May 30, 2013 ? Ever wish that your car?s interior cabin could have separate audio zones for the front and rear seats? It soon may.
A new approach achieves independent listening zones within a car by using small, modified speakers to produce directional sound fields and a signal processing strategy that optimizes the audio signals used to drive each of the speakers. The new design will be presented at the 21st International Congress on Acoustics (ICA 2013), held June 2-7 in Montreal.
Today, car cabins often reverberate with the sounds of music, video soundtracks, navigation system instructions, telecommunications, and warning sounds. Problems arise, however, when occupants of the same car want to listen to different programs. The driver may require navigation system instructions and warning sounds, while the kids in the back seat want to watch a movie. Intergenerational audio conflict might be avoided, however, with a new type of car speaker system.
?We?ve begun developing an audio reproduction system capable of producing independent listening zones in the front and rear seats of a car cabin ? without the use of headphones,? says Jordan Cheer, Research Fellow in Active Control at the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research at the University of Southampton, UK. ?Our system uses standard car audio loudspeakers, which are usually mounted in the doors of the car, at low frequencies, and these are complemented by a set of small loudspeakers mounted to the headrests.?
?Our complete system is able to achieve a significant level of isolation between the front and rear seating positions to provide independent listening zones for the front and rear cabin occupants,? Cheer says.
The necessary degree of isolation between the two listening zones depends on the audio program, he explains. For example, if speech is being reproduced at the front seats and pop music is playing in the rear seats, a higher level of isolation is required than if pop music were playing in both zones.
Future work on the system will factor in the effect of the audio program selection on the required system performance. Based on this information, the researchers will continue to explore improvements to both loudspeaker configuration and digital signal processing.
Presentation 1aSP9, ?Design and implementation of a personal audio system in a car cabin,? is in the morning session on Monday, June 3. Abstract: http://asa.aip.org/web2/asa/abstracts/search.jun13/asa117.html
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MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE ICA 2013 MONTREAL
USEFUL LINKS:
Main meeting website: http://www.ica2013montreal.org/
Itinerary planner and technical program: http://acousticalsociety.org/meetings/ica-2013/
WORLD WIDE PRESS ROOM
ASA's World Wide Press Room (www.acoustics.org/press) will be updated with additional tips on dozens of newsworthy stories and with lay-language papers, which are 300-1200 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience and accompanied by photos, audio, and video.
PRESS REGISTRATION
We will grant free registration to credentialed journalists and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend, contact Jason Bardi (jbardi@aip.org, 240-535-4954), who can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.
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This news release was prepared for the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) by the American Institute of Physics (AIP).
ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world's leading journal on acoustics), Acoustics Today magazine, ECHOES newsletter, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. For more information about ASA, visit our website at http://www.acousticalsociety.org.
News emerged this week that the U.S. Army, which has been collecting biometric data of locals in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, is going to start storing that data in the cloud. Put simply, biometrics is the collection of personal, physical data using devices like retina scanners, and no matter what way you spin the situation, it's a potentially pretty creepy practice. (Do you want the government to take pictures of the inside of your eyeball?) But in a warzone, it seems downright dangerous. Doubly so in the cloud.
I am a member of the Collective Bias? Social Fabric? Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias and their client.
With hubby working long hours he rarely has the energy to do anything when he gets home, and by then its the girls bedtimes anyway.
This does frustrate me a lot as family time is important and the girls really need to spend more fun time with their dad. In fact we all need to spend some proper quality time together.
So when he recently had some unexpected time off from work, I was determined we were going to make use of our rare days and evenings together. ?I was also lucky to be asked to take part in a games night with Coca Cola and Collective Bias. Although Munchkin has never had a fizzy drink and shows no interest in them, I must admit I am a bit of an addict so I couldn't resist taking part.
So off we went to our local Tesco to get shopping for some snacks....and of course Coca Cola.
Munchkin trying to decide what chocolate to get here. You can see the whole of our shopping trip on my Google+ album.
As this was officially our first proper games night, I allowed the snacks to be treats, I don't usually let Munchkin have chocolate, crisps and cake in the evening; it won't do any harm as a one off.
I didn't want the games night to be about the Wii (which is what Munchkin wanted) but family time with board games. Munchkin has quite a few board games, so we asked her to pick some of the ones she wanted to play and bring them from her room.
These are the ones she picked.
Snakes and Ladders is a classic so we started off with that. We love how simple it is to play, but also aids with counting. However, we we weren't happy when her dad kept winning!!
Munchkin really enjoyed her special evening in playing games, as she got to spend some quality time with her dad. We are determined now to make the effort and make this a regular thing.
Oh and not to forget Bee; although she couldn't play she was in the midst of the games with her own special snacks.
CHICAGO (AP) ? When the Chicago Blackhawks were on the brink of playoff elimination, they had the feeling that all they needed was one win to turn it around.
They were right.
Brent Seabrook sent a wrist shot past Jimmy Howard's glove 3:35 into overtime, and the Blackhawks completed an improbable comeback with a 2-1 victory over the Red Wings in Game 7 of their second-round playoff series on Wednesday night.
"You go back to after Game 4," coach Joel Quenneville said. "Their approach and the belief in the room, and each other, was there. It was a strong season and we had to find a way. I think winning here in Game 5 got us excited again and got the momentum back.
"The last two games were tightly fought and amazing games."
The Blackhawks, who had the best record in the NHL regular season, rallied from a 3-1 series deficit to reach the Western Conference finals against the defending Stanley Cup champion Los Angeles Kings.
For just the second time in NHL history, the final four teams remaining in the playoffs are the four most recent Stanley Cup winners. Chicago captured the Cup in 2010.
Seabrook picked up a loose puck and skated in on Howard through the middle of the ice, with Detroit defenseman Niklas Kronwall in front of him. His shot hit Kronwall's leg before it sailed into the left side of the net for the defenseman's first goal of the postseason.
