REVIEW: The iPad Mini Is A Five Star Device - Business Insider

Remember the iPod mini? When Apple launched that in January 2004, at a time when a huge swathe of the fast-growing digital music player market was still up for grabs, people thought Apple was crazy. Only 4GB of storage ? less than in the original 5GB model launched in 2001? A $249 price tag ? only $50 less than the base level "iPod". Well, said the critics, Apple had finally messed up after a couple of years of getting it right. It was doomed.

Turned out it wasn't; the iPod mini became the best-selling iPod (until the iPod nano in September 2005).

Why point this out? Because much the same critique has been applied to the iPad mini, Apple's 7.85in device. It's just smaller (though nobody seems to be calling it "a big iPod Touch" ? perhaps that wore thin after the first few thousand times following the original iPad's launch). It's too pricey; there are others which are already in the market.

As I've said earlier, there are some key differences between the iPod market of 2004 and today's mini-tablet market. The key one is that in the 2004 market, all the rivals needed to make a profit on their hardware; they couldn't make it up from selling music. This time round, Amazon and Google in particular can sell the hardware at a loss in order to goose their market share, if not immediately their profits. So Apple has a fight on its hands in pricing, not just design.

But let's by dealing with the iPad mini as it is, on its own terms.

Build quality: seamless

Jonathan Ive doesn't like seams. He doesn't like any sort of break in the surface of objects, even manufactured ones. One of the notable things about the first iPod was that there was no obvious way to break it open, and the trend in all of Apple products ? including the computers ? is the same.

You'll do well to get a scalpel blade between the iPad mini's screen and its bezel. There's no flex in the body; it's really solid. I was using a black model; it isn't obviously metal until you touch it. As with its bigger sibling, the headphone jack is on the top ? unlike the iPhone 5, where it has migrated to the bottom.

Dimensions

This is worthy of mention because everyone has been focused on the Amazon Kindle Fire in comparison to the iPad mini (and of course Google Nexus 7). I compared an iPad mini beside a Kindle Fire, and was surprised to find that they're almost exactly the same size in both width and length, though the iPad mini is thinner.

Similarly, compare it with the Nexus 7. Here are the figures for the iPad mini: 199mm x 133mm; the Nexus 7, 198.5mm x 120mm. You get 1.3cm ? that's half an inch - width difference between the Nexus 7 and the iPad mini. This surprised me ? I thought that the iPad mini would be substantially wider. But it's not, and at that width you can slip it into an outside jacket pocket or a roomy coat pocket or, of course, a bag.

How though does the iPad mini manage to be so small if it has a 7.85in screen, while the others have just 7in screens? By having a much thinner border along the long edges. It's 20mm wide at the short edges, but just 5mm on the long ones. This isn't just a shrunk-down iPad, where the borders are 20mm and 17mm (short, long). Apple has made a definite effort to create something that can be slipped into generous pockets.

Weight

What will surprise you is the weight. The specs already show that the iPad mini is lighter than the Kindle Fire, 308g v 395g (and 340g for the Nexus 7); even if you add on a Smart Cover, it's still lighter than the uncovered Kindle Fire. It's thinner too. This is a device that will be ideal for holding in one hand for reading on train rides or other commuting; or you might even forget it's in that coat pocket.

What the iPod mini demonstrated, and what the MacBook Air demonstrated, and pretty much every breakthrough in mobility demonstrates, is that lighter is better ? and if you can do lighter and bigger, you're really onto a winner. (This is part of how the Samsung Galaxy S3 has done so well: big screen, light phone.)

The iPad mini (308g) feels like it isn't really there. Certainly you'll not get tired of holding it, which could happen with the iPad (652g).

Battery life

As with previous iPads, battery life is easily in the nine-hour-plus mark. Charging is via the new Lightning connector, and as with the iPhone, the iPad now recharges very quickly ? half an hour will easily add four or five times as much use. I didn't get a chance to try it out on a 4G/LTE network, so don't know how that affects battery life. (Mobile versions sold in the UK will initially be compatible with EE's 1800MHz network, and Three's next year.)

Screen

It's not a retina screen! It's only 1024x768, so that the resolution is 163ppi. This has been a big complaint (or snark, in some cases) that I've heard from people who haven't laid eyes on this device. If all you read is specifications, then the iPad mini screen is far worse than the Kindle Fire's or Nexus 7's, right?

Well, put them beside each other, and the story changes. Web page rendering on the Kindle Fire is, frankly, awful. It's blocky, and there's a yellowish cast which personally I dislike. The iPad mini is bright, and white, and the text rendering is good ? and there's no obvious pixellation. Kindle books look as good on the iPad mini as on the Kindle Fire. (The latter is optimised for reading those, but not for the web; Amazon would rather you bought books than surfed the web.) Icons on the iPad mini look sharp; on the Kindle Fire, not really.

Scrolling

With long lists, it's smooth and untroubled; this is something Apple has prioritised. Again, the comparison with Android, where scrolling has always been a bugbear, is stark; get a long article with lots of comments on a website, and you'll get a smooth scroll. That's not always the case on Android devices, where some will give jerky performance, no matter how many cores their processor has. Specs, eh? They can lead you astray.

