A little over a week ago, Apple revealed the winners of its 2013 design awards.
The awards are meant to recognize the best and most innovative Mac and iOS app produced by independent developers. It is also a way for Apple to show off the most creative uses of its products.
The apps that Apple selected are useful, fun, and of course beautiful.
ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - Two voice identification experts who suggested that unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin screamed for help before he was shot and killed by George Zimmerman will not be allowed to testify at his murder trial, the judge in the case has ruled.
The ruling by Judge Debra Nelson was released on Saturday, marking the last major hurdle before opening statements in the high-profile case begin on Monday in Seminole County courthouse in Sanford, Florida.
Prosecutors had sought to call audio experts to testify about a 911 emergency call in which screams for help can be heard in the background during an altercation between Zimmerman and Martin before the shooting.
The screams could be pivotal evidence and help identify who was the aggressor on the night of the February 2012 killing. Zimmerman's family and supporters claim the voice was his, while Martin's parents insist the voice belonged to their son.
Last year, an FBI expert said a voice analysis of the call was inconclusive.
David Weinstein, a Miami lawyer and former prosecutor, called the ruling a victory for Zimmerman's defense team.
"Now there won't be a witness who can 'identify' the voice with certainty as a particular person," he said. "Each side can argue who they believe the voice belongs to and the jurors will have to decide who they hear."
Prosecutors say Zimmerman followed and confronted Martin despite a police dispatcher telling him not to pursue the 17-year-old. Zimmerman, 29, has said the two fought and that he shot Martin because he feared for his life.
An all-female jury will decide whether Zimmerman is guilty of second-degree murder, a charge that carries a potential life sentence. Zimmerman has pleaded not guilty.
Nelson said in her 12-page order that the decision does not prevent either side from playing the 911 tape and presenting witnesses familiar with Zimmerman's and Martin's voices from stating their opinions.
Lead defense attorney Mark O'Mara has called the recording "the most significant piece of evidence in the case."
Two state experts, in what they qualify as tentative or probable findings because of the poor quality of the recording, have said that the chilling screams heard in the background came from Martin.
Lawyers for Zimmerman, a former neighborhood watch volunteer, sought to block the testimony on grounds that the methods used by the state's voice recognition experts were based on questionable science.
Audio experts who testified for the defense in a lengthy pre-trial hearing argued that voice recognition techniques cannot identify an individual from screams made under extreme duress.
On Friday, the judge also dismissed a defense motion to bar certain words and phrases from the prosecution's opening statement.
She ruled prosecutors could allege that Zimmerman, who is Hispanic, "profiled" Martin but ordered them not to use the term "racial profiling."
(Additional reporting by David Adams; Writing by Kevin Gray; Editing by Eric Beech and Eric Walsh)
CALGARY, Alberta (AP) ? Flooding forced the western Canadian city of Calgary to order the evacuation of its entire downtown Friday, as the waters reached the 10th row of the city's hockey arena.
Communities throughout southern Alberta were inundated by overflowing rivers that washed out roads and bridges, soaked homes and turned streets into dirt-brown waterways. Police say as many as four people might have died.
About 350,000 people work in downtown Calgary on a typical day. However, officials said very few people need to be moved out, since many heeded warnings and did not go to work Friday.
Twenty-five neighborhoods in the city, with an estimated population of 75,000, have already been evacuated due to floodwaters in Calgary, a city of more than a million people that hosted the 1988 Winter Olympics and serves as the center of Canada's oil industry.
Outside the city, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said two men were seen floating lifeless in the Highwood River near the hard-hit community of High River on Thursday, but no bodies have been found. They also say a woman who was swept away with her camper has not been located. And it wasn't clear whether a man who was seen falling out of a canoe in the High River area was able to climb back in.
In the downtown Calgary, water was inundating homes and businesses in the shadow of skyscrapers. Water has swamped cars and train tracks.
The city said the home rink of the National Hockey League's Calgary Flames flooded and the water inside was 10 rows deep.
At the grounds for the world-famous Calgary Stampede fair, water reached up to the roofs of the chuck wagon barns. The popular rodeo and festival is the city's signature event. Mayor Naheed Nenshi said it will occur no matter what.
About 1,500 have gone to emergency shelters while the rest have found shelter with family or friends, Nenshi said.
Nenshi said he's never seen the rivers reach so high or flow so fast, but said the flooding situation was as under control as it could be. Nenshi said the Elbow River, one of two rivers that flow through the southern Alberta city, has peaked.
The mayor suggested that levels on the Bow River ? which, in Nenshi's words, looked like an ocean ? would remain steady for the rest of the day as long as conditions didn't change.
Police urged people to stay away from downtown and not go to work.
The flood was forcing emergency plans at the Calgary Zoo, which is situated on an island near where the Elbow and Bow rivers meet. Lions and tigers were being prepared for transfer, if necessary, to prisoner holding cells at the courthouse.
Schools and court trials were cancelled Friday and residents urged to avoid downtown. Transit service in the core was shut down.
Residents were left to wander and wade through streets waist-deep in water.
"In all the years I've been down here, I've never seen the water this high," resident John Doherty said.
"I've got two antique pianos in the garage that I was going to rebuild and they're probably under water," he said. "We're shell-shocked."
Alberta Premier Alison Redford promised the province would help flood victims put their lives back together and provide financial aid to communities that need to rebuild. The premier said at a briefing that she had spoken to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who was heading to Calgary and promised disaster relief.
Redford urged people to heed evacuation orders, so authorities could do their jobs. She called the flooding that has hit most of southern Alberta an "absolutely tragic situation."
The premier warned that communities downstream of Calgary had not yet felt the full force of the floodwaters.
It had been a rainy week throughout much of Alberta, but on Thursday the Bow River Basin was battered with up to 100 millimeters (four inches) of rain. Environment Canada's forecast called for more rain in the area, but in much smaller amounts.
Calgary was not alone in its weather-related woes. Flashpoints of chaos spread from towns in the Rockies south to Lethbridge.
More than a dozen towns declared states of emergency. Entire communities, including High River and Bragg Creek, near Calgary, were under mandatory evacuation orders.
