If you haven't checked out KSP yet, do it now. It is worth it.
Side note: I showed the demo to a middle school administrator at a yard sale I had a few months ago. She was so impressed, she decided to make the game part of the science curriculum.
Like I said, if you haven't checked it out, do it now. [kerbalspaceprogram.com] You will (probably) not go unimpressed.
A forensic officer works on an unmarked police car in East Belfast Monday, after it was attacked by rioters.
By Reuters
BELFAST -- Police were attacked in Northern Ireland on Monday night by protesters enraged by a decision to remove the British flag from Belfast City Hall, which has sparked eight consecutive days of demonstrations.
About 15 masked men broke out of a crowd assembled in the predominantly Protestant Newtownards Road area of Belfast, smashed the windows of a police car and threw a Molotov cocktail into it while an officer was still inside, police said.
The officer escaped unharmed but the Police Service of Northern Ireland said they were treating the attack as attempted murder.
The attack was one of a series of protests across the city on Monday during which stones and fireworks were hurled at police, who responded with water cannons in at least two locations.
Clinton condemns violence, revisits family legacy in trip to Belfast
Loyalists -- or supporters of Northern Ireland remaining part of the U.K. -- have been protesting against a decision taken mainly by Irish nationalist city councilors from political parties Sinn Fein and the SDLP to take down the British flag which has flown above the provincial capital's city hall every day since it opened in 1906.
Cops hurt as British unionist protesters try to storm Belfast City Hall in flag spat
The decision means Britain's Union Jack will now fly on only 17 days of the year, as is the case at the provincial assembly at Stormont in the British-controlled province.
Teen charged in riots The Molotov cocktail attack happened outside the constituency office of Naomi Long, a member of the British parliament for the non-sectarian, centrist Alliance Party.
"This was a planned attempt to kill a police officer which also put the lives of the public in danger," Assistant Chief Constable George Hamilton said.
Complete World coverage on NBCNews.com
Long was forced to flee her home last week after receiving threats over her party's support of the removal of the flag from City Hall.
Later on Monday night, police separated rival loyalist and republican crowds rioting in a flashpoint area between the loyalist east Belfast and the small nationalist Short Strand enclave.
Violence has raged for seven of the last eight days since the decision, in Belfast and around the and nearly 30 officers have been injured.
About 10 people have appeared in court charged with offences linked to the rioting - the youngest just 13 years of age.
Decades of violence between the province's mainly Catholic republicans and pro-British Protestants largely ended when a peace agreement was signed in 1998, but much of Belfast remains divided along sectarian lines.
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In 2012 Apple increased the screen size of the iPhone from 3.5- to 4-inches, and just a month later introduced the iPad mini with a 7.9- rather than 9.7-inch screen. Between those devices, the old-but-still-on-the-market iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S and iPhone 5, and the iPad mini and iPad, there's a noticeable gap. No 4.5- to 5-inch phone. At least for now.
For many customers that's no gap at all. For many, Apple has kept the screen size exactly where they want it -- tall but still narrow enough to (mostly) use one handed. Thin enough to use with smaller hands, and to fit in smaller pockets and purses. Same enough to continue to argue that people who want much bigger screens are still as wrong as they ever were.
For other customers, 4-inches still isn't big enough.
For some of those, size simply sells. Imagine you walked into a Big Box retailer and all the television sets, from 32- to 102-inches all cost pretty much the same thing. Imagine the 102-inch television cost even less than the 32-inch one. Thanks to carrier subsidies and agendas, that's the current situation for the iPhone. Customers walk into carriers or retailers and see the $199 iPhone on the shelf alongside 4.5- to 5-inch or bigger Android phones and Windows Phones. Bigger equals better, so they buy bigger.
For the rest, size matters. Either their eyes require bigger interface elements to easily use, their motor skills appreciate more room to move around, or they simply want a bigger screen to do bigger things with. Bigger web. Bigger videos. Bigger games. They might even want something approaching mini-tablet size, and would rather have a big phone than a small phone and a tablet. Bigger is better, so they buy bigger.
For both, even if they'd prefer an iPhone in many ways, the screen size is what they see, or what's more important to them than anything else. And because of that, neither of those customers is choosing the iPhone.
