iOS 7 is probably right around the corner, at least as a preview coming at Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference in June, and it looks like it might be the most exciting change to Apple's mobile OS we've seen in a long time, at least on the surface. iOS 7 will get a flat visual look, which is all the rage these days, at the hands of Apple's chief design guru Jony Ive, according to a new report by 9to5Mac. The blog's sources say that it's "very, very flat," losing any evidence of computer-generated shine, glare or the skeuomorphism reportedly favored by deposed iOS chief Scott Forstall.
BOSTON (AP) ? In photos of her as a younger woman, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva wears a low-cut blouse and has her hair teased like a 1980s rock star. After she arrived in the U.S. from Russia in 2002, she went to beauty school and did facials at a suburban day spa.
But in recent years, people noticed a change. She began wearing a hijab and cited conspiracy theories about 9/11 being a plot against Muslims.
Now known as the angry and grieving mother of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, Tsarnaeva is drawing increased attention after federal officials say Russian authorities intercepted her phone calls, including one in which she vaguely discussed jihad with her elder son. In another, she was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, U.S. officials said.
Tsarnaeva insists there is no mystery. She's no terrorist, just someone who found a deeper spirituality. She insists her sons ? Tamerlan, who was killed in a gunfight with police, and Dzhokhar, who was wounded and captured ? are innocent.
"It's all lies and hypocrisy," she told The Associated Press in Dagestan. "I'm sick and tired of all this nonsense that they make up about me and my children. People know me as a regular person, and I've never been mixed up in any criminal intentions, especially any linked to terrorism."
Amid the scrutiny, Tsarnaeva and her ex-husband, Anzor Tsarnaev, say they have put off the idea of any trip to the U.S. to reclaim their elder son's body or try to visit Dzhokhar in jail. Tsarnaev told the AP on Sunday he was too ill to travel to the U.S. Tsarnaeva faces a 2012 shoplifting charge in a Boston suburb, though it was unclear whether that was a deterrent.
At a news conference in Dagestan with Anzor last week, Tsarnaeva appeared overwhelmed with grief one moment, defiant the next. "They already are talking about that we are terrorists, I am terrorist," she said. "They already want me, him and all of us to look (like) terrorists."
Tsarnaeva arrived in the U.S. in 2002, settling in a working-class section of Cambridge, Mass. With four children, Anzor and Zubeidat qualified for food stamps and were on and off public assistance benefits for years. The large family squeezed itself into a third-floor apartment.
Zubeidat took classes at the Catherine Hinds Institute of Esthetics, before becoming a state-licensed aesthetician. Anzor, who had studied law, fixed cars.
By some accounts, the family was tolerant.
Bethany Smith, a New Yorker who befriended Zubeidat's two daughters, said in an interview with Newsday that when she stayed with the family for a month in 2008 while she looked at colleges, she was welcomed even though she was Christian and had tattoos.
"I had nothing but love over there. They accepted me for who I was," Smith told the newspaper. "Their mother, Zubeidat, she considered me to be a part of the family. She called me her third daughter."
Zubeidat said she and Tamerlan began to turn more deeply into their Muslim faith about five years ago after being influenced by a family friend, named "Misha." The man, whose full name she didn't reveal, impressed her with a religious devotion that was far greater than her own, even though he was an ethnic Armenian who converted to Islam.
"I wasn't praying until he prayed in our house, so I just got really ashamed that I am not praying, being a Muslim, being born Muslim. I am not praying. Misha, who converted, was praying," she said.
By then, she had left her job at the day spa and was giving facials in her apartment. One client, Alyssa Kilzer, noticed the change when Tsarnaeva put on a head scarf before leaving the apartment.
"She had never worn a hijab while working at the spa previously, or inside the house, and I was really surprised," Kilzer wrote in a post on her blog. "She started to refuse to see boys that had gone through puberty, as she had consulted a religious figure and he had told her it was sacrilegious. She was often fasting."
Kilzer wrote that Tsarnaeva was a loving and supportive mother, and she felt sympathy for her plight after the April 15 bombings. But she stopped visiting the family's home for spa treatments in late 2011 or early 2012 when, during one session, she "started quoting a conspiracy theory, telling me that she thought 9/11 was purposefully created by the American government to make America hate Muslims."
"It's real," Tsarnaeva said, according to Kilzer. "My son knows all about it. You can read on the Internet."
In the spring of 2010, Zubeidat's eldest son got married in a ceremony at a Boston mosque that no one in the family had previously attended. Tamerlan and his wife, Katherine Russell, a Rhode Island native and convert from Christianity, now have a child who is about 3 years old.
Zubeidat married into a Chechen family but was an outsider. She is an Avar, from one of the dozens of ethnic groups in Dagestan. Her native village is now a hotbed of an ultraconservative strain of Islam known as Salafism or Wahabbism.
It is unclear whether religious differences fueled tension in their family. Anzor and Zubeidat divorced in 2011.
About the same time, there was a brief FBI investigation into Tamerlan Tsarnaev, prompted by a tip from Russia's security service.
The vague warning from the Russians was that Tamerlan, an amateur boxer in the U.S., was a follower of radical Islam who had changed drastically since 2010. That led the FBI to interview Tamerlan at the family's home in Cambridge. Officials ultimately placed his name, and his mother's name, on various watch lists, but the inquiry was closed in late spring of 2011.
After the bombings, Russian authorities told U.S. investigators they had secretly recorded a phone conversation in which Zubeidat had vaguely discussed jihad with Tamerlan. The Russians also recorded Zubeidat talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation with reporters.
The conversations are significant because, had they been revealed earlier, they might have been enough evidence for the FBI to initiate a more thorough investigation of the Tsarnaev family.
Anzor's brother, Ruslan Tsarni, told the AP from his home in Maryland that he believed his former sister-in-law had a "big-time influence" on her older son's growing embrace of his Muslim faith and decision to quit boxing and school.
