FILE - This Nov. 8, 2012 file photo shows director Steven Spielberg, left, and author Doris Kearns Goodwin at The World Premiere of DreamWorks Pictures "Lincoln" in Los Angeles. DreamWorks Studios announced Wednesday that it has acquired the film rights to Goodwin’s upcoming “The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft and the Golden Age of Journalism.” Spielberg, a principal partner of DreamWorks, last year released his acclaimed adaption of Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.” (Photo by Eric Charbonneau/Invision/AP, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Steven Spielberg and Doris Kearns Goodwin are reteaming after their Oscar-winning collaboration on "Lincoln."
DreamWorks Studios announced Wednesday that it has acquired the film rights to Goodwin's upcoming "The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft and the Golden Age of Journalism." Spielberg, a principal partner of DreamWorks, last year released his acclaimed adaption of Goodwin's "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln."
Spielberg said that Goodwin has "once again given us the best seats in the house where we can watch two dynamic American personalities in a battle for power and friendship."
The 900-page book chronicles the friendship and then political rivalry of the two Republican leaders, both American presidents of the Progressive Era.
Administration officials are saying that healthcare.gov will be “functioning smoothly” by the end of November. And maybe they are right, in which case all the fuss about broken websites will become a historical footnote.
But what if administration officials are wrong? What if it’s December and Obamacare’s official online portals are still barely functional?
2 grants to UC Riverside boost scientists' efforts in developing improved cowpea varieties
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
30-Oct-2013
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Contact: Iqbal Pittalwala iqbal@ucr.edu 951-827-6050 University of California - Riverside
Funding from USAID will help increase crop yield in several African countries
RIVERSIDE, Calif. Cowpea is a protein-rich legume crop that plays a key role in sustaining food security for people and their livestock. Immensely important in many parts of the world, particularly drought-prone regions, it plays a central role in the diet and economy of hundreds of millions of people in Africa and Asia.
To meet the needs of a growing world population, new cowpea varieties with desirable traits, such as higher yield and quality, disease resistance, pest resistance and drought tolerance, are needed. But breeding these new varieties the conventional way crossing one variety with another, based on best guesses is time-consuming and laborious.
Enter DNA marker-assisted breeding, a genetic tool that can greatly accelerate breeding efforts by utilizing genetic "markers" or molecular flags in the plant genome that indicate the location of a particular genetic trait. Breeders use the markers to screen large populations of plants from crosses of different varieties. In effect, the markers help breeders locate genes linked to traits the way road signs help a motorist arrive at a destination.
This month, scientists at the University of California, Riverside received substantial funding by way of two grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to continue their work on developing better yielding varieties of cowpea through new genomic resources and marker-assisted breeding research by which UC Riverside directly impacts cowpea production in several countries in Africa. The grants support USAID's agricultural research and capacity building work under Feed the Future, the U.S. Government's global hunger and food security initiative.
The two grants total nearly $7 million. The first, creating the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Climate-Resilient Cowpea, is a nearly $5 million grant that supports a new five-year cowpea-breeding project with partners in four West African nations: Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal. The second grant, titled "Genetic improvement of cowpea to overcome biotic stress and drought constraints," extends a ten-year project and brings additional funding of about $2 million over four-and-a-half years to UCR through the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Grain Legumes as a sub-contract with Michigan State University, East Lansing.
Specific traits of interest for cowpea improvement will include resistance to the drought-associated fungal pathogen Macrophomina phaseolina, tolerance against drought-induced early senescence, and resistance to insects, nematodes and other diseases, along with high yield and maintenance of traits of especial interest to Africa such as seed size, seed coat color and patterns.
"UCR cowpea research goes back more than 30 years," said Timothy Close, a professor of genetics in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences and the principal investigator of the $5 million grant. "The USAID funding through Feed the Future is recognition of the tremendous value that UCR brings to cowpea research and the positive impact it is having on cowpea breeding for African farmers."
Cowpea originated in Africa. It is known also as southern pea, blackeye pea, crowder pea, lubia, niebe, coupe or frijole. In the United States, cowpea is popular in the south, where it is known as blackeyed peas and other names. California primarily grows the blackeyed dry-grain cowpea type.
"Both research projects are intimately tied to our collaborators in sub-Saharan Africa," Close said. "Beyond the technical capability we offer, we have a good network of partners in Africa for on-the-ground application of genetic improvement for cowpea."
Close explained that to breed improved varieties of cowpea, scientists must understand its genetic makeup, mark the location of genes that control important traits, and select the best trait combinations they wish to see emerge in new varieties. Close also explained that with very dense genetic markers it is not crucial to understand exactly which genes underpin the traits, though such information can be helpful for purposes such as finding similar genes within collections of genetically diverse relatives of cultivated cowpeas or even in other plants.
Rather than genetically modify cowpea via manipulation of genes in test tubes, the researchers will use the marker-assisted breeding technology to expedite conventional breeding and, thereby, speed up the production of new and improved cowpea varieties. Associated with traits desired for breeding, the genetic marker profiles of progeny derived from carefully chosen parents will be used to more deliberately design and assemble new superior cowpea varieties.
