stranding groups consist of whales descended from a single ancestral mother (the "extended matriline" hypothesis), multiple matrilines were found in the groups stranded together.

In some strandings, the researchers assessed the spatial relationships of individual whales on the beach. The position of each stranded whale was mapped to determine if individuals found near each other were related. No correlation was found between location and kinship, even when considering only the location of nursing calves and their mothers, who were often widely separated when the group drove itself onto the shore.

Most surprising was the evidence of "missing mothers" -- that is, many of the stranded calves and juveniles had no identifiable mother among the other beached whales.

"Several scenarios could account for the lack of spatial cohesion, including the disruption of social bonds among kin before the actual strandings," commented Oremus. "In fact, the separation of related whales might actually be a contributing causal factor in the strandings, rather than simply a consequence."

The results of this study have important implications for rescue efforts aimed at "refloating" stranded whales. "Often, stranded calves are refloated with the nearest mature females, under the assumption that this is the mother," explained Scott Baker, co-author and Associate Director of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University. "Well-intentioned rescuers hope that refloating a mother and calf together will prevent re-stranding. Unfortunately, the nearest female might not be the mother of the calf. Our results caution against making rescue decisions based only on this assumption."

The researchers acknowledge an important remaining question: where are the "missing mothers?" Had these adult females successfully refloated or had they never stranded in the first place? To answer this question, the researchers conclude that genetic samples are needed from all whales involved in strandings, including from those individuals that do eventually make it back to sea.

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

---

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Genetic Association.

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

---

Journal Reference:

1. Marc Oremus, Rosemary Gales, Helen Kettles, and C. Scott Baker. Genetic Evidence of Multiple Matrilines and Spatial Disruption of Kinship Bonds in Mass Strandings of Long-finned Pilot Whales, Globicephala melas. Journal of Heredity, March 13, 2013 DOI: 10.1093/jhered/est007

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/top_news/top_environment/~3/3gY_H-GFRCs/130314124603.htm

flower delivery e cards kate upton sports illustrated outback chaka khan taylor swift safe and sound delilah