kulsumkatun9: June 2013

Sunday, June 30, 2013

Mayhem marks start of 100th Tour de France

Marcel Kittel of Germany celebrates as he crosses the finish line to win the first stage of the Tour de France cycling race over 213 kilometers (133 miles) with start in Porto Vecchio and finish in Bastia, Corsica island, France, Saturday June 29, 2013. (AP Photo/Laurent Rebours)

Alberto Contador of Spain, center with number 91, sits on the road after a group of riders crashed during the first stage of the Tour de France cycling race over 213 kilometers (133 miles) with start in Porto Vecchio and finish in Bastia, Corsica island, France, Saturday June 29, 2013. (AP Photo/Stephane Mantey/L'Equipe, POOL)

French gendarmes stand next to the Orica Greenedge cycling team bus after it got stuck on the finish line of the first stage of the Tour de France cycling race over 213 kilometers (133 miles) with start in Porto Vecchio and finish in Bastia, Corsica island, France, Saturday June 29, 2013. (AP Photo/Laurent Rebours)

Murilo Antoniobil Fischer of Brazil, center left, Tony Martin of Germany, center right, and Tony Gallopin of France, right, wait for medical assistance after crashing in the last kilometers of the first stage of the Tour de France cycling race over 213 kilometers (133 miles) with start in Porto Vecchio and finish in Bastia, Corsica island, France, Saturday June 29, 2013. (AP Photo/Joel Saget, POOL)

Marcel Kittel of Germany, right in white, sprints towards the finish line ahead of Alexander Kristoff of Norway, second place and second left, and Danny van Poppel of The Netherlands, left of Kittel and third place, to win the first stage of the Tour de France cycling race over 213 kilometers (133 miles) with start in Porto Vecchio and finish in Bastia, Corsica island, France, Saturday June 29, 2013. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

BASTIA, Corsica (AP) ? Riders at the Tour de France know to expect the unexpected. But nothing could have prepared them for the mayhem that turned Saturday's first stage of the 100th Tour into a demolition derby on two wheels.

Seemingly for the first time at the 110-year-old race, one of the big buses that carry the teams around France when they're not on their bikes got stuck at the finish line, literally wedged under scaffolding, unable to move. The timing couldn't have been worse: The blockage happened as the speeding peloton was racing for home, less than 12 miles out.

Fearing the worst ? a possible collision between 198 riders and the bus ? race organizers took the split-second decision to shorten the race. Word went out to riders over their radios and they adapted tactics accordingly, cranking up their speed another notch to be first to the new line, now 1.8 miles closer than originally planned.

Then, somewhat miraculously, the bus for the Orica Greenedge team wriggled free. So organizers reverted to Plan A. Again over the radios, word went out to by-now confused riders and teams that the race would finish as first intended ? on a long straightaway alongside the shimmering turquoise Mediterranean, where an expectant crowd waited to cheer the first stage winner of the 100th Tour.

Then, bam! Two riders collided and one of them went down, setting off a chain of spills that scythed through the pack like a bowling ball.

And this was just Day One. The bad news for riders: They've still got another 20 stages and1,982 more miles to survive to the finish in Paris.

Keeping his head and riding his luck amid the chaos, Marcel Kittel sprinted for the win, claiming the first yellow jersey.

"It feels like I have gold on my shoulders," said the German rider for the Argos-Shimano team.

The 22 teams know from experience that the first days of any Tour are always tough. Everyone is nervous, full of energy and jostling for position. Adding to the stress this year is the race start in Corsica. The island's winding and often narrow roads that snake along idyllic coastlines and over jagged mountains are superbly telegenic but a worry for race favorites ? the likes of Team Sky's Chris Froome and two-time former champion Alberto Contador ? because a fall or big loss of time here could ruin their Tour before it really begins.

Froome survived Day One more or less unscathed. Contador didn't. The Spaniard, back at the Tour after a doping ban which also cost him his 2010 victory, crossed the line grimacing in pain, his left shoulder cut and bruised. He was tangled in the crash that threw about 20 riders to the tarmac. Contador said he'll be sore for a few days, "but I still have enough time to recover."

Even for the Tour, which has seen more than its fair share of dramas in 99 previous editions, Saturday's calamitous chain of events was exceptional.

"We've never had to change the finish line before," said Jean-Francois Pescheux, the event director who helps pick the route each year. "There's never been a bus stuck before."

The blockage at the line presented organizers with two solutions: cancel the stage entirely or shorten it, he said. They took the second option.

"We announced that in French, English, and Spanish on the Tour radio so that everybody was up-to-date," he said. Then, "in the following three minutes, we were told that the finish line was cleared. At that point, we announced that the finish was back to the real, original finish line."

Because of what Pescheux called "the little bout of panic and crashes" caused by this confusion, organizers subsequently decided to give everyone the same time as Kittel ? 4 hours, 56 minutes, 52 seconds over the 132-mile trek from the port town of Porto Vecchio to Bastia in the north of the island.

That means no one was penalized by Saturday's events.

"It's clear there was a moment of panic, and that's why we put everybody on equal footing," said Pescheux.

"The lesson learned is that buses, that heavy vehicles, they should avoid going through the finish line," he added.

"Everybody helped out, we deflated the tires of the bus so we could move it away as the peloton was fast approaching," said Jean-Louis Pages, who manages the finish-line area.

Organizers fined the Orica Greenedge team the equivalent of $2,100. The team's sporting director, Matt White, called the incident "really unfortunate."

"We took for granted that there was enough clearance. We've had this bus since we started the team, and it's the same bus we took to the Tour last year," he said. "Our bus driver was told to move forward and became lodged under the finish gantry."

Managers at other teams couldn't agree who to blame or be angry with most.

Marc Madiot of French team FDJ.FR was forgiving of the bus driver but furious with race organizers for changing their mind about where to finish the stage.

But the sporting director for Contador's Saxo-Tinkoff team, Philippe Mauduit, sided with the organizers.

"It's not the Tour's fault if there's a guy who doesn't know the height of his bus," he said.

"What caused the problems was changing the finish," said Mark Cavendish, the British sprinter who was counting on his great speed to win the stage but who instead was slowed by the crash. "It's just carnage."

His Omega Pharma-Quick Step teammate Tony Martin suffered concussion in the crash. Peter Sagan of Cannondale, another rider who was expecting to challenge for the win, finished with sticking plasters covering cuts on both legs and his left elbow. Other riders also suffered cuts and bruises. Froome's teammate Geraint Thomas flipped over his handlebars and "really whacked the back of his pelvis," said Dave Brailsford, the Team Sky manager.

"The goal for us is to get off this island in one piece, having lost no time," he said. "It's a much tougher ask than it may seem."

