Bowling with God: Vint Cerf Talks Time Travel, Porn, and Web Addiction

They say that success has many parents but failure is an orphan. Judged by that standard?or any other?the Internet is a success. Al Gore invented it. Tim Berners-Lee got a knighthood out of it. Everyone was using it before it was cool. But only two men have ever borne the title "Father of the Internet." One is the late computer scientist Bob Kahn. The other is Vint Cerf.

If it's hard to appreciate what Vint Cerf accomplished, it's only because of its ever-presence. Somewhere around 1973, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn found a way to make machines talk to each other using a protocol called TCP/IP. The protocol was simple, elegant, and catchy. Nearly anything could use it. People said it would run over two tin cans and a piece of string. Today, it runs over everything. It's not just computers. In the "Internet of Things," thermostats, refrigerators and toasters are using it. Television programming and telephone networks are switching to it. It's like Douglas Adams' babelfish reduced to a series of packet headers. When we finally have to bow down to our robot overlords, we'll probably have to learn how to speak TCP/IP just to beg for our lives. Thanks, Vint.

Vint Cerf's interests and accomplishments range far and wide. When we spoke with him, he was working on latency problems associated with sending and receiving network signals to and from deep space. And he was preoccupied by global warming. Obviously, there was a lot to find out about Vint Cerf.

But what we really wanted to find out was how the father of the Internet would handle a 7-10 split.

Photos by John Ulaszek

GIZMODO: As I understand it, much of the work that you did grew out of DARPA, and DARPA was an agency that had to think about big ideas, not sort of immediate needs, but things that are long term. And in a way it was sort of a response to a big idea like Sputnik.

Vint Cerf: That?s partly right, although I think DARPA doesn?t quite characterize itself as just big ideas. The way they would characterize it is DARPA ?hard problems? that are things that are super risky in the sense that you?re not trying to find a solution at all, and that nobody else is tackling them. So they?re not too interested in trying to do something somebody else is doing, they?re not interested in competing with anybody.

In the case of the Internet, this was an exploration of whether this particular technology, packet switching, which was considered nuts at the time, by the conventional telephonic community. AT&T wanted nothing to do with it, it wasn?t going to work, they didn?t care to waste their time on it. They?d be happy to lease dedicated circuits to the idiots who wanted to build this ARPANET thing. So the DAPRA-hard problems tend to be ones that have really high risk and really high payoff, if you can actually make it work. And a lot of what they do is to push the edges and limits of almost everything.

When we got started in 1958 it was to try to get us into space. Because Sputnik just triggered all things within us in the U.S. What we need is similar Sputnik moments, really. If we were looking, generically, for a way to galvanize the country, a Sputnik moment is what we need. I thought we might have had it with global warming, but it doesn?t happen in a sufficiently instantaneous way to build up a ballyhoo of holy crap if we don?t do something about this we?re in deep trouble. It?s sort of like we?re being boiled in water slowly like the frog in the experiment.

GIZMODO: What kind of asshole boils a frog in water just to see if it dies? So this is high-risk, high-payoff?

VC: Right now we?ve got lots of high risk when it comes to this global climate change. And the payoff of course is survival. But a lot of people just don?t get it, and it really is quite amazing.

GIZMODO: So you?re an environmentalist, then?

VC: Well I wouldn?t qualify to be an environmentalist, but I do believe we?ve got a problem. The CO2 levels are way off the charts. The thing that scares me more than anything is the hydrates that are down at the bottom of the ocean. The Methanyl hydrates. Right now they?re sequestered there because temperatures are low enough. But there?s some evidence, geological evidence, that about 50 million years ago, there was sufficient warming, with the sun cycle I guess, that the hydrates actually started to melt. And they released methane. Well methane is 27 times worse than carbon dioxide; it?s a greenhouse gas. So it triggered a significant warming of several degrees over a period of I don?t how many hundreds or thousands of years.

Anyway you didn?t come to talk about that. But this is the thing that really scares me, is not that the CO2 is the problem, but if it triggered something that?s absolutely unstoppable?we may be a smart species, but we may not be smart enough to figure out how to survive if there is a really significant global warming.

GIZMODO: Until it?s too late. Until these high risk situations are already?

VC: Already happening.

VC: What would you actually like to talk about? Wait, do you know what DARPA just did? This project that started at the jet propulsion laboratory in 1998. Interplanetary extension of the internet. They said they?re really serious about this. We?ve done the design, we have the plans, aboard the space station? they're on board the mars science landers. DARPA funded testing, initially, for tactical military simulated environments.

GIZMODO: Is it latency tolerance disruption?

VC: DARPA just released another half million dollar study about the design of a spacecraft to get to the nearest star in a hundred years time. So I?m part of the team that won that?it?s a grant. So it?s not a contract, it?s just a grant. And it?s just a study; nobody?s going to build anything. But the problems and the challenges are absolutely wonderful. First of all, we?ve got to get up to twenty percent of the speed of light in order to get there, to the halfway point in fifty years? time?otherwise you fly through the Andromeda system to get two pictures, and that?s the end. Not good enough. So you?ve got to slow down and get into orbit. Second, the current propulsion systems would take us 65,000 years to get there. So we have work to do.

Then there?s communication. How do you generate a signal to four light years away that you can reliably detect. So that?s my problem is to try to think through that. And then there?s navigation. Because stars aren?t where they look like they are. Light takes time to get here. So it?s actually all a big fake. You gotta imagine?you?re a light year away from earth, and you have to figure well where do I go now? How do I do the mid-course corrections? And you can?t do it remotely, right? Because it takes a whole year for the light signal to go back and forth. By the time you say ?You should do x,? you know, they?re already another light year away.

GIZMODO: Give or take a light year.

VC: So anyway that?s a project that may not even launch in my lifetime, but I don?t care. This is one of those things where it?s just a part of it.

GIZMODO: Is this for DARPA or is this for Google maps?

VC: (laughs) It?s for DARPA, in this case. Although we do have Google Mars, and Google Moon, and Google Sky at Google Earth.

GIZMODO: What?s next?

VC: You know what I would like to do? I would kind of like to do something with Google Earth where you zoom in and then you discover the flora, and the fauna, and the other things. How about the encyclopedia of life? What?s there? What can I grow there?

GIZMODO: What kind of mold is on your roof? [laughter]

VC: And then, what about the inner universe? We haven?t done anything about?we?ve done a little bit of ocean stuff, but we haven?t done very much about?you know, what if you burrow into the earth?What if you looked inside organisms? People?we do a Google organism. And human beings are an interesting choice. Because we?ve got some enormous amount of bacterial DNA in our bodies. A hundred times more bacterial DNA than human DNA. But we?ve grown up, we?ve evolved with these things.

GIZMODO: Do you ever Google yourself at work?

VC: I don?t actually do that. But I did leave a Google Alert going because it?s nice to know who?s attacking me now. So I don?t really. I actually have been reasonably well treated. There?s a little tiff going on right now with the FCC because I was a little critical of their broadband report.

GIZMODO: Which broadband report?

VC: You know, every year the FCC puts out a report on how well we are doing deploying broadband. And you know, this one, this glowing report; every ISP is between 85 and 107 percent of its advertised capacity, or bandwidth. And I don't think any of us in the research community who have been measuring this stuff have ever seen any numbers anywhere close to the advertised bandwidth. So, a lot of us are gathering data independently of whatever they use to generate that report, and we?re going to compare and see what happens.

