Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/267270250?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Friday, November 30, 2012
Robotic equivalent of a Swiss army knife: Reconfigurable robot a step toward something that can become almost anything
ScienceDaily (Nov. 30, 2012) ? The device doesn't look like much: a caterpillar-sized assembly of metal rings and strips resembling something you might find buried in a home-workshop drawer. But the technology behind it, and the long-range possibilities it represents, are quite remarkable.
The little device is called a milli-motein -- a name melding its millimeter-sized components and a motorized design inspired by proteins, which naturally fold themselves into incredibly complex shapes. This minuscule robot may be a harbinger of future devices that could fold themselves up into almost any shape imaginable.
The device was conceived by Neil Gershenfeld, head of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, visiting scientist Ara Knaian and graduate student Kenneth Cheung, and is described in a paper presented recently at the 2012 Intelligent Robots and Systems conference. Its key feature, Gershenfeld says: "It's effectively a one-dimensional robot that can be made in a continuous strip, without conventionally moving parts, and then folded into arbitrary shapes."
To build the world's smallest chain robot, the team had to invent an entirely new kind of motor: not only small and strong, but also able to hold its position firmly even with power switched off. The researchers met these needs with a new system called an electropermanent motor.
The motor is similar in principle to the giant electromagnets used in scrapyards to lift cars, in which a powerful permanent magnet (one that, like an ordinary bar magnet, requires no power) is paired with a weaker magnet (one whose magnetic field direction can be flipped by an electric current in a coil). The two magnets are designed so that their fields either add or cancel, depending on which way the switchable field points. Thus, the force of the powerful magnet can be turned off at will -- such as to release a suspended car -- without having to power an enormous electromagnet the whole time.
In this new miniature version, a series of permanent magnets paired with electromagnets are arranged in a circle; they drive a steel ring that's situated around them. The key innovation, Knaian explains, is that "they do not take power in either the on or the off state, but only use power in the changing state," using minimal energy overall.
The milli-motein concept follows up on a paper, published last year, which examined the theoretical possibility of assembling any desired 3-D shape simply by folding a long string of identical subunits. That paper, co-authored by Cheung, MIT professor Erik Demaine, alumnus Saul Griffith, and former Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory research scientist Jonathan Bachrach, proved mathematically that it was possible for any 3-D shape to be reproduced by folding a sufficiently long string -- and that it's possible to figure out how to fold such a string, and the exact steps needed to successfully reach the desired endpoint.
"We showed that you could make such a universal system that's very simple," Cheung says. While he and his colleagues have not yet proved a way of always finding the optimal path to a given folded shape, they did find several useful strategies for arriving at practical folding sequences.
Demaine points out that the folding of the shape doesn't have to be sequential, moving along the string one joint at a time. "Ideally, you'd like to do it all at once," he says, with each of the joints folding themselves to the desired configuration simultaneously so that the loads are distributed.
Other researchers, including some at MIT, have explored the idea of fashioning reconfigurable robots from a batch of separate pieces that could self-assemble into different configurations -- an approach sometimes called "programmable pebbles." But Gershenfeld's team found that a string of subunits capable of folding itself into any shape could be simpler in terms of control, power and communications than using separate pieces that must find each other and assemble in the right order. "You can just pass signals down the chain," Knaian says.
It's part of an overall approach, Gershenfeld explains, to "turning data into things." In an article in the current issue of the magazine Foreign Affairs, he describes a technology roadmap for accomplishing that, and its policy implications. He and his colleagues have established a global network of more than 100 "fab labs" that provide community access to computer-controlled fabrication tools. Today, the design information is contained in an external computer rather than in the materials being manufactured, but the research goal is to digitize the materials themselves so that they can ultimately change their own shape, as the milli-motein does.
Hod Lipson, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and computing and information science at Cornell University, says, "This result brings us closer to the idea of programmable matter -- where computer programs and materials merge to form a new kind of matter whose shape and function can be programmed -- not unlike biology. Many people are excited today to learn about 3-D printing and its ability to fabricate any shape; Gershenfeld's group is already thinking about the next episode, where we don't just control the shape of objects, but also their behavior."
The milli-motein is part of a family of such devices being explored at size scales ranging from protein-based "nanoassemblers" to a version where the chain is as big as a person, Gershenfeld says. Ultimately, a reconfigurable robot should be "small, cheap, durable and strong," Knaian says, adding that right now, "it's not possible to get all of those." Still, he points out, "Biology is the existence proof that it is possible."
The MIT researchers' work could lead to robotic systems that can be dynamically reconfigured to do many different jobs rather than repeating a fixed function, and that can be produced much more cheaply than conventional robotics.
The development of the milli-motein was supported by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Maximum Mobility and Manipulation and Programmable Matter projects.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The original article was written by David L. Chandler.
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Bridgewater leads Louisville to BCS
A Rutgers defender tackles Louisville tight end Ryan Hubbell during the first half of an NCAA college football game in Piscataway, N.J., Thursday, Nov. 29, 2012. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
A Rutgers defender tackles Louisville tight end Ryan Hubbell during the first half of an NCAA college football game in Piscataway, N.J., Thursday, Nov. 29, 2012. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
Rutgers wide receiver Mark Harrison (81) celebrates his touchdown with teammate Quron Pratt during the first half of an NCAA college football game against Louisville in Piscataway, N.J., Thursday, Nov. 29, 2012. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
PISCATAWAY, N.J. (AP) ? Banged-up Teddy Bridgewater came off the bench to throw two-second half touchdown passes, and John Wallace kicked a 29-yard field goal with 1:41 left to send Louisville to the BCS with a 20-17 victory against Rutgers on Thursday night.
In a game between one team headed to the Big Ten and another bound for the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Big East handed out its second-to-last bid to a school that entered the league during its last massive rebuild in 2005 and watched its athletic program blossom.
The Cardinals will be going to the BCS for the second time, first since 2006.
Louisville (10-2, 5-2) will share this Big East title with Rutgers (9-3, 5-2), Syracuse and possibly even Cincinnati, but the BCS bid will be all theirs. The BCS standings will be used to break the tie and there is no doubt Louisville, with the best overall record in the conference, will be on top.
Bridgewater didn't start a week after getting roughed up in a loss to Connecticut. He broke his left wrist and sprained his right ankle. He entered for the first time in the second quarter and finished with 263 yards passing and threw a pair of TD passes in the third quarter to wipe out a 14-3 deficit.
James Burgess picked off a pass that bounced off Timmy Wright's hands with 3:53 left in Rutgers territory, and Bridgewater hit Andrell Smith on a slant for 30 yards to put Louisville in field goal range. Wallace booted through the short kick to give Louisville the lead.
Rutgers' last chance ended when Gary Nova threw deep, but his receiver stopped short, and Terrell Floyd made an over the shoulder interception with 1:06 left. Nova bent over and grabbed his helmet in disgust.