"You don't know what's going to happen. But you know something is going to happen," he added.

Perhaps as soon again as Sunday. The tricky second stage features four climbs along the 97-mile ride from Bastia to Ajaccio, crossing the island's mountainous spine.

Before Saturday's stage, French Sports Minister Valerie Fourneyron met with a delegation of riders unhappy that pre-race media coverage of the race dwelt heavily on doping in cycling.

That was partly the fault of Lance Armstrong. The disgraced former champion now stripped of his seven Tour wins caused a stir by telling Le Monde that he couldn't have won the race without doping.

___

AP Sports Writer Jerome Pugmire and Associated Press writer Jamey Keaten contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-06-29-Tour%20de%20France/id-06de9154278e4897a717a319b2b4fe53

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The Adam Peacock Memorial Trophy: Football For A Friend

Hundreds of local footballers turned out for the third annual Adam Peacock Memorial Trophy in South Shields.

Adam died of Motor Neurone Disease in November 2012 aged just 33.

Before his death he helped set up the fundraiser.

The seven aside football tournament raises money for the Motor Neurone Disease Association.

This year is the first year that Adam has not been there to take part in the event.

He was a keen sportsman who worked as a football coach in Greece in 2007 and was once asked to join Sunderland AFC.

He was struck down by the disease after mistaking the symptoms for a football injury.

He began to feel unwell but at first he assumed the symptoms were from a sporting injury.

But after medical tests Adam, who was just 31 at the time, was diagnosed with Motor Neurone disease.

It is a progressive neuro-degenerative condition that leads to weakness and wasting of muscles.

Adam, from South Shields in South Tyneside, fought his condition and battled to maintain his independence.

But he began to suffer breathing difficulties while on a family holiday in Cyprus in October.

The 33-year-old was taken to hospital, where he died with his family by his?bedside on November 1 2012.

The Adam Peacock Memorial Trophy is raising money for the Motor Neurone Disease Association: http://www.mndassociation.org/

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New system uses low-power Wi-Fi signal to track moving humans -- even behind walls

June 28, 2013 ? The comic-book hero Superman uses his X-ray vision to spot bad guys lurking behind walls and other objects. Now we could all have X-ray vision, thanks to researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Researchers have long attempted to build a device capable of seeing people through walls. However, previous efforts to develop such a system have involved the use of expensive and bulky radar technology that uses a part of the electromagnetic spectrum only available to the military.

Now a system being developed by Dina Katabi, a professor in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and her graduate student Fadel Adib, could give all of us the ability to spot people in different rooms using low-cost Wi-Fi technology. "We wanted to create a device that is low-power, portable and simple enough for anyone to use, to give people the ability to see through walls and closed doors," Katabi says.

The system, called "Wi-Vi," is based on a concept similar to radar and sonar imaging. But in contrast to radar and sonar, it transmits a low-power Wi-Fi signal and uses its reflections to track moving humans. It can do so even if the humans are in closed rooms or hiding behind a wall.

As a Wi-Fi signal is transmitted at a wall, a portion of the signal penetrates through it, reflecting off any humans on the other side. However, only a tiny fraction of the signal makes it through to the other room, with the rest being reflected by the wall, or by other objects. "So we had to come up with a technology that could cancel out all these other reflections, and keep only those from the moving human body," Katabi says.

Motion detector

To do this, the system uses two transmit antennas and a single receiver. The two antennas transmit almost identical signals, except that the signal from the second receiver is the inverse of the first. As a result, the two signals interfere with each other in such a way as to cancel each other out. Since any static objects that the signals hit -- including the wall -- create identical reflections, they too are cancelled out by this nulling effect.

In this way, only those reflections that change between the two signals, such as those from a moving object, arrive back at the receiver, Adib says. "So, if the person moves behind the wall, all reflections from static objects are cancelled out, and the only thing registered by the device is the moving human."

Once the system has cancelled out all of the reflections from static objects, it can then concentrate on tracking the person as he or she moves around the room. Most previous attempts to track moving targets through walls have done so using an array of spaced antennas, which each capture the signal reflected off a person moving through the environment. But this would be too expensive and bulky for use in a handheld device.

So instead Wi-Vi uses just one receiver. As the person moves through the room, his or her distance from the receiver changes, meaning the time it takes for the reflected signal to make its way back to the receiver changes too. The system then uses this information to calculate where the person is at any one time.

Possible uses in disaster recovery, personal safety, gaming

Wi-Vi, being presented at the Sigcomm conference in Hong Kong in August, could be used to help search-and-rescue teams to find survivors trapped in rubble after an earthquake, say, or to allow police officers to identify the number and movement of criminals within a building to avoid walking into an ambush.

It could also be used as a personal safety device, Katabi says: "If you are walking at night and you have the feeling that someone is following you, then you could use it to check if there is someone behind the fence or behind a corner."

The device can also detect gestures or movements by a person standing behind a wall, such as a wave of the arm, Katabi says. This would allow it to be used as a gesture-based interface for controlling lighting or appliances within the home, such as turning off the lights in another room with a wave of the arm.

Venkat Padmanabhan, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research, says the possibility of using Wi-Vi as a gesture-based interface that does not require a line of sight between the user and the device itself is perhaps its most interesting application of all. "Such an interface could alter the face of gaming," he says.

Unlike today's interactive gaming devices, where users must stay in front of the console and its camera at all times, users could still interact with the system while in another room, for example. This could open up the possibility of more complex and interesting games, Katabi says.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/matter_energy/technology/~3/cHF_GAWaRds/130628092149.htm

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Friday, June 28, 2013

Babies can read each other?s moods, study finds

June 27, 2013 ? Although it may seem difficult for adults to understand what an infant is feeling, a new study from Brigham Young University finds that it's so easy a baby could do it.

Psychology professor Ross Flom's study, published in the academic journal Infancy, shows that infants can recognize each other's emotions by five months of age. This study comes on the heels of other significant research by Flom on infants' ability to understand the moods of dogs, monkeys and classical music.

"Newborns can't verbalize to their mom or dad that they are hungry or tired, so the first way they communicate is through affect or emotion," says Flom. "Thus it is not surprising that in early development, infants learn to discriminate changes in affect."

Infants can match emotion in adults at seven months and familiar adults at six months. In order to test infant's perception of their peer's emotions, Flom and his team of researchers tested a baby's ability to match emotional infant vocalizations with a paired infant facial expression.

"We found that 5 month old infants can match their peer's positive and negative vocalizations with the appropriate facial expression," says Flom. "This is the first study to show a matching ability with an infant this young. They are exposed to affect in a peer's voice and face which is likely more familiar to them because it's how they themselves convey or communicate positive and negative emotions."