GIZMODO: What data is the FCC relying on?

VC: Well, there?s a company called SamKnows, that they contracted with, and they had servers around that they were measuring from. We?re a little puzzled by the overly favorable, what I consider to be overly favorable results. But we don't know how to evaluate that until they release the data. So one of the things that my team at Google has been saying can we get the data, and the methodology that was used to collect and analyze the statistics? Just so that it can be reproduced.

GIZMODO: Do you remember the Matthew Broderick movie War Games?

VC: Yes. 1982 or something like that?

GIZMODO: ?81, ?82? What were your thoughts on that at the time?

VC: Well I thought it was a silly fantasy movie. It wouldn?t be that easy for a kid to go hack his way in. On the other hand, it was a fun movie anyway. It?s like any entertainment, right? This is called the willing suspension of disbelief so you can have fun. Which is why I still read the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, and the Oz books.

GIZMODO: Hunger Games?

VC: I haven?t actually either seen or read that. Maybe I should. I?m a big science fiction fan, but it?s usually stuff coming out of the ?50s and ?60s. Fine line. Ray Bradbury, who just passed away. Orson Scott Card, is a newer one. He did Ender?s Game. He?s got about 15 or 16 books. So those are the kinds of guys I tend to read.

GIZMODO: Did you get to the Dune series?

VC: The Dune series? You know, I read the first one. And then I kind of got a little?it was kind of like reading Tolstoy?s War and Peace. But I used to also read a guy who?s also passed away from JPL, or Caltech, one of those dudes. Robert L. Forward. Who?s an astrophysicist. In the books he stuck to real nuts and bolts. And in the appendixes, he would say, ?This is how you build a time machine.? And you know, set aside the fact that you would need a substantial amount of energy we don?t have available right now. ?Oh, you need a monopole or two, or five.? But it was credible physics, or slightly extrapolated physics. And now Higgs boson has been discovered. You know, you can kind of see somebody beginning to extrapolate quantum gravity theory, because now you have a particle that?s supposed to imbue things with mass. Once you have particle and a force field for mass, now you?re beginning to bring gravitational notions into the standard model. That?s pretty exciting.

GIZMODO: So would it be like a big magnet?

VC: Well, what has to happen?the book that you should read, it?s called Time Masters, and it?s about a guy who actually manages to create enough spatial distortion, it?s like a wormhole, it has the odd property when you go from one end to the other end you do it faster than light would do it, if it were traveling through a geodesic in the universe. And once you do that you?ve built yourself a time machine. If you enjoy the consequences of being able to do that and you enjoy the fact that this is an extrapolation of known physics, for me that?s a lot of fun. Because then you can just imagine that it might be possible.

GIZMODO: What about Philip K. Dick?

VC: Not as much. Although I like my Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter???.. I don?t like it to mess up my science. So don?t mess with my science.

GIZMODO: There?s no hard science in Harry Potter?

VC: Well, there is the wand, but?

GIZMODO: Most people will rightly acknowledge the Internet?s main use as a global tool for quick and reliable access to pornography. What are your thoughts on being the father of that vehicle?

VC: First of all, the thing that I think is most apparent about the net, and the thing that struck me as being the most interesting, is after Tim Berners-Lee put together the World Wide Web idea, he codified ways of pointing to content. And of transporting that content, so HTTP and HTML. The implementation of that idea comes in browsers and servers.

When he first did it it was like 1989, and the official release of his first browser and server was December 25, 1991. And nobody noticed. Except for a couple of guys, named Mark Andreessen and Eric Bina at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. They developed Mosaic, which was the graphical version of this thing. When that hit around ?92, everybody went nuts. Because suddenly the net was colorful, it was imagery, it wasn?t just text. You didn?t have to know UNIX and grep lines. Suddenly anybody could use it because it was visually intuitive.

One of the lessons it?s taught me is as soon as you make it easy for people to create and share information, they?ll do it. They?re not looking for pecuniary compensation. What they?re looking for is satisfaction that something they knew, and they shared, is useful to someone else. So there?s this tsunami of content. Which of course immediately drives the need for some kind of search engine, because you can?t find anything in this ocean.

So watching people pour information into the net was really exciting. Course, that meant that the general public had to have access to it. And there?s a whole story about finally coming to that point. Up until 1988 no access was available to the general public. It was strictly government-sponsored things, whether it was university research or defense department or some other government thing. So some of us worked really hard to break that limitation.

Once the general public gets access to that plus the web tool, then they start generating content. There was one other trick that it may have been intentional, but not necessarily with the intent in mind, but the effect that it had. And that?s the ability to look at a web page and ask the browser to show you ?How is that generated? Show me the HTML.? That is, view source or show source. So everybody who is curious about how to make web pages learned how to do it from other people who had already made a web page. By just looking at the coding. And they could fiddle with it, they could copy it, there was no access control, there was no intellectual property constraint, people could just put the web page up.

So we had webmasters invent themselves in effect, by learning from everybody else. And then propagating. That?s part of what triggered this avalanche. Anybody who wanted to could write their own HTML. So that exposure of mechanism allowed the general public to do whatever it wanted to do, and of course this is a reflection of the entire society. Internet is like a mirror. And it reflects back whatever the society is. And so people get all upset about pornography and hate speech, and they get upset about terrorism websites. I mean, all these bad things. Or fraud and abuse, stalking, all these bad things happen. It?s true, they happen without the Internet, and they happen on the Internet, because the general public is there. Well. So here we have this mirror showing us all these bad stuff. Then the question is, what happens when you see bad stuff in the mirror? Well you don?t fix the mirror. The Internet is a mirror. That doesn?t do any good. Fixing the Internet will not fix the problem. You gotta fix the people that are reflected in the mirror.

GIZMODO: DARPA hard problem!

GIZMODO: Just going back to TCP/IP for a second, I think this is sort of interesting that in 1973?so now we live in a world where coffee makers have IP addresses. Where television is migrating to IP, everything, almost every bit of data that flows across the world is?

VC: Embedded in an IP packet.

GIZMODO: Right. So questions are in 1973 did you have any idea what you were on to, and this is a second question, but for a while I remember if you installed networks in the early ?90s there were other weird protocols. There was NetBIOS and IPS-XPS and all these things. Why did TCP/IP win?

VC: It was a huge battle. Let me try and answer your two questions. The first one is, did we have any clue about what was going to happen? And of course, a literal honest answer would be no, but it wouldn?t be accurate. You have to realize that in 1973, the ARPANET had already been in operation since 1969, early 1970s. So we had three years of experience with it. The reason that?s important is that by 1971 network email had been invented. It was around before, in time period machines, where you have to file for somebody, it didn't have the same utility that network email did. So that shows up around 1970, and instantly it?s a hit. Instantly you discover it?s a social phenomenon. Mailing lists get created very quickly after the email stuff pops up. And the first two that I remember were Sci-fi Lovers and Yum Yum. Look, we?re a bunch of geeks!

GIZMODO: And the forum one, come on.

VC: Actually, that stuff showed up?Yum Yum was restaurant reviews coming out of Palo Alto. Sci-Fi Lovers, I don?t know who started it but you know, we all talked about books we liked.