The Scarlet Knights, the only team that has played in the Big East since it started playing football in 1991, probably will have only one more shot to win the conference for the first time before moving to the Big Ten.
Louisville can add one of the biggest wins in school history to an already memorable week. The Cardinals clinched a spot in the Bowl Championship Series a day after announcing they were joining the ACC.
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Thursday, November 29, 2012
HIStalk Interviews Kobi Margolin, Founder and CEO, Clinigence ...
Jacob ?Kobi? Margolin is founder and CEO of Clinigence of Atlanta, GA.
Tell me about yourself and about the company.
I?m the CEO and founder Clinigence, my third venture in healthcare IT. I am semi-Americanized, an Israeli originally. In the mid-1990s after seven years in an intelligence branch of the Israeli Defense Forces with a group of colleagues that I met in the military, we started Algotec, a medical imaging company. With Algotec, I came to Atlanta in 1999 to start US operations.?
We sold the company to Kodak in 2004. I then joined a startup at Georgia Tech that focused on the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model in medical imaging.
At my first company, Algotec, we were pioneers of bridging web technologies into the PACS market. These were days when medical imaging went through the electronic revolution. Our technology was all about distributing clinical images across the enterprise and beyond. My second company, Nurostar Solutions, capitalized on this electronic revolution and the SaaS model to facilitate new business models for imaging services. In those days, teleradiology was exploding and we became the leading technology platform for these services.
In 2008, I started on a path that led me to Clinigence today. 2008 was an election year. In the days leading to that election, I looked at what was going on in the market and thought that there might be new opportunities opening up around electronic medical records. I had followed the EMR market since my first HIMSS in 1997 in San Diego. The market was advancing, as one of the analysts put it, at glacial speed. Then in 2008 or 2009, suddenly an explosion of funds was allocated for this market. I started thinking about what was coming next. Let?s assume that the market is already on electronic medical records. What impact is that going to have?
That led me to the concept of clinical business intelligence, which in essence is, how do we make sense of the data in electronic medical records from both the clinical and business or financial standpoint for the benefit of healthcare providers, for the benefit of medical practices and their patients? This is when we started Clinigence.
Officially started in 2010, we had our first beta in February 2011 and our first commercial installation in October 2011. Today we are in over 70 medical practices with about 400,000 patients on the platform, with two EMR companies as channel partners. We just signed our second partner a few weeks ago and our first ACO customer just a few days ago.
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How do you position yourself in the market and who do you compete most closely with?
In the clinical analytics industry, we are unique in that we are entirely provider centric. We jumped into clinical analytics with the vision that everything is going to be inside clinical operations and everything is going to be electronic. We have created a technology foundation that uses electronic medical record data as its primary source.
If you look at clinical analytics, that is a multi-billion dollar industry. Pretty much all of that industry has focused on healthcare payers or health plans. The technologies are based on administrative or claims data. There are specific benefits ,we believe, in the use of EMR data as your primary source. The number one differentiator for us is in the use of EMR data, which allows us to do three things.
Number one, our reports are real time. We create a real-time feedback loop that takes the data from the provider system and goes back to the providers and helps them change the way they deliver care to their patients in more proactive ways.
Number two, our reports are very rich in outcomes. We all know that the ultimate goal of everything we?re doing in health reform today and healthcare transformation is patient outcomes. Yet a lot of the reports you look at today in the market don?t give you any outcomes in them, because the data that?s used to generate them is data for billing purposes that doesn?t include clinical outcomes.
Number three, because we focus on the system that comes from the healthcare provider organization itself, we give providers the ability to break the report all the way down to individual patients and individual clinical data elements. The reports are not anonymous for them. The reports are something that they can trust, something they can work with. With that, we have the power to change the behavior of providers and affect behavior change in their patients, which improves outcomes.
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If a physician is receiving reports from your system, what kind of improvements might they suggest?
The reports from our system drive a process, the process of improvement. It?s like peeling layers of an onion. We focus today almost exclusively on primary care. When we go to a primary care practice, we first have the physicians look at how they document clinical encounters today.?
Oftentimes the outer layer of the onion is helping the practice or the individual physicians with their documentation practices ? making sure that they?re documenting everything that needs to be documented. We often find that physicians say, ?Oh, we do these things,? but when you look down at their report, it doesn?t show it. It turns out that they?re doing things, but they?re not always documenting them or not documenting them correctly.
Then the second layer is we help the practices compare their performance, the compliance of their staff, with medical guidelines, recommended care, and sometimes their own protocols within the organization or the practice. You go into a practice and you ask the doctors, ?Do you follow these protocols??
For example, in family medicine, diabetes is chronic disease number one. The recommended guidelines, recommended care protocols for diabetes are pretty well established. We know the things we need to do. You go in and ask the physicians and they always say, ?Of course we follow medical guidelines. Of course we do all the things that we?re supposed to.?
Then you start breaking the data down to reports across the organization, across the staff within the practice. Almost inevitably you find that there are variations in care, differences among providers and their compliance with these protocols which lead to gaps in individual patient care. We help them find these variations in process compliance, close these gaps, and improve their compliance with those medical guidelines and protocols.
The deepest layer of the onion, which only a few of the practices we?re working with are at that level ? certainly in the ACO market we think that there?s going to be more of that ? is about going into the effectiveness of your protocols within the practice in driving outcomes and that goes both to patient outcomes and eventually to business or financial outcomes for the practice. In this context, we give the customer the power, essentially, to do things like comparative effectiveness, look at various protocols that they use and see which ones are driving the outcomes or the results that they want.
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The ACO concept is new enough that I?m not sure anybody really understands how they?re going to operate. Does anybody know how to use the data that you?re providing to manage risk, specifically within an ACO model? Or is it just overall quality and that?s what ACO should encourage?
I think that the ACO market is indeed still a baby. OK, it?s a newborn. Everybody is at the beginning of a journey. Even some of the organizations that have been doing this for the longest, like the pioneer ACOs, are still in very early stages.
We are focusing in the ACO market on finding organizations that we think have the best shot of going through this journey and being successful in going through this journey. We come to them and offer them a partnership in the journey, where we become somewhat of a navigation system for them with the kind of reports I mentioned earlier. Then really all that our technology can do ? empower them with those navigation tools to find the roads that lead to the holy grail of accountable care, to find the roads to the triple aim of health reform.
As I?ve said, we?ve just closed our first ACO customer, so it?s going to be presumptuous of me to say, ?Yes, the answers are already there.? But with the three things that I mentioned earlier, specifically, primary care driven and physician-led ACOs have unique potential of identifying, figuring out the ways to get to that holy grail. We think that our technology is a critical piece that can help them and then accelerate them in their path towards that holy grail.