In the study, infants were seated in front of two monitors. One of the monitors displayed video of a happy, smiling baby while the other monitor displayed video of a second sad, frowning baby. When audio was played of a third happy baby, the infant participating in the study looked longer to the video of the baby with positive facial expressions. The infant also was able to match negative vocalizations with video of the sad frowning baby. The audio recordings were from a third baby and not in sync with the lip movements of the babies in either video.

"These findings add to our understanding of early infant development by reiterating the fact that babies are highly sensitive to and comprehend some level of emotion," says Flom. "Babies learn more in their first 2 1/2 years of life than they do the rest of their lifespan, making it critical to examine how and what young infants learn and how this helps them learn other things."

Flom co-authored the study of 40 infants from Utah and Florida with Professor Lorraine Bahrick from Florida International University.

Flom's next step in studying infant perception is to run the experiments with a twist: test whether babies could do this at even younger ages if instead they were watching and hearing clips of themselves.

And while the talking twin babies in this popular YouTube clip are older, it's still a lot of fun to watch them babble at each other.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_JmA2ClUvUY

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/living_well/~3/ttEOJhEX-Xk/130627102835.htm

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Father of NSA leaker says he would return to US

A supporter of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden holds a poster outside Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow Friday, June 28, 2013. Russian and foreign journalists continued to monitor the Sheremetyevo international airport, where Snowden is believed to remain at the transit zone. The poster reads : Edward! Russia is your second Motherland! (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The father of NSA leaker Edward Snowden acknowledged Friday that his son broke the law but doesn't think he committed treason.

"If folks want to classify him as a traitor, in fact, he has betrayed his government. But I don't believe that he's betrayed the people of the United States," Lonnie Snowden told NBC's "Today" show.

Snowden said his attorney has informed Attorney General Eric Holder that he believes his son would voluntarily return to the United States if the Justice Department promises not to hold him before trial and not subject him to a gag order, NBC reported.

The elder Snowden hasn't spoken to his son since April, but he said he believes he's being manipulated by people at WikiLeaks. The anti-secrecy group has been trying to help Edward Snowden gain asylum.

"I don't want to put him in peril, but I am concerned about those who surround him," Lonnie Snowden told NBC. "I think WikiLeaks, if you've looked at past history, you know, their focus isn't necessarily the Constitution of the United States. It's simply to release as much information as possible."

Lonnie Snowden declined to comment when reached Friday by The Associated Press.

Edward Snowden, who fled to Russia, is charged with violating U.S. espionage laws for leaking information about National Security Agency surveillance programs.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-06-28-NSA-Surveillance-Snowden's%20Father/id-17b3a2025bf14627b1833c222fbe727a

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DirecTV GenieGo takes the fight to Sling, brings TV streaming anywhere on PC and iOS

DirecTV recently switched the name of its Nomad transcoding device to GenieGo to match its new DVRs, a change we first noticed on its Android app. On Windows PC and iOS the apps are about to get a new update that changes the name and lets users stream video from their DVRs over WiFi even when they're away from home (Mac and Android support is due later in the year.) Previously, it allowed users to stream live and recorded TV, or download recorded TV to a mobile device for viewing offline, but Slingbox-style streaming of live or recorded TV anywhere is new, and brings it closer to the device we thought it could be when it launched. Solid Signal and DBSTalk report the incoming update (not live yet, but it should pop up tomorrow) is easy to use, letting users stream recordings, start a recording so it can stream or remotely setting up the transcoder to make a mobile copy users can download once they get home. Satellite TV competitor Dish has brought deeper integration of Sling into its new Hopper DVRs, and now DirecTV has its own in-house solution, anyone thinking of switching sides?

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Mobile

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Source: Solid Signal, DBSTalk, DirecTV

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/yH6tM72q-30/

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Thursday, June 27, 2013

As the Pearl Turns

Microscopy reveals that a growing pearl's surface has a sawtooth pattern that can cause it to ratchet around as it grows, resulting in the familiar sphere. Sophie Bushwick reports

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Flawless pearls are among the most symmetrical spheres with biological origins. But how do they get so round? Turns out they turn.

Pearls form when mollusks such as oysters create so-called pearl sacs around intrusive pieces of grit. The sac coats the irritant with layers of smooth nacre, also known as mother-of-pearl. The growing pearl rotates itself, which allows the nacre to deposit evenly over its surface.

By examining pearls under a fluorescence and a scanning electron microscope, researchers discovered that the surface actually has a saw-tooth texture. As the mollusk moves, the pearl is jostled to the next tiny tooth. The work is published in the journal Langmuir. [Julyan H. E. Cartwright, Antonio G. Checa, and Marthe Rousseau, Pearls Are Self-Organized Natural Ratchets]

A pearl's motion influences its nacre coverage, and thus its final shape. Depending on its surface pattern, it might turn in a single direction to create a drop or ring, or rotate more freely to form a sphere. If a defect prevents this motion, the final product will be shapeless. The resulting asymmetrical pearl is doomed to be booed. Roundly.

?Sophie Bushwick

[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]????
?

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/~r/sciam/biology/~3/kfXd93Ljg34/episode.cfm

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Activists say death toll in Syria now tops 100,000

BEIRUT (AP) ? The civil war in Syria has now killed more than 100,000 people, a grim new estimate Wednesday that comes at a time when the conflict is spreading beyond its borders and hopes are fading for a settlement to end the bloodshed.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has been tracking the death toll through a network of activists in the country, said most of the 100,191 killed in the last 27 months were combatants.

The regime losses were estimated at nearly 43,000, including pro-government militias and 169 fighters from the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah group ? a recent entrant in the conflict.

The Observatory said 36,661 of the dead are civilians. Recorded deaths among the rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad reached more than 18,000, including 2,518 foreign fighters.

Observatory director Rami Abdul-Rahman said he suspected that the toll actually was higher, since neither side has been totally forthcoming about its losses.

The United Nations recently estimated that 93,000 people were killed between March 2011, when the crisis started, and the end of April 2013, concurring with Abdul-Rahman that the actual toll is likely much higher.

The Syrian government has not given a death toll. State media published the names of the government's dead in the first months of the crisis, but then stopped publishing its losses after the opposition became an armed insurgency.

Abdul-Rahman said that the group's tally of military deaths is based on information from medical sources, records obtained by the group from state agencies and activists' own count of funerals in government-held areas of the country. Other sources are the activist videos showing soldiers who were killed in rebel areas and later identified.

The new estimate comes at a time when hopes for peace talks are fading. The U.N.'s special envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, said Tuesday an international conference proposed by Russia and the U.S. will not take place until later in the summer, partly because of opposition disarray.