Actually, the porn stuff doesn?t actually show up there. It shows up in Usenet. Usenet?s another phenomenon over here. It?s UNIX and the UUCP. Usenet is a very clever structure for dropping something in to the stream, and have everybody pick it out. There are big arguments over who manages, what the topics are, and all this other stuff. That?s really where that stuff started; the sharing of digitized images, and text-based news, and things like that.

The thing that was interesting for us was that eventually Usenet immerses itself into the Internet. Which was also what happened to a lot of other systems. BITNET uses file transfer protocol, or remote job submission particle, to move stuff from one machine to another. And eventually that although it grew very big?eventually that just got submerged into the Internet as well. All of those systems eventually migrated over to the Internet, simply because the Internet?s infrastructure kept growing and was available. And it was triggered in part by the academic community, and investments by organizations like the National Science Foundation. Actually spending money using international connections to link other research networks outside of the U.S. together to the rest of the Internet in the U.S. So this regular practice of expanding the system from the government?s point of view was very important.

GIZMODO: How much of your workday is spent just browsing the Internet?

VC: Not much. I?m not out there browsing just for the sake of browsing. I?m on the net though, using Google a lot. But it?s mostly to pull up specific information I need. If I?m writing a paper or preparing a speech or doing something else, trying to make a policy argument, I?m frequently pulling up information, facts, wherever I can. But not just randomly browsing. What I?ve found that is really quite fascinating?I used to write?many many years ago, I used to write things down longhand. And somebody would type it. And then along came word processing, and I liked that better because I can type very quickly. And I found after a few years of using processing programs that I did not want to write anything down anymore.

I preferred having this accessible tool. Then I discovered when the power went out and the Internet wasn?t accessible, and I was in the middle of writing something, well I still had my laptop and I still had battery power?I didn?t want to write unless I was online. And the reason was I didn't have the freedom to go and look something up right in the middle. I mean, you?re starting to write something and you realize you don?t know. And the ability to open up a web page and go look something up in a Google search?I was surprised that I did not want to sit there and type text when I wasn't connected. I hadn?t anticipated that.

So I?ve become very much addicted to having access to information all the time. It feels like we are getting accustomed to it because we?ve got our information lingo in our purses or whatever. I don?t know what we used to do when we got lost.

GIZMODO: Do you think there are psychological implications for that addiction?

VC: There have been some reports on people who say they are addicted to the internet. Some people are saying you should take an hour a day and just disconnect. Just to remember what it?s like not to be connected. Somebody else said are we getting stupid because we don?t remember anything, we just Google it?

But my reaction to that particular line of reasoning is sort of just imagining that you?ve just invented writing. And the village storyteller is outraged at this idea. He says, ?That?s awful. Nobody will ever remember anything. They?ll just write it down. That?s terrible, our memories will just all disintegrate.? And now we know that writing has turned out to be very important.

One thing I really worry about is the potential to lose critical thinking. So here?s a little anecdote. I?m giving a talk, and the teacher gets up and says she?s really angry about the Internet. Now why is that? Students come into my classroom with their laptops. And they?re on the net. And now I?m thinking well is she going to complain because they?re on Facebook or some other thing? And I say well what is it that they?re doing? She says well they?re looking up stuff that I?m talking about. And I say and your point was?? Well they get into arguments. But that?s good! That means they?re engaged! You should consider that a good sign.

So I say you should take advantage of this. Now here?s what you should do. You give people a choice of any ten pages, you give them a set of pages, and choose one. Your assignment is to go look at that website and analyze its contents, and come back and explain why you should or shouldn't believe it. Or how much credibility does this website have? YOU need to document your results. And you?re not done with the assignment if all you do is use online sources. There?s this place called a library and it has these things called books. And not everything in the library is online on the net. And if you?re going to do due diligence on the quality and content of that website, you?re going to have to go to the library too.

So you need to demonstrate that you need both of those things. This is called critical thinking, and it is the most important skill you could ever had. And it?s not just because there?s a lot of misinformation on the net. There?s misinformation everywhere. You get it in newspapers, magazines, television, radio, movies, your friends, your parents?they all are subject to misunderstanding. So this notion of teaching people to be skeptical of what they read and hear or see is a very important skill. It doesn't have to be rude, it doesn't have to be ?you?re a liar and I don't believe anything you have to say?, it?s like I want to try and decide for myself.

And I think if we don?t do that, then we will end up with a lot of people who have no insight at all. It?s because they don?t have the ability to analyze anything. And I consider that to be a major hazard.

Photos by John Ulaszek, a photographer working in the Washington DC area.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/bowling-with-god-vint-cerf-talks-time-travel-porn-an-493143870

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Sony Will ?Never Ever Ever? Let Go Of Spider-Man Movie Rights

One of the unreported bits of silliness that I stepped over in the last few days was a largely speculative ?rumour? that Sony might sell off the Spider-Man movie rights. It all stemmed from a bit of financial advice the company had received, suggesting it sell some assets and buoy themselves on the great Red Sea of accountant?s ink.

Yeah, well, forget that.

Ain?t It Cool put their brand power to use, and got Sony Picture?s Co-Chair Amy Pascal on the line for a quick chat.

Not only did she admit a personal stake ? and so she might, the Spider-Man films are perhaps the biggest hit of her tenure at the studio, and something she has been very much involved with ? Pascal added that she?d ?never ever ever? let the rights slip out of grasp.

Never ever ever?

That?s right. Never ever ever. Ever.

As you might expect, Pascal also took this opportunity to tell the world that she?s really thrilled with work on the new film. Which is nice. I hope we all are too. The last one was pretty divisive, but hell, I don?t think I can fault the casting and I do want to see these guys back and working with better material.

Source: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/05/23/sony-will-never-ever-ever-let-go-of-spider-man-movie-rights/

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Restaurant torched in 4th night of Sweden riots

STOCKHOLM (AP) ? Groups of youth have burnt down a restaurant, torched more than 30 cars and injured three police in a fourth night of riots in suburbs of the Swedish capital that started following a fatal police shooting.

Police spokesman Kjell Lindgren says at least 30 cars were set ablaze across western and southern Stockholm early Thursday. Firefighters said they have "never before seen so many fires raging at the same time."

Rioting youth also burnt down a restaurant in Skogas, south of Stockholm.

Lindgren says a 16-year-old girl was briefly detained on suspicion of preparing an arson attack, but was later sent home to her parents.

The unrest began Sunday in response to the May 13 shooting, in which police killed a 69-year-old, knife-wielding man in a northwestern suburb.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/restaurant-torched-4th-night-sweden-riots-070804271.html

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Drops First Aid: Knowledge You Need to Save a Life Right in Your Pocket

Of all the things you never leave home without, your phone is usually somewhere near the top of that list, ready to whip out at a moments notice. You keep all your most vital information on it: birthdays, important meetings, reminders, beloved images, what have you?but all of this is worthless without the people behind each of these things. And Drops First Aid for iOS wants to make sure that your phone helps you keep them around too?or strangers, for that matter.

Read more...

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/sW3uxxeRA5A/drops-first-aid-knowledge-you-need-to-save-a-life-righ-509392092

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Going green: U.S. equipped to grow serious amounts of pond scum for fuel

May 21, 2013 ? A new analysis shows that the nation's land and water resources could likely support the growth of enough algae to produce up to 25 billion gallons of algae-based fuel a year in the United States, one-twelfth of the country's yearly needs.