Some of the worst flooding hit High River, where an estimated half of the town's residents experienced flooding in their homes.
Military helicopters plucked about 30 people off rooftops in the area. Others were rescued by boat or in buckets of heavy machinery. Some even swam for their lives from stranded cars.
A spokesman for Defense Minister Peter MacKay said 354 soldiers are being deployed to the entire flood zone.
Further west, in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, photos from the mountain town of Canmore depicted a raging river ripping at house foundations.
MANAGUA/PANAMA CITY (Reuters) - For centuries since the colonization of the New World, entrepreneurs have dreamed of building a canal spanning Nicaragua to make it easier to tap Asia's riches.
Sixteenth century Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes yearned to cleave the isthmus, and ever since, French, American and Dutch financiers have all made abortive, Quixotic attempts to bisect the Central American country's volcano-studded terrain.
Now it's the turn of the Chinese. And skepticism is as strong as ever.
The Hong Kong-based company that won a concession to design, build and manage a $40 billion canal to rival Panama's says it has been lured by an energy renaissance in the United States and its belief that world trade could double by 2030.
The company, HKND Group, was registered last year in the Cayman Islands. This would be its first infrastructure project, and its 40-year-old boss, Wang Jing, is relatively unknown.
There is still no firm route for the proposed canal, which would cost about four years' worth of Nicaragua's annual gross domestic product, and would likely be three times longer than the 48-mile (77-km) Panama Canal, which took a decade to build. Engineers also note that the geography poses some major challenges - not least a 20 foot tide differential between the two coasts.
For all those reasons, investors and infrastructure experts are highly dubious that a canal will ever be built.
"Are international shipping companies going to trust a one-guy shop with minor telecommunications experience to be the system integrator on a $40 billion project in a country whose transparency is already subject to question?", said Evan Ellis, a professor of national security studies at the U.S. Government's National Defense University.
Greg Miller, a shipping consultant at IHS Fairplay, a global maritime intelligence company, was also highly skeptical.
"The Nicaragua canal will never be built and the only people who'll financially profit from this proposal are the consultants paid to do the feasibility studies," he said.
Rosario Murillo, the wife of President Daniel Ortega and his government spokeswoman, said at a ceremony with Wang after the concession was granted: "This is a day of miracles, of wonders." Government officials declined to comment on skepticism that has emerged since then.
BETTING ON ENERGY BOOM
HKND Group is a unit of holding company the HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co., Ltd. which was incorporated last year, according to the Hong Kong Companies Registry.
It bases its projections for the future success of a Nicaragua canal on the U.S. shale revolution, which has unlocked decades of oil and gas supply. If the United States wants to export more to Asia, the theory goes, it will need to send more and bigger ships from Gulf Coast refineries by canal to the Pacific, and Panama won't be able to handle it all.
"This project can be undertaken now, and only now, thanks to the discovery of prodigious amounts of gas and oil in the United States," said Ronald MacLean-Abaroa, HKND Group's spokesman, who is a former mayor of Bolivia's La Paz and one-time World Bank governance specialist.
"Three years ago that didn't exist," he told Reuters in an interview, saying the company would seek to raise private financing in Asia. On its website, the company also pointed to growth in U.S. exports of iron ore, coal and grains.
The Panama canal is already expanding to accommodate growth in traffic, and experts say the shale oil boom could benefit a Nicaraguan project, if it is ever completed.
Maersk Line, the world's largest container shipping company and the Panama Canal's top customer, has rerouted services from Asia to the East Coast of the United States via the Suez Canal. Its newest ships are too big for the Panama Canal, even after a third lane is built.
A spokesman for Maersk Line Central America and Caribbean said it was too early to speculate on the Nicaragua project, but it would be monitoring developments.
"We applaud bold initiatives that can boost the possibilities for container shipping for the benefit of both lines and our customers," Ariel Frias said.
Panama Canal officials have said it is too early to speculate on the viability of the Nicaraguan waterway or how it could affect trade.
OUT OF THE BLUE
Little is known about the Chinese lawyer and businessman behind the canal project, Wang Jing.
According to his identity card data, Wang was born in Beijing on December 24, 1972, but there is no information on him publicly available until 2010, when he became the head of the Xinwei Telecom Enterprise Group, a wireless communications company. Wang visited Nicaragua in 2012 and signed a wireless telecoms deal.
Xinwei's website says the group's core markets include public telecoms operations, public security, oil fields, power grids, water conservancy and transportation and emergency communication, and lists several subsidiaries in China, Hong Kong, Russia and Cyprus.
The site, which does not mention HKND Group, carries photographs of Xi Jinping, now China's president, and Li Keqiang, now premier, visiting Xinwei.
"Your future is very bright. Full of hope," the site quotes Li as saying of Xinwei, picturing Wang with the leader. It said the visit took place on December 21, 2010.
At Wang Jing's listed office in Hong Kong, a woman declined to say where he was. HKND Group's plush office takes up a large part of the 18th floor of Two International Finance Centre, which it occupied in May.
The office is large and brand new with a view of Victoria Harbor outside its floor-to-ceiling windows. Big LED screens by the front door play the company's promotional videos in a loop. The office was very quiet and few people were working there.
An HKND spokesperson contacted by email said Wang was not available to comment for this story.
The company has given little information on the practicalities of building the proposed canal. The concession simply lists a shipping canal, ports and terminals, an oil pipeline, a railway, free trade zones and an airport.
Unlike the Panama Canal, a canal cutting across Nicaragua could theoretically be built at sea level, without locks, but there is a problem with the tides at either end. The timing and height of the tides are different, meaning that the water level can be as much as 20 feet higher at one end.
"It means a lot of water is going to come from west to east," said J. David Rogers, professor or geological engineering at Missouri University of Science & Technology.
"Everybody would love to have a sea-level canal between the Pacific and the Atlantic," he said, adding that engineers would likely have to consider tidal weirs.
"I'm not saying you can't do it, but it has some major engineering challenges that have to be overcome, and if it's your first project, I wouldn't invest in it."