Regime forces are pushing into rebel-held areas in an attempt to secure the seat of Assad's power in the capital of Damascus and along the Mediterranean coast in the heartland of the Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam to which Assad belongs.

The offensive, along with new reports that Assad has used chemical weapons in 10 different incidents in the conflict, also prompted Washington and its allies to declare they have decided to arm the rebels.

On Wednesday, the Observatory said the regime drove rebels out of the town of Talkalakh, along the border with Lebanon. The town, which had a predominantly Sunni population of about 70,000 before the conflict, is surrounded by 12 Alawite villages located within walking distance of the Lebanon border.

The government takeover will likely affect the rebels' ability to bring supplies, fighters and weapons from Lebanon.

The town also lies on the highway that links the city of Homs to Tartus, in the coastal Alawite enclave that is home to one of Syria's two main seaports.

Syrian state TV showed soldiers patrolling the streets of Talkalakh, inspecting underground tunnels and displaying weapons seized from the opposition.

The governor of Homs, Ahmed Munir, told the private Lebanese broadcaster al-Mayadeen that some rebels in Talkalakh handed their weapons over to authorities. He said the town was a major area for infiltrators from Lebanon.

"Talkalakh is clear of weapons," Munir said.

Southeast of Talkalakh, government forces also took control of the village of Quarayaten on a highway that links the rebels to another supply route from Iraq, according to an activist who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety.

The regime victories are likely to help it advance on rebel-held areas of the city of Homs, he said. The activist, who is connected to rebels in Homs, spoke by Skype.

The main opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, urged the U.N. to help civilians in Talkalakh open routes to facilitate the rescue of women, children, the elderly and the wounded.

The fighting has increasingly taken on sectarian overtones. Sunni Muslims dominate the rebel ranks while Assad's regime is dominated by Alawites, and has been backed by Hezbollah fighters, particularly in towns near the Lebanese borders.

The conflict has also polarized the region. Several Gulf states, including Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia, back the rebels. Shiite powerhouse Iran is a major Assad supporter.

Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi lashed out at Saudi Arabia after that country condemned Damascus for enlisting fighters from its Lebanese ally in its struggle with rebels.

The remarks by al-Zoubi were carried late Tuesday by the state agency SANA after Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal met with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Jiddah and condemned Assad for bolstering his army with fighters from Hezbollah. Prince Saud charged that Syria faces a "foreign invasion."

Al-Zoubi fired back, saying Saudi diplomats have blood on their hands and are "trembling in fear of the victories of the Syrian army."

___

Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue and Barbara Surk in Beirut contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/activists-death-toll-syria-now-tops-100-000-201432503.html

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Official Facebook, Flipboard, And NFL Apps Are Coming To Windows 8/RT

At its Build developer conference in San Francisco today, Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer announced that Facebook, Flipboard and the NFL are about to launch their apps on Windows 8 and Windows RT. As Ballmer notes, Microsoft believes that developers are doing great work on Windows 8 and that the number of apps “that are coming into the store is phenomenal.” He did, however, single these three apps out, which makes sense, given that they are indeed marquee apps for Windows 8 that were, until now, sadly missing from the platform. Now that Microsoft is putting a new emphasis on small Windows tablets with Windows 8.1, apps like Flipboard will make a lot more sense on the Windows 8 platform. Flipboard CEO Mike McCue argues that he doesn’t just want to build “the best app possible for Windows 8,” but that Flipboard wants it to be “the best version of Flipboard possible.” As for the Facebook apps, Facebook tells us that it will first bring a Facebook for Windows 8 apps to the platform. The company is building this service itself and the focus will, for now, be on tablets. Microsoft, Ballmer said, also “recently struck a deal with the NFL to bring its content and applications to a broad set of Microsoft devices, including all Windows tablets and PCs.” The first app to come to Windows 8, it seems, will be a fantasy football app.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/w5P8WFZRWv4/

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Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Feature stops apps from stealing phone users' passwords

Public release date: 26-Jun-2013
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Contact: Ashley Yeager
ashley.yeager@duke.edu
919-681-8057
Duke University

DURHAM, N.C. -- Imagine downloading a NetFlix app to your phone so that you can watch movies on the go. You would expect the app to request your account's username and password the first time it runs. Most apps do.

But, not all apps are what they appear to be. They can steal log-in and password information. In 2011, researchers at North Carolina State University discovered a convincing imitation of the real Netflix app that forwarded users' login details to an untrusted server. And, in June, the security firm F-Secure discovered a malicious, fake version of the popular game "Bad Piggies" in the Google Play Store.

Attacks like these are rare, said Duke computer scientist Landon Cox, but, "we will likely see more of them in the future." To protect users against the threat of malicious apps, Cox and his team have built ScreenPass. ScreenPass adds new features to an Android phone's operating system to prevent malicious apps from stealing a user's passwords.

"Passwords are a critical glue between mobile apps and remote cloud services," Cox said. "The problem right now is that users have no idea what happens to the passwords they give to their apps."

This is where ScreenPass comes in. It provides a special-purpose software keyboard for users to securely enter sensitive text such as passwords. An area below the keyboard allows users to tell ScreenPass where they want their text sent, such as Google, Facebook, or Twitter. ScreenPass then tracks a users' password data as the app runs and notifies the user if an app tries to send a password to the wrong place.

ScreenPass guarantees that users always input passwords through the secure keyboard. It does this by using computer vision to periodically scan the screen for untrusted keyboards.

"If a malicious app can trick a user into inputting their password through a fake keyboard, then there is no way to guarantee that an app's password is sent only to the right servers," Cox said. If ScreenPass detects an untrusted keyboard, then an app may be trying to "spoof" the secure keyboard in order to steal the user's password.

Cox and his team presented ScreenPass at the MobiSys 2013 conference in Taipei on June 27.

In trials on a prototype phone, ScreenPass detected attack keyboards that tried to avoid detection by changing the font, color, and blurriness of letters on the keys. "The only attack keyboard that ScreenPass could not detect was a keyboard with a flowery background that blended in with the keyboard letters," Cox said.

He and his team also installed ScreenPass on the phones of 18 volunteers for three weeks to test how user-friendly it was. Users reported no additional burden at having to tell ScreenPass where their passwords should be sent.

Finally, testing ScreenPass on 27 apps from the Android Marketplace, the team found three apps sent passwords over the network in plaintext, four stored passwords in the local file system without encryption, and three apps sent passwords from different domains to a third-party server owned by the app developer. Cox would not provide the names of the apps, but said ScreenPass also easily detected the fake Netflix app.

Cox's team plans to make ScreenPass publicly available to continue to improve smartphone password security.

###

Citation: "ScreenPass: Secure Password Entry on Touchscreen Devices." Liu, D. et. al. MobiSys 2013. June 27, 2013.