Apple may not care, of course. They didn't care about customers for whom "cheap" is the most important feature, when they chose netbooks, or choose sold-at-cost tablets over Apple's MacBooks or iPads. They currently don't care about customers for whom size options are the most important feature, when people choose larger than 15-inch laptops over MacBooks. In general, Apple has shown resilience to market trends and stuck to a small core of high quality, highly specific products.
But Apple did go to 4-inches with the iPhone this year. And they did go to 7.9-inches with the iPad mini this year, following the introduction of several 7-inch tablets. So Apple's not completely immune to market trends either.
Right now, Apple is content to try and counter-program the bigger screen Samsung and HTC and Nokia devices.
If Apple goes to multiple iOS device releases next year, and their cycle includes two refreshes a year instead of one, however, it'll be interesting to see how the hardware will keep up with that pace. When they're fast enough, with good enough cameras, and long enough battery life, what else will differentiate them? Could multiple screen sizes be an answer to that question?
At close to 5-inches, a 1136x640 iPhone would have the same pixel density as the Retina iPad, 264 ppi. That would be a large iPhone -- a Droid DNA-large iPhone -- and probably larger than most of the market wants. At close to 4.5 inches, a 1136x640 iPhone would have a pixel density of 290, between the Retina iPad and the current iPhone's 326 ppi. Having the same pixel resolution means apps "just work" and developers don't have to update to support it.
If Apple would rather prioritize pixel density and stay truer to the original Retina brand messaging, they could also go from the current @2x (1136x640) to @3x (1704x960) for 435 ppi at 4.5-inches or 391 at 5-inches, or even @4x (2272x1280) or 580 ppi at 4.5-inches or 522 at 5-inches. That would create the same workload for developers as the switch from @1x to @2x that occurred between the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, and iPad 2 and iPad 3. (By way of comparison, the Droid DNA is 1920x1080 at 5-inches and 440 ppi.)
Apple already has multiple Mac sizes, multiple iPod sizes, and multiple iPad sizes, so it's not unimaginable they could one day have multiple iPhone sizes greater than the 3.5 and 4-inch iPhones we have today.
With Apple you can never say never. They're smart, they're changeable, and if one day they do choose to go big, it'll be something many people choose to taken home.
Amie Garcia as Jamie Batista, Yvonne Strahovski as Hannah McKay and Michael C. Hall as Dexter Morgan (Season 7, episode 11). Photo by Randy Tepper/Showtime.
Here we are, Dexter viewers, waiting for the finale as questions hover like one of Dexter?s ghost companions over our heads. Chief among them: Did Hannah actually sabotage Deb with a bottle of Xanax water? Or did a frantic Deb drug herself in order to place her brother?s murderous girlfriend safely behind bars?
While HuffPo writer (and last week?s TV club guest) Alex Moaba thinks the accident has ?Hannah?s fingerprints all over? it, Cory Barker at tv.com picks door number two?and quickly heads off our objections.
?Before you even say it, yes, I know that would mean that Deb stupidly put herself behind the wheel of a car and could have killed herself to prove a point. And I think that's why it happened: Deb wants to remove Hannah from the equation so badly that she took a really, really stupid risk. That's who she is, and that's the kind of thing she does for her brother.?
On the comment boards, people are inclined to agree with Barker. AmyEM, nax, Darth and Good Eric all floated, with varying degrees of conviction, the same hypothesis, and several of them highlighted Deb?s vow to ?do whatever it takes? to keep Dexter and Hannah apart. Yet Darth also voices an intriguing alternative theory?that Arlene Shram, Hannah?s roommate from the halfway house, tampered with the water out of loyalty to Hannah (not to mention that Deb threatened to separate her from her kids). Hey?Dexter did find a strand of blonde hair by the medicine cabinet in his sister?s apartment, which could just as easily have come from Arlene as from Hannah. Perhaps the subtext of episode 11 has less to do with curdled love and more to do with the general murderous treachery of the towheaded.
Reviewers also latched onto the fidgety ambiguity of Hannah?s parting words to Dexter. You should have killed me. For Cassandra Berube at the Baltimore Sun, the shock and hurt behind the line confirmed our heroine?s innocence. ?I hope Hannah will make it to next season,? she writes. ?I also hope for world peace and for a credit card with no limit.? Moaba calls the moment ?heartbreaking.? But to Vulture?s Richard Rys, the exchange is ?shudder-worthy, the first time [Hannah] seems like a true threat, an unhinged psychopath.? He continues, ?It seems rather unwise to send your diabolical ex-girlfriend to jail when she knows you like to kill people (sometimes even on a first date).? Now there are four non-Morgans at large in Miami who know or strongly suspect Dexter?s secret: Hannah, drug lord Hector Estrada, who slipped through Dexter?s fingers during a police sting at the shipping yard, the Phantom Arsonist (remember him? He?s still in custody!) and police captain Maria LaGuerta. Alyse Wax seems right when she notes on Fear Net that last night?s ?solid little hour of television? went light on the surprises in order to lay a truly involved groundwork for episode 12.