Environmentalists are concerned the project could contaminate Lake Nicaragua, Central America's largest reserve of fresh water, which would almost certainly be part of any route.
President Ortega said last week the government was going ahead with feasibility studies that should be done by 2015, when work on the canal could begin.
Under the terms of the concession, HKND Group would face no legal or economic sanctions for failing to complete the project.
"Who knows if this is actually going to happen or not, but it seems much more serious at this point. There's some real heavy-weights involved," said Margaret Myers, director of the China and Latin America program at the Washington D.C.-based Inter-American Dialogue.
She noted HKND Group says it is working with several respected international companies, including Environmental Resources Management, a leading sustainability consultancy, and consulting firm McKinsey & Company.
McKinsey declined to comment, citing client confidentiality. Environmental Resources Management confirmed it had been hired to do a study.
SHOW ME THE MONEY
Another open question is the financing.
Christopher Erckert is a partner at the U.S. Mayer Brown law firm, which advised the Panama Canal Authority in its $5.25 billion expansion. A specialist in Latin American project finance, he said the main risk would be if Nicaragua nationalized the canal in the future.
"Nicaragua is not an investment grade country. That's a fact," he said. "That makes this a speculative grade investment... which limits the kind of investors who can play."
Several project financiers Reuters spoke to, who asked not to be named, said they had seen no signs in the industry of interest in the project.
If the project does go ahead, it might depend on China's desire to flex its muscles in America's backyard.
Alfonso Guzman, managing director at Castalia Strategic Advisors, an international economic and financial advisory firm, said it was hard to see how the project would be commercially viable.
"The only way it can be viable is if someone like the Chinese government provides a lot of grants and low-cost money so that the cost of the project is low and the prices charged for using this canal are lower or comparable to what the Panama canal offers," he said.
(With reporting by Lomi Kriel in Panama City, Isabella Cota in San Jose; Krista Hughes, Gabriel Stargardter and Simon Gardner and Elinor Comlay in Mexico City, Jonathan Standing and Koh Guiqing in Beijing, Lavinia Mo, Anne Marie Roantree and James Pomfret in Hong Kong and Kristen Hays in Houston; Writing by Gabriel Stargardter and Simon Gardner; Editing by Claudia Parsons)
If you're hoping for a job at Google but can't fathom the answer to "How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane?," don't worry?the company is phasing out its notorious brainteasers, because they are meaningless, the New York Times reports.
Surprisingly, asking massively difficult questions and expecting an answer on the spot didn't yield qualified candidates?"they serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart," says Google HR honcho Laszlo Block. "They don't predict anything," other than, probably, the ability to deal with batshit hypotheticals. Google will now start relying more on questions about real life experience. Huh! This will come as an enormous relief to everyone other than the people who created a cottage industry coaching applicants on how to answer these nonsense questions. [via QZ]
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Please try Yahoo Help Central if you need more assistance.
Even if it's not quite as amazing as it could be, Google Voice does some wonderful things. That's what makes it hard to admit the truth: It's time for Google Voice to die.
Today Microsoft revealed the Xbox One, and confirmed rumors that its new game console is ready to take over as the heart of your home theater. The new box features HDMI in and out for passthrough with your cable or satellite box. It's even able to control connected devices with Kinect 2.0-detected voice and gesture commands thanks to IR blasters and HDMI-CEC. On stage, executives showed off the Xbox OneGuide, demonstrating a way to pull up information including trending programming or fantasy sports stats while watching live TV. There's also a live TV show for Halo in the works, and Microsoft brought NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on stage to talk about integration with the number one pro sports league. There's no word on exactly which cable, telco or satellite TV systems this will integrate with, but Microsoft's PR states "is committed to bringing live TV through various solutions to all the markets where Xbox One will be available" and mentions HDMI is required for the feature to work. It's supposed to be available at launch in the US, with "global scale" anticipated over time.
With CyberLink's PowerDVD getting most of the OEM bundled disc-playing software action these days, Corel's once-dominant WinDVD has begun to fade. The current version hasn't been updated since 2011, but the company informs me that a new version will be coming soon. Look for an update of our review when it does ship. For a product that claims to have sold 250 million copies, it's a bit of a disappointment, but the software does some things quite well. Read on to see if WinDVD has what you need.
Setup Corel WinDVD runs on Windows 7, Vista, and XP. You can try it out with a 30-day, full-function trial download. Windows 8 is compatible with Windows 7 applications in desktop mode, and WinDVD ran fine except for Blu-ray. It's a 118MB download, considerably less than PowerDVD's 161, but there are caveats, as you'll see below.
The whole installation process on my test Windows 8 laptop, a Lenovo G580 with 4GB RAM and integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000, took just 3 minutes. During the process you're asked your zone for DVD playback. Oddly and annoyingly, it tries to install a browser toolbar, something people just no longer need or want. You can set up with recommended or custom settings, which let you choose file association for the product. You're required to fill in the online registration form, and at first run, I had to download additional codecs.
Interface WinDVD has a very Windows Vista look to it, with lots of elements sporting that once-fashionable shiny 3D, transparent look. It couldn't look more different than ArcSoft TotalMedia Theater's modern Windows 8 appearance, but that said, WinDVD's is not an unpleasant or unattractive interface to work in. And it's a lot simpler looking than PowerDVD's, mostly because it doesn?t offer as many playback options as that CyberLink program.
The Corel Guide, accessible from an icon at the top of the program's window offers not only tutorial videos, but even has the FlixFinder video search page, which can find movies available on Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu. A search bar at the top of the interface lets you do the same. But when I typed in Skins, which I know is on Netflix, the response said 0 results on Netflix, as it did for all searches. When I did find a free Amazon show to play, it played in the site's web-player, not in WinDVD, so this search is less useful than it might be.
Playing DVDs Since Windows 7 and later now can play DVDs in Windows Media Player without external software, straightforward DVD playback isn't enough to justify the purchase of a separate application for that purpose. Like PowerDVD, WinDVD earns its keep by adding playback improvements like lighting improvements, stabilization, upscaling to HD quality, and 2D-to-3D conversion. WinDVD 11 does all that, but how well?