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Describe the patient-centered medical home model and the data capabilities physicians need to operate under that.
In primary care, we are doing much more work on medical homes than ACOs because ACOs are still few and far between. There is great interest in the patient-centered medical home model.
The patient-centered medical home model in itself is only a care delivery model. It does not come with a payment model attached to it, but there are certain markets where payers actually offer incentives to those practices that go to the patient-centered medical home model.
To become a patient-centered medical home, there are specific areas that the practice needs to address. NCQA offers a certification process that has become the de facto standard in certification as a medical home. They don?t necessarily force you to have an electronic medical record, so you can potentially become a patient centered medical home even without one. But what we would say is, as you look at your goals in the patient-centered medical home ? specifically goals around continuous quality improvement, goals around population health management ? using electronic medical records becomes necessary, a prerequisite to your ability to engage seriously in those kinds of efforts.?
We typically come in with our technology after the practice implements or adopts electronic medical record technology and help them take the data in their electronic medical record and translate that into a clear path towards quality improvement.
?
Is it hard to get physicians to follow your recommendations?
Most physicians are independent. They don?t like to be told what to do. Before I started Clinigence, I looked at clinical decision support and decided not to jump into it, basically because I didn?t want to be in a position to tell physicians what to do. Instead, I selected clinical business intelligence. It was more around telling physicians how well they?re doing and how well their patients are doing.?
One of the unique aspects of what we?ve built is that we created a ?declarative classification engine,? which in essence means that the physicians can ask the system whatever question they want about their operations, about their patients, about their quality. We give them flexibility to go around the medical guidelines that come from the outside sources, build their own protocols, and then look at compliance and look at their performance relative to the protocols that they have set up for themselves.
You have to be somewhat careful when you do that. If you?re looking for success under a specific pay-for-performance program, then you have to abide by whatever the payer or some outside authority has set for you, and it is not uncommon for us to have variations or flavors of the same guideline. One that measures performance for the outside reporting purpose, and then a second one or even a number of them that give the practice the ability to create their own flavor of protocols.?
Then it?s no longer somebody telling you ? Big Brother telling you ? what to do. You have the power to determine what to do. I think the ACO model ? and to some degree, also the patient-centered medical home as a step towards the ACO model ? puts the physicians within those ACOs in the driver?s seat. Nobody is telling them where to go or what road to try in order to drive the success of the ACO.
There are 33 quality metrics for an ACO that are defined by Medicare. We say, ?Is this sufficient?? Clearly these metrics are necessary; you have to report on those to Medicare. But are these sufficient? Will these guarantee your success??
It is clear to everybody in the ACO market that the answer is no. These may provide a starting point, but nothing more than that. You have to carve your own way to achieve the outcomes. We know what outcomes are desired, but as far as how to get there, much is still unknown. There?s great need for innovation in fact in the market to figure it out.
?
A number of Israel-based medical technology companies have come in to the U.S. market, a disproportionate number based on what you might expect. Why are companies from Israel so successful in succeeding here?
My personal story may be a bit of a reflection of the success story of Israeli medical technology. Israel has become a Silicon Valley, an incubator of technology. Israel has more technology companies on Nasdaq, I think, than all of Europe combined. A lot of it is around the medical field.
Why has Israel has become that? I can speak from my own personal experience. There?s a book called Start-up Nation that was written by Dan Senor that looked more generally at this same question. His thesis in the book is that the military in Israel is the real incubator, the real catalyst for innovation.
I can say from my experience it really was like that. In my first company, Algotec, we started fresh out of the military. We were a group of engineers in the military. We knew very little about healthcare, certainly not healthcare in the US.
What we knew ? and what the military instilled in us ? was the desire to do something, to innovate, to create something. Beyond the desire, also the confidence to think that at the early age and early in our careers as we were back then, that we could do something like that. We could go and make a difference like that.?
There?s a lot of that going on in the medical field. I joke around that every Jewish mother wants her kid to be a doctor. Certainly there?s a lot of that here in the States. When I was growing up, somehow I was never really attracted to that. I was more on the exact scientific side. For my undergrad, I chose math and physics. In grad school, medical physics for me was a way to bridge the gap, to fulfill at least a portion of the wishes of my mother.
?
Any concluding thoughts?
You asked me about the process that we go with practices and I said it?s like peeling layers of an onion. Today, mostly with our clients we focus with them on some of the outer layers. We help them comply with pay-for-performance or create a patient-centered medical home.?
But where I think all of this gets really exciting and interesting is when you start getting to the deeper layers. We took great efforts to build a platform that?s very flexible. The unique piece I mentioned earlier in this context was the declarative classification engine. We also built what we believe is the first commercial clinical data repository that?s based on semantic technologies. Now this may sound to some folks like technology mumbo jumbo, but what?s important here is the ability to get data ? any type of data ? and make sense of it, so the system can understand the data even if it has never seen data like that before.
We think that over time, as our healthcare system goes through this journey of figuring out how to deliver more effective and efficient care, we can with technologies like that drive or create a bridge in between medical practice and medical science or medical research. Imagine that all of medical research ? pharmaceuticals that go to the market or new devices that go through clinical trials ? where they test the devices on hundreds or thousands of patients. We are building a system that can collect data from many millions of patients. Already today we are collecting data on hundreds of thousands of patients every day in medical practices.
Imagine what kind of insights we can get out of the data that we?re collecting, and then how this can then accelerate medical knowledge. Not just in the context of the holy grail of accountable care ? helping deliver care that?s more efficient and effective ? but really advancing medical science, identifying new things, new treatment protocols that otherwise we would never know about or would take us generations potentially to find.
Source: http://histalk2.com/2012/11/28/histalk-interviews-kobi-margolin-founder-and-ceo-clinigence/
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Tapping supermodels and sex, again, to sell ... - Automotive News
LARRY P. VELLEQUETTE
| November 29, 2012 - 11:25 am ET |
LOS ANGELES -- Most everyone agrees that sex sells.
Chrysler Group will soon find out whether sex tinged with bawdy humor sells Fiats.
The automaker premiered a series of new short films for its launch of the Fiat 500e electric, 500 Abarth Cabrio, and 500L wagon Wednesday at the Los Angeles Auto Show. The spots might make their way to TV, just as the brand's sex-soaked "Seduction" commercial did during the 2012 Super Bowl.
If they do, they should come with the following warning label: Like the Fiat 500's back seat, this commercial is not suitable for children or prudes, but it's sure fun to watch.
The film touting the 500e starts out with a shot of a helmeted woman zipping up the top of a racing suit with nothing on underneath and climbing into the subcompact's passenger seat for an official test of the 500e's 80-mile range and acceleration.
The "test" lasts all of 10 seconds before the car spins out and stops. As crews race to see what's wrong and fling open the door, they spot the woman passionately kissing the now-shirtless male driver.