While Tamerlan was living in Russia for six months in 2012, Zubeidat, who had remained in the U.S., was arrested at a shopping mall in the suburb of Natick, Mass., and accused of trying to shoplift $1,624 worth of women's clothing from a department store.
She failed to appear in court to answer the charges that fall, and instead left the country.
___
Seddon reported from Makhachkala, Russia. Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan and Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report from Washington.
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) ? All those months of hard work and rehab are starting to pay off for Rafael Nadal. Yet he is still not sure what this means for the French Open.
Nadal won the Barcelona Open for the eighth time Sunday, defeating Nicolas Almagro 6-4, 6-3 for his fourth title of the year.
And with French Open about a month down the road, this latest victory is a promising sign that Nadal is getting back to full strength from a knee injury that sidelined him since last summer
"I am very happy," he said. "It has been an important week for me to win here again and a great source of joy after everything I have been through."
He has made six straight finals since returning from his knee injury. This title, the 54th of his career, comes one week after his eight-year reign at Monte Carlo ended with a loss to top-ranked Novak Djokovic.
"With just these six tournament since I have returned, I have managed to assure my place in the top 10 one more year, which is positive," said Nadal, who is ranked No. 5. "These months of work have been worth it."
Even so, Nadal was hesitant to say how this might carry over to Roland Garros, where he has won a record seven times.
"This win doesn't mean much," he said. "Just that I am in good form since I have come back. The results are fantastic. I would never have imagined them and they are better than I had dreamed. I am back playing at a high level."
After trailing 3-0 in the first set, Nadal found his form and broke his fellow Spaniard in three of his next four service games to take command in a final played in a drizzle.
Nadal won the Barcelona Open from 2005-09 but did not play in 2010 because of a knee injury. He has won every year since. He has won 39 straight matches on the red clay at Real Club de Tenis, his last loss coming 10 years ago to Spain's Davis Cup captain, Alex Corretja.
"I didn't know in 2005 that I would win again or that in 2013 I would still be winning," Nadal said.
Almaro, ranked 12th, has lost all 10 of his matches to Nadal. He enjoyed a good start Sunday and broke Nadal's first service game with a forehand winner before holding serve to love.
Almagro kept Nadal moving with deep backhands. He broke again for a 3-0 lead following a long rally when he swatted a running crosscourt return. But Nadal then showed why he hasn't lost in Barcelona in a decade, reeling off four straight games.
"It was important for me to get the break, down 3-0," Nadal said. "Almagro is having a great season and I wish him the best."
Almagro was serving and up 30-0 when he made a series of errors, including a double-fault that brought the score to three games apiece. Nadal took control by breaking Almagro a third time. Down 0-30, Nadal saved a point by returning a lob with a shot from between his legs before Almagro dropped the game and set.
In the second set, Nadal maintained the pressure and broke to lead 3-1. Nadal served out the match to love, and was soon applauding the fans who had cheered both players.
"He showed again why he is the best player in history on this surface," Almagro said, adding he'll try to win the title next year "if Rafa lets me."
Personalized leadership key for keeping globally distributed teams on taskPublic release date: 29-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Phil Ciciora pciciora@illinois.edu 217-333-2177 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. For companies with employees around the globe, the challenges of distance, diversity and technology may threaten team cohesiveness among their long-distance workers. But according to a new study by a University of Illinois business professor, out of sight doesn't necessarily have to mean out of mind for virtual teams.
Ravi S. Gajendran, a professor of business administration at Illinois, says leaders of globally distributed teams can mitigate the isolation of virtual employees by taking a relationship-based approach in the form of a "leader-member exchange" in tandem with frequent communication on a predictable schedule.
In contrast to the traditional top-down, "one-to-many" leadership approach that treats all employees similarly (and often interchangeably), leader-member exchange involves cultivating a personalized relationship characterized by trust, loyalty, developmental feedback and support between team leader and member, Gajendran says.
"Leadership of virtual teams is tough, for very obvious reasons," he said. "You don't have that type of face-to-face interaction as you do with your real-life team members, so you don't know how things are going, nor can you monitor a team member's performance all that easily."
The study, co-written by Aparna Joshi, a professor of management and organization at Pennsylvania State University, says a top-down style of leadership approach doesn't work well in a virtual context.
"The traditional model of leadership is, 'I'm the leader, you're my team members, and I'm going to articulate my vision for how things should be,' " Gajendran said. "What we find is that a personalized leadership strategy characterized by the leader-member exchange has even stronger effects when the workers are globally distributed."
Since spatial distance can translate into psychological distance, high-quality leader-member exchange relationships are effective in creating inclusivity and involvement among team members, so long as they are accompanied by frequent communication.
"The conundrum is, you're bringing together these talented people from around the globe because you hope that something innovative is going to come from their work," Gajendran said. "You explicitly design a team to get the best experts from different parts of the world. But at the same time, you've structured the team in a distributed manner so that it's easy for team members to feel isolated and that they can't give their input. So there's this tension that has to be resolved, which is why leaders have to work hard at re-creating the team in people's minds."
For leaders, ordinary workaday world tasks such as figuring out if someone is energized on a given day is impossible simply because they don't see virtual workers at the office, Gajendran says.
"As a leader, then, you don't know whether you need to motivate them or give them their space," he said. "And team members also are missing out on the social aspects of work: team space, team dinners and team drinks things like that."
To bridge that gap, a personal touch is required, Gajendran says.
"Even though there is no physical team, leaders need more one-on-one interaction with their virtual team members," he said. "In other words, leadership needs to be uniquely tailored to the team members rather than dictated from on high. It's about building a relationship with each member, and that requires slightly more effort than in it would in a normal workplace setting."
The other finding of the study is the need for constant, predictable contact to ensure that team members understand that their input matters, Gajendran says.