To improve DVD playback quality for viewing on an HD screen, WinDVD offers the Enhancements dialog, popped up by clicking the tool icon on the toolbar at the bottom of the screen and choosing Enhancements. Other tools available are Bookmarks and Capture, which lets you save a picture from the movie. The Enhancements dialog offers both Audio and Video modes. We'll concern ourselves with the latter first, which is itself divided among four tabs?Video Effect, Color, Ratio, and Time Stretch.
Video Effects include an upscaler, to make DVD look HD; Stabilizer; and Motion Streamliner. To really see the effects of these Effects, a split screen option lets you see them in action alongside the unmodified original video. The image indeed looks sharper and brighter with Video Upscaler turned on, and I liked that you can adjust the strength of this effect with a slider control?something not available in ArcSoft's similar tool.
The Motion Streamliner effect, which effectively increases the frame rate, did make some video easier on the eyes. And I was surprised that the stabilizer effect was available for movie title discs as well as for your own shot video clips. This could be useful for some of those handheld Scandinavian art films. This stabilizer did a great job on my iPhone videos, and let me adjust the effect with a slider and a choice between lateral and rotational motion.
A final couple of tools in WinDVD for DVD playback deserve mention. The first is Time Stretch, which gets its own tab on the Effects dialog. Here you get options to adjust playback speed, choose a time the movie should end, or specify a target length for the movie. When I tried making an hour-and-a-half movie just one hour, the dialog was clipped, too fast. Lesser adjustments are livable, but do you really want to alter a movie's pacing, just because you don't have enough time to watch?
The second, Capture, lets you snap a screen capture or video clip of the currently playing video. It's a well-designed tool, showing a tray of all your captures, and even offers direct emailing of the captures using your default mail client.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama pledged urgent government help for Oklahoma Tuesday in the wake of "one of the most destructive" storms in the nation's history.
"In an instant neighborhoods were destroyed, dozens of people lost their lives, many more were injured," Obama said from the White House State Dining Room. "Among the victims were young children trying to take shelter in the safest place they knew ? their school."
The president added that the town of Moore, Okla., "needs to get everything it needs right away."
Obama spoke following a meeting with his disaster response team, including Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and top White House officials. On Monday, he spoke with Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin and Republican Rep. Tom Cole, whose home is in the heavily damaged town of Moore, a suburb of Oklahoma City.
The president has also declared a major disaster in Oklahoma, ordering federal aid to supplement state and local recovery efforts. Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Craig Fugate was due in Oklahoma later Tuesday to ensure that federal resources are being properly deployed.
The state medical examiner's office has revised the death toll from the tornado to 24 people, including seven children. Authorities had said initially that as many as 51 people were dead, including 20 children.
Teams are continuing to search the rubble in Moore, 10 miles south of Oklahoma City, after the Monday afternoon's more than half-mile-wide twister.
Hot on the heels of yesterday's rumors, Yahoo and Tumblr have jointly announced a "definitive agreement" for the former to acquire the latter for $1.1 billion. The agreement makes it clear that Tumblr will be "independently operated as a separate business" with its own branding and line of development. A frankly worded press release says that this arms-length arrangement will help Yahoo "not to screw it up" and promises that the 300 million monthly visitors to the blogging site will continue to experience Tumblr's "irreverence, wit, and commitment to empower creators." Those who have allegedly fled to WordPress already, for fear of Tumblr being shut down, may have slightly jumped the gun.
If you?re suffering from hair loss or are worried about suffering into the future, you may find yourself asking whether hair loss is hereditary.?
Is this something that is going to happen naturally regardless of what you do or is it something that is purely based around factors that you can control?? Almost 95 percent of men and up to 70 percent of women will experience hair thinning at some point in time, so at the very least, you should feel comfort in knowing that you are not alone in this problem.?
Let?s look at a few of the key points to know and consider when it comes to hair loss.?
The Hereditary Cause Of Hair Loss?
While your genes are not the only possible cause of hair loss, make no mistake about it, there is a hereditary factor at work here.?
This hair loss that is caused by your genes occurs because there is a shortening of the hair growth cycle and as this cycle shortens, your hair is going to become thinner and shorter over time.
Eventually, no growth will result.?
Fortunately, despite the fact that this is something you cannot control, both male pattern and female pattern baldness are very treatable.?
Here are some things you can do.?
Treat Yourself Early
First, start treating yourself early on before it has become a big problem. If you can catch hair loss in the initial stages, you can prevent complete balding, which is what happens to many people.
Some people may even want to start with treatments into their twenties if their mothers or fathers have very thin hair or are bald. In this instance, chances are it?s coming so the earlier you can get started, the better.?
Consider Medication
One treatment for hair loss is prescription medication.? Both Proscar and Propenia will influence hormone formation that impacts the hair follicles and can cause hair loss to occur.
Ask your doctor about more information regarding these medications.?
Lotion
Another way to treat hair loss is through the use of lotion that you will apply directly to your scalp a few times per day.?
This can help to restore certain hormones that will help to keep your hair intact.?
Surgical Options
Finally, you may also want to consider surgical options that are available to treat hair loss. This includes? scalp reduction surgery ,which will remove bald skin between the hair growing scalp regions, pulling the hair growing regions together.?
Obviously this is a much more extreme approach however and one that most people will aim to avoid as best as possible.?
So there you have the key points to know about hair loss and whether it?s hereditary.
Remember that even if your parents aren?t going bald or suffering from hair loss issues, this does not mean that you won?t in the future.?
Anyone can experience hair loss for a wide variety of reasons including diet deficiencies, medications, stress and illness, along with poor hair care habits.
May 20, 2013 ? The miniaturization of electronics continues to create unprecedented capabilities in computer and communications applications, enabling handheld wireless devices with tremendous computing performance operating on battery power. This same miniaturization of electronic systems is also creating new opportunities in biotechnology and biophysics.