Likewise, the 500 Abarth Cabrio spot features the return of "Seduction" star Catrinel Menghia, a Romanian supermodel, sunbathing on a beach while a black scorpion crawls over her backside and up her back. The scorpion, the image of Fiat's Abarth performance brand, cuts the string of Menghia's string bikini, making her topless, like the new Abarth Cabrio. It ends with the scorpion dragging her black bikini top across the sand as a backlit, topless Menghia leaves the beach.
Perhaps the funniest and sexiest marketing efforts, however, were left for the 500L, a cavernous five-passenger wagon. The series of spots tell a story of a young American man who falls in love with an Italian woman and meets her parents. They ultimately get married.
The spots are bawdy and hilarious and drew laughs among several hundred journalists gathered for Fiat's reveal.
Fiat global brand chief Olivier Francois makes no secret of the tack that his marketing efforts would take for the new Fiats, saying that Chrysler is trading in labels like eco-friendly in favor of eco-sexy and showing an image of a Viagra pill as part of his presentation.
Ultimately, the best answer to whether sex will sell Fiats may be left to Yiddish philosophers: It couldn't hurt.
You can reach Larry P. Vellequette at lvellequette@crain.com.
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Tips for Buying an Energy Efficient House | Care2 Healthy Living
By s.e. smith, Networx
Buying an energy efficient home can be a great investment that will save you money on energy costs in the long term in addition to increasing the resale value of your home, when you?re ready to move on. With increasing consumer awareness of environmental issues, it?s growing much easier to find energy efficient homes, but it helps to be armored with some tips before you set out on your home buying journey. Savvy buyers can find the perfect house for their needs and negotiate the best deals.
If you?re using a real estate agent, which is a very good idea unless you?re familiar with real estate transactions, look for one who has experience with green homes. Some may have attended certification programs on green real estate, while others simply have experience based on previous home sales and the community in general. As you conduct interviews to find the right real estate agent for you, ask about prior experience, the kinds of homes on the market, and recommendations the agent may have for you.
Be aware that energy efficient homes can come with some immediate cash benefits for buyers. Some may qualify for special mortgages as well as tax credits and rebates to defray the cost of the home. If a home isn?t quite as energy efficient as you like but it has promise, you may qualify for assistance with modifications to increase its efficiency. Ask your real estate agent about these options and make sure to factor them in as you look at homes for sale; a high sticker price might be mitigated by long-term energy savings and immediate rebates designed to encourage green home purchases.
Some homes may be certified by independent or government agencies to indicate that they?re energy efficient. Some examples include Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) for homes, EnergyStar, and the Passive House Standard. If a home is certified, ask to see the documentation, as it will provide specific information about how well the house performed in testing and what the standards of the certification are. Uncertified homes aren?t necessarily a bad buy; you?ll just need to perform a more careful evaluation.
An energy efficient home should be designed with the local environment in mind to maximize efficiency. The thermal envelope, which protects the home from the elements, should include insulated windows, high R-value insulation, and appropriate measures to limit cracks and drafts. The green Chicago remodeling company GreenWerks often adds expanding foam insulation to existing structures, but there are plenty of other types of effective insulation available. These all help the home stay hot in the winter and cool in the summer, and reduce the amount of energy that needs to be spent on heating and cooling. You can request an energy audit to determine how much heat is lost and where the primary sites of heat loss are located.
Another factor to consider is the location of the home, not just in the old real estate sense of ?location, location, location,? but its literal position on the lot. The home should take advantage of prevailing climate and environmental conditions; for example, a row of windows facing south to catch the sun would be a good thing, while the same set of windows on the north are not desirable. Landscaped lots also tend to be more energy efficient, especially if they contain mature trees and shrubs which act as a heat sink to control temperatures around your home, as long as they?re not too close. A looming tree can cast a shadow on the home and make it difficult to heat in the winter.
Smaller homes tend to be more energy efficient, which is another thing to consider. If you?re willing to scale down to a smaller lifestyle, your home will be less costly to run.
You should also look at the heating and cooling systems to see what?s been installed. These systems come with ratings that provide information about how much energy is required to run them. A well-insulated home should require less energy to heat and cool overall, and the best systems will be designed to work with the home to get the maximum returns. Appliances are another issue; some are more efficient than others, and could be costly to replace. Others may be certified through energy efficiency programs, which can make them very appealing.
As you look at potential energy efficient homes, remember that you don?t have to live with what you buy. You could make modifications such as a remodel or appliance switch out. A certified home in your preferred neighborhood might be out of your price range, but it?s possible you could buy a home that needs some work for much less, and you could use tax credits and other incentives to perform the work it would need to be more efficient. Your real estate agent can provide specific advice on the best modification decisions for your needs.
Source: http://www.care2.com/greenliving/tips-for-buying-an-energy-efficient-house.html
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Wednesday, November 28, 2012
US federal mediators to join NHL labor talks
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Federal mediators are entering the stalled NHL labor talks, with the season's first 2? months already lost because of the lockout.
George Cohen, director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, said Monday the parties had agreed to use the agency. He assigned three mediators to assist negotiations ? deputy director Scot Beckenbaugh, director of mediation services John Sweeney and Commissioner Guy Serota ? who was removed later in the day because of a Twitter account that may have been tampered with.
The sides are to meet separately with the mediators Wednesday.
"While we have no particular level of expectation going into this process, we welcome a new approach in trying to reach a resolution of the ongoing labor dispute at the earliest possible date," NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said.
Cohen has worked with the players' associations for Major League Baseball, helping end the 1994-95 strike as an outside counsel, and the NBA. He was an adviser to the NHL players' union before joining FMCS three years ago.
"We look forward to their involvement as we continue working to reach an equitable agreement for both the players and the owners," said Donald Fehr, executive director of the NHL Players' Association.
Cohen mediated during the 2010 negotiations in Major League Soccer and 2011 talks in the NFL and NBA, along with this year's dispute between the NFL and its on-field officials.
Cohen said Serota was removed because "within one hour after I issued a press release ... it has been called to my attention that there are issues involving an allegedly hacked Twitter account associated with Commissioner Guy Serota." He said Serota was removed "to immediately dispel any cloud on the mediation process, and without regard to the merits of the allegations."
Hockey players and management have not negotiated since last Wednesday. The NHL has canceled more than one-third of its regular season, including all games through Dec. 14, the New Year's Day outdoor Winter Classic and the All-Star weekend scheduled for Jan. 26-27 at Columbus, Ohio.
"I have had separate, informal discussions with the key representatives of the National Hockey League and the National Hockey League Players' Association during the course of their negotiations for a successor collective bargaining agreement," Cohen said in a statement.
"Due to the extreme sensitivity of these negotiations and consistent with the FMCS's longstanding practice, the agency will refrain from any public comment concerning the future schedule and/or the status of the negotiations until further notice."