On another note, I was grateful to Cory Barker for pointing out that, regardless of how you feel about LaGuerta, Matthews? treatment of her is totally despicable. ?Everything that comes out of [the retired police chief?s] mouth is hateful, sexist and misogynistic,? she writes. Yup! And racist too. The trend got so egregious last night that I wondered whether the garland of dead Christmas lights on Matthews? boat was supposed to be a metaphor for the dark synapses in his brain.
Also, I erroneously reported in my original post that a stripper at the Fox Hole paraphrased Nadia?s Dear John letter to Quinn while writhing around on a pole. I am very sorry for the confusion: In fact, she was performing a lap dance.?
Dec. 11, 2012 ? The SARS epidemic of 2002-2003 was short-lived, but a novel type of human coronavirus that is alarming public health authorities can infect cells from humans and bats alike, a fact that could make the animals a continuing source of infection, according to a study to be published in in mBio?, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, on December 11. The new coronavirus, called hCoV-EMC, is blamed for five deaths and several other cases of severe disease originating in countries in the Middle East. According to the new results, hCoV-EMC uses a different receptor in the human body than the SARS virus, and can infect cells from a wide range of bat species and pigs, indicating there may be little to keep the virus from passing from animals to humans over and over again.
First identified in a patient in Saudi Arabia in June, nine laboratory-confirmed cases of hCoV-EMC infection have now been identified, five of whom have died. Although the virus does not apparently pass from person-to-person very readily, the case fatality rate and the fact that the source of the virus has not been identified have caused concern among global public health authorities. Cases of hCoV-EMC infection are marked by severe pneumonia and often by kidney failure.
"This virus is closely related to the SARS virus, and looking at the clinical picture, it causes the same pattern of disease," says Christian Drosten of the University of Bonn Medical Centre in German, a lead author of the study.
Given the similarities, Drosten and his colleagues wanted to know whether hCoV-EMC and SARS might use the same receptor, a sort of molecular "dock" on human cells that the virus latches onto to gain entry to the cell. The SARS receptor, called ACE2, is found mostly on pneumocytes deep within the human lung, so an individual must breathe in many, many SARS viruses for a sufficient number of them to reach this susceptible area and cause an infection. Drosten says this simple fact helped ensure the SARS outbreak didn't spread like wildfire and was mostly limited to healthcare workers and residents of overcrowded housing in Hong Kong. Also, once a person was infected with SARS in the deep part of their lungs, he or she felt sick almost immediately and therefore was not active in the community and infecting others, another aspect of the receptor that helped curb the outbreak.
Does hCoV-EMC use the same receptor? If so, the means of controlling this new virus might become clearer.
"The answer is a clear no," says Drosten. "This virus does not use ACE2." This leaves open the possiblity that hCoV-EMC could use a receptor in the human lung that is easier to access and could make the virus more infectious than SARS, but it is still not known what receptor the virus does use.
To help identify how hCoV-EMC might have originated and moved between humans and animals, the second part of the study focused on the animal species the virus can infect. SARS is closely related to viruses from bats, but Drosten says the virus changed in the transition from bats to civet cats to humans and could no longer infect bats, so SARS was not present in the wild and did not pass repeatedly from bats to humans like a classical zoonotic disease. "So the [SARS] virus lost its old host and gained a new one," says Drosten.
Like SARS, hCoV-EMC is most closely related to coronaviruses from bats, but unlike SARS, this study found that hCoV-EMC can still infect cells from many different species of bats. "This was a big surprise," says Drosten. "It's completely unusual for any coronavirus to be able to do that -- to go back to its original reservoir." The virus is also able to infect cells from pigs, indicating that it uses a receptor structure that all these animals have in common. If that receptor is present in mucosal surfaces, like the lining of the lung, it is possible the virus could pass from animals to humans and back again, making animals an ongoing source of the virus that would be difficult or impossible to eliminate.