A team of researchers at Columbia Engineering has used miniaturized electronics to measure the activity of individual ion-channel proteins with temporal resolution as fine as one microsecond, producing the fastest recordings of single ion channels ever performed. Ion channels are biomolecules that allow charged atoms to flow in and out of cells, and they are an important work-horse in cell signaling, sensing, and energetics. They are also being explored for nanopore sequencing applications. As the "transistors" of living systems, they are the target of many drugs, and the ability to perform such fast measurements of these proteins will lead to new understanding of their functions.
The researchers have designed a custom integrated circuit to perform these measurements, in which an artificial cell membrane and ion channel are attached directly to the surface of the amplifier chip. The results are described in a paper published online May 1, 2013, in Nano Letters.
"Scientists have been measuring single ion channels using large rack-mount electronic systems for the last 30 years," says Jacob Rosenstein, the lead author on the paper. Rosenstein was a PhD student in electrical engineering at the School at the time this work was done, and is now an assistant professor at Brown University. "By designing a custom microelectronic amplifier and tightly integrating the ion channel directly onto the amplifier chip surface, we are able to reduce stray capacitances that get in the way of making fast measurements."
"This work builds on other efforts in my laboratory to study the properties of individual molecules using custom electronics designed for this purpose," says Ken Shepard, professor of electrical engineering at the School and Rosenstein's adviser. The Shepard group continues to find ways to speed up these single-molecule measurements. "In some cases," he adds, "we may be able to speed things up to be a million times faster than current techniques."
This work was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.
Study shows how bilinguals switch between languagesPublic release date: 20-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Anna Mikulak amikulak@psychologicalscience.org 202-293-9300 Association for Psychological Science
Individuals who learn two languages at an early age seem to switch back and forth between separate "sound systems" for each language, according to new research conducted at the University of Arizona.
The research, to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, addresses enduring questions in bilingual studies about how bilingual speakers hear and process sound in two different languages.
"A lot of research has shown that bilinguals are pretty good at accommodating speech variation across languages, but there's been a debate as to how," said lead author Kalim Gonzales, a psychology doctoral student at the University of Arizona. "There are two views: One is that bilinguals have different processing modes for their two languages they have a mode for processing speech in one language and then a mode for processing speech in the other language. Another view is that bilinguals just adjust to speech variation by recalibrating to the unique acoustic properties of each language."
Gonzales's research supports the first view that bilinguals who learn two languages early in life learn two separate processing modes, or "sound systems."
The study looked at 32 Spanish-English early bilinguals, who had learned their second language before age 8. Participants were presented with a series of pseudo-words beginning with a 'pa' or a 'ba' sound and asked to identify which of the two sounds they heard.
While 'pa' and 'ba' sounds exist in both English and Spanish, how those sounds are produced and perceived in the two languages varies subtly. In the case of 'ba,' for example, English speakers typically begin to vibrate their vocal chords the moment they open their lips, while Spanish speakers begin vocal chord vibration slightly before they open their lips and produce 'pa' in a manner similar to English 'ba.' As a result of those subtle differences, English-only speakers might, in some cases, confuse the 'ba' and 'pa' sounds they hear in Spanish, explains co-author Andrew Lotto, associate professor of speech, language and hearing sciences at the University of Arizona.
"When most people think about differences between languages, they think they use different words and they have different grammars, but at their base languages use different sounds," Lotto said.
"One of the reasons it sounds different when you hear someone speaking a different language is because the actual sounds they use are different; they have a sound code that's specific to that language," he said. "One of the reasons someone might sound like they have an accent if they learn Spanish first is because their 'pa' is like an English 'ba,' so when they say a word with 'pa,' it will sound like a 'ba' to an English monolingual."
For the study, the bilingual participants were divided into two groups. One group was told they would be hearing rare words in Spanish, while the other was told they would be hearing rare words in English. Both groups heard audio recordings of variations of the same two words bafri and pafri which are not real words in either language.
Participants were then asked to identify whether the words they heard began with a 'ba' or a 'pa' sound.
Each group heard the same series of words, but for the group told they were hearing Spanish, the ends of the words were pronounced slightly differently, with the 'r' getting a Spanish pronunciation.
The findings: Participants perceived 'ba' and 'pa' sounds differently depending on whether they were told they were hearing Spanish words, with the Spanish pronunciation of 'r,' or whether they were told they were hearing English words, with the English pronunciation of 'r.'
"What this showed is that when you put people in English mode, they actually would act like English speakers, and then if you put them in Spanish mode, they would switch to acting like Spanish speakers," Lotto said. "These bilinguals, hearing the exact same 'ba's and 'pa's would label them differently depending on the context."
When the study was repeated with 32 English monolinguals, participants did not show the same shift in perception; they labeled 'ba' and 'pa' sounds the same way regardless of which language they were told they were hearing. It was that lack of an effect for monolinguals that provided the strongest evidence for two sound systems in bilinguals.
"Up until this point we haven't had a good answer to whether bilinguals actually learn two different codes so a 'ba-pa' English code and a 'ba-pa' Spanish code or whether they learn something that's sort of in the middle," Lotto said. "This is one of the first clear demonstrations that bilinguals really do have two different sounds systems and that they can switch between one language and the other and then use that sound system."
This is true primarily for those who learn two languages very young, Lotto said.
"If you learn a second language later in life, you usually have a dominant language and then you try to use that sounds system for the other language, which is why you end up having an accent," he said.
Research on bilingualism has increased in recent years as the global climate has become more intermixed, Lotto noted. These new findings challenge the idea that bilinguals always have one dominant language.
"This raises the possibility that bilinguals can perceive speech like a native speaker in both languages," said Gonzales, whose own son is growing up learning English and Chinese simultaneously.
"The predominant view of late has been that bilinguals will never be able to perceive a second language beyond what a late learner is capable of, or someone who learns a second language late in life. So even if you learn two languages simultaneously from birth, you're always going to perceive one of them like a late learner," Gonzales said. "Our findings cast doubt on that prominent view in the bilingual literature."
###
For more information about this study, please contact: Kalim Gonzales at kalimg@email.arizona.edu.