"Personalized leadership seems to matter much more in distributed working environments," he said. "So instead of treating all of the team members the same, it's better for leaders to target and personalize the relationship with each individual. That's why leader-member exchange training should also emphasize the importance of regular and predictable leadermember communication to maximize the impact of member influence on team decisions."
In addition to building relationships and a regular, predictable communication schedule, a team leader also needs to be an advocate for the work of its members, which can easily go unnoticed.
"That's the big danger in these distributed teams the lack of visibility of the end-product, as well as the lack of visibility of the team member," Gajendran said. "In high-tech companies like Google and Facebook, a lot of the work being done is on a server. They're often working at different times, so that creates this distance that makes it difficult for people to appreciate their contribution or to motivate each other or feel part of this one cohesive unit."
Which is why it's incumbent on the leader to make sure that the team's work gets its due, Gajendran says.
"You don't want team members to feel as though they're just sending their work out into a vacuum," he said. "That's why leaders matter they have to make those invisible workers visible, and you can do that by creating that sense of involvement and inclusion."
The paper will appear in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
###
Editor's notes: To contact Ravi Gajendran, email ravisg@illinois.edu.
The paper, "Innovation in globally distributed teams: The role of LMX, communication frequency, and member influence on team decisions," is available online.
[ | 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.
Personalized leadership key for keeping globally distributed teams on taskPublic release date: 29-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Phil Ciciora pciciora@illinois.edu 217-333-2177 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. For companies with employees around the globe, the challenges of distance, diversity and technology may threaten team cohesiveness among their long-distance workers. But according to a new study by a University of Illinois business professor, out of sight doesn't necessarily have to mean out of mind for virtual teams.
Ravi S. Gajendran, a professor of business administration at Illinois, says leaders of globally distributed teams can mitigate the isolation of virtual employees by taking a relationship-based approach in the form of a "leader-member exchange" in tandem with frequent communication on a predictable schedule.
In contrast to the traditional top-down, "one-to-many" leadership approach that treats all employees similarly (and often interchangeably), leader-member exchange involves cultivating a personalized relationship characterized by trust, loyalty, developmental feedback and support between team leader and member, Gajendran says.
"Leadership of virtual teams is tough, for very obvious reasons," he said. "You don't have that type of face-to-face interaction as you do with your real-life team members, so you don't know how things are going, nor can you monitor a team member's performance all that easily."
The study, co-written by Aparna Joshi, a professor of management and organization at Pennsylvania State University, says a top-down style of leadership approach doesn't work well in a virtual context.
"The traditional model of leadership is, 'I'm the leader, you're my team members, and I'm going to articulate my vision for how things should be,' " Gajendran said. "What we find is that a personalized leadership strategy characterized by the leader-member exchange has even stronger effects when the workers are globally distributed."
Since spatial distance can translate into psychological distance, high-quality leader-member exchange relationships are effective in creating inclusivity and involvement among team members, so long as they are accompanied by frequent communication.
"The conundrum is, you're bringing together these talented people from around the globe because you hope that something innovative is going to come from their work," Gajendran said. "You explicitly design a team to get the best experts from different parts of the world. But at the same time, you've structured the team in a distributed manner so that it's easy for team members to feel isolated and that they can't give their input. So there's this tension that has to be resolved, which is why leaders have to work hard at re-creating the team in people's minds."
For leaders, ordinary workaday world tasks such as figuring out if someone is energized on a given day is impossible simply because they don't see virtual workers at the office, Gajendran says.
"As a leader, then, you don't know whether you need to motivate them or give them their space," he said. "And team members also are missing out on the social aspects of work: team space, team dinners and team drinks things like that."
To bridge that gap, a personal touch is required, Gajendran says.
"Even though there is no physical team, leaders need more one-on-one interaction with their virtual team members," he said. "In other words, leadership needs to be uniquely tailored to the team members rather than dictated from on high. It's about building a relationship with each member, and that requires slightly more effort than in it would in a normal workplace setting."
The other finding of the study is the need for constant, predictable contact to ensure that team members understand that their input matters, Gajendran says.
"Personalized leadership seems to matter much more in distributed working environments," he said. "So instead of treating all of the team members the same, it's better for leaders to target and personalize the relationship with each individual. That's why leader-member exchange training should also emphasize the importance of regular and predictable leadermember communication to maximize the impact of member influence on team decisions."
In addition to building relationships and a regular, predictable communication schedule, a team leader also needs to be an advocate for the work of its members, which can easily go unnoticed.
"That's the big danger in these distributed teams the lack of visibility of the end-product, as well as the lack of visibility of the team member," Gajendran said. "In high-tech companies like Google and Facebook, a lot of the work being done is on a server. They're often working at different times, so that creates this distance that makes it difficult for people to appreciate their contribution or to motivate each other or feel part of this one cohesive unit."
Which is why it's incumbent on the leader to make sure that the team's work gets its due, Gajendran says.
"You don't want team members to feel as though they're just sending their work out into a vacuum," he said. "That's why leaders matter they have to make those invisible workers visible, and you can do that by creating that sense of involvement and inclusion."
The paper will appear in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
###
Editor's notes: To contact Ravi Gajendran, email ravisg@illinois.edu.
The paper, "Innovation in globally distributed teams: The role of LMX, communication frequency, and member influence on team decisions," is available online.
[ | 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.
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank has "zero tolerance" for customers seeking to evade taxes by holding assets in foreign accounts managed by the lender, Co-Chief Executive Juergen Fitschen told German radio broadcaster Deutschlandfunk.
"Tax evasion is a crime," Fitschen said in an interview. "It's unacceptable."
Germany's biggest lender has restrictive policies for dealing with its customers' overseas assets and all employees working in the area are aware of it, Fitschen said.
"We have zero tolerance," he said, adding that if the bank had the slightest indication that foreign assets handled by the bank were not taxed, it would demand that customers prove the assets were legitimate.
Tax evasion has become an election issue in Germany after the shock revelation that Uli Hoeness, the Bayern Munich soccer club president and an associate of Chancellor Angela Merkel, had turned himself into tax authorities over a secret Swiss bank account.