"I don't know if I saw it go in to be honest," Seabrook said. "I just heard the horn going and the boys jumping out. It was a pretty exhausting game, but I think I was more tired during the celebration with guys jumping and pushing me in the face and dragging me down.
"It's exciting. You don't get to do that too many times."
The sellout crowd of 22,103 roared as Seabrook skated over to the boards and was mobbed by his delirious teammates.
Howard put his arm around Kronwall, who was down on one knee, and tried to console him while the Blackhawks celebrated.
"It's tough. How do you get upset at someone who's sacrificing their body out there to block shots?" Howard said. "Kroner has been huge for us all year and you know, he doesn't deserve that luck."
It was quite a change from the end of the third period, when the Blackhawks thought they had scored the go-ahead goal. But it was waved off with less than 2 minutes remaining by referee Stephen Walkom, who called a pair of penalties behind the play.
Patrick Sharp put Chicago in front in the second period, but Henrik Zetterberg tied it in the third for No. 7 Detroit, which beat second-seeded Anaheim in seven games in the first round. Howard finished with 33 saves.
"They're a very talented group," Detroit coach Mike Babcock said. "I think we pushed them very hard in the series and had a lot of fun doing it."
Chicago made it to the conference finals for the first time since it won the title three years ago and will host Los Angeles in Game 1 on Saturday. The Kings advanced with a 2-1 victory over San Jose in Game 7 on Tuesday night.
Pittsburgh will host Boston in the opener of the Eastern finals on Saturday.
Chicago was one of the favorites to win the Stanley Cup when the playoffs began, storming to the Presidents' Trophy during the lockout-shortened season. The Blackhawks then boosted their credentials with a five-game win over Minnesota in the first round and a convincing 4-1 victory against the Red Wings in the series opener.
But Howard and Detroit responded with three straight victories, pushing Chicago to the edge of elimination. The frustrated Blackhawks held a team meeting the day after Game 4, where the seeds were planted for their improbable comeback.
Three victories later ? in which the Blackhawks outscored the Red Wings 10-5 after managing just two goals in Games 2-4 ? they became the 25th team to win a series after trailing 3-1. It was the first time in franchise history Chicago has made such a comeback.
"We dug really deep," captain Jonathan Toews said. "We came in here and asked ourselves a question: How bad we wanted it. You got your answer right there. That's a heck of a way to pull out four wins in seven games."
Crawford finished with 26 saves, continuing his strong performance after allowing a soft goal that nearly proved costly in Game 6. He was especially tough after Detroit turned up the pressure early in the third.
The Blackhawks celebrated wildly when Niklas Hjalmarsson blasted a slap shot by Howard with 1:47 left in regulation, prompting cheers from the raucous crowd.
But Chicago forward Brandon Saad and Detroit defenseman Kyle Quincey got tangled up in front of the Red Wings bench. Walkom stopped play to give roughing penalties to both players as the Blackhawks went in for what appeared to be the go-ahead goal.
"It was getting to the point where he had to call the penalty, I guess. We were going back and forth," Quincey said. "I guess it worked in our favor there."
Toews had a long discussion with one of the officials while the cheers turned to boos as the crowd realized the goal was waved off. The Red Wings then rushed down the ice, and Johan Franzen's shot was blocked by defenseman Duncan Keith.
After a seesaw series with all sorts of twists and turns, Chicago and Detroit faced off one more time in a Western Conference playoff game. The Red Wings will move to the East after this season as part of NHL realignment while the Blackhawks remain in the West.
Playing on soft ice due in part to The Rolling Stones concert on Tuesday night, the Original Six teams provided a fitting conclusion to a compelling series.
"You have to give the Red Wings credit," Sharp said. "They're a well-coached team, they keep coming at you. Each game could have gone the other way. But we have to be proud of ourselves in this locker room for being able to battle back."
The Blackhawks got an opening at the start of the second period when Sharp got Kronwall to turn the puck over while the Red Wings changed lines. Sharp then skated in with Michal Handzus and Marian Hossa and finished a pretty passing sequence with his seventh goal of the playoffs at 1:08.
The Red Wings tied it at the beginning of the third. Gustav Nyquist made a nice move to get open along the boards and found a streaking Zetterberg on the left side for the captain's first goal since the Red Wings' 3-2 victory at Anaheim in Game 7 of the first round.
"To go all the way, you need a lot of luck," Detroit forward Daniel Cleary said. "You need to be healthy to win. The last five teams that won Cups were still alive. There's probably a reason for that. They're a good team. I mean, tip your hat to them. They played well."
NOTES: Detroit C Valtteri Filppula didn't return after leaving in the first period with an undisclosed lower body injury. ... It was the third Game 7 between the Red Wings and Blackhawks. Detroit won 4-2 in 1964, and Chicago returned the favor by the same score a year later. ... White Sox 1B Paul Konerko won his matchup with Cubs RHP Jeff Samardzija in shoot the puck after the second period. Former Bulls star Scottie Pippen and Chicago Bears cornerback Charles Tillman both received warm ovations when they were shown on the video board.
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Jay Cohen can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/jcohenap
StartX, the startup accelerator for companies founded by Stanford students, is just about to kick off Demo Day for its Summer 2013 startup class at AOL's Silicon Valley headquarters in Palo Alto this evening. The non-profit StartX program, which was launched in 2010 as SSE Labs, aims to provide Stanford students with entrepreneurial ambitions the tools and connections they need to bridge the gap between dreaming of a concept and creating a real company. This evening at Demo Day, 10 companies are making their debuts, while five StartX alums will be returning to provide updates on their companies' progress.
Pavlof Volcano has been erupting for over a week, releasing a humongous plume of ash, steam, and smoke visible from the International Space Station. The eruption has quieted down, but seismic data suggests that it's not over.
By Liz Fuller-Wright,?Correspondent / May 24, 2013
Space station astronauts captured this picture of Pavlof Volcano on Saturday.