"We are no longer confined to slower, less directed methods of plant breeding, nor must we base all hope on genetically modified organisms," Close said. "With marker-assisted breeding we can, over just a few years, accomplish improvement in cowpea varieties that can enormously benefit farmers, markets and consumers."
Philip Roberts, a professor of nematology and the principal investigator on the $2 million USAID grant, explained that the marker-assisted breeding technology for cowpea, developed at UCR, is based on finding genetic variability in cowpea that already exists in nature and that can then be brought into breeding programs.
"Our method is focused on finding genetic variability that nature has already created and marking where the genes for the favorable traits are located in the cowpea genome," he said. "The marker-assisted selection then allows for the crossing of varieties with complementary sets of favorable traits so that these traits can be stacked up and passed down to progeny. It's not about making transgenes and inserting them into plants. It's about bringing favorable traits from donors into highly bred cultivars via accelerated cross-breeding."
Close and Roberts will be joined in the analysis by Stefano Lonardi, a professor of computer science and engineering and a co-principal investigator on the team, who will help process large amounts of data that the research projects will generate.
"We will use a computational method that greatly reduces the possibility of making mistakes and also reduces the cost," Lonardi said. "This method makes it possible to mark where in the genome the genes are located that influence, say, drought-tolerance. And the method also identifies those progeny that carry the alleles, which are forms of genes, for this and other desirable traits."
Close explained that marker-assisted breeding can also be understood as being analogous to creating a painting.
"Imagine you have eight different sources of favorable alleles," he said. "You can make a painting by having a blue segment in one section of the canvass for drought adaptation, a yellow one in another section for aphid resistance, and so on. This way, you create what's called a genetic ideotype. You then use markers to cross one variety with another, and calculate how close each progeny is to the ideotype. The goal is to get a variety close to the genetic ideotype through the least number of steps. Because the marker system has good knowledge-based efficiency built into it, it can deliver a cowpea variety that is close to the ideotype in as little as four to five years."
UCR has already had much success in releasing new cowpea varieties in California and West Africa, and has a longterm blackeye breeding program funded by the California Dry Bean Advisory Board.
"The UCR Coachella Valley Agricultural Research Station closely resembles environmental conditions in West Africa," Roberts said. "The lessons learned here in breeding this legacy crop plant have already helped boost yield and consumer adoption in Africa."
UCR is host to a collection of more than 5,000 cowpea accessions from around the world. Researchers at the university, like, most recently, Close and Roberts, have been providing assistance to African scientists for several decades. In the late 1970s, Anthony Hall, a professor emeritus of crop physiology in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, pioneered research on cowpea at UCR. His research on cowpea physiology contributed to a deeper understanding of the legume's adaptation to drought, heat and poor soils; his efforts with several African breeders helped develop highly successful varieties in Senegal, Sudan and Ghana. He also led the effort to establish a genetic map for cowpea, published in 1997.
"The UCR cowpea team has trained many graduate students from Africa at UCR over the years," Close said. "Several of these young and bright scientists have returned to their countries of origin and applied in farms there the knowledge in cowpea genetic research they gained at UCR. As before, in both the Feed the Future projects we will emphasize direct training of African breeders to ensure effective adoption of best practices related to the use of genetic markers."
The research projects will support a number of UCR graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, support staff and visiting scientists in the labs of Close, Roberts and Lonardi.
###
The University of California, Riverside (http://www.ucr.edu) is a doctoral research university, a living laboratory for groundbreaking exploration of issues critical to Inland Southern California, the state and communities around the world. Reflecting California's diverse culture, UCR's enrollment has exceeded 21,000 students. The campus will open a medical school in 2013 and has reached the heart of the Coachella Valley by way of the UCR Palm Desert Center. The campus has an annual statewide economic impact of more than $1 billion. A broadcast studio with fiber cable to the AT&T Hollywood hub is available for live or taped interviews. UCR also has ISDN for radio interviews. To learn more, call (951) UCR-NEWS.
USAID is an independent agency that provides economic, development and humanitarian assistance around the world in support of the foreign policy goals of the United States. As stated in the President's National Security Strategy, USAID's work in development joins diplomacy and defense as one of three key pieces of the nation's foreign policy apparatus. USAID promotes peace and stability by fostering economic growth, protecting human health, providing emergency humanitarian assistance, and enhancing democracy in developing countries. These efforts to improve the lives of millions of people worldwide represent U.S. values and advance U.S. interests for peace and prosperity.
Feed the Future is the U.S. Government's global hunger and food security initiative. With a focus on smallholder farmers, particularly women, Feed the Future supports partner countries in developing their agriculture sectors to spur economic growth and trade that increase incomes and reduce hunger, poverty and undernutrition.