Germany's financial watchdog Bafin plans to take a closer look at banks' business in offshore tax havens.
Fitschen said he was confident the Bafin enquiry would bring a good result. "As in other areas, we have nothing to hide."
Separately, UBS Chairman Axel Weber told Wirtschaftswoche magazine that Switzerland's biggest bank would no longer do business with customers seeking to evade taxes.
"I am confident that we can persuade the affected customers to put their situation with the German tax authorities in order," said Weber, who is a former Bundesbank president.
(Reporting by Jonathan Gould; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Apr. 26, 2013 ? The NIMS Global Research Center for Environment and Energy based on Nanomaterials Science (GREEN) and Tokyo Metropolitan University have measured the volumetric expansion of single particles of silicon accompanying the charging reaction. This finding demonstrated the importance of electrode design from the viewpoint of volumetric energy density.
The NIMS Global Research Center for Environment and Energy based on Nanomaterials Science (GREEN) and a research group at Tokyo Metropolitan University succeeded in measuring the volumetric expansion of single particles of silicon, which is a negative electrode material for lithium ion batteries, accompanying the charging reaction, and demonstrated the importance of electrode design from the viewpoint of volumetric energy density based on this finding.
A research group headed by Dr. Kiyoshi Kanamura (NIMS Special Researcher) and Dr. Kei Nishikawa (Postdoctoral Researcher) at the Global Research Center for Environment and Energy based on Nanomaterials Science (GREEN) of the National Institute for Materials Science (President: Sukekatsu Ushioda), in joint research with Tokyo Metropolitan University (President: Fumio Harashima), succeeded in measuring the volumetric expansion of single particles of silicon, which is a negative electrode material for lithium (Li) ion batteries, accompanying the charging reaction, and demonstrated the importance of electrode design from the viewpoint of volumetric energy density.
Li-ion batteries are a type of secondary cell in which a Li-containing transition metal oxide is used as the positive electrode and graphite is used as the negative electrode. Because Li-ion batteries have high energy density in comparison with other secondary cells, such as nickel-metal hydride (NIMH) batteries, etc., they are widely used as a power source for mobile electronics, and are also considered promising for electric vehicle (EV) and stationary power storage applications. At present, graphite is used as the negative electrode material, but in order to achieve higher energy density, materials which utilize the alloying reaction with lithium, represented by silicon, have attracted attention as next-generation negative electrode materials. The most important issues for practical application are elucidation of the mechanism of the large volume change which occur in the charging and discharging reactions, and control of those changes.
Researchers at Tokyo Metropolitan University established the technology of a single-particle measurement system to investigate the intrinsic electrochemical properties of single particles of electrode materials for Li-ion batteries. In the present research, this system was introduced in the ultra-dry room at the NIMS Global Research Center for Environment and Energy based on Nanomaterials Science (GREEN), and was used to perform electrochemical measurements of single particles (10-20?m) of silicon, which is seen as a next-generation negative electrode material. To date, the expansion ratio, etc. of single particles of silicon had been estimated from the theoretical crystal size, and volumetric changes accompanying the charging and discharging reactions had not been evaluated quantitatively. This research result was the world's first example of successful measurement of volumetric expansion of a single particle of silicon accompanying the charging reaction.
The results of this experiment clarified the fact that the volumetric expansion of silicon in the charging reaction is larger than the value estimated theoretically. Although this is thought to be due to the formation of an amorphous phase, etc. as the alloying reaction between the lithium and silicon proceeds, further study will be necessary in order to elucidate the detailed mechanism. Standards have now been established for Li-ion batteries for electric vehicle (EV) and cellphone applications. Conventionally, evaluations of material performance had centered on energy density per unit of mass. However, volumetric energy density is increasingly considered more important than mass energy density. As the present research showed, silicon displays larger volumetric expansion than the predicted value, which results in a decrease in real energy density. Thus, this research demonstrated the importance of actual measurement of volumetric expansion in the search for candidates for next-generation battery materials.
As described above, this research showed the importance of measuring the actual volumetric energy density when adopting a material that displays volumetric changes during charging/discharging in the electrodes of Li-ion batteries. Based on this result, electrode design guidelines which also consider volumetric changes are necessary in research and development in the search for next-generation materials for Li-ion batteries.
These research results was presented at the 80th Spring Meeting of the Electrochemical Society of Japan, which was held at Tohoku University on March 29.
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Vines aren't exactly a new from of high art or anything. But while poorly edited Vine's of your friends' cats doing nothing are probably what you see most often, there are some pretty good ones, with a bit more meat to 'em. These Tribeca Vine Competition winners are a pretty good sample. They're so good you might even go "huh!" More »
Getting an app with many advanced features of its flagship Photoshop application onto a tablet seemed hard enough, but Adobe has gone a step further, taking the world's leading image editor to phones, with Photoshop Touch for iPhone ($4.99). It only makes sense to offer these capabilities on the iPhone, since that's become the primary point-and-shoot camera for many users, including me?despite the fact that I own a shiny new (but much bulkier) Canon EOS 6D.
If you're going to shoot and share the photo from the phone, why not have the ability to edit it effectively, too? Photoshop Touch brings a lot of?though obviously not all?familiar Photoshop tools and concepts, including layers, filters, and the beloved Magic Wand. But the iPhone version is not as powerful or usable as that for the iPad, which is only to be expected, given the smaller work area. It's also missing some expected tools like red-eye correction and photo leveling.
Interface You get started by tapping the bottom center photo icon, which lets you choose form your camera roll, from Adobe's Creative Cloud online service, from shooting a new picture with your camera, or with a blank document. I missed the ability to open a Facebook photo, and I also missed all the helpful tutorials of the iPad app, but the first time through the interface, tool tip overlays explain what each button is for. The camera option doesn't offer any shooting tools like Camera+'s separate focus and exposure points and self-timer. Once you've got an image in to edit, you'll see four icons across the top. The first is for basic actions like selection and pasting, the second is for image adjustments, and the next two offer filters and advanced effects.