Courtesy of the ISS Expedition 36 crew / NASA
Enlarge
Astronauts on the International Space Station?captured jaw-dropping pictures of a volcanic eruption last Saturday. Since then, the volcano has been hidden from sight, shrouded in thick clouds.
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Pavlof Volcano has been belching ash and spewing lava since May 13, when tremors and rising surface temperatures gave way to fountains of molten rock bursting from the volcano's north flank.
When that lava hit ice and snow, it created explosive steam clouds that could be seen for dozens of miles ? and photographed from space. The steam, ash, and gas plumes have climbed over 20,000 feet into the sky, and left a grey streak stretching for a hundred miles.
Prior to last week, Pavlof hadn't erupted since 2007.
Is it over?
Pavlof has been playing it cool for the past few days, reports the Alaska Volcano Observatory, which celebrated its 25th?anniversary last month.
Though the ash eruptions have disrupted local air travel, the violence seems to have subsided for now, with a more relaxed release of ash and lava continuing steadily. Even through the clouds hiding Pavlof from sight, satellites can measure high surface temperatures indicating that the lava is still flowing.
After about a week of steady seismic rumbles,?the shaking calmed down on Tuesday morning and hasn't restarted, though a huge seismic blast this morning suggests that Pavlof had another volcanic explosion ? but through the clouds, it's hard to know just what or where.
The scientists at Alaska Volcano Observatory have the volcano threat level set at "Watch," which is one step down from the highest level, "Warning." But they caution that massive explosions ? like the one that created that giant, 20,000-foot plume ? can occur without warning.
The Aleutian Islands are sparsely enough settled that the primary hazard from volcanoes like Pavlof is that airborne ash could endanger planes flying between North America and Asia. In fact, in 1989, a wide-body passenger jet encountered an ash plume from Redoubt, another Alaska volcano, and lost power in all four engines.?Fortunately for the passengers, after the plane plummeted two miles in five minutes, the crew restarted the engines and landed safely in Anchorage, about a hundred miles away.
Why did Pavlof erupt?
Like the rest of the Aleutian Islands (and, for that matter, the Cascades), Pavlof sits on the boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American plate. When the dense ocean floor runs into the less-dense continental crust, its weight pulls it down into the mantle, where the heat and pressures make it start to melt.
When rock melts, magma forms ? and when magma reaches the earth's surface, it erupts as lava. The more water or gases were trapped in the magma, the more explosive the eruption will be.
Though scientists know exactly how volcanoes form, volcanologists can't yet predict eruptions. But they've made huge strides, thanks to regular monitoring of hundreds of active volcanoes around the world.
Volcano monitoring became a political punching bag in 2009, after Louisiana's Gov. Bobby Jindal highlighted it as "wasteful spending" in the Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union address. "Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in?Washington, D.C.," said Mr. Jindal. The eruption of Redoubt Volcano a month later ? the same volcano that had nearly crashed a passenger jet in 1989 ? was seen by some as a definitive response, but video monitoring shrunk in recent years due to budget pressures and the sequester.
Alaska's 52 active volcanoes once had 200 working seismic instruments. Now 80 of those instruments have fallen into disrepair and can?t be fixed because of the USGS budget cuts, the Associated Press reported last week. That means that five of Alaska's 52 active volcanoes aren?t monitored electronically at all, and the number could rise if more instruments go without maintenance.
Amanda Bynes was not touched inappropriately during her Thursday arrest, contrary to claims the actress made on Twitter, the New York Police Department said in a statement Tuesday.
?Internal Affairs investigators have found no evidence to corroborate Ms. Bynes? allegations,? the department said in a statement. ?To the contrary, a credible civilian witness who was with the officers throughout told investigators that none touched Ms. Bynes inappropriately or otherwise engaged in misconduct at any time.?
Bynes was arrested Thursday after police were called to her New York apartment after reports that she was smoking marijuana in the lobby. She reportedly later threw a bong out the 36th floor window of her apartment. Bynes has said the item was "just a vase" and her attorney pointed out in court that no bong was found.
In a tweet sent on Saturday, Bynes accused responding police of sexually touching her, saying one "slapped my vagina."
Bynes was taken into custody and released Friday morning. She is due to return to court in July.
South Barrington homes are a magnet for luxury home buyers. The location is good, close to I-90 and Route 59. There are more luxury homes here and the typical cost of properties is higher than any other Barrington area. However I see a disconnect and I am not sure what can be done about it. We are talking about what a buyer wants and what?s available in terms of age of house.
Having worked with several buyers recently looking to buy in South Barrington it?s a fair statement to make that many of them looking above the $1 Million price tag are looking for homes that are either new or fairly new. New construction in South Barrington is very limited and before long likely will not exist at all. There is not a lot of land left that can be developed, and for now builders are not rushing to build spec homes for fear of not being able to sell them. Not many buyers are willing to buy a home from a rendition of what it might look like, they just don?t have the imagination.
The price ranch of $1 Million to $1.5 million will buy a home of about 5,000 square feet and this seems to be a target price and size for many of the buyers. It?s a fair statement that a buyer who wants to spend that amount of money and have a new home, would not get the size they want. There are limited ?homes in this price range in South Barrington but due to the age the buyers are having a hard time committing to buy them.
View all available South Barrington Homes Priced $1,000,000 to $1,500,000
How can this disconnect be resolved?
South Barrington home buyers can wait the market for as long as they want until a house that is younger in age hits the market but who knows how long they?ll have to wait. They should also know they have competition. To think you are the only person looking for a younger house in South Barrington and make an offer based on that thought, will likely mean your offer will be trumped by someone else.
Dare I say look elsewhere? Likely not because South Barrington is known to be the best in 60010 for the luxury properties and location here is king!
Low ball offers until you score? Again this rarely works. Listing agents don?t just pluck numbers from the sky when they advise sellers what homes should sell for. We look at comparable sales. So sellers are not going to give in and sell because you try to get a cheap house. Knowing the market is more than knowing a price, it?s also about knowing market action, average market times, your competition.