Setup experience

If you have an iOS device already ? iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad ? then you can log into your iCloud account and all the apps and content you've already bought, plus all your settings including alarms can be transferred wirelessly. (If you've got multiple devices backed up, you get to choose which it's restored from. Alternatively, you can just use a wire and an iTunes backup.) Android tries, but doesn't quite get to the granular level that iCloud does, and that's a big difference in user-friendliness.

User accounts

There aren't any. This is the biggest failing in iOS at present. Now that Google has announced that Android will support a form of user accounts on tablets, and Windows Phone 8 offers "Kids Corner" (fenced-off apps you can let the kids use), and Windows RT tablets support multiple signins, iOS is starting to look like the odd one out. One tablet per person is great for Apple, but it's not so great for the squeezed middle. Single-user iPhones yes; multi-user iPads, yes please.

Keyboard

Of course, there isn't an inbuilt keyboard. But the question is, is the onscreen version too small to type on? No ? used in landscape or portrait, the keys are large enough even for my hands. Despite the smaller screen, touch targets aren't too small either. In short, you can still type quite accurately (and certainly more accurately than on an iPhone) and manipulate onscreen objects. I don't think that many app developers will be redoing their existing iPad 2 apps.

In fact, games developers are quite excited by the idea of the iPad mini, because they reckon it will mean more players using the device in landscape mode who will be able to span the bottom of the screen with their thumbs (personally, I could) ? something that was impossible with the iPad, which anyway gets too heavy.

Cameras

Available front and back ? here's an example shot with the camera on the back. There's no Panorama option with the rear camera, which is a strange omission.

Apps

Existing iPad apps work perfectly well. I tried the Brian Cox Wonders app, which includes videos. I criticised the Nexus 7 for the extent of letterboxing on its 16:9 screen, so will I do the same for the iPad mini?

Yup ? you get some pretty hefty letterboxing here too. Here's the thing, though: because the border around the long edges is so much thinner than at the edges, the overall effect is no worse than the Nexus 7; given that proportionally less of the space is lost to the border, you could argue it's a less compromised experience.

For comparison, here's the Nexus 7 letterboxing:

It might not be immediately obvious, but if you look closely then you can see that the physical border is much wider in the Nexus 7 than on the iPad mini.

iPhone apps' behaviour can be hit-and-miss: some fit the screen neatly when expanded to the "2x" size, others overlap the edges (I'm looking at you, Tube Deluxe), others just look blocky (hello, Amazon ? though there is a proper Amazon iPad app). There isn't the spare room that the larger iPad has around the edges when you expand the size of the iPhone app on the mini's screen. Then again, with the huge number of iPad apps available, this probably won't be a problem.

Price

Yes, let's talk about the price. As mentioned above, Apple isn't looking to race to the bottom on price, because its objective (make a profit on hardware) isn't aligned to that of Google and Amazon (sell hardware near cost, profit on content or from users' web browsing). That said, at ?269 ($329) for the 16GB model, you're getting an impressively light, small tablet which (if you buy the connectors, or have them) can take your camera pictures, or just take pictures itself. There's AirPlay, the wireless audio and video connection ? if you have an AppleTV (?99) ($99) then you can run iPlayer on the iPad and "throw" it over to the AppleTV and watch it on a big screen; no wires. And it's not hugely more expensive than the Nexus 7, though the Kindle Fire is much cheaper. If price is your only consideration, though, an iPad probably hasn't been on your shopping list anyway.

Conclusion

Those in favour: excellent build quality; very light, comparatively large screen, not significantly wider than competition (for putting in coat pockets), excellent text rendering, huge selection of apps, music, books and films, pain-free setup from iCloud backups for existing accounts; 3G/4G LTE option; fast-growing range of accessories.

Those against: price is higher than rivals ? at ?239 ($329), it's ?40 ($130) more than the 16GB Nexus 7; no expandable storage; letterboxing of films; no HDMI out (though AirPlay is a wireless equivalent).

Lining those pluses and minuses up against those for the Nexus 7 ? which garnered four stars ? there's no doubt that this is indeed a five-star device. The 20% difference in comparative price is more than made up by the difference in build quality and software selection.

Apple is going to sell a lot of these ? quite possibly more than the "large" iPad ? in this quarter. The only way Apple could improve on this product would be (as some people are already agitating) to give it a retina screen and somehow make it lighter. That might happen at some point. You can wait if you like; other people, in the meantime, will be buying this one.

This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/review-the-ipad-mini-is-a-five-star-device-2012-10

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For Romney, campaigning resumes; Obama tours storm wreckage (cbsnews)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories Stories, RSS and RSS Feed via Feedzilla.

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Three left in hunt for WSOP glory - Online Gambling News

Peter Amsel
October 30, 2012
No Comments

On Monday, the World Series of Poker?s October Nine reconvened after a three-month hiatus to do battle for the $8.5m main event payday. Seven hours later, the field had been whittled down to three: Greg Merson is chip leader with a stack of 88.35m chips, followed by Jesse Sylvia with 62.75m and 21-year-old Jacob Balsiger short-stacked at 46.875m. A Balsiger win would make him the WSOP?s youngest ever main event champ, but Merson was looking like the man of the hour on Monday. Will his momentum hold when the trio retake their seats Tuesday? ESPN will be carrying 15-minute delayed coverage starting at 6pm local time.