Beckenbaugh was a mediator during the 2004-05 lockout, a stoppage that caused cancellation of the entire season.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-federal-mediators-join-nhl-labor-talks-212528457--nhl.html
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Turkey lifts headscarf ban in religious schools
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey has lifted a ban on female students wearing headscarves in schools providing religious education, in a move drawing criticism from secularists who see it as fresh evidence of the government pushing an Islamic agenda.
Education has been one of the main battlegrounds between religious conservatives, who form the bedrock of support for Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's AK Party, and secular opponents who accuse him of imposing Islamic values by stealth.
Those secularist fears were fuelled this year when Erdogan said his goal was to raise a "religious youth" and the AK Party, in power for the past decade, pushed through a reform of the education system which boosted the role of religious schools.
Under the latest regulation, announced on Tuesday and going into effect from the 2013-2014 academic year, pupils at regular schools will also be able to wear headscarves in Koran lessons.
Erdogan said the reform, which also ends a requirement for pupils to wear uniform, was taken in response to public demand.
"Let's allow everyone to dress their child as they wish, according to their means," he said at a news conference in Madrid on Tuesday.
"These are all steps taken as a result of a demand."
Rivalry between religious and secular elites is one of the major fault lines in Turkish public life.
Erdogan's Islamist-rooted AK Party has tamed the influence of the military - the self-appointed guardians of secularism since the modern republic was founded in 1923 - over the past decade, but he denies an Islamist agenda.
Last month the military top brass attended a reception in the presidential palace alongside the headscarved wives of the president and prime minister, something that until recently would have been unthinkable.
DOGMA
The secularist newspaper Cumhuriyet said the latest reform was a step towards the Islamization of education.
"This will end with chadors," a headline in the paper said.
The latest reform followed a law approved in March allowing "imam hatip" schools specializing in religious education combined with a modern curriculum to take children from the age of 11 instead of 15.
The Egitim-Sen education sector union was critical of the move on school uniforms and the headscarf.
"The changes in the clothing regulations are important in enabling us to see the intense degree to which the education system is being made religious," the union said in a statement.
"Religious symbols which spread a religious lifestyle in schools and which will have a negative impact on the psychology of developing children should definitely not be used," it said.
But others voiced support for the reform.
Gurkan Avc?, head of the Democratic Educators' Union (DES), said it had removed a legacy of the September 12, 1980 military coup by changing the dress code.
"We will not be able to rescue the education system from the perverse consequences of the oppression, rituals, dogma and thinking of the 'cold war' period until teachers and pupils are liberated," he said.
(Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Greg Mahlich)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/turkey-lifts-headscarf-ban-religious-schools-133348880.html
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Iranian scientists running simulations of large nuclear weapon - Times of Israel
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Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Model sheds light on chemistry that sparked origin of life
ScienceDaily (Nov. 26, 2012) ? The question of how life began on a molecular level has been a longstanding problem in science. However, recent mathematical research sheds light on a possible mechanism by which life may have gotten a foothold in the chemical soup that existed on the early Earth.
Researchers have proposed several competing theories for how life on Earth could have gotten its start, even before the first genes or living cells came to be. Despite differences between various proposed scenarios, one theme they all have in common is a network of molecules that have the ability to work together to jumpstart and speed up their own replication -- two necessary ingredients for life. However, many researchers find it hard to imagine how such a molecular network could have formed spontaneously -- with no precursors -- from the chemical environment of early Earth.
"Some say it's equivalent to a tornado blowing through a junkyard and assembling the random pieces of metal and plastic into a Boeing 747," said co-author Wim Hordijk, a visiting scientist at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, North Carolina, and a participant in an astrobiology meeting held there last year.
In a previous study published in 2004, Hordijk and colleague Mike Steel of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand used a mathematical model of simple chemical reactions to show that such networks might form more easily than many researchers thought. Indeed, biochemists have recently created such networks in the lab.
In a new study published this year, Hordijk, Steel, and colleague Stuart Kauffman of the University of Vermont analyzed the structure of the networks in their mathematical models and found a plausible mechanism by which they could have evolved to produce the building blocks of life we know today, such as cell membranes or nucleic acids.
"It turns out that if you look at the structure of the networks of molecules [in our models], very often they're composed of smaller subsets of molecules with the same self-perpetuating capabilities," Hordijk explained.
By combining, splitting, and recombining to form new types of networks from their own subunits, the models indicate that these subsets of molecules could give rise to increasingly large and complex networks of chemical reactions, and, presumably, life.
"These results could have major consequences for how we think life may have originated from pure chemistry," Hordijk writes.
The study will appear in the December 2012 print issue of the journal Acta Biotheoretica.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent), via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Wim Hordijk, Mike Steel, Stuart Kauffman. The Structure of Autocatalytic Sets: Evolvability, Enablement, and Emergence. Acta Biotheoretica, 2012; 60 (4): 379 DOI: 10.1007/s10441-012-9165-1
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
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Verizon's Samsung Galaxy Note II starts shipping
If you've pre-ordered a Verizon flavor of Samsung's Galaxy Note II, it's high time you check your email for a shipping confirmation, as we just received a notice of our own. With two-day shipping on the package carrying our smartphone behemoth, it's estimated to arrive on November 29th. Presumably, it'll be available at Big Red's brick-and-mortar establishments on that same day, but we've reached out to Verizon and Samsung for confirmation. In the meantime, you can peep inside your inboxes and let us know in the comments if your hulking handset is on its way as well.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/27/verizon-galaxy-note-ii-shipping/
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Susan Rice: why GOP opposition to her is no longer white-hot (+video)
Key GOP voices including Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham have tempered their rhetoric about Ambassador Susan Rice, who has been speculated as a possible secretary of State.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice listens during a news conference at the UN in June. Republican opposition to Rice's possible nomination to be secretary of state began to crack Sunday, Nov. 25, 2012, as Sen. John McCain said she was 'not the problem' in the White House's explanation about the Sept. 11 attack in Libya.
Bebeto Matthews/AP
EnlargeIt?s looking more likely that if President Obama wants Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the United Nations, as his next secretary of State, he?ll get his wish.
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Key Republicans are softening their opposition to any promotion of Ambassador Rice. Notably, Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona has replaced his outright opposition with a willingness now to hear her case, should she be nominated.
The less strident tone from Senator McCain and other Republicans over the weekend suggests that the hyper-partisan atmosphere that prevailed in the election campaign and in the immediate aftermath of Mr. Obama?s reelection may be ceding to a more bipartisan approach to foreign policy ? and to the general rule that, barring any egregious disqualifiers, the president should get the foreign-policy and national-security team he wants.