Watch the mortgage interest rates. Absolutely. There has never been a time to get jumbo mortgages at such a low rate. Even this week we have seen the rates rise and this might affect your monthly outgoings more than you think. Lower payments could provide you the money you need to upgrade or change a house to be what you want it to be.
South Barrington home sellers cannot change the age of their homes but it might be worth updating the property to make it appeal to those buyers. Kitchens and bathrooms sell houses but windows, roofs and driveways are also big ticket items that buyers look at.
Either way there?s no way of making South Barrington?s housing stock any younger, buyers cannot tag older kitchens or windows as worthless, ?and something will have to give. With mortgage rates on the rise buyers may have to grasp hold of the fact that they cannot get all that they desire and take the plunge before prices start to rise. These limited choices are fully functioning and quite frankly beautiful homes,so why not update them over time. Sometimes you have to give to get, and an older kitchen in a superb waterfront location is an example.
Waterfront homes in South Barrington.
Categories: Buying Homes, South Barrington Market Reports
Trader Gregory Rowe on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Tuesday, May 28, 2013. A jump in home prices is helping send the stock market sharply higher in early trading. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Trader Gregory Rowe on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Tuesday, May 28, 2013. A jump in home prices is helping send the stock market sharply higher in early trading. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Americans are more confident in the U.S. economy than at any point in the past five years, thanks to surging home values, a brighter job market and record-setting stock prices.
Stock averages on Tuesday extended the year's explosive rally.
Further gains in consumer confidence could help the economy withstand the effects of higher taxes and federal spending cuts that kicked in this year. Spending by consumers drives about 70 percent of economic growth.
Consumer confidence jumped in May to 76.2, the Conference Board, a private research group, said Tuesday. That was up from a reading of 69 in April and is the highest level of confidence since February 2008, two months after the Great Recession officially began.
A separate report Tuesday showed that U.S. home prices jumped 11 percent in March compared with a year ago, the sharpest 12-month increase since April 2006. Prices rose year over year in all 20 cities in the Standard & Poor's/Case Shiller home price index.
The reports helped fuel a rally on Wall Street. Traders were also encouraged by gains in overseas markets, especially in Japan and Europe.
The Dow Jones industrial average was up about 112 points in late-afternoon trading. Broader stock indexes also rose. The Dow has rocketed 18 percent this year.
Surging stock prices and steady home-price increases have allowed Americans to regain the $16 trillion in wealth they lost to the Great Recession. Higher wealth tends to embolden people to spend more. Some economists have said the increase in home prices alone could boost consumer spending enough to offset a Social Security tax increase that's reduced paychecks for most Americans this year.
Thomas Feltmate, an economist with TD Economics, says cheaper gas has also helped consumers shrug off the higher Social Security tax.
And the Conference Board survey said consumers are also more optimistic about the next six months. That should translate into greater consumer spending, substantial growth in hiring and faster economic growth in the second half of 2013, Feltmate said.
Michael Quintos, head of a Chicago advertising agency that helps small businesses market through social media, sees more optimism at work and among friends and relatives.
"A year ago, I had more friends asking me if I knew anybody who was hiring," says Quintos, 44. "Now, I have more people who are hiring asking me if I know anyone looking for a job."
At work, Quintos is finding it easier to land customers. In the past couple of months, businesses that have asked about his services have been more likely to follow through and hire him. A year ago, most were wary.
"I've had more work than I can handle," Quintos says. As a result, his firm hired a web designer last week.
The Conference Board found that optimism is growing mostly among higher-income earners. For Americans earning $50,000 or more, the confidence index jumped to 95.1 from 85.3. Among most other income groups, confidence either rose more slowly or fell.
Economists said that disparity points to the rapid gain in stock prices, which mostly benefits wealthier Americans.
Still spending and economic growth could benefit. Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James, notes that the top 20 percent of U.S. earners account for about half of all spending.
The economy has added an average of 208,000 jobs a month since November. That's well above the monthly average of 138,000 during the previous six months. The job growth has helped reduce the unemployment rate to a four-year low of 7.5 percent.
Some of the decline in unemployment is due to fewer people looking for work. The government counts people as unemployed only if they're actively searching for a job.
The economy grew at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in the January-March quarter, up from a rate of just 0.4 percent in the October-December quarter. The fastest expansion in consumer spending in more than two years drove the economy's growth.
Many economists think growth is slowing slightly in the April-June quarter to an annual rate between 2 percent and 2.5 percent. But many analysts say growth should strengthen in the second half of this year, boosted by the gains in housing and employment.
A key reason the Case Shiller index of home prices jumped in March was that a growing number of buyers were bidding on a tight supply of homes.
Prices rose in Phoenix by 22.5 percent over the past 12 months, the biggest gain among cities. It was followed by San Francisco (22.2 percent) and Las Vegas (20.6 percent).
"Rising home prices may begin to alleviate a lack of housing inventory ... by encouraging more homeowners to put their properties on the market," Maninder Sibia, an economist with Economic Advisory Service, said in a research note. "The housing market is clearly improving."
Builders are responding to the supply shortage by ramping up construction. Applications for building permits rose in April to the highest level in nearly five years. The supply of available homes jumped in April but was still 14 percent below its level a year earlier.
Stan Humphries, chief economist at Zillow, a real estate data provider, says the increase in the Case-Shiller index has been skewed higher by cities such as Phoenix and San Francisco. Fewer homes are available in those areas because many homeowners still owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. That makes it difficult to sell.
Yet even excluding those markets, prices are rising steadily nationwide, Humphries said. The increases are "certainly confirmation that the housing market is experiencing a brisk recovery," he adds.
Rising prices typically encourage more would-be buyers to purchase homes before prices rise further. They also enable more homeowners to sell homes by reducing the number of people who owe more on their mortgages than the homes are worth.
Prices have been rising steadily since last summer. Still, they're about 29 percent below the peak reached in July 2006.