In other WSOP news, the $1m buy-in Big One For One Drop event will have its second go-round at the 2014 WSOP. Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Lalibert?, who launched the mega-high-roller event to benefit his One Drop charitable foundation, made the announcement during Monday night?s main event broadcast. Antonio Esfandiari won this summer?s inaugural Big One For One Drop event, collecting a whopping $18.35m for his troubles. To tide players over until 2014, Lalibert? announced the 2013 WSOP would feature a new event, the Little One For One Drop, a $1,111 buy-in with unlimited re-entries over two starting days. Lalibert? was inducted into the American Gaming Association?s Gaming Hall of Fame last week.

While most of the poker world?s eyes are on the Rio in Las Vegas, the live poker action hasn?t stopped in other corners of the globe. On Monday, Tim Hartmann won the 2012 Irish Winter Festival to claim the ?100k prize. The Paddy Power Poker-sponsored event attracted a field of 385 to Dublin?s Burlington Hotel, with Polish runner-up Patryk Pietnoczko being the last to withstand Hartmann?s date with destiny. Following a three-hour heads-up battle, Pietnoczko settled for ?56.5k, while Ronan Gilligan took ?35k for finishing third.

Even further away from the Rio, 345 players showed up at the Crown Casino to contest the 2012 PokerStars.net Australia New Zealand Poker Tour (ANZPT) Melbourne main event. The title went to semi-pro player Paul Hockin, who earned $101k for defeating Ashley Warner heads-up. However, due to a three-way deal, Warner (who held a deceptively comfortable chip-lead at the time) ended up with $130k, while Michael Guzzardi earned $112k. But hey? a deal?s a deal.

Finally, Taiwan?s Raymond Wu has won the first event at the 2012 Asia Championship of Poker (ACOP) at the Grand Waldo Casino in Macau. Wu earned H$419k (US $54k) for outlasting 191 other players at the HK $10k Deepstack Championship. The UK?s Iqbal Ahmed was runner-up, earning HK $282k while Korea?s Vivian Im took third and $171k.

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Views and opinions expressed are those of the Author and do not necessarily reflect those of CalvinAyre.com

Source: http://calvinayre.com/2012/10/30/poker/big-one-for-one-drop-to-return-2014-wsop/

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'Ordered' catalyst boosts fuel cell output at lower cost

ScienceDaily (Oct. 30, 2012) ? Fuel cells, which convert fuel directly into electricity without burning it, promise a less polluted future where cars run on pure hydrogen and exhaust nothing but water vapor. But the catalysts that make them work are still "sluggish" and worse, expensive.

A research team at the Cornell Energy Materials Center has taken an important step forward with a chemical process that creates platinum-cobalt nanoparticles with a platinum enriched shell that show improved catalytic activity. "This could be a real significant improvement. It enhances the catalysis and cuts down the cost by a factor of five," said H?ctor Abru?a, the E.M. Chamot Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, senior author of a paper describing the work in the Oct. 28 issue of the journal Nature Materials. Co-authors include Francis DiSalvo, the John Newman Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and David Muller, professor of applied and engineering physics and co-director of the Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science.

In a hydrogen fuel cell, a catalyst at one electrode breaks hydrogen atoms into their component protons and electrons. The electrons travel through an external circuit to create an electric current to the other electrode, where a second catalyst combines the incoming electrons, free protons and oxygen to form water. In current commercial fuel cells, that catalyst is pure platinum, which is scarce and expensive. Researchers have tried substituting platinum alloys with varying degrees of success. Previously, the Cornell research team created nanoparticles of a palladium-cobalt alloy coated with a thin layer of platinum that worked like pure platinum at lower cost. Forming the catalyst as nanoparticles -- typically about 5 nanometers in diameter and distributed on a carbon support -- provides more surface area to react with the fuel.

Computer simulations of the catalytic reaction predicted that there should be an increase in catalytic activity if the platinum atoms are pushed a bit together or "strained," as Abru?a describes it. Deli Wang, a post-doctoral researcher in Abru?a's group, devised a new chemical process to manufacture nanoparticles of a platinum-cobalt alloy that included an annealing (heating) step, where the randomly distributed atoms in the alloy form an orderly crystal structure. Rather than just being jumbled together, the metal atoms arrange themselves in an orderly lattice. Platinum atoms layered onto these particles line up with the lattice and are pushed closer together than they would be in pure platinum, with the resulting "strain" enhancing the catalytic activity. Huolin Xin, a graduate student in Muller's group, used a scanning tunneling electron microscope to confirm the structure.

In preliminary tests the new nanoparticles to showed about three and a half times higher catalytic activity (measured by current flow) than similar particles with a disordered core, and more than 12 times more than pure platinum. The new catalysts also are more durable. Fuel cell catalysts lose their effectiveness as platinum atoms are oxidized away or as nanoparticles clump together, deceasing the surface area they can offer to react with fuel. After 5,000 on-off cycles of a test cell, catalytic activity of the ordered nanoparticles remained steady, while that of similar cobalt-platinum nanoparticles with a disordered core rapidly fell off. The ordered structure is more stable, Abru?a said. The platinum skin may be bonded more strongly to the ordered core than to the disordered alloy, so it would be less likely to fuse with the platinum on other nanoparticles to cause clumping. "We have not gone beyond 5,000 cycles but the results up to that point look very, very good," he said.