Opposition to Rice flared up over her depiction of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead, including the US ambassador to Libya. Working from a set of talking points provided by the Central Intelligence Agency when she appeared on Sunday news shows Sept. 16, Rice described the attack as a ?spontaneous? act that grew out of a copycat reaction to widespread demonstrations against an anti-Islam video.
Prominent Republican senators including McCain and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina vowed to oppose Rice?s nomination to any higher office, while a group of 97 House Republicans took the unusual step of sending a letter to Obama saying they opposed Rice?s possible nomination for secretary of State ? even though the House has no role in approving presidential nominations.
A heated debate ensued that included charges from Democrats of Republican sexism and racism (Rice being an African-American woman). By the weekend, key Republican voices tempered their rhetoric.
McCain said on ?Fox News Sunday? that he?d ?be glad to have the opportunity to discuss these issues with? Rice, while Senator Graham said on ABC?s ?This Week? that he blames the president more than Rice for the administration?s depiction of the Benghazi attack and its reluctance to call it a terrorist attack.
Still, Graham said that if Obama does nominate Rice, ?there will be a lot of questions asked of her about this event and others.? Also, he vowed to pursue an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the attack.
Over on NBC?s ?Meet the Press,? House Republican Peter King of New York lauded Rice?s work at the UN, particularly on North Korea. But as for the argument that Rice was speaking from vetted intelligence talking points when she went on national television five days after the attack, Representative King said that as a senior administration official, ?she has an obligation not to just be a puppet and take what?s handed to her.?
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Monday, November 26, 2012
A glass of wine please, say Canadians who are moving to more ...
MONTREAL, Que. ? Canadians are increasingly reaching for a glass of Beaujolais instead of beer and they?re also drinking more domestic wines, says a new study on Canadian drinking habits.
Consumers bought an average of 22 bottles of wine in 2011, up from 13 in 1995, found the Bank of Montreal?s (TSX:BMO) special report on the Canadian wine industry.
?It?s a meteoric rise, really,? said David Rinneard, national manager of agriculture at BMO.
And Canada?s wine industry is poised for solid growth over the next five years, thanks in part to an aging population, a willingness to pay more for premium wines and the opportunity for domestic producers to make bigger inroads in the Canadian marketplace, the report said.
A third of wine consumed in Canada is produced by domestic wineries, Rinneard said. More than half of wine consumed in New Brunswick is Canadian-made and almost half of wine consumed in British Columbia is Canadian, he added.
?Canadian wineries continue to evolve, continue to hone their craft to the point where they are making some really globally competitive wines, which will in time bode well for all Canadian vintners,? Rinneard said from Toronto.
But Quebec, which is the leading wine drinking province, has the lowest consumption of Canadian-made wine at a little more than 20 per cent.
Wine has drained away market share from beer and spirits to the point where it?s a third of all alcohol consumption in Canada, the recent report said.
Over the 1995 to 2011 period, wine rose from 18 per cent to 30 per cent of Canadians? total alcohol consumption, while beer fell from 53 per cent to 45 per cent and spirits fell from 29 per cent to 25 per cent.
One hindrance for Canadian wine makers is the climate does impose limits on Canada?s wine production, which is concentrated in southern Ontario and Prince Edward County in southeastern Ontario as well as the interior of British Columbia, he said. There is also some wine production in Nova Scotia and Quebec.
Rinneard said Canadian wineries do import grapes and blend them into some of their wines to increase production, due to the climate.
But the freezing temperatures are also essential to the production of Canada?s ice wine, known globally.
?It?s certainly a niche, if you will, that Canadian wineries have carved out on a global level and certainly have positioned Canadian wineries as the pre-eminent ice wine producer on the planet.?
Rinneard said he sees Canada?s wine industry, which employs about 5,000 people, poised for solid growth over the next five years.
?Certainly growth in many respects is attributable to changing consumer palates,? he said.
Rinneard said he sees growth for Canadian wines in southeast Asia, particularly China where ice wine is already seen as something of a luxury good.
He isn?t as optimistic about Latin America, where Canadian wines would have to compete with ?plenty of cheap wines.?
Wine writer Michael Pinkus said B.C.?s wine industry is seen very much in a good light worldwide, but Ontario?s wine industry ?barely makes a drop in the large glass of wine,? on a global level, except for ice wine.
People are starting to know Ontario for cool climate Chardonnay wine, but the province has a reputation to deal with, Pinkus said.
?B.C. doesn?t have the nasty past that Ontario has,? said Pinkus, president of the Wine Writers? Circle of Canada.
?Ontario had Baby Duck and things like that kind of tarred Ontario with a broad brush of making, for lack of a better term, crappy wine. That?s the stuff your parents grew up on.?
However, younger people are really taking to Ontario wines, he said. It?s the older generation that?s still looking to French and Italian wines, said Pinkus, who lives in the heart of Ontario?s Niagara wine region in St. Catharines, Ont.
Overall, Pinkus said there?s potential for the Canadian wine industry and noted the climate doesn?t prevent Ontario from making good wine, Pinkus said.
?A cool climate gives you better acidity, gives you wines that are better for food because it cleanses the palate,? he said.
?Instead of sitting on the palate, it freshens the mouth, freshens the palate and you?re ready for your next bite.?
Another issue is that most provinces ban the direct importation of wine from other provinces.
But last week Nova Scotia introduced provincial legislation that would allow the province?s wine drinkers to import wine from other parts of Canada, following a recent decision by the federal government to lift its prohibition on wine importation.
If the legislation becomes law, Nova Scotia would join British Columbia and Manitoba as the only provinces to allow direct importation.
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Deal of the Day ? Dell Inspiron 14z Core i5 Ivy Bridge Ultrabook
Cyber Monday’s LogicBUY Deal is the pre-configured?14″ Dell Inspiron 14z Core i5 Ultrabook for $499.99. ?Features: ?6GB RAM, 500GB 5400RPM hard drive and a 32GB mSSD, and?pre-installed Windows 8 (64-bit). $850.99 – $151 instant savings – $200 coupon code?= $499.99 with free shipping. This deal expires November 26, 2012 or sooner. Check the above link [...]
Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2012/11/26/deal-of-the-day-dell-inspiron-14z-core-i5-ivy-bridge-ultrabook/
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Sunday, November 25, 2012
More than 350 African migrants intercepted off Italy
ROME (Reuters) - Italian coastguards said they had intercepted and picked up 358 African migrants attempting to reach Italy in two overcrowded vessels on Saturday.
Two hundred and thirty-five of the migrants from sub-Saharan Africa were travelling in a rickety wooden boat and the other 123 were spotted on a rubber dinghy, said the coastguards.
A coastguard spokesman, who was unable to give any information on where the vessels departed from, said the migrants were all in decent health and were being transported to reception centres.