Banks have raised their credit standards since the housing bubble burst and are demanding larger down payments. That's made it hard for some potential first-time buyers to get a mortgage.
One potential obstacle to further economic gains is that workers' pay is rising only modestly. Without faster growth in pay, some consumers may be reluctant to keep spending more.
"If you don't think your income is going up, you will not be exuberant in your spending," notes Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors.
Stronger hiring, though, would enable more people to spend freely. Naroff expects the pace of job creation to average between 175,000 and 200,000 a month for the rest of the year.
At that rate, the Federal Reserve might be inclined to slow its aggressive bond purchases ? $85 billion a month in Treasury and mortgage bonds. The bond purchases have been intended to drive down long-term loan rates to encourage borrowing and spending.
Super-low rates have also helped fuel the stock rally. Still, some investors have grown nervous that that Fed may soon start to curtail its pace of bond purchases and that rates could creep up.
May 28, 2013 ? UCLA researchers now have the first evidence that bacteria ingested in food can affect brain function in humans. In an early proof-of-concept study of healthy women, they found that women who regularly consumed beneficial bacteria known as probiotics through yogurt showed altered brain function, both while in a resting state and in response to an emotion-recognition task.
The study, conducted by scientists with UCLA's Gail and Gerald Oppenheimer Family Center for Neurobiology of Stress and the Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center at UCLA, appears in the June edition of the peer-reviewed journal Gastroenterology.
The discovery that changing the bacterial environment, or microbiota, in the gut can affect the brain carries significant implications for future research that could point the way toward dietary or drug interventions to improve brain function, the researchers said.
"Many of us have a container of yogurt in our refrigerator that we may eat for enjoyment, for calcium or because we think it might help our health in other ways," said Dr. Kirsten Tillisch, an associate professor of medicine at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine and lead author of the study. "Our findings indicate that some of the contents of yogurt may actually change the way our brain responds to the environment. When we consider the implications of this work, the old sayings 'you are what you eat' and 'gut feelings' take on new meaning."
Researchers have known that the brain sends signals to the gut, which is why stress and other emotions can contribute to gastrointestinal symptoms. This study shows what has been suspected but until now had been proved only in animal studies: that signals travel the opposite way as well.
"Time and time again, we hear from patients that they never felt depressed or anxious until they started experiencing problems with their gut," Tillisch said. "Our study shows that the gut-brain connection is a two-way street." ? The small study involved 36 women between the ages of 18 and 55. Researchers divided the women into three groups: one group ate a specific yogurt containing a mix of several probiotics -- bacteria thought to have a positive effect on the intestines -- twice a day for four weeks; another group consumed a dairy product that looked and tasted like the yogurt but contained no probiotics; and a third group ate no product at all.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans conducted both before and after the four-week study period looked at the women's brains in a state of rest and in response to an emotion-recognition task in which they viewed a series of pictures of people with angry or frightened faces and matched them to other faces showing the same emotions. This task, designed to measure the engagement of affective and cognitive brain regions in response to a visual stimulus, was chosen because previous research in animals had linked changes in gut flora to changes in affective behaviors.
The researchers found that, compared with the women who didn't consume the probiotic yogurt, those who did showed a decrease in activity in both the insula -- which processes and integrates internal body sensations, like those form the gut -- and the somatosensory cortex during the emotional reactivity task.
Further, in response to the task, these women had a decrease in the engagement of a widespread network in the brain that includes emotion-, cognition- and sensory-related areas. The women in the other two groups showed a stable or increased activity in this network.
During the resting brain scan, the women consuming probiotics showed greater connectivity between a key brainstem region known as the periaqueductal grey and cognition-associated areas of the prefrontal cortex. The women who ate no product at all, on the other hand, showed greater connectivity of the periaqueductal grey to emotion- and sensation-related regions, while the group consuming the non-probiotic dairy product showed results in between.
The researchers were surprised to find that the brain effects could be seen in many areas, including those involved in sensory processing and not merely those associated with emotion, Tillisch said.
The knowledge that signals are sent from the intestine to the brain and that they can be modulated by a dietary change is likely to lead to an expansion of research aimed at finding new strategies to prevent or treat digestive, mental and neurological disorders, said Dr. Emeran Mayer, a professor of medicine, physiology and psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the study's senior author.
"There are studies showing that what we eat can alter the composition and products of the gut flora -- in particular, that people with high-vegetable, fiber-based diets have a different composition of their microbiota, or gut environment, than people who eat the more typical
Western diet that is high in fat and carbohydrates," Mayer said. "Now we know that this has an effect not only on the metabolism but also affects brain function."
The UCLA researchers are seeking to pinpoint particular chemicals produced by gut bacteria that may be triggering the signals to the brain. They also plan to study whether people with gastrointestinal symptoms such as bloating, abdominal pain and altered bowel movements have improvements in their digestive symptoms which correlate with changes in brain response.
Meanwhile, Mayer notes that other researchers are studying the potential benefits of certain probiotics in yogurts on mood symptoms such as anxiety. He said that other nutritional strategies may also be found to be beneficial.
By demonstrating the brain effects of probiotics, the study also raises the question of whether repeated courses of antibiotics can affect the brain, as some have speculated. Antibiotics are used extensively in neonatal intensive care units and in childhood respiratory tract infections, and such suppression of the normal microbiota may have longterm consequences on brain development.
Finally, as the complexity of the gut flora and its effect on the brain is better understood, researchers may find ways to manipulate the intestinal contents to treat chronic pain conditions or other brain related diseases, including, potentially, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and autism.
Answers will be easier to come by in the near future as the declining cost of profiling a person's microbiota renders such tests more routine, Mayer said.
The study was funded by Danone Research. Mayer has served on the company's scientific advisory board. Three of the study authors (Denis Guyonnet, Sophie Legrain-Raspaud and Beatrice Trotin) are employed by Danone Research and were involved in the planning and execution of the study (providing the products) but had no role in the analysis or interpretation of the results.