The findings come from an in-depth look at the water resources that would be needed to grow significant amounts of algae in large, specially built shallow ponds. The results were published in the May 7 issue of Environmental Science and Technology, published by the American Chemical Society.

"While there are many details still to be worked out, we don't see water issues as a deal breaker for the development of an algae biofuels industry in many areas of the country," said first author Erik Venteris of the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

For the best places to produce algae for fuel, think hot, humid and wet. Especially promising are the Gulf Coast and the Southeastern seaboard.

"The Gulf Coast offers a good combination of warm temperatures, low evaporation, access to an abundance of water, and plenty of fuel-processing facilities," said hydrologist Mark Wigmosta, the leader of the team that did the analysis.

Wooing algae as fuel

Algae, it turns out, are plump with oil, and several research teams and companies are pursuing ways to improve the creation of biofuels based on algae -- growing algae composed of more oil, creating algae that live longer and thrive in cooler temperatures, or devising new ways to separate out the useful oil from the rest of the algae.

But first, simply, the algae must grow. The chief requirements are sunlight and water. Antagonists include clouds, a shortage of water, and evaporation.

A previous report by the same team looked mainly at how much demand algae farms would create for freshwater. That report demonstrated that oil based on algae have the potential to replace a significant portion of the nation's oil imports and drew the attention of President Obama.

The new report focuses on actual water supplies and looks at a range of possible sources of water, including fresh groundwater, salty or saline groundwater, and seawater. The team estimates that up to 25 billion gallons of algal oil could be produced annually, an increase of 4 billion gallons over the previous study's estimate. The new amount is enough to fill the nation's current oil needs for one month -- about 600 million barrels -- each year. The study's authors note that the new estimate is exactly that -- an estimate -- based to some degree on assumptions about land and water availability and use.

"I'm confident that algal biofuels can be part of the solution to our energy needs, but algal biofuels certainly aren't the whole solution," said Wigmosta. Most important, he notes that the cost of making the fuel far exceeds the cost of traditional gasoline-based products right now.

Big ponds, big potential

An algae farm would likely consist of many ponds, with water maybe six to 15 inches deep. A few companies have built smaller algae farms and are just beginning to churn out huge amounts of algae to convert to fuel; earlier this year, one company sold algae-based oil to customers in California. Players in the algae biofuels arena range from Exxon-Mobil, which launched a $600 million research effort four years ago, to this year's teenage winner of the Intel Science Talent Search, who was recognized for her work developing algae that produce more oil than they normally do.

The availability of water has been one of the biggest concerns regarding the adoption of broad-scale production of algal biofuel. Scientists estimate that fuel created with algae would use much more water than industrial processes used to harness energy from oil, wind, sunlight, or most other forms of raw energy. To produce 25 billion gallons of algae oil, the team estimates that the process annually would require the equivalent of about one-quarter of the amount of water that is now used each year in the entire United States for agriculture. While that is a huge amount, the team notes that the water would come from a multitude of sources: fresh groundwater, salty groundwater, and seawater.

For its analysis, the team limited the amount of freshwater that could be drawn in any one area, assuming that no more than 5 percent of a given watershed's mean annual water flow could be used in algae production. That number is a starting point, says Venteris, who notes that it's the same percentage that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allows power plants to use for cooling.

"In arid areas such as the Desert Southwest, 5 percent is probably an overstatement of the amount of water available, but in many other areas that are a lot wetter, such as much of the East, it's likely that much more water would be available," says Venteris.

"While the nation's Desert Southwest has been considered a possible site for vast algae growth using saline water, rapid evaporation in this region make success there more challenging for low- cost production," Venteris added.

Venteris and colleagues weighed the pluses and minuses of the various water sources. They note that freshwater is cheap but in very limited supply in many areas. Saline groundwater is attractive because it's widely available but usually at a much deeper depth, requiring more equipment and technology to pump it to the surface and make it suitable for algae production. Seawater is plentiful, but would require much more infrastructure, most notably the creation of pipelines to move the water from the coast to processing plants.

The team notes that special circumstances, such as particularly tight water restrictions in some areas or severe drought or above-average rainfall in others, could affect its estimates of water availability.

The work was funded by the DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. In addition to Venteris and Wigmosta, PNNL scientists Richard Skaggs and Andre Coleman contributed to the project and authored the study.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/Z4rjrZ05yEQ/130521140916.htm

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Bed bugs on the eve of summer vacation: A mom?s guide [+video]

Bed bugs come to visit one Virginia family and Mom does a quick inventory of prevention methods ?? a helpful tool as you push off for summer vacation and beds others use.

By Lisa Suhay,?Guest Blogger / May 22, 2013

As the kids watched their beds, blankets, and dressers make their way to the curb, our son Avery, 14, said, ?Man, I never realized grandmothers meant it literally when they say ?Goodnight. Sleep tight. Don?t let the bed bugs bite.? ?

Skip to next paragraph Lisa Suhay

Lisa Suhay, who has four sons at home in Norfolk, Va., is a children?s book author and founder of the Norfolk (Va.) Initiative for Chess Excellence (NICE) , a nonprofit organization serving at-risk youth via mentoring and teaching the game of chess for critical thinking and life strategies.

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Bed bugs are real, easily transferred to our homes, and expensive to cope with. However, everything we need to know comes from my granny, her sayings, and some moms who went buggy over these critters.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, bed bugs ? blood-sucking insects that feed on humans while they sleep ? are literally everywhere. ?Everyone is at risk for getting bed bugs when visiting an infected area," the CDC reports. "However, anyone who travels frequently and shares living and sleeping quarters where other people have previously slept has a higher risk of being bitten and or spreading a bed bug infestation.?

Contrary to urban legend, bed bugs are not microscopic; those are mites. Bed bugs are reddish-brown, wingless, about the size of an apple seed, and can live several months without a blood meal.

I can tell you that while bites are painless, welts left behind are itchy, but they don?t transmit diseases. Some people are mildly allergic to them. The welts from bed bugs sometimes get written off as mosquito bites.

That was all the bad stuff. Now let?s talk about getting them to bug-off. I was perfectly serious about taking our cues from nursery rhymes and old wives' expressions because those old girls have forgotten more than we even know.

The bed bug, Cimex lectularius, was my childhood nickname given to me by my maternal grandmother, Anne. She called me ?My little vance (vants)? which is Yiddish for bed bug. This makes little sense because she was a blonde, blue-eyed, Roman Catholic to the bone. According to her, it was also a Polish expression of endearment. I looked it up and in Polish the word for bed bug is?pluskwa.

While she might have been a little off-base on nicknames, I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that Grandma Anneisms had some practical sense when it came to bed bug riddance.

?Some Like it Hot,??was one of my Grandma Anne?s favorite films and it works as an extermination plan for bed bugs because bed bugs hate warmth, according to Scientific American.

However professional heat treatments are costly, between $2,000 and $4,000 per single-family home, according to Scientific American, which also tells us that today?s bed bug has become ?pesticide resistant,? while heat remains effective.

The best and thriftiest solution comes from friend Theresa who had them through two moves until she learned to put things in the dryer for 25 minutes and then put the still hot items into a plastic bag in a warm place for a few hours. She actually had bags in her car in the sun for the day and that did the job better than chemical treatments that had repeatedly failed to get the job done.

That means if it can go in the dryer on high for 25 minutes you?re probably going to be able to keep it. If the bed doesn?t fit in there it?s time to call the trash guys for a bulk pickup or rent a dumpster.