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Feature stops apps from stealing phone users' passwords Public release date: 26-Jun-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Ashley Yeager
ashley.yeager@duke.edu
919-681-8057
Duke University

DURHAM, N.C. -- Imagine downloading a NetFlix app to your phone so that you can watch movies on the go. You would expect the app to request your account's username and password the first time it runs. Most apps do.

But, not all apps are what they appear to be. They can steal log-in and password information. In 2011, researchers at North Carolina State University discovered a convincing imitation of the real Netflix app that forwarded users' login details to an untrusted server. And, in June, the security firm F-Secure discovered a malicious, fake version of the popular game "Bad Piggies" in the Google Play Store.

Attacks like these are rare, said Duke computer scientist Landon Cox, but, "we will likely see more of them in the future." To protect users against the threat of malicious apps, Cox and his team have built ScreenPass. ScreenPass adds new features to an Android phone's operating system to prevent malicious apps from stealing a user's passwords.

"Passwords are a critical glue between mobile apps and remote cloud services," Cox said. "The problem right now is that users have no idea what happens to the passwords they give to their apps."

This is where ScreenPass comes in. It provides a special-purpose software keyboard for users to securely enter sensitive text such as passwords. An area below the keyboard allows users to tell ScreenPass where they want their text sent, such as Google, Facebook, or Twitter. ScreenPass then tracks a users' password data as the app runs and notifies the user if an app tries to send a password to the wrong place.

ScreenPass guarantees that users always input passwords through the secure keyboard. It does this by using computer vision to periodically scan the screen for untrusted keyboards.

"If a malicious app can trick a user into inputting their password through a fake keyboard, then there is no way to guarantee that an app's password is sent only to the right servers," Cox said. If ScreenPass detects an untrusted keyboard, then an app may be trying to "spoof" the secure keyboard in order to steal the user's password.

Cox and his team presented ScreenPass at the MobiSys 2013 conference in Taipei on June 27.

In trials on a prototype phone, ScreenPass detected attack keyboards that tried to avoid detection by changing the font, color, and blurriness of letters on the keys. "The only attack keyboard that ScreenPass could not detect was a keyboard with a flowery background that blended in with the keyboard letters," Cox said.

He and his team also installed ScreenPass on the phones of 18 volunteers for three weeks to test how user-friendly it was. Users reported no additional burden at having to tell ScreenPass where their passwords should be sent.

Finally, testing ScreenPass on 27 apps from the Android Marketplace, the team found three apps sent passwords over the network in plaintext, four stored passwords in the local file system without encryption, and three apps sent passwords from different domains to a third-party server owned by the app developer. Cox would not provide the names of the apps, but said ScreenPass also easily detected the fake Netflix app.

Cox's team plans to make ScreenPass publicly available to continue to improve smartphone password security.

###

Citation: "ScreenPass: Secure Password Entry on Touchscreen Devices." Liu, D. et. al. MobiSys 2013. June 27, 2013.

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Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-06/du-fsa062613.php
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This Guy Has an Invisible Headphone Implanted In His Ear

Rich Lee has freed himself from the frustrations of misplacing or having to untangle his headphones ever again. How? He's what's known as a grinder: someone who experiments with surgical implants or body-enhancements, and he's come up with a doozie. Implanted in his tragus?the stiff protrusion just in front of your ear canal?is a small magnet that works like an earbud built into his head.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

My1login Raises Further $500K To Help Businesses Get Security-Savvy With Its Cloud-Based Password Manager

Aiming to help users double-down on their password security is 1mylogin, which offers a cloud-based password manager. Today the UK startup has announced that its raised a further $500,000 or so in funding, capital it will use to market its relatively new business offering soft-launched last month.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/LMco950SOVk/

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Greylock Deepens Enterprise Bench, Adds VMware Cloud And App VP Jerry Chen As General Partner

Greylock continues to staff up on enterprise-focused investment partners. Today, the venture firm is announcing that former VMware VP Jerry Chen is joining Greylock's enterprise investment team as a general partner. In his new role, he will focus investing in cloud and application infrastructure and new enterprise applications.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/2avclLpwvg4/

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Three planets in habitable zone of nearby star: Gliese 667c reexamined

June 25, 2013 ? A team of astronomers has combined new observations of Gliese 667C with existing data from HARPS at ESO's 3.6-metre telescope in Chile, to reveal a system with at least six planets. A record-breaking three of these planets are super-Earths lying in the zone around the star where liquid water could exist, making them possible candidates for the presence of life. This is the first system found with a fully packed habitable zone.

Gliese 667C is a very well-studied star. Just over one third of the mass of the Sun, it is part of a triple star system known as Gliese 667 (also referred to as GJ 667), 22 light-years away in the constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion). This is quite close to us -- within the Sun's neighbourhood -- and much closer than the star systems investigated using telescopes such as the planet-hunting Kepler space telescope.

Previous studies of Gliese 667C had found that the star hosts three planets with one of them in the habitable zone. Now, a team of astronomers led by Guillem Anglada-Escud? of the University of G?ttingen, Germany and Mikko Tuomi of the University of Hertfordshire, UK, has reexamined the system. They have added new HARPS observations, along with data from ESO's Very Large Telescope, the W.M. Keck Observatory and the Magellan Telescopes, to the already existing picture [1]. The team has found evidence for up to seven planets around the star [2].

These planets orbit the third fainter star of a triple star system. Viewed from one of these newly found planets the two other suns would look like a pair of very bright stars visible in the daytime and at night they would provide as much illumination as the full Moon. The new planets completely fill up the habitable zone of Gliese 667C, as there are no more stable orbits in which a planet could exist at the right distance to it.

"We knew that the star had three planets from previous studies, so we wanted to see whether there were any more," says Tuomi. "By adding some new observations and revisiting existing data we were able to confirm these three and confidently reveal several more. Finding three low-mass planets in the star's habitable zone is very exciting!"

Three of these planets are confirmed to be super-Earths -- planets more massive than Earth, but less massive than planets like Uranus or Neptune -- that are within their star's habitable zone, a thin shell around a star in which water may be present in liquid form if conditions are right. This is the first time that three such planets have been spotted orbiting in this zone in the same system [3].

"The number of potentially habitable planets in our galaxy is much greater if we can expect to find several of them around each low-mass star -- instead of looking at ten stars to look for a single potentially habitable planet, we now know we can look at just one star and find several of them," adds co-author Rory Barnes (University of Washington, USA).

Compact systems around Sun-like stars have been found to be abundant in the Milky Way. Around such stars, planets orbiting close to the parent star are very hot and are unlikely to be habitable. But this is not true for cooler and dimmer stars such as Gliese 667C. In this case the habitable zone lies entirely within an orbit the size of Mercury's, much closer in than for our Sun. The Gliese 667C system is the first example of a system where such a low-mass star is seen to host several potentially rocky planets in the habitable zone.