Memorial Day, like Veteran's Day, always brings conflicted thoughts and emotions. Here are some of them, spurred by some recent books and other reports. Americans have a longtime romance with war movies, books and stories, but these are a little different.
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.
- President/General Dwight D. Eisenhower
My father worked the "industrial" side of what Eisenhower famously called the military-industrial complex. He ran a division of a major automobile corporation that made weaponry, or parts thereof, for the military. After he died, we found a letter addressed to him from a senior general he worked with. The letter said (paraphrasing; I've misplaced it): "It has come to our attention that you have brought in a major project under budget and before deadline. Please don't ever do that again, as it makes us all look bad." The letter was a joke among old pals, but belied a major problem -- these old military cronies (my father was a Navy man, and stayed involved the rest of his life) were used to going way over budget in their use of tax dollars to fund "defense" or, in the case of Vietnam at the time, offense. It was an offhand insiders' joke among good old Cold Warriors -- who didn't seem to worry that their practices came at the expense of taxpayers' funds and probably human lives.
This old letter came to mind as I read of the current national budgetary debates, much of which has focused on the military. I'm no expert in this realm, but have found some recent books to be illuminating about our nation's military history, and how it has shaped and warped our economy and policy. Start with this fact: The U.S. spends more on "defense" than all other nations combined, but still we have lost and/or blundered most every war we've entered in the past half century. Now read on....
The first book is National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism by Melvin A. Goodman. Goodman, who spent 24 years with the CIA, provides an incisive insider's examination of what he calls our "military economy," and how outsized "defense" spending and profiteering results in much more "offense" than might otherwise be conducted or justified. The result is untold suffering and, in some cases, belated apologies. With a focus on the most recent such "adventures" in Iraq and Afghanistan, Goodman summarizes much of what any impartial informed view of these wars, especially the Iraq disaster, must conclude -- they have been a "monumental blunder," as former New York Times editor Bill Keller, a former supporter, had to conclude from the evidence a decade into the war.
Beyond the economic near-disaster brought to our own country, our national reputation was stained by our use of torture, which has again been confirmed by a recent bipartisan task force that concluded that such practices "had "no justification" and "damaged the standing of our nation, reduced our capacity to convey moral censure when necessary and potentially increased the danger to U.S. military personnel taken captive."
Further, we have provided oft-shameful care of veterans, and are now seeing a shameful scandal unfold regarding sexual abuse among our own soldiers.
It thus should not be so surprising to read of the tragic frequency of suicides among those we send to war (on this latter tragic point, a recent letter in the New York Times by Sandy Savett offered this terse prescription: "A good way to cut down on suicides in the military is to stop sending young people to war").
The second book is Nick Turse's Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. The Vietnam War has been examined enough, with enough apology even by those who conducted it -- see Robert McNamara's belated mea culpa -- that one might think there was nothing left to tell or lament. But Turse provides a catalog of atrocities so pervasive and inexcusable that this reader will never be able to feel unreservedly proud of our nation again, and never feel wholly justified in criticizing another. Our military in this war was as bad as any in history. America committed genocide there -- and not for the first time.
The third book, also centered on the Vietnam War, is Napalm: An American Biography by Robert Neer. This one reads like a case study of arms development, with the product being deployed without discretion or mercy, in the name of victory but also profit. Countless humans -- and, I can't help but add, other creatures -- suffered and died horribly from napalm's use. True to form and too late for them, the United Nations called the use of napalm against civilians a war crime in 1980. Also true to form, our own nation admitted to that global consensus just a few years ago.
Napalm's most visible and infamous victim was Kim Phuc, a nine-year-old girl photgraphed running down a road in agony. In Neer's book, she now relates that she has been in physical pain ever since, but that for decades the psychic pain was even worse. She lived in anger and hatred of Americans, and "I had cursed them to death." But after finding foregiveness, "I feel there are no more scars on my heart." It's a beautiful redemption; but her struggle did not have to happen in the first place.
The final book is What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France by Mary Louise Roberts. World War II was the one "good war," supposedly, where "the greatest generation" were unequivocal heroes. Well, read this book and learn how many of our soldiers acted simiarly to the hated Japanese and Germans, raping and abusing the very people they had just "liberated" -- with the acquiescence and even encouragement of their leaders. As the title says, maybe that's just what soldiers do -- history would seem to tell us so.
Currently there are budgetary debates about how much we might be able to cut "defense" spending. The argument becomes partisan, with "conservatives" arguing that this is the one area where we need to spend as much as we currently do -- or more. Somehow, as even a Republican politician has lamented, "Conservatism came to mean 'I deserve to drive my SUV as much as I want and will send other people's kids to fight for that right.'" But increasingly, even self-identified conservatives are joining Eisenhower in seeing the folly of our being "seduced by war" -- and that "support our troops" is an empty slogan when that just means a bumper sticker. How about cutting expenses on unneeded weaponry and bases, and spending that on better services for veterans -- and others? There are many opportunity costs to us being the biggest military power of all time. Even a relatively small percentage cut in military spending could fund so much in terms of human services, and many experts feel it could be done with no loss in terms of our national security. Goodman, in his book, offers expert advice on how this might be attained.
Now, I'm very aware of George Orwell's famed statement that "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." The majority of soldiers likely go to war, at least at first, due to loyalty and even idealism (although it must also be noted that enlistment in a no-draft military is often, even mostly, driven by economic need). I've no illusions that the world can be dangerous and I'm glad I live in a relatively safe, and even relatively dominant, nation. I even admit to "interventionist" urges when I read of, say, Syria's President Bashar al-Assad using language from his medical background to justify his regime's slaughter ("When a surgeon in an operating room ... cuts and cleans and amputates, and the wound bleeds, do we say to him your hands are stained with blood?"). That makes me wish we could somehow remove him from power, and save lives at a minimum.