?Snug as a bug in a rug.??Well that says it all for how we got bed bugs at our house after accepting a beautiful, but infested rug from a neighbor. Beware the magic carpet that will take you on a hellish ride through bed bug land.

We put it in the room shared by Avery and Ian, 18,? over the tatty old tan wall-to-wall carpeting to hide the stains and make the room bearably warm in winter.

At first we thought the plush oriental carpet was itchy because of its age and not being aired. Later we thought it might have mites so we sprinkled it with powdered insecticide. This had the effect of sending the bugs deeper into the carpet where they lay dormant through the cold winter as our furnace repeatedly broke down ? thus keeping the house quite cold.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/deA3y73kOks/Bed-bugs-on-the-eve-of-summer-vacation-A-mom-s-guide-video

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Male Celebrities With The Sexiest Eyes!

Male Celebrities With The Sexiest Eyes!

There’s an old saying “the eyes are the windows to the soul” and these male celebrities have some heavenly peepers. Let’s check out some of the most gorgeous eyes on some of our favorite stars in Hollywood! Most ladies check out a man’s height, their physique, possibly their package, and their eyes. Check out some ...

Male Celebrities With The Sexiest Eyes! Stupid Celebrities Gossip Stupid Celebrities Gossip News

Source: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2013/05/male-celebrities-with-the-sexiest-eyes/

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The latest release of Chrome, version 27, is 5 percent faster?and available to download now.

The latest release of Chrome, version 27, is 5 percent faster?and available to download now.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/the-latest-release-of-chrome-version-27-is-5-percent-509243954

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Portland Fluoridation Vote Reignites Debate

Voters in Portland, Ore., will decide tomorrow (May 21) whether the city will begin fluoridating its water. For weeks, residents have been contentiously debating water fluoridation, the addition of fluoride to public water supplies for the purpose of reducing cavities and tooth decay.

Portland is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States that doesn't add fluoride to public drinking water supplies. Currently, two-thirds of Americans have fluoridated public water, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The debate has split the relatively liberal city, causing a "civil war amongst progressives," as the Oregonian put it. Pro-fluoride groups say that fluoridation will help reduce cavities among poor children who don't have access to dental care. Those in the opposing camp object to fluoridation's possible negative health effects, like impaired brain development and function, and say the practice amounts to forced medication of the populace without consent.

If Portland voters decide to keep fluoride out of their water, it would be the fourth time since the 1950s that the city has rejected it, according to government records. That makes it unique amongst large American cities, most of which have implemented it.

The groups against fluoridation include the local union representing Oregon Department of Environmental Quality employees, and the local chapter of the Sierra Club, which has said fluoridation would endanger the health of rivers, wildlife and people.

Portland's chapter of the NAACP has also voted to oppose the measure. "Children growing up in communities of color already face risks from many different environmental chemicals, and they do not need more chemicals added to their drinking water," NAACP political chair Cheryl Carter told Willamette Week, a local publication.

Fluoridation is supported by the American Medical Association, the American Dental Association and the CDC, which lists it as one of the top 10 most important public health measures of the 20th century. It is also supported by dental and medical groups such as Kaiser Permanente and the Oregon Dental Association, as well as several groups that represent people of color and low-income communities, according to Slate.

Groups on both sides have spent money on ads and fliers that have been distributed around the city. Pro-fluoridation groups have a lot more funds than their opponents. As of May 20, the main fluoridating group, Healthy Kids, Healthy Portland, had received $845,870.45. The main anti-fluoridation group, Clean Water Portland, got less than one-third of that, at $269,439.09, according to the Oregon Secretary of State.

A poll of likely voters conducted on May 16, by local ABC News affiliate KATU-TV, found a 13-percentage point lead among those against fluoridation. However, "in a low-turnout election, any outcome remains possible," the station noted.

Fluoridation began on a small scale in the 1940s in Grand Rapids, Mich., and later in towns in New York State. It caused a fair amount of debate about its effectiveness and possible health effects in the 1950s and 1960s, but the arguments faded from the national conversation as the process garnered the support of most large medical and dental groups.

Tooth decay, when left untreated, can lead to serious health problems, such as infections that can spread into the jaw. Tooth decay has declined in the United States since fluoridation began; however, it has also declined in other countries that do not fluoridate, said William Hirzy, a chemist at American University who worked at the Environmental Protection Agency for 27 years before leaving in 2008.

A 2009 study that tracked fluoride consumption and exposure in more than 600 Iowan children found no significant link between fluoride exposure and tooth decay, said Kathleen Thiessen, a scientist at SENES Oak Ridge Inc., an environmental risk-assessment company.

Americans are now exposed to many more sources of fluoride than when the practice of fluoridation began, Hirzy told LiveScience. Until about the year 2000, it wasn't widely acknowledged by the public health community that fluoride primarily works topically. That means there is no benefit to swallowing it and exposing your whole body to the substance, said Hirzy, who is opposed to fluoridation.

And while the issue remains contentious, new evidence suggests that fluoride could be linked to unforeseen health effects at concentrations nearing those put into water. Studies have linked fluoride exposure to bone fractures, thyroid disorders and certain cancers, according to a report by the National Research Council in 2006.

One study published last fall in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives found a link between high fluoride levels found naturally in drinking water in China and elsewhere in the world, and lower IQs in children. The paper looked at the results of 27 different studies, 26 of which found a link between high-fluoride drinking water and lower IQ. The average IQ difference between high and low fluoride areas was 7 points, the study found. ?

However, most of the drinking water in these studies contained fluoride at concentrations several times greater than the level at which it is added to fluoridated water in the United States, where it averages about 1 part per million (ppm). But several of the studies found lower intelligence scores in kids drinking water with only three times more fluoride than is found in fluoridated U.S. water.

Harvard researcher Philippe Grandjean, lead author of the study, wrote in an email to LiveScience that his results "do not allow us to make any judgment regarding possible levels of risk at levels of exposure typical for water fluoridation in the U.S. On the other hand, neither can it be concluded that no risk is present."

But Hirzy told LiveScience that a threefold difference between the levels in U.S. water and the level that may be linked with damage is not enough to protect children. These exposure levels overlap, in part because some kids drink a lot of water. There should ideally be at least a tenfold, and preferably a hundredfold, difference between the levels at which no adverse health effects can be demonstrated, and the so-called "safe" level, he said.

The National Research Council's 2006 report found that the Environmental Protection Agency's upper limit for fluoride, at 4 ppm, was too high to prevent a certain percentage of kids from developing severe dental fluorosis, a condition in which teeth are stained and pitted.

However, Grandjean compared fluoride to other chemicals discussed in his book published this month called "Only One Chance: How Environmental Pollution Impairs Brain Development ? and How to Protect the Brains of the Next Generation."

"When researching for my book, it was clear that fluoride was no different from other chemicals," he wrote. "The potential for adverse effects on brain development has been ignored for many, many years."?Grandjean reiterated, however, that he did not want to take a stance on water fluoridation, and that the point of his book was more general: "We must protect brain development in the next generation," he said.?

Many people don't realize that fluoride in fluoridated water comes not from the fluoride salts used in dental products, but from silicofluorides, which "are one of the by-products from the manufacture of phosphate fertilizers," according to the National Research Council's 2006 report.