The ESO scientist responsible for HARPS, Gaspare Lo Curto, remarks: "This exciting result was largely made possible by the power of HARPS and its associated software and it also underlines the value of the ESO archive. It is very good to also see several independent research groups exploiting this unique instrument and achieving the ultimate precision."

And Anglada-Escud? concludes: "These new results highlight how valuable it can be to re-analyse data in this way and combine results from different teams on different telescopes."

Notes

[1] The team used data from the UVES spectrograph on ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile (to determine the properties of the star accurately), the Carnegie Planet Finder Spectrograph (PFS) at the 6.5-metre Magellan II Telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, the HIRES spectrograph mounted on the Keck 10-metre telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii as well as extensive previous data from HARPS (the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) at ESO's 3.6-metre telescope in Chile (gathered through the M dwarf programme led by X. Bonfils and M. Mayor 2003-2010.

[2] The team looked at radial velocity data of Gliese 667C, a method often used to hunt for exoplanets. They performed a robust Bayesian statistical analysis to spot the signals of the planets. The first five signals are very confident, while the sixth is tentative, and seventh more tentative still. This system consists of three habitable-zone super-Earths, two hot planets further in, and two cooler planets further out. The planets in the habitable zone and those closer to the star are expected to always have the same side facing the star, so that their day and year will be the same lengths, with one side in perpetual sunshine and the other always night.

[3] In the Solar System Venus orbits close to the inner edge of the habitable zone and Mars close to the outer edge. The precise extent of the habitable zone depends on many factors.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/DpMy_6AWEjY/130625073544.htm

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Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Mass hysteria outbreaks hit Bangladesh's garment workers

Hundreds of garment workers fell ill on Sunday after drinking water of questionable quality at their workplace in Gazipur at the outskirts of Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka.

The incident occurred less than two weeks after about 800 workers fell ill and were hospitalized after drinking water at Starlight Sweaters Ltd., which produced clothes for European buyers Carrefour and Otto.

The Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research in Bangladesh, which tested samples of the water after the incident at Starlight Sweaters on June 5, said they did not find anything unusual from the regular contaminants in water. The Institute?s director, Dr. Mahmudur Rahman, found the case to be a result of ?mass psychogenic illness.?

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The director believed the illness was a result of a panic attack that may have been triggered by factory authorities announcing that something was wrong with the water and closing work for the day.

Bangladesh?s garment industry, which constitutes 80 percent of the country?s export revenue worth $20 billion, has been troubled with shutdowns and agitations since the collapse of a factory building in the South Asian country killed 1,129 workers in April. Rumors and incidents of illness have added further panic in the industry, with workers becoming extremely sensitive to workplace accidents.

?There is fear persisting among garment workers since the incident" in April, says Mushrefa Mishu, president of the Garment Workers? Unity Forum.

Dr. Rahman says the recent illness of garment workers is a result of the prevalent fear. ?Such illness is symptomatic mostly among teenage women,? says Rahman. Women make up 80 percent of Bangladesh?s garment industry workforce of 4 million.

Ms. Mishu, however, says that most of Bangladesh?s garment factories do not maintain minimum health safety and hygiene. ?The water used in the factories is not purified,? says the labor leader. Most of these workers take water from jars that are filled with pipe waters without purification.

The director of the Institute of Epidemiology does not dispute the poor water quality. Although the illness reported at Starlight Sweaters on June 5 was not a result of water contamination, says Rahman, ?the water cannot be considered for drinking."

Responding to Sunday's incident, Rumana Rashid, managing director of Alvin Fashion Ltd., said only two of their workers are currently receiving treatment at hospital out of about 60, who shortly recovered after they were brought to the hospital. ?When we visited the hospital, there were workers from two other factories,? she says.

Incidence of ?mass psychogenic illness? has been recurrent in Bangladesh, particularly during summer. ?This is a complicated issue, which has been recurrent in Bangladesh, particularly in schools. Most recently it is being observed in garment factories,? says Rahman, who identified empty stomachs and dehydration during summer as a contributing factor to such outbreaks in the past.

?Usually such illness is cured through counseling and the patients recover very soon. There is no fatality,? he says.

The recurrence of the problem has prompted the Bangladeshi government to prepare a health program to contain such illness.

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The problem has been seen in other stressed parts of the region as well. On June 3, as many as 97 schoolgirls in northern Afghanistan were reported sick after smelling gas, only two months after a similar incident was reported in Takhar province in northeastern Afghanistan. The World Health Organization maintains the reported poisoning of hundreds of Afghan schoolgirls in recent years were in fact cases of ?mass psychogenic illness.?

A recent WHO report states: ?In the last four years over 1,634 cases from 22 schools have been treated for mass psychogenic illness in Afghanistan. There are no related deaths reported.?

Study finds the sweet spot -- and the screw-ups -- that make or break environmental collective actions

June 17, 2013 ? Sustainability programs are a Goldilocks proposition -- some groups are too big, some are too small, and the environment benefits when the size of a group of people working to save it is just right.

It has long been debated how many people working together can change the world.

Scientists at Michigan State University have found that there is a sweet spot -- a group size at which the action is most effective. More importantly, the work revealed how behaviors of group members can pull bad policy up or drag good policy down. The work is published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This paper finds that group size does matter -- and the answer is right in the middle," said Jianguo "Jack" Liu, who holds the Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability at MSU and is director of the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability. "Collective action is of growing importance as the world becomes more interdependent. It's important to understand how collective action works if we want programs that are effective."

Wu Yang, an MSU-CSIS doctoral student, and his colleagues studied how groups in the Wolong Nature Reserve worked to participate in China's massive Natural Forest Conservation Program. That program pays all of the 1,100 rural households there to monitor the forest on which they rely to enforce logging bans intended to allow forests to recover. Since it's mostly local residents who chop down the trees for firewood or to build homes, enlisting locals has been identified as the best way to increase forest cover.

The stakes are high there. Wolong is a biodiversity hotspot that's home to endangered giant pandas.

Wolong and the conservation program became a stage on which the universal behaviors that have bogged down collective actions are played out. If groups get too big, "free riders" -- individuals who dodge their duty undetected and still reap the benefits -- can make the collective actions less effective.

In small groups, participants can be overburdened. In contrast, large groups need to have expensive enforcement efforts to reduce free riders and improve the effectiveness.

For both group sizes, those limiting forces drag the effectiveness down. Liu said that holds true in Wolong, as well as in other efforts, including students' class group projects.