The bottom left icon is the tool selector: this popped up well-known Photoshop features like Clone Stamp, Healing Brush, and Magic Wand, along with selection and painting tools. If you need (just a little) more space, you can hide the top toolbar.
The coolest of this last group is the Scribble selection tool, which lets you finger-paint on a rough trace of the object in the photo you want to select and automagically your person or whatever other item you want is selected with a usually accurate outline. You use a green scribble to mark what you want to keep and red for what you don?t. The Refine Selection tool let me do just that after the rough scribble selection. One basic thing missing was a hand tool?it took me a while to figure out that the same two-finger input was used for this. And I'm not alone, several users have complained about the app's lack of a hand tool in the product forum
Basic Photo Edits Photoshop Touch includes all the basic photo adjusters you'd expect from the imaging software leader: brightness and contrast, color saturation and temperature, and noise reduction. You also get more specific tonal adjustments for shadows, darks, and highlights. I like that these adjustments start in the middle and lets you slide down and up to darken or brighten the effect. You even get the more advance curves and levels tool, which lets you adjust using a histogram, and even by separate color channels. I was surprised not to find sharpening in the adustement tool set, but thankfully it was available in the FX tool set.
I could rotate my photo by 90 degrees or flip it, but I couldn't level or straighten images from this tool, which other photo apps offer. This seemed odd for an app that actually lets you "warp" your photo using several control points. You can use the Transform tool to rotate to a specific number of degrees, but that also rotates the image sides. Another tool I was surprised to see missing was red-eye reduction. You could of course go in and select pupils and replace colors, but red-eye is a basic correction that's in nearly every photo editor at every level.
* Lewandowski scored four goals against Real Madrid * Poland international refuses contract extension (adds details, background) BERLIN, April 26 (Reuters) - Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund striker Robert Lewandowski have not signed a deal, the newly-crowned champions said on Friday, shooting down widespread speculation of another imminent surprise transfer. "Bayern, as opposed to some reports, has no contract with Robert Lewandowski," the Bavarian Champions League semi-finalists said in a brief statement. ...
Apr. 25, 2013 ? As scientists probe and parse the genetic bases of what makes a human a human (or one human different from another), and vigorously push for greater use of whole genome sequencing, they find themselves increasingly threatened by the unthinkable: Too much data to make full sense of.
In a pair of papers published in the April 25, 2013 issue of PLOS Genetics, two diverse teams of scientists, both headed by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, describe novel statistical models that more broadly and deeply identify associations between bits of sequenced DNA called single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs and say lead to a more complete and accurate understanding of the genetic underpinnings of many diseases and how best to treat them.
"It's increasingly evident that highly heritable diseases and traits are influenced by a large number of genetic variants in different parts of the genome, each with small effects," said Anders M. Dale, PhD, a professor in the departments of Radiology, Neurosciences and Psychiatry at the UC San Diego School of Medicine. "Unfortunately, it's also increasingly evident that existing statistical methods, like genome-wide association studies (GWAS) that look for associations between SNPs and diseases, are severely underpowered and can't adequately incorporate all of this new, exciting and exceedingly rich data."
Dale cited, for example, a recent study published in Nature Genetics in which researchers used traditional GWAS to raise the number of SNPs associated with primary sclerosing cholangitis from four to 16. The scientists then applied the new statistical methods to identify 33 additional SNPs, more than tripling the number of genome locations associated with the life-threatening liver disease.
Generally speaking, the new methods boost researchers' analytical powers by incorporating a priori or prior knowledge about the function of SNPs with their pleiotrophic relationships to multiple phenotypes. Pleiotrophy occurs when one gene influences multiple sets of observed traits or phenotypes.
Dale and colleagues believe the new methods could lead to a paradigm shift in CWAS analysis, with profound implications across a broad range of complex traits and disorders.
"There is ever-greater emphasis being placed on expensive whole genome sequencing efforts," he said, "but as the science advances, the challenges become larger. The needle in the haystack of traditional GWAS involves searching through about one million SNPs. This will increase 10- to 100-fold, to about 3 billion positions. We think these new methodologies allow us to more completely exploit our resources, to extract the most information possible, which we think has important implications for gene discovery, drug development and more accurately assessing a person's overall genetic risk of developing a certain disease."
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Andrew J. Schork, Wesley K. Thompson, Phillip Pham, Ali Torkamani, J. Cooper Roddey, Patrick F. Sullivan, John R. Kelsoe, Michael C. O'Donovan, Helena Furberg, Nicholas J. Schork, Ole A. Andreassen, Anders M. Dale. All SNPs Are Not Created Equal: Genome-Wide Association Studies Reveal a Consistent Pattern of Enrichment among Functionally Annotated SNPs. PLoS Genetics, 2013; 9 (4): e1003449 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1003449
Ole A. Andreassen, Wesley K. Thompson, Andrew J. Schork, Stephan Ripke, Morten Mattingsdal, John R. Kelsoe, Kenneth S. Kendler, Michael C. O'Donovan, Dan Rujescu, Thomas Werge, Pamela Sklar, J. Cooper Roddey, Chi-Hua Chen, Linda McEvoy, Rahul S. Desikan, Srdjan Djurovic, Anders M. Dale. Improved Detection of Common Variants Associated with Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder Using Pleiotropy-Informed Conditional False Discovery Rate. PLoS Genetics, 2013; 9 (4): e1003455 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1003455
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.
Apr. 25, 2013 ? Weight loss is a topic of concern for nearly 36% of Americans who are considered obese. There are many barriers that can interfere with weight loss. For those attending face-to-face weight loss programs, barriers can include travel, conflict with work and home, need for childcare, and loss of anonymity.