The Energy Materials Center at Cornell is an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Cornell University. The original article was written by Bill Steele.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Deli Wang, Huolin L. Xin, Robert Hovden, Hongsen Wang, Yingchao Yu, David A. Muller, Francis J. DiSalvo, H?ctor D. Abru?a. Structurally ordered intermetallic platinum?cobalt core?shell nanoparticles with enhanced activity and stability as oxygen reduction electrocatalysts. Nature Materials, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/nmat3458

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/B2kiHg_NgwE/121030173216.htm

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Yes On Idaho's Innovative Educational Reform Measures - - Idaho ...

By Richard Larsen

There are three Propositions on the general election ballot in Idaho. If all three receive a majority vote, the Students Come First legislation signed into law last year, will remain on the books and will begin the process of innovatively ameliorating the quality of public education across the state.

Proposition 1 does primarily three things. It allows for parents to have input on teacher evaluations, phases out tenure for educators, and mandates that contract negotiations be conducted in open meetings.

A supportive and involved parent largely determines the academic success of a student. Including parental involvement in teacher evaluations will foster a more synergistic relationship between the teacher and the parent, with the predictable outcome of additional parental involvement and children who perform better academically.

Teacher tenure is preserved for those who already have it. Tenure is an obstacle for school districts and administrators to work around when faced with reductions in force. Phasing out tenure allows increased flexibility to retain the best teachers, regardless of seniority or tenure. This is clearly in the best interest of students and academic performance, but is also the major objection teachers have to the Students Come First legislation.

Collective bargaining is limited to matters pertaining to salary and benefits. In the past they could negotiate bell schedule, school calendar, teacher evaluations, and grading methods. This gives the local school board more flexibility and latitude in those peripheral issues without jeopardizing salary and benefit negotiations.

Contract negotiations have sailed through with few exceptions, since the open-meeting negotiations law went into effect. Everyone involved in such negotiations behaves more circumspectly when the public eye is on them.

Proposition 2 implements Pay for Performance (PFP) incentives for teachers, allowing for bonuses based on one of three criteria. The minimum teacher salary was raised and a funding mechanism added to increase the minimum salary in the future. The current salary apportionment grid for teachers with longevity and added educational credits is maintained.

PFP provides extra compensation for teachers who serve in hard-to-fill positions, like calculus teachers in small school districts, or leadership roles, like mentoring new teachers or developing curriculum. This comes as a bonus to those teachers on top of their pay grid compensation. The local school board determines hard-to-fill positions and the extra compensation.

PFP also allows for teachers to earn bonuses beyond their base salary for meeting or exceeding student achievement goals at the state and local levels. This will provide for the entire certified staff of a school to receive bonus pay when their school is showing growth in student achievement. Local school boards set student achievement goals for bonus participation. Bonuses will be paid to nearly 85% of Idaho?s teachers next month, based on last year?s performance.

Proposition 3 allows for high school juniors and seniors to earn up to a years worth of college credit, and provides for technology in the classroom as well as individually to students. In addition, new standards of transparency and public disclosure are required of school districts.

All local school boards and school districts must be totally transparent in fiscal matters, including master contracts and associated information. Further, the State Department of Education will create a web-based fiscal report card and will post financial data and statistics for every school district and public charter school.

For teachers who don?t already have a personal computer in their classroom, they will get one. They will also be trained on how to integrate computer technology into the curriculum and into the classroom to raise student achievement. This school year, high school teachers will be provided mobile computing devices.

High school students will be provided access to similar devices. Local districts will determine how best to utilize this technology on a daily basis and teachers will decide how to incorporate them into the learning process. The local boards will also set student-use policy for the mobile devices.

Starting with the graduating class of 2016, students will have some online curriculum. The State Board of Education has determined that two of the 46 credits required to graduate will be completed online, but local districts will determine the curriculum. And the digital learning component allows students in small districts to enjoy the same curriculum breadth of the larger schools.

As taxpayers, we benefit by the increased transparency in the disposition of financial resources. As parents of public schools, we benefit by the increased focus on results and achievement, by rewarding schools and teachers for jobs well done. The incorporation of technology in the classroom and online curriculum prepares students for college and the work force, while increasing efficiency. And the Students Come First legislation empowers teachers to earn more based on their performance and grants more flexibility and authority to local school boards to manage resources. Everyone should visit the studentscomefirst.org website to learn more.

There is no doubt that each of these measures brings something to the table to improve our public education system. All three Propositions should be approved to realize those benefits.

AP award winning columnist Richard Larsen is President of Larsen Financial, a brokerage and financial planning firm in Pocatello, and is a graduate of Idaho State University with a BA in Political Science and History and former member of the Idaho State Journal Editorial Board.? He can be reached at rlarsenen@cableone.net.?

Source: http://www.pocatelloshops.com/new_blogs/politics/?p=9675

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IRL: Nuu SoftKey, MacBook Air and Thermaltake's eSports Cyclone ...

Welcome to IRL, an ongoing feature where we talk about the gadgets, apps and toys we're using in real life and take a second look at products that already got the formal review treatment.