The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article "A bafri, un pafri: Bilinguals' pseudoword identifications support language-specific phonetic systems" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Anna Mikulak at 202-293-9300 or amikulak@psychologicalscience.org.
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Study shows how bilinguals switch between languagesPublic release date: 20-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Anna Mikulak amikulak@psychologicalscience.org 202-293-9300 Association for Psychological Science
Individuals who learn two languages at an early age seem to switch back and forth between separate "sound systems" for each language, according to new research conducted at the University of Arizona.
The research, to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, addresses enduring questions in bilingual studies about how bilingual speakers hear and process sound in two different languages.
"A lot of research has shown that bilinguals are pretty good at accommodating speech variation across languages, but there's been a debate as to how," said lead author Kalim Gonzales, a psychology doctoral student at the University of Arizona. "There are two views: One is that bilinguals have different processing modes for their two languages they have a mode for processing speech in one language and then a mode for processing speech in the other language. Another view is that bilinguals just adjust to speech variation by recalibrating to the unique acoustic properties of each language."
Gonzales's research supports the first view that bilinguals who learn two languages early in life learn two separate processing modes, or "sound systems."
The study looked at 32 Spanish-English early bilinguals, who had learned their second language before age 8. Participants were presented with a series of pseudo-words beginning with a 'pa' or a 'ba' sound and asked to identify which of the two sounds they heard.
While 'pa' and 'ba' sounds exist in both English and Spanish, how those sounds are produced and perceived in the two languages varies subtly. In the case of 'ba,' for example, English speakers typically begin to vibrate their vocal chords the moment they open their lips, while Spanish speakers begin vocal chord vibration slightly before they open their lips and produce 'pa' in a manner similar to English 'ba.' As a result of those subtle differences, English-only speakers might, in some cases, confuse the 'ba' and 'pa' sounds they hear in Spanish, explains co-author Andrew Lotto, associate professor of speech, language and hearing sciences at the University of Arizona.
"When most people think about differences between languages, they think they use different words and they have different grammars, but at their base languages use different sounds," Lotto said.
"One of the reasons it sounds different when you hear someone speaking a different language is because the actual sounds they use are different; they have a sound code that's specific to that language," he said. "One of the reasons someone might sound like they have an accent if they learn Spanish first is because their 'pa' is like an English 'ba,' so when they say a word with 'pa,' it will sound like a 'ba' to an English monolingual."
For the study, the bilingual participants were divided into two groups. One group was told they would be hearing rare words in Spanish, while the other was told they would be hearing rare words in English. Both groups heard audio recordings of variations of the same two words bafri and pafri which are not real words in either language.
Participants were then asked to identify whether the words they heard began with a 'ba' or a 'pa' sound.
Each group heard the same series of words, but for the group told they were hearing Spanish, the ends of the words were pronounced slightly differently, with the 'r' getting a Spanish pronunciation.
The findings: Participants perceived 'ba' and 'pa' sounds differently depending on whether they were told they were hearing Spanish words, with the Spanish pronunciation of 'r,' or whether they were told they were hearing English words, with the English pronunciation of 'r.'
"What this showed is that when you put people in English mode, they actually would act like English speakers, and then if you put them in Spanish mode, they would switch to acting like Spanish speakers," Lotto said. "These bilinguals, hearing the exact same 'ba's and 'pa's would label them differently depending on the context."
When the study was repeated with 32 English monolinguals, participants did not show the same shift in perception; they labeled 'ba' and 'pa' sounds the same way regardless of which language they were told they were hearing. It was that lack of an effect for monolinguals that provided the strongest evidence for two sound systems in bilinguals.
"Up until this point we haven't had a good answer to whether bilinguals actually learn two different codes so a 'ba-pa' English code and a 'ba-pa' Spanish code or whether they learn something that's sort of in the middle," Lotto said. "This is one of the first clear demonstrations that bilinguals really do have two different sounds systems and that they can switch between one language and the other and then use that sound system."
This is true primarily for those who learn two languages very young, Lotto said.
"If you learn a second language later in life, you usually have a dominant language and then you try to use that sounds system for the other language, which is why you end up having an accent," he said.
Research on bilingualism has increased in recent years as the global climate has become more intermixed, Lotto noted. These new findings challenge the idea that bilinguals always have one dominant language.
"This raises the possibility that bilinguals can perceive speech like a native speaker in both languages," said Gonzales, whose own son is growing up learning English and Chinese simultaneously.
"The predominant view of late has been that bilinguals will never be able to perceive a second language beyond what a late learner is capable of, or someone who learns a second language late in life. So even if you learn two languages simultaneously from birth, you're always going to perceive one of them like a late learner," Gonzales said. "Our findings cast doubt on that prominent view in the bilingual literature."
###
For more information about this study, please contact: Kalim Gonzales at kalimg@email.arizona.edu.
The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article "A bafri, un pafri: Bilinguals' pseudoword identifications support language-specific phonetic systems" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Anna Mikulak at 202-293-9300 or amikulak@psychologicalscience.org.
[ | 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.
The massive tornado that ripped through a handful of Oklahoma City suburbs and killed at least 50 people grabbed the attention of the sports world on Monday, especially the players and coaches with ties to the area.
Kevin Durant, a three-time scoring champion for the NBA's Oklahoma City Thunder, posted on his Twitter account that he was praying for everyone involved. He added: "Everybody stay safe!"
Mets pitcher Jeremy Hefner went to Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, just south of Oklahoma City. The school had its roof torn off and walls knocked down. Some of those killed died at the school.
"I mean, it's terrifying," the right-hander said.
Hefner still has family living in Moore. He said he had been in contact with his mother, who told him his cousins and uncles were OK.
"It's just unfathomable," he said. "I used to live there."
Dodgers star Matt Kemp posted on Twitter: "'m giving $1000 for tonight's HR and every HR until the All-Star break for the victims of my hometown in OKC. (hash)PrayforOklahoma"
Coverage of the tornado damage was on the clubhouse TV as the Red Sox prepared for their game at the Chicago White Sox.