This work for the first time tests and quantifies the non-linear relationship hypothesized by Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in economics for her analysis of governance, particularly how people managed "the commons" -- as she referred to shared natural resources.

"We're showing that the outcomes of these actions are important," Liu said. "This can point the way to determine how to better protect the environment and utilize natural resources."

Other contributors to the paper were CSIS members Thomas Dietz, professor of environmental science and policy, sociology, and animal studies; Andr?s Vi?a, assistant professor of fisheries and wildlife; and former CSIS doctoral students Wei Liu, now a postdoctoral fellow at IIASA in Laxenburg, Austria, Mao-Ning Tuanmu, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University, and Guangming He.

The research is funded by the National Science Foundation, NASA and Michigan State University AgBioResearch.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/QBOJzEexAtw/130617160858.htm

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Dying of Heat Stroke in Texas Prisons - Courthouse News Service

?????GALVESTON, Texas (CN) - Four Texas inmates died of heat stroke in brutally hot prisons, and nine others have died for the same reason in Texas prisons since 2007, families claim in court.
?????Families of the late Rodney Gerald Adams, Kenneth Wayne James and Douglas Hudson sued the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, its executive director Brad Livingston, The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, which partners with the TDCJ to provide medical care to inmates, and other TDCJ officials and wardens.
?????The family of the late Robert Allen Webb sued the same defendants in a separate complaint.
?????In their complaint, the three families say they "bring this lawsuit to prevent more men from dying of heat stroke in the brutally hot TDCJ Gurney Unit and seek redress for their relatives who perished at the Gurney Unit."
?????"Prisoners are regularly dying of heat stroke in TDCJ custody at the Gurney Unit in Tennessee Colony, Texas," the families say in the complaint.
?????Webb died in the "Hodge Unit."
?????In the complaint about the three dead men, the families say: "Like most other TDCJ units, the Gurney Unit inmate living areas are not air conditioned, and apparent indoor temperatures routinely exceed 100 degrees. These temperatures last late into the night, providing no relief to prisoners. Even early in the morning, indoor apparent temperatures are sweltering.
?????"As each of the defendants named individually have long known and discussed internally at high-level TDCJ and UTMB leadership meetings well before 2011, temperatures this elevated cause the human body to shut down. As the body can no longer cool itself, body systems fail. If there is no immediate intervention, extreme temperatures will cause death."
?????Defendant Robert Eason was the TDCJ's regional director for its Gurney Unit when the inmates died, according to the complaint.
?????"Even though ten men died of heat stroke in 2011 - and eight of them died in his 'region' - Eason did not consider these deaths a serious problem. In fact, in the face of these deaths, he believed TDCJ was doing a 'wonderful job' and '[didn't] have a problem with heat-related deaths,'" the complaint states.
?????"Eason's direct supervisors, [Brad] Livingston, [TDCJ Correctional Institutions Division Director Rick] Thaler and [Thaler's Deputy Director William] Stephens, were similarly unconcerned. The deaths of prisoners from heat stroke at the Gurney Unit and system wide were regularly discussed at meetings Thaler and Stephens held with their deputies, including Eason.
?????"Even though the existing policies were obviously inadequate, Thaler, Stephens, and Eason continued to follow the same deadly course of conduct. Air conditioning the Gurney Unit or other prisons was never even discussed. Nor was moving individuals with heat-sensitive medical conditions or disabilities to air-conditioned prisons discussed or implemented."
?????The TDCJ officials were also keenly aware that certain prisoners should not be in the heat, the families say.
?????"It was well known to TDCJ and UTMB leadership that people with certain medical conditions, like diabetes or hypertension, or who take certain medications, like psychotropics or diuretics, are much more vulnerable to extreme temperatures. Their medical conditions prevent their bodies from regulating their temperature, putting them at much greater risk of death," the families say in the complaint.
?????Each of the four inmates had been prescribed pyschotropics or diuretics before their deaths, according to a chart in the complaints.
?????They shared characteristics with the other inmates who have died in Texas prisons since 2007, their families say.
?????"These thirteen men all shared certain characteristics. Most took psychotropic drugs to treat some form of mental illness, suffered from diabetes, or took diuretics to treat hypertension," the complaint states. "Many arrived in non-air-conditioned TDCJ facilities, like the Gurney Unit, shortly before their deaths - they were not acclimated to the heat, and/or had not received initial physicals. Most collapsed in the middle of the night, or were found dead early in the morning. And they all died in late July and early August - the hottest days of the Texas summer."
?????Adding to the intensity of the deadly Texas summer heat, the families say, the Gurney Unit's windows are sealed shut, making the prison housing areas "like an oven."
?????Prisoners are not allowed to have personal fans at the Gurney Unit and water is in short supply, the families say.
?????"Defendants provide grossly inadequate amounts of water to help prisoners survive the extremely high temperatures indoors," the complaint states. "TDCJ policy requires officers only to bring one large jug per fifty-four prisoners to the prisoner living areas (at most) three times a day. Throughout the system, and at Gurney, the jugs did not contain enough water for each prisoner to drink enough to protect them from the heat, and are frequently filled with lukewarm water. While Director Eason has stated the provision of water should occur as much as possible and should not be limited to three times a day, the provision of sufficient water to stay hydrated did not occur at the Gurney Unit." (Parentheses in complaint.)
?????The contrast between Texas county jails, which are required to keep indoor temperatures between 65 and 85 degrees, and Texas state prisons, are a shock to the prisoners' systems when they transfer to a state jail, the families say.
?????"When prisoners arrive from temperature-controlled jails to the brutally hot Gurney Unit, the defendants know they are at heightened risk of heat-related injury or death," the complaint states.
?????Some of the Gurney Unit have air conditioning, the families say.
?????"There are some parts of the Gurney Unit where prisoners could live, at least until they receive the critical intake physical to identify which prisoners suffer from heat-sensitive medical conditions," the complaint states. "But TDCJ and UTMB officials, including Livingston, Thaler, Stephens, Eason and [Dennis] Miller, do not take any steps to house prisoners with heat-sensitive conditions in those areas.
?????"Additionally, certain areas, like the offices of Livingston, Eason, Stephens, Thaler, and Miller, are air-conditioned - a comfortable 75 degrees. TDCJ even air-conditions the armory at the prison because it considers possible damage to its weaponry more important than possible, or even likely, death to the inmate population."
?????Douglas Hudson and Kenneth James were housed in the TDCJ's Gurney Unit in Tennessee Colony. They died on July 25 and Aug. 13, 2011, according to the complaint. Hudson was 62 and James was 52.
?????Rodney Adams was also a prisoner in the Gurney Unit when he died on Aug. 3, 2012 at age 45.
?????Robert Allen Webb died in August 2011 in the TDCJ's Hodge Unit in Rusk at age 50.
?????Their families want punitive damages for Americans with Disabilities Act violations and wrongful death.
?????They are represented by Jeff Edwards with the Texas Civil Rights Project in Austin.
?????The defendants include the TDCJ's prison manager Rick Thaler, the supervisor for all TDCJ guards William Stephens, former TDCJ regional director Robert Eason and Dennis Miller, former warden of the TDCJ's Gurney Unit. ?