In a new study released in the May/June 2013 issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, investigators from The University of Kansas Medical Center continue to explore alternative weight management delivery methods to eliminate some of these barriers. The solution they are investigating -- virtual reality for weight loss and weight maintenance.
Looking at the results from twenty overweight and obese individuals after 3 months of a weight loss program at a weekly clinic delivered via face-to-face or virtual reality and then 6 months of weight maintenance delivered via virtual reality, the investigators found virtual reality compares favorably with face-to-face for weight loss and may facilitate greater weight maintenance. Debra Sullivan, lead investigator, adds, "Although we found weight loss was significantly greater for face-to-face compared to virtual reality, weight maintenance was significantly better for virtual reality."
The virtual reality weight maintenance program was conducted using Second Life, a Web-based virtual reality environment available to the public. Participants in Second Life create virtual representations of themselves, called ''avatars,'' which can interact with other avatars and navigate through the virtual world of Second Life. Voice communication is accomplished via headset, which allows for person-to-person and group interaction. Education and training takes place on an ''island,'' which is purchased from Second Life and provides restricted group access to the nutrition education/training area.
To further explain how Second Life can be used in this capacity, Dr. Sullivan explains, "Individuals who want to participate in real-life scenarios without real-life repercussions can use virtual reality. For example, participants can practice meal planning, grocery shopping, and dietary control when eating at restaurants and holiday parties to a much greater extent with Second Life compared with the time-limited clinic meeting. Virtual reality may even be able to serve as a more feasible option to monitor individuals after completing a weight loss program."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Elsevier Health Sciences.
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Journal Reference:
Debra K. Sullivan et al. Improving Weight Maintenance Using Virtual Reality (Second Life). Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, May/June 2013
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.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon reaffirmed his opposition Thursday to a Republican-backed plan that would cut Missouri income taxes for individuals and businesses while raising the state sales tax for the benefit of schools, roads and a mental hospital.
Nixon suggested he was likely to veto the legislation, which could be sent to his desk as soon as next week.
"Increasing sales taxes on all Missourians and shifting the burden on to seniors and veterans on fixed incomes is not the right approach to growing our economy or creating jobs," Nixon said in a written statement.
His reaction comes after the House passed a bill Wednesday that would gradually increase the state sales tax by three-fifths of a cent over the next five years, with most of those revenues earmarked to schools and a smaller portion to state roads and the replacement of an aging mental hospital in Fulton.
Although Nixon focused exclusively on the sales tax increase, Republicans who hold a supermajority in the Legislature have emphasized the legislation's income tax cuts that would result in a net reduction of several hundred million dollars of tax revenues annually for the state.
The Senate, which previously passed a different version of the bill, could have taken up the House version Thursday and immediately sent it to Nixon. Instead, Senate leaders opted to give members more time to review the new version before deciding whether to give it final approval or ask the House for negotiations.
The bill's sponsor, Sen. Will Kraus, said he's willing to pass the House version but also is open to changes that could make it more appealing to Nixon.
"Our goal is to get something done and passed ? to cross the finish line ? that becomes law that has an impact on the state of Missouri and improves economics in the state," said Kraus, R-Lee's Summit.
The legislation stems from a desire among Missouri lawmakers to counter income tax cuts enacted in neighboring Kansas and Oklahoma as part of an ongoing battle among states to attract businesses.
The Missouri legislation would reduce the top individual income tax rate of 6 percent by two-thirds of a percentage point over five years, the first reduction in Missouri's income tax rate since 1921.
The corporate income tax would be gradually reduced by three-quarters of a percentage point. And a new 50 percent deduction would be phased in for business income reported on individual income tax returns.
The bill also contains several provisions meant to aid lower-income families and small businesses. It would nearly double the personal deduction on individual income taxes for those with adjusted gross incomes below $20,000 annually. And it would exempt the first $25,000 of corporate income from taxation.
The various tax changes would start in 2014 and be fully implemented in 2018, but each step would go forward only if state revenues rise by at least $100 million annually.
Legislative researchers estimate the bill would reduce state revenues by $438 million annually once fully implemented. The cost has been estimated at more than double that by The Missouri Budget Project, a St. Louis-based nonprofit that has run ads against the proposal.
Nixon also had expressed opposition to an earlier Senate version of the bill, which had a slightly smaller sales tax hike and larger income tax cut.
But Kraus said the House version contains several provisions he had hoped would appease Nixon.
For example, the bill would earmark much of the new sales tax revenue to schools as opposed to placing it in general revenues as the Senate version had done.
The House also added a tax amnesty period backed by Nixon that would waive interest and penalties for overdue taxpayers who pay up between this August and October. That provision has been projected to generate tens of millions of dollars that the state would otherwise be unlikely to collect. Kraus personally opposes the tax amnesty provision but said he's willing to accept it if it helps the bill become law.
Senate President Pro Tem Tom Dempsey, R-St. Charles, said Republican senators would discuss how to proceed on the tax legislation during a private caucus meeting next week.
___
Tax bill is SB26.
Online:
Legislature: http://www.moga.mo.gov .
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Follow David A. Lieb at: http://www.twitter.com/DavidALieb
HENDERSON, Nev. (AP) ? A Las Vegas man is behind bars after police say he became so enraged at being turned away from speaking with a pastor that he plowed his car through an entrance and down the hall of a large Henderson church.
Kevin Wilson was being held Thursday on $8,000 bail at the Henderson city jail pending a court appearance Monday on felony burglary and destruction of property charges.
Henderson police say the 51-year-old Wilson got out of his Kia Spectra, smashed furniture and knocked holes in the walls at Central Christian Church before police arrested him about 5 a.m. Wednesday.
Police spokesman Keith Paul says a city building inspector later determined the church building remained structurally sound.
It wasn't immediately clear if Wilson had an attorney.