Italy has borne the brunt of clandestine seaborne migration to southern Europe that has ebbed and flowed for several years. Migrants say they are attracted by the prospect of a better life in Europe.
Most migrants risk the voyage across the Mediterranean Sea in small and overcrowded fishing boats. Thousands have died as a result of shipwreck, harsh conditions at sea or a lack of food and water.
(Reporting By Catherine Hornby; Editing by Ralph Gowling)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/more-350-african-migrants-intercepted-off-italy-203926113.html
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PFT: NFL suspends Gaffney 2 days after release
Getty ImagesWhen Nnamdi Asomugha was a younger man, he?d get upset at players he saw on television, the ones he thought were underperforming.
So he?s not going to badmouth Eagles fans who have targeted him the same way.
?If a fan has an issue with that, they?re not going to get me saying that?s wrong or anything like that,? Asomugha said, via Reuben Frank of CSNPhilly.com. ?I can look back to being a fan and teams I liked and when a player I like comes in and, . . . it?s not working out, being upset about that.
?So I can?t now be that guy and then look at them and say, ?You can?t be upset that we haven?t won and I haven?t been, you know, Superman on the field,? even though that?s been expected of me.?
The cornerback has become the very symbol of the Eagles current woes, signing a five-year, $60 million contract to become part of the Dream Team, and struggling just like the rest of them once he got there. He?s been part of a team that?s gone 11-15 since he walked in the door, far below expectations.
That?s hard anywhere, but in Philadelphia, the heat is a little higher than in other places.
?It?s tough,? he said. ?That?s one of the things they say, . . . Mentally, how do you handle this sort of situation? Not just the losing, but losing in this environment. Because losing is different here.
?No one wants to lose. You want to win everything that you?re doing, but as they?ve pointed out, as we all know, you?ve got to win here. You just have to win here.
?So I get that question a lot from younger guys, and I just try to talk to them, keep their head in it. When you believe in yourself and believe in your team no matter what?s going on, I?m one of the people that believes it turns around at some point.?
Of course, when it does turn around, it?s likely to include a new coach, and it?s far from guaranteed it will include a 33-year-old corner who?s scheduled to make $15 million next year. But he doesn?t second-guess his decision to sign with the Eagles.
?Did I make the right decision? Should I have gone somewhere else? That doesn?t cross my mind at all,? he said. ?This is the place I wanted to be. Whatever happens or has happened, I always have the mindset that there?s something to learn from it and there?s a way to grow.
?And I think especially with what we?ve been through, the type of stuff we?ve been through the last year and a half, what did you learn from it? How can you become a better man from it? That?s going to help you on the field. That?s always been my mentality. I absolutely believe in the decision that I made and believe in this team.
?I don?t even think about that stuff. Whatever happens, I?m built to deal with that situation. Honestly? Being as honest as I can be? It doesn?t go through my mind.?
It?s going through many others, however, and they?re rightly wondering if it was all worth it.
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Cops shoot dead 7 robbers in South Africa
By Reuters
JOHANNESBURG - An elite South African police unit shot dead seven men who tried to rob a cash depot in western Johannesburg on Saturday evening, a spokesman for the unit said.
Nine others were injured and under police guard in hospital, a spokesman of the unit known as Hawks told Reuters.
Police also confiscated 11 vehicles and four firearms.
"We believe we got the kingpin down. We are convinced that we got all the robbers - dead or arrested," Paul Ramaloko said.
The depot belonged to Protea Coin, a security company which runs a cash-in-transit business.
Crime is a chronic problem for South Africa. It has one of the highest murder rates in the world outside a war zone.
About 40 percent of the adult population is jobless - a percentage expected to rise substantially in the coming years - and this is seen driving crime and widening economic inequality.
Officials in South Africa confirmed today that 34 people were killed and 78 injured when police opened fire on striking uranium miners and supporters they allege charged at them. TODAY's Natalie Morales reports.
More world stories from NBC News:
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Saturday, November 24, 2012
Questioning The Ads For Below-The-Waist Surgery | CommonHealth
November 23, 2012 | 2:11 PM | Judy Foreman
(YouTube)
By Judy Foreman
Guest Contributor
Not surprisingly, the headline about ?designer vagina? procedures in a press release this week from BMJ Open, an online publication of the esteemed BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal), caught my eye ? and stopped my coffee cup in midair.
It appears that women are flocking to surgeons for things like ?vaginal rejuvenation,? ?G-spot amplification,? ?revirgination? and ?labiaplasty.? According to the BMJ authors, a team from University College Hospital in London, vaginal cosmetic surgery is a growing thing for women who ?simply don?t like the way their genitals look.?
Good Lord.
These women are apparently concerned about the visibility of vaginal labia through tight clothing (I must be getting old. Why not just wear looser clothing?). Or, as the BMJ authors put it, they want their labia to look ?sleeker? and ?more appealing.? The women in question seem to have an ?awareness ? courtesy of a partner or magazine pictures ? of larger than normal labia.? (What kind of partners would say?.oh, well.)
There is an actual point, beyond sheer prurient interest, to the authors? concerns. They are worried, with good reason as I discovered, that Internet ads touting these vaginal cosmetic procedures are of ?poor? quality. That is, they often contain inaccurate and misleading information. (Are we surprised?)
So, I put my coffee cup down and did what the authors did: I Googled their search term, female genital cosmetic surgery, and sure enough, up popped endless ads shamelessly appealing to, or dare I say, ?creating,? female genital insecurities. For the record, I get that some older women who?ve had multiple babies may have urinary incontinence or other legitimate complications of childbirth ? or even plain aging ? and might want to have things tightened up a bit. Vaginas, like the rest of our bodies, can get droopy with time.
But young women and girls worried that they don?t look right? First, it was that women?s breasts were too small ? or too big. Now, it?s genitals, too? In truth, there?s as much variation in labia length as in many other physical characteristics.
What really gets me about all this is that these made-up genital insecurities make a mockery of the real, and serious, issue of female genital mutilation in developing countries. In our supposedly modern societies, women are persuaded that they don?t ?look? right and are choosing surgery they probably don?t need, while girls in Africa are still forced into genital mutilation.
It doesn?t take a genius to question the wisdom of all this unnecessary female genital cosmetic surgery, but I called one anyway.
In reality, ?Designer vaginoplasty? and ?G-spot amplification? are, as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists put it in a 2007 statement, ?not medically indicated, and the safety and effectiveness of these procedures have not been documented.?
Which is pretty much what the British researchers concluded.
It doesn?t take a genius to question the wisdom of all this unnecessary female genital cosmetic surgery, but I called one anyway, Dr. Nawal Nour, director of the Ambulatory Obstetrics Practice at Brigham and Women?s Hospital.
Nour won a MacArthur Foundation ?genius? award in 2003 for her work on repairing the surgical and emotional damage done to women through female genital mutilation. In fact, she has devoted her entire life to treating the medical complications and legal issues surrounding female genital mutilation and founded the African Women?s Health Center in Boston.