"It's a tragedy when you see a natural disaster like that take place, so many innocent people that are certainly affected, if not directly by injury or possibly loss of life," Boston manager John Farrell said. "Having been though something similar back in 1997 that had probably very similar damage, it's a scary situation. Our thoughts are with all the people affected."
Farrell played for Oklahoma State in college, and then served as the assistant coach and pitching and recruiting coordinator for the Cowboys for five seasons from 1997-2001.
"The location today is very close to where it was back in '97," Farrell said. "Just that area just south of Oklahoma City seems to be right in the path of unfortunately a lot of storm fronts and certainly the tornadoes again today."
White Sox manager Robin Ventura also played his college ball at Oklahoma State, where was a three-time All-America. The Santa Maria, Calif., native said he didn't know anything about tornadoes until there were a couple that passed through the area while he was in school.
"It's scary," he said. "There's nothing you can do about it."
Browns quarterback Brandon Weeden, who played at Oklahoma State and grew up in the Oklahoma City area, was relieved that no one in his wife's family was injured.
"Devastating damage to Moore, Oklahoma due to Tornadoes," Weeden wrote on his Twitter account. "Please keep these people in your prayers. Thankfully (at)MelanieWeeden family is safe."
Kansas coach basketball coach Bill Self also went to Oklahoma State.
"We wish nothing but the very best for (those affected by the storm) and our thoughts are with them," he said.
Graduation is just around the corner which means student loans aren?t far behind. The good news is that there are plenty of ways to gain control over student loans before they take over your life. And the earlier you start, the better! That?s why we?re sharing information on student loans in this week?s shout outs ? to empower you to face and tackle them head on!
The Ultimate Guide to Student Loans (Credit.com) The world of student loans can be confusing to say the least. Here is a list of just about everything you need to know.
5 New Rules on Federal Student Loans (Daily Finance) To make matters more confusing, student loan laws always seem to be changing. Read here to find out what?s new this year.
How the Student Loan Fairness Act Could Affect Borrowers (Graduating from Debt) Have you heard of the Student Loan Fairness Act? Read on to see what it is and how you might benefit.
3 Reasons Paying Off Student Loans With Credit Is A Terrible Idea (Business Insider) Have you ever thought about paying off your student loans with a credit card? This article explains why this may not be a good idea.
5 Ways to Pay Back Student Loans Faster (Moolanomy) There are plenty of other ways to pay off your student loan debt faster! Read on to find out what you can do to get rid of this debt.
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Premier Li Keqiang arrived this weekend in New Delhi on his first foreign trip. India has become China's biggest?market?for infrastructure contracts, but the two countries remain wary neighbors.
By Peter Ford,?Staff writer / May 20, 2013
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, right, and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang pose for photographers before a meeting New Delhi, India, Monday, May 20, 2013.
Saurabh Das/AP
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China?s leaders never tire of saying it: Asian giants India and China, the two most populous nations in the world, have so much in common that neighborly relations should be natural and fruitful.
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But if Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has this week chosen New Delhi as his first foreign destination since taking office in March, it is because such neighborly relations are proving stubbornly difficult to establish.
?India is a very, very significant country for China,? says Hu Shisheng, head of South Asian studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations in Beijing. ?But we suffer from a strategic trust deficit.?
Mr. Li arrived in Delhi on Sunday at the start of a three day trip designed to rectify that shortfall. ?I want this visit to show the whole world that the mutual political trust between China and India is rising, practical cooperation is expanding, and there are more common interests than differences,? he told Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
What China wants
China is keen to improve its relations with India at the moment?for a couple of reasons. First, Beijing does not want to see India align itself more closely with the US and China's other Pacific rivals like Japan. And India represents a major new market for Chinese infrastructure companies.
The trip has been shadowed, though, by a recent three week standoff between Indian and Chinese troops on their disputed Himalayan border, in an incident that underlined the two countries? traditional rivalry.
Home to more than one third of humanity, China and India are more than just neighbors; both are rising global powers that are still developing countries and which have become strategic partners on many international issues.
Delhi and Beijing find themselves on the same side in global arguments over such questions as climate change, for example, or the reform of the international financial system.
The two sides have also found there is a lot of room to boost their trade, which last year stood at a rather lackluster $66 billion. They have set themselves the target of increasing that to $100 billion by 2015, and of encouraging more cross-border investment. India wants to trade China more pharmaceuticals and information technology. China, meanwhile, has seen?India emerge as its biggest market?for infrastructure contracts ? already worth $35 billion and with $16 billion of deals in the pipeline.?With warmer bilateral ties, Beijing hopes, that figure could rise significantly.
But their good intentions are persistently dogged by worries on both sides over security questions.
Before Li left Beijing, the ruling Communist Party?s official mouthpiece, the People?s Daily, published a commentary in its overseas edition saying China and India had agreed to ?separate the boundary issue from overall China-India relations and ensure the relevant differences do not affect the development of bilateral ties.?
Future of flare-ups?
But that is easier said than done, suggests Lora Saalman, an expert on Sino-Indian relations at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Beijing. ?Putting strategic issues aside to focus only on economic ties means that such flare-ups will continue to erupt,? she warns.
India and China fought a brief border war in 1962; China?s victory still smarts in India and the two sides have never been able to agree where the nearly 2,500 mile border actually lies. The frontier has remained generally quiet ? no shots have been fired for more than half a century ? but tense standoffs occasionally blow up and sour bilateral relations.
No resolution of the dispute seems in sight. As both nations rise on the international scene, so do nationalist sentiments in each country. Neither government will find it easy to make the sort of concessions required for a deal.
?The territorial issue is politically highly risky,? says Professor Hu. ?Neither party has the guts to find a solution.?
Beijing and Delhi have also yet to overcome historical differences born of the cold war, when India was friendly with the Soviet Union while her bitter enemy, Pakistan, found arms and diplomatic aid in China.
That history complicates current geopolitical frictions, as China and India discover they have overlapping interests.
India today is increasingly close to Washington, a posture that alarms Beijing, and India is rubbing up against China in the South China Sea, where a state owned Indian oil company has signed an exploration deal with Vietnam in waters that China claims as hers.