When journalist Clive Thompson tweeted that he was "kind of slow" in terms of productivity, I had serious doubts. For a writer with so much on his plate (including gigs at Wired and The New York Times Magazine, as well as a book coming out this fall), he must have a few tricks up his sleeve, right? Turns out, Clive's version of "slow" is anything but. I caught up with the busy Brooklynite to find out what gadgets, apps, and inspirations keep him cruising along.
Location: Brooklyn, NY Current Gig: Contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and Wired; author of Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing our Minds for the Better, coming out with Penguin in September Current mobile device: iPhone 4S Current computer: MacBook Pro primarily, though I also have an old Dell runing Ubuntu, and another old Dell running XP. One word that best describes how you work: "Bursty"
What apps/software/tools can't you live without?
I'm a pack rat when it comes to research. I like to save everything, because you never know when it'll be useful. I write primarily long-form magazine pieces and books, each of which takes months to report and sometimes years to gestate, so I often find myself realizing an interview or study I encountered three years earlier is suddently useful now. So I lean heavily on tools for finding and saving everything.
For face-to-face interviews, I use a Livescribe pen, which is invaluable even though the software is kind of creaky. I use Skype out for most of my phone interviews, and Call Recorder to save those files. I have a Scrivener database for my research?whenever I read anything interesting, I make a note about it and paste in any relevant passages. The note-writing is a crucial part of the task for me, because it requires me to slow down and make sense of what I?m reading, instead of just blindly clipping and saving everything. I also use DEVONthink to mirror a lot of my Scrivener notes and store the full text of the thousands of scientific papers and articles I?ve read and found worth saving.
When I?m reading, I write tons of marginalia?again as much for sense-making as for retrieval. When reading in PDF format, I either use Acrobat Professional on my desktop or iAnnotate PDF on my iPad. My book reading is split probably 50/50 between paper and digital books. For digital books, I mostly read in Kindle or Stanza on my iPad or phone and export the notes and highlights locally. I use Project Gutenberg and Google Books a ton for reading out-of-copyright digital books; indeed, my reading probably has a huge pre-1923 bias because so much amazing stuff is so easily available before copyright laws tightened up.
For paper notes and marginalia, I?m addicted to Palomino Blackwing pencils?the lead is gorgeous and almost as dark as ink! I?m also shamelessly addicted to Blackwing Long Point Sharpeners. When I?m writing, I do much of my organizing on paper, but almost any paper will do; I don?t have much of a preference.
Pictured above: Some of Clive's favorite tools.
For books, I also rely heavily on the Brooklyn Public Library system. My local branch is only a few blocks away, and the main branch?a bike ride away?has JSTOR and other academic databases, a godsend for science research.
For collaborating with other people?editors, researchers, other writers?I often use Google Docs and Dropbox. That?s just for stuff that isn?t sensitive or where the privacy of interviewees isn't an issue. If privacy and security are an issue, I keep all the files local and stored in TrueCrypt volumes.
I text like a maniac, particularly with my wife, and probably ? of my texts are written with Siri, particularly if I?m walking around the neighborhood. I wish there were a better voice-transcription tool, because I?m unsettled by Apple?s long-term storage of my Siri utterances. I also frequently use it to dictate notes and ideas that occur to me while I?m away from my desk. When I?m at my computer I sometimes use Dragon Dictate to dictate notes or passages from paper books.
For keeping abreast of news and the people I?m interested in, I use Bloglovin for RSS, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook (a bit). I?m old-school with daily news. I still read the New York Times and Wall Street Journal in paper every day, though I read a gazillion odd niche blogs and sites online too.
I rely on Youtube heavily when I?m making things or fixing things. I?d probably have cut off every finger I have with high-powered tools if I hadn?t first watched maker and fixer videos to learn safe techniques.
I use Google Translate amazingly often, sometimes daily, because it?s baked into Chrome for autotranslating when I?m surfing foreign-language web sites. It?s terrible for many languages (like Mandarin) but shockingly good with the European romance ones.
I have a Sprint MiFi for roaming data?it's wildly expensive but has saved me in deadline situations. I use Time Machine religiously to back up my data, which also saved me when my Mac?s hard drive suddenly failed a few months ago.
I?ve been a Rhapsody subscriber since 2004, but use Shazam as my primary music-discovery tool, identifying stuff I hear when I work in cafes or bars.
What's your workspace like?
My work is split into research and writing. I do a lot of interviews, which are either face-to-face out in the field, or on Skype using a headset at home. My ?office? is a desk crammed into the corner of my bedroom. It?s nothing fancy?just a regular office chair and an Ikea desk. When my back starts to ache, I?ll carry my laptop downstairs and work standing up on the counter in my kitchen. If my research involves a lot of reading I?ll go to a cafe or the library, too. For writing, I do short pieces at my desk, but for long ones I need to be in a cafe: The extra background noise seems to help!
What's your best time-saving trick?
I don?t know if you?d call it ?time saving? so much as ?time generating," but I go mostly offline on the weekends. I generally don?t check email from Friday night until Monday morning. I still text like a freak, because that?s how my social life is organized! But by staying off email I also find I tend to not engage in social media much either. This leaves my weekends free for a lot of slower thinking and reading that?s a nice break from the zingy pace of being at a screen all the work week.
I also tend to engage in social media in periodic massive dives, instead of darting over every few minutes and distracting myself all day long. Instead of checking Twitter a few times an hour, I check it only a few times a day, and if I get busy I might just forget to check it for days at a time. I?ll ignore a useful blog for weeks and weeks, then sit down and spend a few hours reading everything that happened in the last two months. Fortunately, while my work requires me to pay attention to the news, my writing and research goes very, very slowly?so for the purpose of my research, it doesn?t really matter if I follow a breaking news story hours, days, or even weeks later. Basically I try to decouple myself from the daily news cycle as much as possible. I turn off the alerts for every single piece of social media I use.
That said, I still manage to spend way too much time online.
What's your favorite to-do list manager?
My to-do lists are all just plain-text?a single text file on whatever computer I?m using, and sometimes a piece of paper if I?m out in the field. I?ve tried endless to-do apps and none of them ever worked for me!