Drosten says work on hCoV-EMC will continue in many hospitals and laboratories. His own lab will continue the search for the hCoV-EMC receptor and will work on developing diagnostic tools to help identify cases of infection with the virus.
Drosten says he's also driven to find the animal source of the virus, a crucial piece of information in managing a potential outbreak. The virus can infect bats with host ranges that extend all across Europe and into the Arabian Peninsula.
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SINGAPORE (AFP) ? Animal lovers in Singapore will soon be able to publish tributes to their dead pets when the city-state?s leading daily launches a special obituary section.
From December 16, the classified ads section in the Sunday edition of the English-language Straits Times will have a segment devoted to pet obituaries, publisher Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) said.
The Pets Corner is a section of the classified ads that already contains a pet adoption column and a lost and found segment.
For pet obituaries, tributes of no more than 30 words will be published for free, subject to space availability.
However, a grieving owner may choose to enhance the message by having it published with a photograph of the pet at a ?special discounted price? of Sg$50 ($41).
?More and more, we are getting requests from pet owners who want to remember their pets which have passed away, and want to tell the stories of their pets,? said Tan Su-Lin, vice president for CATS Classified, which handles advertisements for the SPH stable of newspapers.
?Pet lovers have the kind of deep, emotional bonds they have forged with their pets and we want to give them a platform to express this in print,? Tan told AFP.
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'Commitment-phobic' adults could have mom and dad to blamePublic release date: 10-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: George Hunka ghunka@aftau.org 212-742-9070 American Friends of Tel Aviv University
Adults avoiding relationships may be trying to meet childhood needs, say Tel Aviv University researcher
Afraid to commit to a relationship? According to new research from Tel Aviv University, it could be just one more thing to blame on your parents.
A study of the romantic history of 58 adults aged 22-28 found that those who avoid committed romantic relationships are likely a product of unresponsive or over-intrusive parenting, says Dr. Sharon Dekel, a psychologist and researcher at the Bob Shappell School of Social Work.
Dr. Dekel and her fellow researcher, Prof. Barry Farber of Columbia University, found that 22.4 percent of study participants could be categorized as "avoidant" when it came to their relationships, demonstrating anxiety about intimacy, reluctance to commit to or share with their partner, or a belief that their partner was "clingy," for example. Overall, they reported less personal satisfaction in their relationships than participants who were determined to be secure in their relationships.
The goal of the study, published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, was to address the widespread research debate on "avoidant attachment" whether such behavior is due to innate personality traits, such as being more of a loner, or is a delayed reaction to unmet childhood needs. Dr. Dekel and Prof. Farber found that while both secure and avoidant individuals expressed a desire for intimacy in relationships, avoidant individuals are conflicted about this need due to the complicated parent-child dynamics they experienced when young.
Taking lessons from childhood
The premise of their study, says Dr. Dekel, is based on attachment theory, which posits that during times of stress, infants seek proximity to their caregivers for emotional support. However, if the parent is unresponsive or overly intrusive, the child learns to avoid their caregiver.
The researchers believe that adult relationships reflect these earlier experiences. When infantile needs are met in childhood, that person approaches adult relationships with more security, seeking intimacy, sharing, caring, and fun, says Dr. Dekel. The researchers labelled these relationships "two-adult" models, in which participants equally share desires with their partner. Avoidant individuals, however, are more likely to adopt an "infant-mother" intimacy model.
When they enter relationships, there is an attempt to satisfy their unmet childhood needs, Dr. Dekel explains. "Avoidant individuals are looking for somebody to validate them, accept them as they are, can consistently meet their needs and remain calm including not making a fuss about anything or getting caught up in their own personal issues."
The tendency to avoid dependence on a partner is a defense mechanism rather than an avoidance of intimacy, she adds.
Hope for the commitment-phobic?
It's important to study this group further because beyond their severely diminished ability to conduct satisfying romantic relationships, they are also less happy in their lives and are more likely to suffer illnesses than their secure counterparts, notes Dr. Dekel. Psychologists need a better understanding of what these insecure individuals need, perhaps through more sophisticated neurological studies, she suggests.
There is also the question of whether or not these attachment styles are permanent. Dr. Dekel believes that there are some experiences which can help people develop more secure relationship styles.