She feels that female genital surgeries, with proper counseling, may make sense if women ?have truly physiological complications after childbirth? or when there are other ?medical indications to perform some of these surgeries.?
But she is appalled that ?more and more girls and women are thinking that they are abnormal,? and that the definition of what is considered ?normal? for the length of labia has been getting smaller and smaller.
In the US, Nour said, it has been illegal since 1996 for surgeons to knowingly excise, that is, to surgically remove, all or part of the labia in someone under 18. As part of a survey, she called a number of surgeons and asked if they would do it anyway in girls this young. Many said yes, she said, ?even though under the law that is considered genital mutilation.?
?Genital mutilation? or ?female genital cosmetic surgery.? It?s a fine line, indeed. And tragic, by whatever name you call it.
Judy Foreman, a health reporter in Boston, just completed a book about chronic pain: ?A Nation in Pain: Healing Our Biggest Health Problem.?
About the author
Blogger, CommonHealth Rachel Zimmerman worked as a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal for 10 years, most recently covering health and medicine out of the paper?s Boston bureau. Rachel has also written for The New York Times, the (now-defunct) Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the alternative newspaper Willamette Week, in Portland, Ore., among other publications. Rachel co-wrote a book about birth, published by Bantam/Random House, and spent 2008 as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. Rachel lives in Cambridge with her husband and two daughters. View all posts by Rachel Zimmerman
Source: http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2012/11/questioning-ads-vaginal-surgery
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Nokia imaging head Damian Dinning makes 'personal decision' to leave the company
Nokia's cameras and imaging systems have garnered the company plenty of attention in recent years, but it looks like it's now facing something of a turning point in that area. As Amateur Photographer reports, the man responsible for leading that charge, Damian Dinning, has announced that he's leaving the company effective November 30th. According to a statement released by Nokia UK, that move is a "personal decision" Dinning made following the company's decision to relocate a number of key strategic roles to Finland. As for what's next for Dinning, he rather cryptically tweeted just two days ago that he's "incredibly excited about the 10th Dec," adding that he "can't say more than that right now other than to say it's nothing to do with Nokia directly." There's also no word yet from Nokia on who will take over his role.
Filed under: Cellphones, Cameras, Mobile, Nokia
Via: PureViewClub, The Verge
Source: Amateur Photographer, @PhoneDaz (Twitter)
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/q3R-Vog38LY/
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The Untold Stories: International law, The M23 Insurgency, and ...
The M23?s latest assault on Goma has an international legal consequence and constitutes a set of war crimes. The large-scale military assault launched by M23 on Goma, and the manner in which both Rwanda and M23 forces are fighting this war, raise numerous red flags regarding large scale violations of human rights and international humanitarian law (IHL). Such violations have long characterised the international legal framework in armed conflict; yet despite post-Cold War improvements in the enforceability of international criminal law, in the Congo context those who perpetrate human rights violations and war crimes seem largely immune to legal accountability.
The indictment of the Congo War Lord commonly known as Terminator has proved disastrous and difficult to enforce and the current UN Security Council sanctions against the M23 rebel leader Sultan Makenga is likely to suffer the same fate, yet the Rwandan leaders who have been supporting these conflicts in Congo for almost 2 decades seem not bothered by the continued death of innocent people. The International Community with the largest UN Peace keeping force in the world stationed in Congo, just looked on as the M23 forces matched into Goma without any resistance.
Certainly, international law offers no panacea for the death and destruction of war; nor does most media coverage of the Congo conflict devote more than the scantiest attention to the human rights implications of such violence. International law does, however, provide the most important standard against which the conduct of opposing sides can be judged. Such judgments have political currency, if not during the heat of battle then later. International human rights campaigner Raji Sourani described it in the midst of the current violence, human rights is the ?skin? to protect civilians from the all-out aggression of those who attack them.
International law impacts the present war in Congo in two key ways. One pertains to whether the violence deployed by each side complies with or violates IHL, in particular the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocol I of 1977. The other, more complicated issue pertains to the assistance the Rwandan government is giving the rebel group M23.
Since the 1996 Rwanda has been involved directly or indirectly in the destabilization of Congo. Rwanda has been denying or giving vague excuses .However, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the official guardian and authoritative interpreter of IHL, has consistently maintained that the Fourth Geneva Convention will be applicable to countries or individuals who support not only rebels but rather all activities that result in the crimes against humanity. This view is endorsed by a vast preponderance of international legal opinion, including United Nations resolutions and the opinion of the International Court of Justice.
Rwanda under Kagame for his personal economic reasons also advances the novel interpretations of IHL in order to project the legitimacy of dubiously legal or patently unlawful practices in his involvement in Congo by arguing that Congo harbors the former militias who committed genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Rwanda?s consistent position over almost 2 decades that Congo harbors militias and as such, Rwanda has to go to Congo any time its coffers are dry, does not hold any legal water in the glass.
This extends to the interpretation that Rwanda?s own conduct is not tightly regulated by IHL when engaged in a war against what they call militias and sometimes terrorists. However, the Geneva Conventions are considered customary international law, and therefore apply any time and place and on any parties who use armed force to wage war on enemies.
The fundamental purpose of IHL is to protect civilians and minimize avoidable harm during armed conflicts. Under IHL, five core principles govern what conduct is lawful in armed conflict. Violations of these constitute grave breaches and thus can be considered war crimes. These principles are: civilian immunity (ie, the prohibition against intentionally targeting civilians or otherwise treating them as combatants); distinction (i.e., the imperative to distinguish between civilians and combatants in military operations, and for combatants to distinguish themselves as such through identifiable dress and insignia and by carrying arms openly); proportionality (ie, the requirement to use force in a manner that is proportionate to the military value of the target); necessity (ie, the obligation to restrict targets or tactics to those necessary to achieve legitimate military goals); and humane treatment (ie, the prohibition of torture, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners, and the imperative to guard the rights and interests of ?protected persons?, the legal term for civilians in captured territories)..
Unfortunately, there has been violation of these entire international legal obligations by the rebels in the territory they have captured. Reports have indicated massive killings, abductions of civilians, rape of women and disappearances. Ultimately, no matter how much Rwanda wants to use Rwanda militias in Congo as the political, legal and moral interference in the Congo affairs, its actions and legacy, are not far from those of other states which systematically use violence against civilians. This will be determined by its adherence to or violations of normative interpretations of international law. The longer Rwanda under Kagame continues to kill Congolese directly or by his rebel proxy M23 indiscriminately and with impunity, and the longer it maintains the military and financial illegal support of this notorious rebel group, the more such policies will face greater de-legitimation and opprobrium.
Jacqueline Umurungi
Brussels.
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