Source: http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/06/17/58567.htm

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Monday, June 17, 2013

School prayer: Can a caring religious presence steer clear of prayer ban?

School prayer was banned by the Supreme Court 50 years ago, but many public schools and faith-based groups partner to help at-risk youth by offering a caring presence.
.?

By Lee Lawrence,?Correspondent / June 15, 2013

Every Wednesday morning at 10 , Andrea Bentz walks into Sanders Elementary School to spend an hour with third-grader Alex Grant, who sports a cool Mohawk and camouflage sweat-jacket, and who has a talent for drawing.?

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Sitting at a low table, they chat and laugh, and she pulls out a small paper bag with his favorite snack, popcorn. Then Ms. Bentz teaches him a shortcut to help with addition, building in a break so Alex can add a scene to a cartoon epic. Throughout, she breathes not a word about faith even though faith informs her every move and every smile.

A member of the nearby Orange Hill Baptist Church, Bentz volunteers through Kids Hope USA, which trains churches to partner with public schools to mentor at-risk children. The program spells out and enforces the First Amendment restrictions that apply in a public school setting.

Similar arrangements are being made around the country, mostly though not exclusively with Christian groups. Some are independent outreach efforts, others are coordinated through such organizations as the Texas-based National Church Adopt-a-School Initiative or One Church One School out of Chicago. ?Their shared aim is to?create ways for communities of faith to be part of the life of public schools without violating the bans on school-sponsored prayer and religious activities. ?

Some volunteers admit they hope their interaction with children will be so positive the kids will ask them about matters of faith. But the immediate goal, Bentz and others say, is to combat what they see as a dissolution of morals and a growing sense of hopelessness by filling a concrete need and providing a caring presence. ?

Brett Scullen for example, is a board member of the?evangelical missionary organization?Youth for Christ (YFC), through which he has gotten to know schools in and around his native city, Auburn, Al. But while YFC volunteers help set up religious student groups, Mr. Scullen is currently piloting a mentoring program where?"we don't discuss anything religious." ?

About once a month, he meets with 16 students at Notasulga High School to discuss?career opportunities in health care ? Scullen is a vice president of Atlanta-based WellStar Health System. He also helps the kids focus their course selection to prepare them for future training, be that a certification program, on-the-job training, or college. ??

"Several kids [in these underprivileged schools] have potential, but they'll get caught up in a system of no opportunities," he says. "It's great to talk about Jesus, but they also need concrete things." ??

In addition to such ad-hoc partnerships, there is a growing interest nation-wide in more formal arrangements. Such is the case in?the Philadelphia school district, where?213 of its 269 schools partner with faith-based organizations. These are ?pretty evenly split between churches and mosques? plus some Buddhist temples and seven rabbis, says?Kandice Lewis, manager of the school district's Office of Parent, Family, Community Engagement & Faith-Based Partnerships.

The terms are clear, she adds: ??We do not allow proselytizing or solicitation [for their religious institution.]" Instead, the faith groups?variously provide anything from supplies to after-school programs, mentors, and tutors. ?

Many of the Philadelphia groups?also participate on advisory councils.??They alert the teachers of, say, gang activity that might affect attendance,? Ms. Lewis explains, ?and help create safe corridors? so children can get to school. ?Our faith-based members,? she adds, ?have a vested interest in the community.?

At Austell's Sanders Elementary,?counselor?Corinna Oliver says this faith-based commitment makes a difference. ?We tried for years to recruit mentors through civic organizations, retirement homes,"?she says, "and had little luck. These [church volunteers] are committed, trained and they always show up.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/ZFK73nHfMv0/School-prayer-Can-a-caring-religious-presence-steer-clear-of-prayer-ban

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East Antarctic ice shelves melting at surprising pace, study suggests

Breakup of the shelves can accelerate the flow of continental ice to the sea, contributing to sea-level rise, and the Antarctic shelves 'are melting too fast,' the study's lead author says.

By Pete Spotts,?Staff writer / June 14, 2013

Emperor penguins walk across sea ice near Ross Island, Antarctica. New research finds the frozen continent's ice shelves melting at an alarming rate.

Courtesy Thomas Beer/AP/File

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Several small ice shelves along the East Antarctic coast appear to be melting at surprisingly high rates, some at rates comparable to those of shelves in West Antarctica, long a center of concern over the impact of climate change on the region's vast ice sheet and sea-level rise.

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This is an unexpected result of a new study that documents the current status of ice shelves around Antarctica's coastline and the relative influence of the factors melting them.

It's unclear if the unexpected melt rates represent a trend. Conditions off the East Antarctic coast have been less-well studied than those off of West Antarctica, notes Stanley Jacobs, a researcher at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., and a member of the team reporting its results in the current issue of the journal Science.

The cause also is unclear. But a lead suspect is relatively warm water that deep currents drive up onto the continental shelf. This water melts the ice shelves from underneath.

Still, "the numbers were a little bit larger than we were expecting ? about the same as for shelves on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet," Dr. Jacobs says.

Ice shelves are the leading edges of glaciers that flow from the continental interior into bays and fjords. Friction with a bay's sides or with raised features on the sea floor turn the buoyant ice shelves into brakes that slow the pace at which the glacial ice upstream moves toward the sea. The last area where the ice touches sea floor is known as the grounding line.

Relatively warm water, driven by deep-ocean currents up onto the continental shelf, can melt the shelves from underneath. The water-induced melting also can cause the grounding line to retreat. Both are thought to contribute to the break-up, or calving, of the ice shelves into icebergs. On the shelf surface, meltwater can work its way into crevasses, freeze, and act as a wedge to help cleave the ice.

"Ice shelf melt doesn't necessarily mean an ice shelf is decaying; it can be compensated by the ice flow from the continent," notes Eric Rignot, a professor of earth science at UC Irvine and the study's lead author. "But in a number of places around Antarctica, ice shelves are melting too fast."

Excessive breakup of the shelves can accelerate the flow of continental ice to the sea, contributing to sea-level rise.

Some of the most dramatic break-ups have occurred along the Antarctic Peninsula, a region of the continent that has seen some of the most pronounced warming on the planet ? warming most climate scientists attribute to the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuel and from land-use changes.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/AmdCEyJtWx0/East-Antarctic-ice-shelves-melting-at-surprising-pace-study-suggests

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