But there is such a thing as overkill -- literally. It's said that everything looks like a nail if you're holding a hammer; the United States has long had many more "hammers" than it needs. We need to scale it back, and maybe these books and other viewpoints, even though they might not be entirely new, indicate a growing awareness of that. I consider myself a patriot, but blind patriotism is really meaningless; "my country, right or wrong" is the slogan of the blind. We can both honor those who have sacrificed and do much better. Even my hawkish and lifelong Republican father, as he was a highly-educated man, came to see Iraq as a mistake. And when the historical evidence is reviewed, it seems that the old 1969 Temptations/Edwin Starr Motown hit -- later revived by Bruce Springsteen -- had it right:
Award-winning author Jacqueline Woodson to be guest speaker
Jacqueline Woodson
The First Annual Poetry Outreach Conference, sponsored by The City College of New York School of Education and CCNY?s Poetry Outreach Center, will be held 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, June 8, in the City College Faculty Dining Room, third floor, North Academic Center, on the CCNY campus. Award-winning author Jacqueline Woodson will be the keynote speaker.
In addition to Ms. Woodson?s keynote address, the conference features workshops on teaching poetry for K-12 teachers and readings by high school students of award-winning poems from the citywide 2013 Poetry Outreach Competition. Registration is free to NYC Department of Education teachers; those who attend the event will receive professional development credit. Complimentary breakfast and lunch are included for conference participants.
The conference aims to get more teachers at all levels ? elementary, middle school and high school ? to incorporate poetry into their curricula, explained Pamela Laskin, director of the Poetry Outreach Center. ?Using poetry in the classroom is critical to developing literacy because of its focus on language, form, structure and voice.?
Ms. Laskin, who is also a lecturer in CCNY?s English Department, and Dr. Betsy Rorschach, director of the City College School of Education graduate program in secondary English education, received a City College SEED grant to support the conference and other poetry-related activities. SEED grants, provided by the Office of City College President Lisa S. Coico and Provost Maurizio Trevisan, advance interdisciplinary collaborative research by members of City College?s faculty.
The Poetry Outreach Center, now in its 42nd year of operation, sponsors the City College Poetry Festival. Dubbed ?the Woodstock of the Spoken Word,? the festival has become one of the longest continually running annual poetry festivals in the United States. In addition, it is the only such event at which schoolchildren read on the same program as professional poets.
Teachers from the Poetry Outreach Center have mentored many of the children who participate in the festival. They visit public school classrooms in diverse neighborhoods and foster a love of the reading and writing of poetry.
About the Keynote Speaker Jacqueline Woodson is the author of numerous books for children and young adults, including ?From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun,? ?Each Kindness,? ?Miracle?s Boys,? ?After Tupac and D Foster,? ?If You Come Softly? and ?Beneath A Meth Moon.? Her awards include two National Book Award honors, the 2013 Jane Addams Peace Award, three Newbery Honors, the 2013 Charlotte Zolotow Medal, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition, she is the 2013 U.S. nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Medal. She lives with her family in Brooklyn.
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Few weeks ago I decided to create first console game Texas Hold'Em Poker, everything is going pretty well...yesterday I finished and game logic, now is only left part for a River stage where a method has to check for a best hand.. But that is not a problem I came here for a help. So, I created a method getRealPointValue() which returns a real pointValue, as you can see below.
public String getRealPointValue(String pointValue, boolean highAce) { switch (pointValue) { case "A": return (highAce) ? "14": "1"; case "K": return "13"; case "Q": return "12"; case "J": return "11"; case "T": return "10"; default: return pointValue; } }
So the problem now is, I have a statement where I say:
// it says no suitable method found for a String.. ok.. so I tried to cast it into (char) inside getNumricValue method just before getRealPointValue, but doesn't work... int pointValue = Character.getNumericValue(getRealPointValue("T", false));
So I decided to change a parameter pointValue into a char, and do something like this:
public static String getRealPointValue(char pointValue, boolean highAce) { switch (pointValue) { case 'A': return (highAce) ? "14": "1"; case 'K': return "13"; case 'Q': return "12"; case 'J': return "11"; case 'T': return "10"; default: return (String)pointValue; } }
But this is also impossible, bcs of incompatible types, which req a String not a char..
This post has been edited by stefilix: Today, 12:46 PM
Is This A Good Question/Topic? 0
Replies To: Does this method really thinks I'm going to cheat him? :D
#2 stefilix ?
Reputation: 2
Posts:19
Joined:10-April 13
Re: Does this method really thinks I'm going to cheat him? :D
Posted Today, 12:53 PM
oh my god.. my bad... I'm stupid.. Since I'm going to use this methods just in some case for integer compare, then I'm going to return int.. :DD
public static int getRealPointValue(String pointValue, boolean highAce) { switch (pointValue) { case "A": return (highAce) ? 14: 1; case "K": return 13; case "Q": return 12; case "J": return 11; case "T": return 10; default: return Integer.parseInt(pointValue); } }
So now this make sense..
int pointValue = getRealPointValue("A", true);
This post has been edited by stefilix: Today, 12:57 PM
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Heavy fighting raged on Monday around the strategic border town of Qusair and the capital Damascus, amid renewed reports of chemical weapons attacks by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces.
Opposition activists said Syrian troops backed by Lebanese Hezbollah fighters were advancing in areas around Qusair, pressing a sustained assault on a town long used by rebels as a way station for arms and other supplies from Lebanon.
For Assad, Qusair is a crucial link between Damascus and loyalist strongholds on the Mediterranean coast. Recapturing the town, in central Homs province, could also sever connections between rebel-held areas in the north and south of Syria.
Syrian government offensives in recent weeks are an apparent attempt to strengthen Assad's negotiating position before peace talks next month sponsored by the United States and Russia.
Assad's forces now hold about two-thirds of Qusair, said one activist who asked not to be named. Rebel reinforcements from elsewhere in Syria were trying to relieve the pressure, but their attacks had bogged down on the outskirts.