"The toxicity database on silicofluorides is sparse and questions have been raised about the assumption that they completely dissociate in water and, therefore, have toxicity similar to the fluoride salts tested in laboratory studies and used in consumer products," the report noted.

Email Douglas Main?or follow him @Douglas_Main. Follow us @livescience, Facebook?or ?Google+. Article originally on?LiveScience.com .

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/portland-fluoridation-vote-reignites-debate-212426791.html

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'Deeply saddened': Pope, UK queen lead worldwide ... - World News

Evening Standard

London's Evening Standard newspaper reports on the tornado in Oklahoma.

By Alastair Jamieson, Claudio Lavanga and Amna Nawaz, NBC News

Pope Francis and Britain?s queen sent messages of condolence to those affected by the deadly Oklahoma tornado Tuesday, as news of the devastation spread around the world.

"I am close to the families of all who died in the Oklahoma tornado, especially those who lost young children,? the pontiff posted on his Twitter feed. ?Join me in praying for them."

The U.S. Embassy in London thanked British well-wishers for their expressions of support.

In a statement issued by Buckingham Palace officials, Queen Elizabeth said: "I was deeply saddened to hear of the loss of life and devastation caused by yesterday?s tornado in Oklahoma."

"Prince Philip joins me in offering our heartfelt condolences to the victims and their families at this difficult time. Our deepest sympathies go out to all those whose lives have been affected, as well as the American people," she added.

Canada's foreign minister John Baird said he was "shocked and saddened" at the devastation.

"Canada stands with those affected, ready to assist," he added.

Pakistan?s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that the government and people of the country were ?deeply saddened and shocked at the humanitarian tragedy unleashed on the Oklahoma State by a devastating tornado.?

?Our sympathies and prayers go out to the families of victims of this horrific incident that led to precious loss of life and property,? the statement said. ?We are particularly grieved over the loss of innocent children and their teachers who were buried under the rubble.?

?May God Almighty give courage and strength to the bereaved families to bear this irreparable loss. The people of Pakistan stand hand in hand with the people of Oklahoma at this difficult time,? it added.

Full coverage of the Oklahoma tornadoes from NBC News

This story was originally published on Tue May 21, 2013 9:01 AM EDT

Source: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/21/18397505-deeply-saddened-pope-uk-queen-lead-worldwide-condolences-after-oklahoma-tornado?lite

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Genetic diversity within tumors predicts outcome in head and neck cancer

May 20, 2013 ? A new measure of the heterogeneity -- the variety of genetic mutations -- of cells within a tumor appears to predict treatment outcomes of patients with the most common type of head and neck cancer. In the May 20 issue of the journal Cancer, investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary describe how their measure was a better predictor of survival than most traditional risk factors in a small group of patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck.

"Our findings will eventually allow better matching of treatments to individual patients, based on this characteristic of their tumors," says Edmund Mroz, PhD, of the MGH Center for Cancer Research, lead author of the Cancer report. "This method of measuring heterogeneity can be applied to most types of cancer, so our work should help researchers determine whether a similar relationship between heterogeneity and outcome occurs in other tumors."

For decades investigators have hypothesized that tumors with a high degree of genetic heterogeneity -- the result of different subgroups of cells undergoing different mutations at different DNA sites -- would be more difficult to treat because particular subgroups might be more likely to survive a particular drug or radiation or to have spread before diagnosis. While recent studies have identified specific genes and proteins that can confer treatment resistance in tumors, there previously has been no way of conveniently measuring tumor heterogeneity.

Working in the laboratory of James Rocco, MD, PhD -- director of the Mass. Eye and Ear /MGH Head and Neck Molecular Oncology Research Laboratory, principal investigator at the MGH Center for Cancer Research and senior author of the Cancer report -- Mroz and his colleagues developed their new measure by analyzing advanced gene sequencing data to produce a value reflecting the genetic diversity within a tumor -- not only the number of genetic mutations but how broadly particular mutations are shared within different subgroups of tumor cells. They first described this measure, called mutant-allele tumor heterogeneity (MATH), in the March 2013 issue of Oral Oncology. But that paper was only able to show that patients with known factors predicting poor outcomes -- including specific mutations in the TP53 gene or a lack of infection with the human papillomavirus (HPV) -- were likely to have higher MATH values.

In the current study, the investigators used MATH to analyze genetic data from the tumors of 74 patients with squamous cell head and neck carcinoma for whom they had complete treatment and outcome information. Not only did they find that higher MATH values were strongly associated with shorter overall survival -- with each unit of increase reflecting a 5 percent increase in the risk of death -- but that relationship was also seen within groups of patients already at risk for poor outcome. For example, among patients with HPV-negative tumors, those with higher MATH values were less likely to survive than those with lower MATH values. Overall, MATH values were more strongly related to outcomes than most previously identified risk factors and improved outcome predictions based on all other risk factors the researchers examined.

The impact of MATH value on outcome appeared strongest among patients treated with chemotherapy, which may reflect a greater likelihood that highly heterogeneous tumors contain treatment-resistant cells, Mroz says. He also notes that what reduces the chance of survival appears to be the subgroups of cells with different mutations within a tumor, not the process of mutation itself. "If all the tumor cells have gone through the same series of mutations, a single treatment might still be able to kill all of them. But if there are subgroups with different sets of mutations, one subgroup might be resistant to one type of treatment, while another subgroup might resist a different therapy."

In addition to combining MATH values with clinical characteristics to better predict a patient's chance of successful treatment, Mroz notes that MATH could someday help determine treatment choice -- directing the use of more aggressive therapies against tumors with higher values, while allowing patients with lower values to receive less intense standard treatment. While MATH will probably be just as useful at predicting outcomes for other solid tumors, the investigators note, that will need to be shown in future studies.

"Our results have important implications for the future of oncology care," says Rocco, the Daniel Miller Associate Professor of Otology and Laryngology at Harvard Medical School. "MATH offers a simple, quantitative way to test hypotheses about intratumor genetic heterogeneity, including the likelihood that targeted therapy will succeed. They also raise important questions about how genetic heterogeneity develops within a tumor and whether heterogeneity can be exploited therapeutically."

Additional co-authors of the Cancer paper are Aaron Tward, MD, PhD, Mass. Eye and Ear; Curtis Pickering, PhD, and Jeffrey Myers, MD, PhD, University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center; and Robert Ferris, MD, PhD, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. The study was supported by National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research grants R01DE022087 and RC2DE020958, National Cancer Institute grant R21CA119591, Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas grant RP100233, and the Bacardi MEEI Biobank Fund. The MGH has filed a patent application for the MATH measure.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/health_medicine/genes/~3/i05TKezQ-qU/130520094600.htm

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Letter to a Young Scandalmonger

Richard Nixon (left); Barack Obama (right)

Left photo by APF/Getty Images; Right photo by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

I note in your most recent correspondence that you have used the term ?Watergate? in connection with the recent troubles facing The Administration. You take a view popular among our kind that raising the specter of this famous scandal will convince your prey to turn against The One. I would like to counsel you against walking this path.?

First, your instincts are sound. There is much to recommend using Watergate in your work. For 40 years we have relied on it faithfully, hinting at it successfully to bedevil both Democrats and Republicans. Watergate is powerful because it?lies at the intersection of ignorance and resonance, like many of our most keen weapons. If I may speak mathematically for a moment, for most people Watergate simply equals bad and they?ve forgotten (if they ever knew) the collection of facts that led mankind to that conclusion. They know the sum, but not the?equation?that produced it. Lock the number five in the public mind and you can convince them that the addition of any two numbers equals it.?