Welcome back! This week in real-life adventures with gadgetry, Sharif recommends an $80 gaming mouse and Dan pleads with you all not to buy a certain keyboard case for the iPad. As for Philip, he just purchased his first Apple product after years of buying Windows laptops and Zune players, which means he's got a little explaining to do.

NUU Softkey

I was looking for an iPad case to help me peck out articles on the go, but NUU's Softkey case for the new iPad / iPad 2 isn't it. The faux-leather folio disguises your tablet in a document wallet respectably enough, but its awkward prop made it useless as an impromptu movie screen on a long haul flight. In fact, the various stand configurations are all so weak that you constantly need to keep your hands on the device to prevent it collapsing before you.

Of course, none of that would matter if its keyboard was useful enough to relegate my laptop to the bottom of my carry-on. Unfortunately, it's topped with a rubber membrane that's too easily parted from its keys, meaning that the only travel you experience is when you depress the sheath in on itself. The keyboard, too, needlessly includes Escape, Arrow and Function keys that, while useful, could have easily been shed to increase the size of the letters. As such, my quest to turn the iPad into a useful work machine will struggle on.

-- Dan Cooper

MacBook Air (13-inch, 2012)

I'm not even sure what happened. One minute, I was dead-set on waiting for one of those hybrid laptop / tablet deals running Windows 8. The next, I was braving a New York City downpour to pick up a MacBook Air. I've been a die-hard Windows user since the 3.1 days: I stuck with it through Vista and I eagerly await next month's update. And yet, here in New York, thousands of miles from home, I feel like I've had the OS equivalent of an illicit cross-country fling. What if my wife finds out?

Truthfully, my reasons for picking up an OS X machine are far more practical than lecherous. It's become increasingly clear that my Windows-only approach is a bit outdated. As part of a group that obsessively covers technology, it only makes sense for me to stay current with as many hardware and software ecosystems as I can. I've used OS X for years in the work environment (and Mac OS 9 before that). But this Ivy Bridge-powered 13-inch Air represents the first time I've ever spent my own money on an Apple product. That's right, no iPods or iPhones in our home. Just look at my Zune HD and Windows Phone.

So far, I'm not regretting my decision. This keyboard and trackpad combo is supremely comfortable and the solid-state drive is impressively quick. As of this writing, I've been on battery for about three hours and only just crossed the 50 percent threshold. The screen may not be Retina-level, but I've no complaints about it so far (though I haven't done any photo editing just yet). Up next: installing Windows 7 (and later Win 8) for a little Boot Camp action so I can have two great OSes on one amazing machine. Yup, I'm officially a two-timer -- and I'm not ashamed.

-- Philip Palermo

Thermaltake eSports Cyclone Edition

I admit that when I first wrote about Thermaltake's eSports Cyclone Edition gaming mouse, I didn't take it all that seriously. A protruding 6,000 RPM fan to keep your trigger finger cool and slip-resistant -- isn't that slightly OTT? Well, yes it is. But it's also beautiful, exuberant and happiness-inducing -- as is the very thought that someone out there has the guts to bring stuff like this to market. My Cyclone's fan mostly sits detached and idle on a shelf these days, because Fall where I live is cool enough already, but that detracts little from the $80 mouse itself. It's comfortable and well-built, and rather than just being a boring gimmick it leaves me with a strong sense that someone at TT eSports genuinely loves their job. Not convinced? Check out the Taiwanese company's obscene gold and yellow Chao gaming headphones and you soon will be.

-- Sharif Sakr

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/14/irl-nuu-softkey-macbook-air-thermaltake-esports-cyclone-edition-gaming-mouse/

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Canada beats undermanned Cuba in qualifying

Associated Press Sports

updated 10:17 p.m. ET Oct. 12, 2012

TORONTO (AP) -Despite squandering numerous chances, Canada beat undermanned Cuba 3-0 Friday night to remain on course in World Cup qualifying.

The Cubans (0-5-0) dressed just 11 players for the game. Down the field, Canada (3-1-1) had 10 substitutes dressed.

And Cuba was down to 10 in the 70th minute after striker Roberto Linares was ejected off a challenge that crumpled captain Kevin McKenna.

Three minutes later, Canadian striker Olivier Occean was sent off for a melee after Will Johnson's header made it 2-0. That means Occean will have to miss Canada's final match against Honduras, which will decide whether the Canadians advance to the CONCACAF finals.

Tosaint Ricketts scored for Canada in the 14th minute. And until Johnson's goal padded the lead with just 20 minutes remaining, the Cubans were one kick away from evening the score and silencing the enthusiastic crowd of 17,712 at BMO Field.

David Edgar made it 3-0 in the 78th minute with a sweet volley - a score that could come in useful with goal difference a tiebreaker.

Now a showdown awaits against Honduras in San Pedro Sula on Tuesday.

The top two in the group that also includes Panama advance to the final six-team round of qualifying.

From there, three will advance to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. A fourth CONCACAF team will take part in an intercontinental playoff with the Oceania winner to see who joins them.

? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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A win is a win, but ...

PST: Latest lackluster U.S.?victory ? a 2-1 triumph over tiny Antigua and Barbuda ? is cause for concern.

PST: US finds unlikely hero in Johnson

PST: Not even the most ardent Eddie Johnson fan would have predicted he would be the man to pull the U.S. national team back from its World Cup qualifying ledge. But he scored both goals in the 2-1 victory over Antigua and Barbuda.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/49397453/ns/sports-soccer/

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A Volunteer Experience: Bringing affordable energy to the village ...