For timed events and meetings, I rely heavily on Google Calendar. This is one time when alerts are very useful for me: I have Google Calendar set up to email me 12 hours before a meeting, then text me one hour before. I space out easily, so this is life-saving. I can?t tell you how many times I?ve totally forgotten about a meeting until I get a text message reminding me I?m supposed to be in the city in an hour!
Besides your phone and computer, what gadget can't you live without?
Those Palomino Blackwing pencils. They're so delightful they make me want to write more often by hand, which is useful in its own way. My thinking moves in slightly different modes when I write by hand versus writing on a keyboard, so it's like a form of cognitive diversity.
Pictured above: Clive's workspace.
What everyday thing are you better at than anyone else?
I doubt I'm better at any single thing than anyone else. I read a ton of poetry, and while that's a pleasant/obnoxious enough thing to brag about, I doubt it's a habit people wish they were "better" at.
What do you listen to while you work?
Silence! I almost never listen to music while working. Vocals utterly distract me. I very occasionally listen to classical while doing research. Recently I've been loving Zoe Keating's Into the Trees.
Are you more of an introvert or an extrovert?
I'm 80% extrovert, 20% introvert.
What's your sleep routine like?
I am a night owl all the way. I can?t get a single blessed piece of work done before 11 AM, except for drinking coffee and reading the news and dorking around online. If I didn?t have children to get to school in the morning I?d probably stay up until 2 or 3 AM every day and sleep until 10 AM. My best work hours are often from 8:30 PM, after my kids are in bed, until 1 AM.
Fill in the blank. I'd kill to see _______ answer these same questions.
E.E. Cummings. I've been reading his Complete Poems from 1904 to 1962, and his productivity is completely insane and stunningly high quality. How the hell did he do it? A lot of authors' complete-works editions include plenty of filler, but not here. Cummings takes pretty much every single poem and knocks it flaming out of the park.
What's the best advice you've ever received?
?If you want to understand what?s going on in the world, get out from behind your desk.? This is advice specific to reporters, but it extends to a lot of other fields too. Early on in my career a lot of long-time, old-school reporters told me this. They were right. These days it?s easier than ever to feel you know how the world works from sitting at your desk, because there?s such a welter of knowledge on tap. But there?s no substitute for seeing things and talking to people.
The How I Work series asks heroes, experts, brilliant, and flat-out productive people to share their shortcuts, workspaces, routines, and more. Every Wednesday we'll feature a new guest and the gadgets, apps, tips, and tricks that keep them going. Have someone you'd kill to see featured, or questions you think we should ask? Email Tessa.
Apr. 24, 2013 ? Prisoners who are psychopaths lack the basic neurophysiological "hardwiring" that enables them to care for others, according to a new study by neuroscientists at the University of Chicago and the University of New Mexico.
"A marked lack of empathy is a hallmark characteristic of individuals with psychopathy," said the lead author of the study, Jean Decety, the Irving B. Harris Professor in Psychology and Psychiatry at UChicago. Psychopathy affects approximately 1 percent of the United States general population and 20 percent to 30 percent of the male and female U.S. prison population. Relative to non-psychopathic criminals, psychopaths are responsible for a disproportionate amount of repetitive crime and violence in society.
"This is the first time that neural processes associated with empathic processing have been directly examined in individuals with psychopathy, especially in response to the perception of other people in pain or distress," he added.
The results of the study, which could help clinical psychologists design better treatment programs for psychopaths, are published in the article, "Brain Responses to Empathy-Eliciting Scenarios Involving Pain in Incarcerated Individuals with Psychopathy," which appears online April 24 in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.
Joining Decety in the study were Laurie Skelly, a graduate student at UChicago; and Kent Kiehl, professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico.
For the study, the research team tested 80 prisoners between ages 18 and 50 at a correctional facility. The men volunteered for the test and were tested for levels of psychopathy using standard measures.
They were then studied with functional MRI technology, to determine their responses to a series of scenarios depicting people being intentionally hurt. They were also tested on their responses to seeing short videos of facial expressions showing pain.
The participants in the high psychopathy group exhibited significantly less activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, lateral orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala and periaqueductal gray parts of the brain, but more activity in the striatum and the insula when compared to control participants, the study found.
The high response in the insula in psychopaths was an unexpected finding, as this region is critically involved in emotion and somatic resonance. Conversely, the diminished response in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and amygdala is consistent with the affective neuroscience literature on psychopathy. This latter region is important for monitoring ongoing behavior, estimating consequences and incorporating emotional learning into moral decision-making, and plays a fundamental role in empathic concern and valuing the well-being of others.
"The neural response to distress of others such as pain is thought to reflect an aversive response in the observer that may act as a trigger to inhibit aggression or prompt motivation to help," the authors write in the paper.
"Hence, examining the neural response of individuals with psychopathy as they view others being harmed or expressing pain is an effective probe into the neural processes underlying affective and empathy deficits in psychopathy," the authors wrote.
The study with prisoners was supported with a $1.6 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Chicago, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
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Journal Reference:
Jean Decety, Laurie R. Skelly, Kent A. Kiehl. Brain Response to Empathy-Eliciting Scenarios Involving Pain in Incarcerated Individuals With Psychopathy. JAMA Psychiatry, 2013 DOI: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2013.27
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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.
iOS 7 is probably right around the corner, at least as a preview coming at Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference in June, and it looks like it might be the most exciting change to Apple's mobile OS we've seen in a long time, at least on the surface. iOS 7 will get a flat visual look, which is all the rage these days, at the hands of Apple's chief design guru Jony Ive, according to a new report by 9to5Mac. The blog's sources say that it's "very, very flat," losing any evidence of computer-generated shine, glare or the skeuomorphism reportedly favored by deposed iOS chief Scott Forstall.
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Public release date: 29-Apr-2013
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