The Indian navy, an admiral warned late last year, is prepared to deploy to the area to defend Indian interests.
China, meanwhile, has unnerved some Indian strategists with its activities in the Indian Ocean. A Chinese company now operates the Chinese-built port at Gwadar, in Pakistan?s Balochistan Province; the Chinese navy has re-fueling rights in the Seychelles, and a Chinese-built port in Hambantota, Sri Lanka, is due to open next month.
As China courts India with visions of an economic partnership that could strengthen Asia?s sway over the world economy, Beijing must be careful not to upset Pakistan, to whom it has always been an ?all weather friend? in the two allies? diplomatic parlance.
Li will travel to Pakistan after his Indian visit, dancing a delicate diplomatic minuet as he seeks to strike a better balance between China?s relationships with its two southern neighbors without alarming old friends.
While it is important for China to reassure Pakistan that their ?time tested strategic partnership? is not at risk, says Zhang Li, a South Asian specialist at Sichuan University in the southwestern city of Chengdu, ?we have to make Pakistan understand that it is a strategic necessity for China to have balanced relations in South Asia.
?We need credible working relations with India,? Professor Zhang adds. ?For that we need to give substance to our partnership, and the first task is to promote mutual trust and confidence.?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama urged the president of Myanmar on Monday to halt violence against a Muslim minority but praised economic and political reforms in the formerly pariah nation that is emerging as a U.S. ally in China's backyard.
During the first visit to the White House in 47 years by a leader of the Southeast Asian nation, Obama called for an end to the killings of Rohingya Muslims in western Myanmar's Rakhine state.
Reformist Myanmar President Thein Sein vowed to resolve ethnic conflicts and bring perpetrators to justice.
"I also shared with President Sein our deep concern about communal violence that has been directed at Muslim communities inside Myanmar. The displacement of people, the violence directed towards them needs to stop," Obama said.
At least 192 people died last year in violence between Buddhists in Rakhine and Rohingya Muslims, who are denied citizenship by Myanmar. Most of the victims, and the 140,000 people made homeless in the attacks, were Muslims.
As the Myanmar government eases repression, long-simmering ethnic tensions are on the boil - a dynamic that resembles what happened when multi-ethnic Yugoslavia fractured in the 1990s after communism fell.
Thein Sein appealed for U.S. "assistance and understanding" as Myanmar attempts difficult reforms.
Obama said the Myanmar leader had assured him that he intends to release more political prisoners and institutionalize political reforms that have already begun transforming the country and ending its estrangement from the West.
Rights groups and some U.S. lawmakers fear Obama has moved too quickly since forging a dramatic breakthrough in relations in 2011 after a half century of military rule in Myanmar.
U.S. officials argue that reforms by Myanmar - freeing democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi and hundreds of political prisoners, scrapping censorship, legalizing trade unions and protests - are transformative and deserve support from Obama, who confirmed the end of Myanmar's pariah status with the West with a landmark visit last November.
"What has allowed this shift in relations is the leadership that President Sein has shown in moving Myanmar down a path of both political and economic reform," Obama said in the Oval Office.
Even critics in Congress of Obama's Myanmar policy support the U.S. strategic goal of bringing Myanmar, tucked between China and India, out of its isolation from the West.
The long U.S.-Myanmar estrangement was a drag on America's relations with ASEAN, the 10-nation Southeast Asian regional grouping that looks to Washington as a counterbalance to the more assertive China of recent years.
'MAXIMUM INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT'
In a speech after the White House meeting, Thein Sein described efforts to develop Southeast Asia's poorest economy, overhaul decrepit institutions, undo the habits of decades of authoritarian rule and build a new, inclusive national identity from dozens of ethnic groups, some of which have been at war for decades.
"To achieve all this we need maximum international support, including from the United States, to train and educate, share knowledge, trade and invest, and encourage others to do the same," he told an audience at a Washington university.
He referred to the Muslim killings and said his government "must ensure not only that inter-communal violence is brought to a halt, but that all the perpetrators are brought to justice."
Thein Sein, a retired general, was taken off the U.S. Treasury Department's Specially Designated Nationals visa blacklist last year to facilitate engagement.
The slight, soft-spoken leader was a close confidante of former military ruler Than Shwe, who ran Myanmar for 19 years, a period that saw mass jailing of opponents, the gunning down of pro-democracy protesters and widespread abuses in ethnic minority areas.
Successive U.S. governments have refused to acknowledge the country's change of name from Burma to Myanmar made in the late 1980s by the country's military rulers.
The United States for years deliberately referred to the nation of 60 million people as Burma, so as not to give legitimacy to military governments.
But in a nod to political reforms, the White House acknowledged it is now employing the name Myanmar more often than before.
"We have responded by expanding our engagement with the government, easing a number of sanctions, and as a courtesy in appropriate settings, more frequently using the name Myanmar," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
In a new U.S. measure to support reform, the United States and Myanmar on Tuesday will sign a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement on boosting trade, labor standards and investment, the United States trade representative said.
U.S. business leaders support lifting sanctions more quickly to facilitate access to an undeveloped consumer market in a country rich in oil, natural gas, minerals and timber. Europe, Japan and other parts of Asia have few or no Myanmar sanctions.
"The immediate tasks at hand ... are to remove the remaining U.S. economic sanctions on Myanmar, and to extend duty-free treatment in the United States for the imports of Myanmar," said Bart Fisher, chairman of the new Myanmar-U.S. Trade Council.
(Reporting by Paul Eckert; Additional reporting by Steve Holland and Jeff Mason; Editing by Alistair Bell and Eric Beech)
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Public release date: 20-May-2013
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Graduation is just around the corner which means student loans aren?t far behind. The good news is that there are plenty of ways to gain control over student loans before they take over your life. And the earlier you start, the better! That?s why we?re sharing information on student loans in this week?s shout outs ? to empower you to face and tackle them head on!
This post was published by Shannon, Community and Customer Support Manager for ReadyForZero. ReadyForZero is a company that helps people get out of debt on their own with a simple and free online tool that can automate and track your debt paydown.