This blog post was written by a SOCAP12 Volunteer. SOCAP12 was possible with the help of 100+ volunteers!

What a stellar panel. On the first afternoon of SOCAP 2012, Niki Armacost from Arc Finance facilitated a conversation highlighting the development of companies that support the use of mobile technologies to increase access to energy. The panel included Miguel Granier from Invested Development, Michael MacHarg from Simpa Networks, Megan Beck from Acumen Fund, and Corina Gardner from GSMA Development Fund. The room was filled with an engaged audience of aspiring entrepreneurs and guests interested in learning more about this emerging space.

Miguel eloquently explained the power of the cellphone, a two way communication device allowing efficient and effective communication between people across the world. The cell phone is an enabling technology that can address so many different market failures and energy is a huge focus today, an issue affecting 3-4b people globally. When the energy problem is solved, it will bring the world that much closer to solving numerous other market failures. Problems like education and transportation become much easier to address with access to energy.

The panel was supremely educational to those of us less well-versed in this space. I learned that?

- ?Pay as you go? models allow access to energy and other goods for those who can?t afford to pay upfront.
- Once mobile energy products are in-market, they provide data on how people are actually using energy. This is a unique by-product and can help product developers get a better sense of the energy landscape and iterate and improve their products over time.
- One of the big obstacles is a lack of trust between constituents. The customer doesn?t trust the micro-grid operation, the micro-grid operator doesn?t trust the customer to pay, etc. The introduction of technology can bring some objectivity to the market and help to build out that trust among people.

Many new social enterprises are emerging in this space. Keep your eyes peeled!

Source: http://socialcapitalmarkets.net/2012/10/12/a-volunteer-experience-bringing-affordable-energy-to-the-village-through-technology/

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TV automatically pauses when you leave the room

18 hrs.

John Roach , NBC News

Pausing live TV is about to get easier. All you?ll have to do is get up and walk out of the view of the screen, according to researchers working on the technology.

The remote-less remote control is one application of the algorithms being developed by PredictGaze, a Santa Clara, Calif. startup working at the intersection of computer vision and machine learning.

Other applications in the works include the ability to control your iPad with your?eyes and mute a stereo with a ?shh? gesture.?

Similar remote control is possible today with Microsoft?s Kinect, but PredictGaze aims to achieve that kind of functionality with less expensive hardware, such as a basic webcam, Gigaom notes in post on the company.?

You can check out a series of videos on the technologies under development at the PredictGaze website. The self-pausing TV is featured below.

When this technology will move from the lab and?to our living rooms is uncertain, but the?news does suggest that we?couch potatoes of the future almost certainly will be even lazier than we are today.?

?? via Gigaom?

John Roach is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. To learn more about him, check out his website. For more of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/futureoftech/tv-automatically-pauses-when-you-leave-room-1C6439107

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The bishops speak: Joe, you lied (Powerlineblog)

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Wounded survivor testifies as Ohio Craigslist murder trial opens

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/wounded-survivor-testifies-ohio-craigslist-murder-trial-opens-223732399.html

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Arizona Senate Race Turns Nasty (Taegan Goddard's Political Wire)

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Cannabis extract eases muscle stiffness typical of multiple sclerosis ...

You are here: Home / Health / Cannabis extract eases muscle stiffness typical of multiple sclerosis

Posted by Michelle Hunt on October 10, 2012 ? Leave a Comment?

Cannabis seems to ease the painful muscle stiffness typical of multiple sclerosis (MS), indicate phase III trial results, published in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.

Up to 90 per cent of MS patients endure painful muscle stiffness at some point during the course of their disease, which reduces their mobility and interferes with daily routine activities and sleep quality. But current treatments often fail to resolve symptoms fully, and can be harmful, as a result of which many MS patients have experimented with alternative therapies, including cannabis.

Adult MS patients with stable disease, from 22 different specialist centres across the UK, were either randomly assigned to cannabis extract (tetrahydrocannabinol) daily (144) or a dummy pill (placebo) (135) for a period of 12 weeks.

The treatments were given in gradually increasing doses from 2.5 mg up to a maximum of 25 mg for two weeks, followed by maintenance doses for the remaining 10 weeks. The aim was to see if cannabis extract alleviated or improved muscle stiffness, associated pain, muscle spasms, and sleep quality, using a validated 11 point rating scale.

After the first two weeks of treatment, 87 per cent of those taking the placebo were on the maximum daily dose compared with just under half of those (47%) taking the cannabis extract.

After 12 weeks, one in four patients treated with cannabis extract was taking the maximum daily dose compared with over two thirds (69.4%) of those taking the placebo.

At the end of the study period, the rate of relief from muscle stiffness was twice as high among those given the cannabis extract as those given the placebo. Muscle stiffness was alleviated in just under 30 per cent of those given cannabis compared with just under 16 per cent of those treated with the placebo.

This difference was evident after 4 and 8 weeks, and also extended to pain, muscle spasms and sleep quality, at all time points, the results showed.

The differences were most noticeable among patients not already using antispasmodic treatment, among whom almost 40 per cent of those taking the cannabis extract gained relief compared with just over 16 per cent of those taking placebo.