You also face the mounting problem of gaining public attention. Our colleagues in the Twitter, cable news, and reality television branches have succeeded in shredding the modern mind. We see proof in the statistics. Measures of morality, right thinking, posture, and empathy have fallen precipitously. Donald Trump, for example, is still popular. There is nothing but glory in this, but it makes it harder for an aspiring scandalmonger to be heard. Naturally, you chose the Watergate analogy to startle their sleeping ears and excite the somnolent masses in a single jolt.

The problem is that the label has become shopworn. The constant application to lesser scandals such as Iran Contra, the Clinton-Lewinsky?imbroglio, or the Scooter Libby leak case has scrubbed the analogy down to near meaninglessness. It now signifies overcompensation, telegraphing a weakness in your case. It suggests you are conjuring the ghosts of Watergate because you have so little in the present to frighten men, women, and children. We see how this overcompensation fails in other realms: the guilty child who protests his innocence too?volubly, the aging?Lothario?who uses too much hair dye, or?the purchaser of the?vehicle?known as the Hummer. The weakening of the Watergate analogy has led some to madness as they search for ever-harder stuff. Sen. Dick Durbin and Rep. Keith Ellison, for example, compared President George W. Bush and his administration to the Nazis and Hitler.?

Exaggeration makes your case easy to dismiss with a single fact. So, for example, in Watergate, President Richard Nixon used the IRS as one of his tools for punishing his enemies. In this instance, President Obama learned about the IRS scrutiny of conservative groups through news reports. That is the difference between cooking dinner and watching a cooking show.

You may have many salient points to encourage people to believe in your scandal, but when your Watergate analogy can be this easily dismantled into rubble, you will lose your audience for the other points you want to make.?

Let me anticipate your objections. You will argue that you only take on scandals that have the potential to become like Watergate and that I censure you too quickly. It is true, in time we may learn something about one of your scandals that does warrant the application of this Watergate analogy. Perhaps you will be lucky enough to find a gem that surpasses Watergate. (We're working on seeing if we can get the mayor of Toronto elected president.) But we are not there yet. When?you mumble Watergate at the outset, everything that comes after can only seem less spectacular. When a new fact doesn't live up to the grand billing, your prey will turn away, assuming this is just any old spat between the political parties. Like New Year?s Eve, picnics, and the White House Correspondents? Dinner, the reality can never match the hype.?

Even Watergate wasn't really Watergate. Modesty forbids me from reminding you of my role in that case, but it took us months and months to slowly disclose information. Had people been on the lookout for blockbuster revelations at the outset, we would have been in a sweat constantly trying to meet demand. We would never have been able to keep up. Or we?d have had to invent an alien invasion to keep people on the beam. But we turned this pace to our advantage: Our greatest moments came by surprise. The entire country was glued to their televisions and learned about secret tapes and phone bugging in real time. Everyone was discovering the next revelation in one astonishing national moment after another. That added immeasurable fuel to our cause because no one had time to mount a defense. It was a surprise attack!

You may be skeptical because my advice relies on the reason and attention-span of the American public. As I have long warned, we are many generations from that time when people employed their wits to reach conclusions based on facts and logic. But true scandals are perhaps one of the last places where reason plays a flickering role. You must convince supporters of The Administration that it is at fault. They wake up each morning braced against you, so you must make inroads through their minds, not their hearts.?

Some of your less talented colleagues have fallen short of this standard. They are content to simply initiate a "partisan furry" or a media "feeding frenzy." Don't aspire to this mediocrity. Merely increasing the flow of saliva among partisans is a low prize. Red-eared tirades on Twitter are too small a trinket. We aim to destabilize the entire operation. For that purpose, we must enlist members of both parties. Watergate succeeded in part because three Republican senators went to their president and asked him to resign. There must be bipartisan outrage to achieve peak scandal.?

So, in conclusion: Patience, my young scandalmonger.?If something is like Watergate, you will not have to say it is so. The words will form on their lips by themselves.

Muck Raker, Executive Vice President Northeast Region

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=aadd37b6e08adffd4a1f12dc498aa66f

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Bad TV marriages: Tyrion and Sansa, and more

TV

Anna Chan TODAY

13 hours ago

HBO

Can you feel the wedded bliss? Neither Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) nor Sansa (Sophie Turner) are exactly excited to be married to each other.

"You married who?!?!?" The refrain is often heard when a beloved family member marries someone who is ... not exactly the perfect match.

Fans of "Game of Thrones" who hadn't read the novels probably felt the same way when last week's sudden betrothal turned into a legally binding union Sunday night as Sansa Stark and Tyrion Lannister tied the knot. (When papa lion Tywin Lannister wants something, he gets it!) After all, there couldn't be a more mismatched pair.

And that got us thinking: The beauty and the beloved imp certainly aren't the only married couple who don't fit together all that well. (At least they have the excuse that it was an arranged marriage.) Here are a few others who probably shouldn't have tied the knot:

Don and anyone on 'Mad Men'
None of Don's (so far) three wives on the show have had an exactly wonderful marriage with the handsome ad man. First wife Anna was actually married to the real Don Draper, who died in the Korean War and had his identity stolen by the guy viewers now know and love as Don. As for second and third wives Betty and Megan, Don just couldn't be faithful to or honest with either.

Bates and Vera on 'Downton Abbey'
Oh, what a miserable marriage! When Bates tried to divorce Vera and marry Anna, the jilted ex (if you can call her that; they had been separated for years, after all) went to extreme lengths to keep the lovers from their happily ever after. First, she took all of his money, then blackmailed him. When none of that worked, she committed suicide and pinned her "murder" on him. (Honorable mention: Susan and Shrimpy, who don't yet have death to separate them.)

Alex and Izzie on 'Grey's Anatomy'
After ghost sex with Dead Denny and BFF sex with George, it seemed like Alex Karev would be a good match for Izzie. Both young doctors had overcome great obstacles in their pasts to succeed in their fields, and with Alex's inherent attraction to the slightly unstable and his need to take care of those he loves, it seemed like the pair could work. That is, until Izzie gets fired, blames Alex, leaves him and sticks him with her ginormous hospital bill from her cancer treatments. Nice.

Rick and Lori on 'The Walking Dead'
All was good with this couple ... until zombies took over the planet. She hooked up with his BFF, Shane, while Rick lay in a coma in a hospital (granted, they thought he was dead). But that was far from the worst of it. After her husband defied all odds and reunited with her and son Carl, she manipulated both Shane and Rick, which eventually led Rick to kill Shane after being provoked. Then she gets upset with him for killing the guy, whom she wanted dead anyway! As if that weren't enough, after her death, poor, exhausted, grieving Rick was tortured by visions of his dearly beloved.

President Fitz and Mellie on 'Scandal'
Oof. What a tough marriage to be in. First lady Mellie gave up her own career as a lawyer so hubby Fitz could pursue politics. And how does he repay her? By having an affair and falling in love with crisis manager Olivia. Not that Mellie made things easy for Fitz in season two by doing whatever she could to maintain her status as first lady, despite the president's admission that he wants a divorce.

Which married TV couples do you think need to split? Tell us in the comments!