There are hints that after experiencing a traumatic event, survivors show a greater ability and desire to form closer relationships, Dr. Dekel observed in a previous study in the Journal of Psychological Trauma, completed during her post-doctoral work with Prof. Zahava Solomon. As an expert in the field of trauma recovery and post-traumatic growth who has worked with patients in Israel and abroad to overcome traumatic events, she is beginning to study this phenomenon in greater depth.
###
American Friends of Tel Aviv University supports Israel's leading, most comprehensive and most sought-after center of higher learning. Independently ranked 94th among the world's top universities for the impact of its research, TAU's innovations and discoveries are cited more often by the global scientific community than all but 10 other universities.
Internationally recognized for the scope and groundbreaking nature of its research and scholarship, Tel Aviv University consistently produces work with profound implications for the future.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
'Commitment-phobic' adults could have mom and dad to blamePublic release date: 10-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: George Hunka ghunka@aftau.org 212-742-9070 American Friends of Tel Aviv University
Adults avoiding relationships may be trying to meet childhood needs, say Tel Aviv University researcher
Afraid to commit to a relationship? According to new research from Tel Aviv University, it could be just one more thing to blame on your parents.
A study of the romantic history of 58 adults aged 22-28 found that those who avoid committed romantic relationships are likely a product of unresponsive or over-intrusive parenting, says Dr. Sharon Dekel, a psychologist and researcher at the Bob Shappell School of Social Work.
Dr. Dekel and her fellow researcher, Prof. Barry Farber of Columbia University, found that 22.4 percent of study participants could be categorized as "avoidant" when it came to their relationships, demonstrating anxiety about intimacy, reluctance to commit to or share with their partner, or a belief that their partner was "clingy," for example. Overall, they reported less personal satisfaction in their relationships than participants who were determined to be secure in their relationships.
The goal of the study, published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, was to address the widespread research debate on "avoidant attachment" whether such behavior is due to innate personality traits, such as being more of a loner, or is a delayed reaction to unmet childhood needs. Dr. Dekel and Prof. Farber found that while both secure and avoidant individuals expressed a desire for intimacy in relationships, avoidant individuals are conflicted about this need due to the complicated parent-child dynamics they experienced when young.
Taking lessons from childhood
The premise of their study, says Dr. Dekel, is based on attachment theory, which posits that during times of stress, infants seek proximity to their caregivers for emotional support. However, if the parent is unresponsive or overly intrusive, the child learns to avoid their caregiver.
The researchers believe that adult relationships reflect these earlier experiences. When infantile needs are met in childhood, that person approaches adult relationships with more security, seeking intimacy, sharing, caring, and fun, says Dr. Dekel. The researchers labelled these relationships "two-adult" models, in which participants equally share desires with their partner. Avoidant individuals, however, are more likely to adopt an "infant-mother" intimacy model.
When they enter relationships, there is an attempt to satisfy their unmet childhood needs, Dr. Dekel explains. "Avoidant individuals are looking for somebody to validate them, accept them as they are, can consistently meet their needs and remain calm including not making a fuss about anything or getting caught up in their own personal issues."
The tendency to avoid dependence on a partner is a defense mechanism rather than an avoidance of intimacy, she adds.
Hope for the commitment-phobic?
It's important to study this group further because beyond their severely diminished ability to conduct satisfying romantic relationships, they are also less happy in their lives and are more likely to suffer illnesses than their secure counterparts, notes Dr. Dekel. Psychologists need a better understanding of what these insecure individuals need, perhaps through more sophisticated neurological studies, she suggests.
There is also the question of whether or not these attachment styles are permanent. Dr. Dekel believes that there are some experiences which can help people develop more secure relationship styles.
There are hints that after experiencing a traumatic event, survivors show a greater ability and desire to form closer relationships, Dr. Dekel observed in a previous study in the Journal of Psychological Trauma, completed during her post-doctoral work with Prof. Zahava Solomon. As an expert in the field of trauma recovery and post-traumatic growth who has worked with patients in Israel and abroad to overcome traumatic events, she is beginning to study this phenomenon in greater depth.
###
American Friends of Tel Aviv University supports Israel's leading, most comprehensive and most sought-after center of higher learning. Independently ranked 94th among the world's top universities for the impact of its research, TAU's innovations and discoveries are cited more often by the global scientific community than all but 10 other universities.
Internationally recognized for the scope and groundbreaking nature of its research and scholarship, Tel Aviv University consistently produces work with profound implications for the future.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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Public release date: 10-Dec-2012
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