The rate of side effects was higher among those taking the cannabis extract and highest during the first two weeks of treatment. Nervous system disorders and gut problems were the most commonly reported side effects, but none was severe.

The authors conclude that the results of their trial indicate that cannabis extract could be a useful treatment for the muscle problems typical of MS, and could provide effective pain relief, particularly for those in considerable pain.

Click the following link to read the full paper: [Multiple sclerosis and extract of cannabis: results of the MUSEC trial J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2012; 83: 1125-32 doi 10.1136/jnnp-2012-302468]

Source: http://lifeandfitnessmag.ie/2012/10/cannabis-extract-eases-muscle-stiffness-typical-of-multiple-sclerosis/

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Team Obama hopes Biden can halt the GOP's momentum

DANVILLE, Ky. (AP) ? Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Paul Ryan pull up a couple of chairs for a vice presidential debate that has mushroomed in importance since Mitt Romney's strong showing in the first presidential faceoff. This time, it's the Obama team looking to put the brakes on the other guy's momentum.

The veep showdown matches up two skilled politicians with strong policy credentials and very different styles. It's 69-year-old Biden's folksy appeal and solid vice presidential portfolio vs. 42-year-old Ryan's intensity and extensive knowledge of the federal budget and economy from 14 years in Congress.

"Looking forward to it," Biden said Thursday as he boarded his plane for Kentucky with his children and Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who has been playing Ryan in practice debate sessions.

Like the second installment in a miniseries, the debate will help to shape the campaign narrative until Romney and Obama meet up again Tuesday. Obama is eager to change the vibe after his lackluster performance in the first debate and Romney's recent gains in the polls. Romney, for his part, is hoping a strong Ryan performance will help propel Republicans forward on an energetic drive through the campaign's final weeks.

Democratic Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear encouraged Biden to turn in a tougher performance than Obama. Beshear said Obama "didn't do well" in the presidential debate and should have mentioned Romney's dismissive comments about the 47 percent of Americans who don't pay income taxes.

"My guess is that he was advised to be presidential and don't get into the fray and look like you are above the fray and all that," Beshear said in an interview with The Associated Press. "But there is a difference in doing that and being aggressive and making your points and pointing out the difference between your two candidates."

The 90-minute debate at Centre College, a liberal arts school with just 1,340 students in tiny Danville, is sure to draw a television audience of tens of millions. But it's unlikely to eclipse the 70 million who tuned in to watch Biden face off with Republican firebrand Sarah Palin four years ago.

That debate was more of a curiosity: It allowed Palin to outdo Biden in folksiness and recover from a series of painfully awkward media interviews but did little to alter the trajectory of the race.

"Normally vice presidential debates are good political theater and sort of interesting from a talent scout standpoint, as you evaluate the up-and-comers on the political stage," says Alan Schroeder, author of a book on presidential debates. "But this year could be different because of the negative reviews of Obama's performance. That heightens expectations for this second debate."

"Joe just needs to be Joe," Obama said, when asked his advice for the vice president in an interview Wednesday with ABC News.

Senior Obama adviser David Axelrod, appearing Thursday on "CBS This Morning," said he believes "the big challenge for him is to pin Congressman Ryan down."

"Right now the Romney campaign is running away from some of their positions like unwanted stepchildren," Axelrod said.

Thursday was a rare day when the political activities of the running mates were taking center stage and those of Obama and Romney were seen as secondary. But with just 26 days left until the election and the race still tight, neither Obama nor Romney was completely ceding the spotlight. The president headed to Florida while his GOP opponent had his own debate prep at his hotel in Dayton, Ohio, Thursday morning before traveling to North Carolina, another battleground.

Thursday's debate, moderated by Martha Raddatz of ABC News, will cover both foreign and domestic topics. The debate is to be divided into nine, 10-minute segments. At the outset of each segment, Raddatz will ask an opening question, and each candidate will have two minutes to respond.

Romney and Obama both predicted strong performances by their No. 2s.

"I think Paul Ryan will do great," Romney told supporters at a town-hall meeting Wednesday in Mount Vernon, Ohio.

He said the debates offer people a rare chance to see the candidates directly, unfiltered by misleading and negative ads.

The GOP nominee said he'd seen some of the anti-Romney TV ads running in Ohio that morning, and added: "It's a good thing I don't do that very often because my blood pressure would be very high."

Obama, in a radio interview Wednesday with Tom Joyner, said he'd been "too polite" in his debate with Romney ? a sure sign that Biden won't be going easy on Ryan. And that Obama won't make the same mistake in the next two presidential debates, on Tuesday in Hempstead, N.Y., and Oct. 22 in Boca Raton, Fla.

"We've got four weeks left in the election, and we're going to take it to him," Obama said.

Later, in an interview with ABC News, Obama minimized the importance of his poor first debate performance, saying: "Gov. Romney had a good night. I had a bad night. It's not the first time I've had a bad night."

He added: "What's important is the fundamentals of what this race is about haven't changed."

The president, who had tried to lower expectations for his own performance before last week's debate, predicted in his radio interview that Biden would be "terrific."

Ryan signaled he's ready for whatever Biden sends his way.

"I'm not intimidated, I'm actually excited about it," he said on CNN.