Source: http://www.today.com/entertainment/game-groans-tyrion-sansa-more-bad-tv-marriages-6C9995720

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NC unemployment rate 8.9 percent ?, Greensboro News Record AP ...

NC unemployment rate 8.9 percent ?, Greensboro News Record AP article quotes Duke University Economics Professor, Labor force participation rate dropped .3 percent, Good news?

?With a 63.7% labor force participation, ?conditions in the labor market are considerably worse than indicated? in July?s report??economist Joshua Shapiro, WSJ August 3, 2012

?Although the numbers are not directly comparable, local labor markets
across much of North Carolina began 2013 no differently than they
began 2012,? said Quinterno. ?Simply put, unemployment rates remain
elevated across the state, and twice as many North Carolinians are
jobless and seeking work than was the case five years ago.??SBN Strategies March 22, 2013

?Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.??George Orwell, ?1984?

?

The Associated Press has always been a problem. A member ?news? organization creates a report and it is regurgitated across the nation & world, in most cases without fact checking.

We have another example recently from the Greensboro News Record.

Is this because the Rhino Times just shut down?

Or because John Coleman, an economics professor at the Duke University Fuqua School of Business was quoted?

From the Greensboro News Record May 17, 2013.

?North Carolina unemployment rate drops 8.9 percent?

?North Carolina?s unemployment rate fell to 8.9 percent in April _ the lowest in the state in four years.

The state?s unemployment rate was 9.2 percent in March.

?This is very encouraging for North Carolina,? said John Coleman, economics professor at Duke University?s Fuqua School of Business.

The state Commerce Department said Friday the number of people unemployed fell by 15,259 between March and April. On the downside, nearly 4,200 fewer people held jobs than in March.

The industry with the largest monthly increase: Leisure and hospitality services, which added 6,100 jobs. It was followed by financial activities with 2,000; government with 1,300, and professional and business services with 1,300.

January 2009 was the last time the state?s unemployment rate was at 8.9 percent.?

??Coleman said the report contained good news about North Carolina?s economy.?

??What?s encouraging about the report is the large drop in the number of unemployed,? he said. That number seems to have more to do with new jobs than people who are deciding to give up rather than keep competing for work.

He also said the new figures bode well for North Carolina in the future.?

http://www.news-record.com/news/north_carolina_ap/article_f2cad77b-33b3-5f27-914b-fb285076ebd9.html

Huh???

From the Employment Security Commission of NC.

Labor Force Participation Rate

March 2013 ? ?62.8 %

April ? ?2013 ? ?62.5 %

http://esesc23.esc.state.nc.us/d4/LausSelection.aspx

The Labor Force Participation Rate fell .3 percent in April.

That fully accounts for the drop in the unemployment rate and is certainly not good for the NC public.

Perhaps it is good for lying politicians and newspapers.

Mr. Coleman, did you actually make those statements that were reported???

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Now we know why old scizophrenia medicine works on antibiotics-resistant bacteria

May 18, 2013 ? In 2008 researchers from the University of Southern Denmark showed that the drug thioridazine, which has previously been used to treat schizophrenia, is also a powerful weapon against antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as staphylococci (Staphylococcus aureus).

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a huge problem all over the world: For example, 25 -- 50 per cent of the inhabitants in southern Europe are resistant to staphylococci. In the Scandinavian countries it is less than 5 per cent, but also here the risk of resistance is on the rise.

So any effective anti-inflammatory candidate is important to investigate -- even if the candidate is an antipsychotic that was originally developed to alleviate one of the hardest mental illnesses, schizophrenia.

Until now, scientists could only see that thioridazine works effectively and that it can kill staphylococcus bacteria in a flask in the laboratory, but now a new study reveals why and how thioridazine works. The research group, which includes professor Hans J?rn Kolmos, associate professor Birgitte H. Kallipolitis and other participants from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Southern Denmark, publishes their findings in the journal PLOS ONE on May 17 2013.

The research team tested thioridazine on staphylococcal bacteria and discovered that thioridazine works by weakening the bacterial cell wall.

"When we treat the bacteria with antibiotics alone, nothing happens -- the bacteria are not even affected. But when we add both thioridazine and antibiotics, something happens: thioridazine weakens the bacterial cell wall by removing glycine (an amino acid) from the cell wall. In the absence of glycine, the antibiotics can attack the weakened cell wall and kill staphylococcus bacteria," explains Janne Kudsk Klitgaard, visiting scholar at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Southern Denmark.

Thus, it is the interaction between thioridazine and antibiotic that works.

And now that researchers know that thioridazine works by weakening staphylococcal cell wall, they can concentrate on improving this ability.

"Now that we know how thioridazine works, we can develop drugs that target the resistant bacteria. And just as important: We can remove or inactivate the parts of thioridazine, which treats schizophrenia, so we end up with a brand new product that is no longer an antipsychotic, "explains Janne Kudsk Klitgaard.

According to her, we are now a little closer to a safe, non-psychopharmacological drug that can save people from potentially fatal infections that do not respond to antibiotics.

"This will no longer be an antipsychotic, when scientists are finished with this task," she says.

Together with her colleagues Klitgaard tested thioridazine on roundworms in the laboratory and have seen that they were cured of staphylococci in the gut. Next step will be testing on mice and pigs.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/KHZgMZHOdQs/130518153742.htm

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Useful Tips To Improve Your Dental Care ? Hot Article Depot

Fear of dental care can be paralyzing. Spending a few minutes learning about new dental procedures will teach people that visiting the dentist is nothing to fear. The following advice is a great start!

Having trouble thinking of spending a lot of money on a toothbrush? Many dentists claim that the electronic toothbrushes are the closest at-home experience you can get to a visit to the dentist. They aren?t perfect, but they do have far more cleaning power than the average toothbrush. Pick out a model that has multiple heads as well as a good warranty.

How you maneuver your toothbrush while brushing is a key factor in whether or not you are actually caring for your teeth properly. Tilting the toothbrush slightly is the right way. Then, move it in a circular motion. Also, be sure that you are not brushing so hard that you are hurting your gums.

Flossing once daily is an important part of your dental hygiene routine. Good flossing really makes a big difference. Carefully place the floss between your teeth. Move the floss backwards and forwards. Don?t get the floss under the gums; it should be at the gum line. You need to go slowly and clean the back and sides of every tooth with the floss.

If you are in the middle of a teeth-whitening procedure, you should avoid any food or drink that can cause your teeth to stain. Your efforts will be self-defeating. Have willpower and make some changes in your diet in order to achieve beautiful, white teeth.

Make regular visits to your dentist. You can improve your dental health by regularly visiting your dentist. Dealing with dental problems early cuts down the cost of fixing the problem later. It will also help you decrease your chances of pain, because you will be fixing things early on. Getting your teeth cleaned and looked at on a regular basis can save you a lot of money and keep you healthy in the long run.

If your child is scared of going to the dentist, you should try playing dentist with them. Pretend your children are patients, and you act as the dentist. Count their teeth using a toothbrush. Afterwards, you can let your child be the professional on a stuffed animal.

It sometimes can be rough finding info on your specific dental issues, but this post should have given you some answers. There are many things that go along with proper dental care. Use what you have learned here, and be more healthy.

To learn more gum disease treatment where you can find out all about it.

Source: http://hotarticledepot.com/useful-tips-to-improve-your-dental-care-2/

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