"So far they are just fighting and dying, their assault hasn't resulted in much yet unfortunately," the activist said.
Fierce clashes cut the highway running north from Damascus to the central city of Homs and shook the eastern outskirts of the capital, where dozens of people were suffering the effects of an apparent chemical attack, opposition sources said.
VICTIMS IN OXYGEN MASKS
Video posted online from the eastern suburb of Harasta showed lines of victims lying on the floor of a large room, covered in blankets and breathing from oxygen masks.
Both sides in the conflict, now in its third year, have accused each other of using chemical weapons. France's Le Monde newspaper published first-hand accounts on Monday of apparent chemical attacks by Assad's forces in April.
Another video from Harasta overnight showed at least two fighters being put into a van, their eyes watering and struggling to breathe while medics put tubes into their throats.
It was not possible to verify the videos independently, given the difficulties of media access in Syria.
A doctor interviewed in another video said the alleged chemical attack in Harasta was revenge for a rebel raid on nearby military checkpoints. He complained of a severe shortage in staff and medical supplies to treat such victims.
"We have dozens of wounded from another chemical gas bomb attack ... As you can see there are many people here just lying on the floor with no one to treat them," said the doctor, who did not give his name.
Many of the fighters affected by the attack, according to one opposition group, had recovered sufficiently to return to battle, suggesting its severity had been limited.
"Praise God, all our wounded men are in a stable condition," said the Harasta Media Group in a statement on Skype. "They are doing well and many have even returned to the frontline."
(Reporting by Erika Solomon; Editing by Alistair Lyon)
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) ? South Korea has idled two nuclear power plants after finding that test results for crucial control cables were falsified in a new blow to an industry mired in a graft scandal and safety lapses.
South Korea's trade and energy ministry said Tuesday a company contracted to conduct tests fabricated the results for cables that failed to meet international standards for capacity to withstand changes in voltage and pressure.
The cables control valves that are responsible for cooling nuclear fuel or preventing the release of radioactive materials during an emergency. Another four nuclear reactors that were either shut down for scheduled maintenance or under construction were also using cables that had failed the tests.
"If these control cables do not operate well during an emergency, we viewed that it would not guarantee to cool nuclear fuels or to shut off radioactive materials," South Korea's Nuclear Safety and Security Commission said in a statement.
It said the cables, which were in use since December 2011, failed nine of 12 tests pertinent to their operation in a "loss of coolant accident."
Han Jinhyun, vice trade and energy minister, declined to name the company while the government's investigation is ongoing. The ministry will sue the company and also ask prosecutors to launch a probe, he told a press conference.
The revelations add to public worries about nuclear safety and power shortages during the summer when demand is at its peak. They are a new blow to South Korea's ambitions to export its nuclear technology.
Last year, the South Korean nuclear industry was rocked by revelations that thousands of components used in nuclear plants had falsified quality certificates. Dozens of employees at state owned nuclear power plant operator, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co., were prosecuted for taking bribes from contractors to accept substandard parts and machinery.
The investigation into the cable problems began after the nuclear safety commission received tips through a whistleblowing channel that was set up in the wake of last year's scandal.
"This incident is more serious than previous scandals because it is wrongdoing by a company that is supposed to oversee products," said Kim Ik-jung, a medical professor at Dongguk University who has become prominent as an anti-nuclear activist since the government decided to build a nuclear waste dump in Gyeongju city where he lives.
"Corruption is widespread in the nuclear industry because there is no agency that can truly regulate Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power," he said.
South Korea has 23 nuclear power plants which supply about 30 percent of its energy and plans to add another 11 reactors by 2025.
With the shutdown of the Shin-Kori No. 2 and Shin-Wolsong No. 1 reactors to replace cables, a total of 10 nuclear plants are now offline.
May 28, 2013 ? Snail shells coil in response to a lopsided protein gradient across their shell mantles, finds research in BioMed Central's open access journal EvoDevo. In contrast the shell mantle of limpets, whose shells do not coil, have a symmetrical pattern of the protein Decapentaplegic (Dpp).
There are many hundreds of different kinds of gastropods (slugs snail and limpets) -- second only in number of species to insects. They have adapted to live on land as well as in fresh water and marine environments, and have altered their physiology to survive in different habitats and to exploit different niches. The ancestral snail is thought to have had a coiled shell but during evolution some snails have lost their shells to become slugs, and some, limpets and false limpets, have independently lost the ability to coil their shells.
In order to find out why some gastropods have straight and some have coiled shells researchers from the University of Tokyo looked at the pattern of Dpp during shell growth. Dpp was first identified in fruit flies where it is necessary for the correct development of limbs, wings and other organs -- decapentaplegic describes the 15 things missing in the absence of the gene dpp. Dpp is also found in the shell gland of gastropods, an early structure which begins to form a developing shell. However its presence in the mantle, which takes over shell production as the animal develops, was unknown.
In all four animals tested, limpets Patella vulgata and Nipponacmea fuscoviridis, and the right-hand coiled pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis along with a sinistral coiled lab-developed snail, dpp expression matched shell shape. There was also a Dpp protein gradient spreading away from this which was also symmetrical in limpets but had left/right asymmetry for the pond snails, matching the handedness of shell coiling.
Keisuke Shimizu, who led this study, commented, "This molecular mechanism driving for shell coiling persists from early developmental stages though adult life as the shell is replaced. It also provides an explanation for how shell coiling has been lost several times during the evolution of gastropods by the relatively easy loss of asymmetric Dpp."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by BioMed Central Limited, via AlphaGalileo.
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Journal Reference:
Keisuke Shimizu, Minoru Iijima, Davin HE Setiamarga, Isao Sarashina, Tetsuhiro Kudoh, Takahiro Asami, Edi Gittenberger, Kazuyoshi Endo. Left-right asymmetric expression of dpp in the mantle of gastropods correlates with asymmetric shell coiling. EvoDevo, 2013; 4 (1): 15 DOI: 10.1186/2041-9139-4-15
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