Both Biden and Ryan head into the debate with vulnerabilities: Biden must rein in a freewheeling manner that can be endearing but also produces plenty of gaffes. Ryan hasn't been in a campaign debate for more than a decade and is light on foreign policy experience, a sharp contrast to the vice president, a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Ryan also will need to find a way to reinforce Romney's policy positions without selling out his own, more conservative credentials.

Romney adviser Kevin Madden signaled in advance that Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, would distance himself from his past proposals for sharp budget cuts.

"You have to remember that there is a Romney-Ryan ticket and there's one presidential candidate ? there's one person at the top of the ticket ? so the focus again will be on what Gov. Romney's plan is for reforming Washington," Madden said.

___

Benac reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Robert Ray in Danville, Ky., and Matthew Daly in Wilmington, Del., contributed to this report.

___

Follow Nancy Benac on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/nbenac

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/team-obama-hopes-veep-debate-halts-gop-momentum-064544894--election.html

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Facebook Currently Down For Some European Users, Anon Hacker Claims Responsibiilty

Facebook is down for many users in Europe, according to several TC tipsters and widespread reports on Twitter. Twitter user @AnonymousOwn3r is claiming responsibility, as he had done in the past for a major GoDaddy outage as well. Later, GoDaddy claimed that a technical problem on its own end was responsible, however, and the true cause of this current European outage is still unknown.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/IFyGWNAim0k/

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Claim that Links Economic Success and Genetic Diversity Draws Criticism

Genoeconomists' use of population-genetic data to predict economic success is sparking a war of words, including charges of racism

By Ewen Callaway and Nature magazine

The United States has the right amount of genetic diversity to buoy its economy, claim economists. Image: D. ACKER/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY

• 

  Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...

  Read More??

From Nature magazine

?The invalid assumption that correlation implies cause is probably among the two or three most serious and common errors of human reasoning.? Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould was referring to purported links between genetics and an individual?s intelligence when he made this familiar complaint in his 1981 book The Mismeasure of Man.

Fast-forward three decades, and leading geneticists and anthropologists are levelling a similar charge at economics researchers who claim that a country?s genetic diversity can predict the success of its economy. To critics, the economists? paper seems to suggest that a country?s poverty could be the result of its citizens? genetic make-up, and the paper is attracting charges of genetic determinism, and even racism. But the economists say that they have been misunderstood, and are merely using genetics as a proxy for other factors that can drive an economy, such as history and culture. The debate holds cautionary lessons for a nascent field that blends genetics with economics, sometimes called genoeconomics. The work could have real-world pay-offs, such as helping policy-makers to set the right level of immigration to boost the economy, says Enrico Spolaore, an economist at Tufts University near Boston, Massachusetts, who has also used global genetic-diversity data in his research.

But the economists at the forefront of this field clearly need to be prepared for harsh scrutiny of their techniques and conclusions. At the centre of the storm is a 107-page paper by Oded Galor of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and Quamrul Ashraf of Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It has been peer-reviewed by economists and biologists, and will soon appear in American Economic Review, one of the most prestigious economics journals.

The paper argues that there are strong links between estimates of genetic diversity for 145 countries and per-capita incomes, even after accounting for myriad factors such as economic-based migration. High genetic diversity in a country?s population is linked with greater innovation, the paper says, because diverse populations have a greater range of cognitive abilities and styles. By contrast, low genetic diversity tends to produce societies with greater interpersonal trust, because there are fewer differences between populations. Countries with intermediate levels of diversity, such as the United States, balance these factors and have the most productive economies as a result, the economists conclude.

The manuscript had been circulating on the Internet for more than two years, garnering little attention outside economics ? until last month, when Science published a summary of the paper in its section on new research in other journals. This sparked a sharp response from a long list of prominent scientists, including geneticist David Reich of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and Harvard University palaeoanthropologist Daniel Lieberman in Cambridge.

In an open letter, the group said that it is worried about the political implications of the economists? work: ?the suggestion that an ideal level of genetic variation could foster economic growth and could even be engineered has the potential to be misused with frightening consequences to justify indefensible practices such as ethnic cleansing or genocide,? it said.

The critics add that the economists made blunders such as treating the genetic diversity of different countries as independent data, when they are intrinsically linked by human migration and shared history. ?It?s a misuse of data,? says Reich, which undermines the paper?s main conclusions. The populations of East Asian countries share a common genetic history, and cultural practices ? but the former is not necessarily responsible for the latter. ?Such haphazard methods and erroneous assumptions of statistical independence could equally find a genetic cause for the use of chopsticks,? the critics wrote.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=0bd60613113db01331f5f888aea15222

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BuddyTV Guide app adds Hulu Plus integration

Even when you're watching TV alone, you've always got a friend in BuddyTV Guide -- the personalized listings and remote control app. Now, in addition to content providers Netflix, iTunes and Amazon, it's inviting another player to the viewing party: Hulu Plus. Subscribers to the service will be able to see all associated video content in the BuddyTV Guide listings, and better yet, access it directly from within the app. Intrigued, Hulu Plus patrons? Head on down to the source link, grab the relevant app and let the New Girl marathon commence.

Continue reading BuddyTV Guide app adds Hulu Plus integration

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BuddyTV Guide app adds Hulu Plus integration originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Oct 2012 18:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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