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2 grants to UC Riverside boost scientists' efforts in developing improved cowpea varieties
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
30-Oct-2013
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Contact: Iqbal Pittalwala iqbal@ucr.edu 951-827-6050 University of California - Riverside
Funding from USAID will help increase crop yield in several African countries
RIVERSIDE, Calif. Cowpea is a protein-rich legume crop that plays a key role in sustaining food security for people and their livestock. Immensely important in many parts of the world, particularly drought-prone regions, it plays a central role in the diet and economy of hundreds of millions of people in Africa and Asia.
To meet the needs of a growing world population, new cowpea varieties with desirable traits, such as higher yield and quality, disease resistance, pest resistance and drought tolerance, are needed. But breeding these new varieties the conventional way crossing one variety with another, based on best guesses is time-consuming and laborious.
Enter DNA marker-assisted breeding, a genetic tool that can greatly accelerate breeding efforts by utilizing genetic "markers" or molecular flags in the plant genome that indicate the location of a particular genetic trait. Breeders use the markers to screen large populations of plants from crosses of different varieties. In effect, the markers help breeders locate genes linked to traits the way road signs help a motorist arrive at a destination.
This month, scientists at the University of California, Riverside received substantial funding by way of two grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to continue their work on developing better yielding varieties of cowpea through new genomic resources and marker-assisted breeding research by which UC Riverside directly impacts cowpea production in several countries in Africa. The grants support USAID's agricultural research and capacity building work under Feed the Future, the U.S. Government's global hunger and food security initiative.
The two grants total nearly $7 million. The first, creating the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Climate-Resilient Cowpea, is a nearly $5 million grant that supports a new five-year cowpea-breeding project with partners in four West African nations: Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal. The second grant, titled "Genetic improvement of cowpea to overcome biotic stress and drought constraints," extends a ten-year project and brings additional funding of about $2 million over four-and-a-half years to UCR through the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Grain Legumes as a sub-contract with Michigan State University, East Lansing.
Specific traits of interest for cowpea improvement will include resistance to the drought-associated fungal pathogen Macrophomina phaseolina, tolerance against drought-induced early senescence, and resistance to insects, nematodes and other diseases, along with high yield and maintenance of traits of especial interest to Africa such as seed size, seed coat color and patterns.
"UCR cowpea research goes back more than 30 years," said Timothy Close, a professor of genetics in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences and the principal investigator of the $5 million grant. "The USAID funding through Feed the Future is recognition of the tremendous value that UCR brings to cowpea research and the positive impact it is having on cowpea breeding for African farmers."
Cowpea originated in Africa. It is known also as southern pea, blackeye pea, crowder pea, lubia, niebe, coupe or frijole. In the United States, cowpea is popular in the south, where it is known as blackeyed peas and other names. California primarily grows the blackeyed dry-grain cowpea type.
"Both research projects are intimately tied to our collaborators in sub-Saharan Africa," Close said. "Beyond the technical capability we offer, we have a good network of partners in Africa for on-the-ground application of genetic improvement for cowpea."
Close explained that to breed improved varieties of cowpea, scientists must understand its genetic makeup, mark the location of genes that control important traits, and select the best trait combinations they wish to see emerge in new varieties. Close also explained that with very dense genetic markers it is not crucial to understand exactly which genes underpin the traits, though such information can be helpful for purposes such as finding similar genes within collections of genetically diverse relatives of cultivated cowpeas or even in other plants.
Rather than genetically modify cowpea via manipulation of genes in test tubes, the researchers will use the marker-assisted breeding technology to expedite conventional breeding and, thereby, speed up the production of new and improved cowpea varieties. Associated with traits desired for breeding, the genetic marker profiles of progeny derived from carefully chosen parents will be used to more deliberately design and assemble new superior cowpea varieties.
"We are no longer confined to slower, less directed methods of plant breeding, nor must we base all hope on genetically modified organisms," Close said. "With marker-assisted breeding we can, over just a few years, accomplish improvement in cowpea varieties that can enormously benefit farmers, markets and consumers."
Philip Roberts, a professor of nematology and the principal investigator on the $2 million USAID grant, explained that the marker-assisted breeding technology for cowpea, developed at UCR, is based on finding genetic variability in cowpea that already exists in nature and that can then be brought into breeding programs.
"Our method is focused on finding genetic variability that nature has already created and marking where the genes for the favorable traits are located in the cowpea genome," he said. "The marker-assisted selection then allows for the crossing of varieties with complementary sets of favorable traits so that these traits can be stacked up and passed down to progeny. It's not about making transgenes and inserting them into plants. It's about bringing favorable traits from donors into highly bred cultivars via accelerated cross-breeding."
Close and Roberts will be joined in the analysis by Stefano Lonardi, a professor of computer science and engineering and a co-principal investigator on the team, who will help process large amounts of data that the research projects will generate.
"We will use a computational method that greatly reduces the possibility of making mistakes and also reduces the cost," Lonardi said. "This method makes it possible to mark where in the genome the genes are located that influence, say, drought-tolerance. And the method also identifies those progeny that carry the alleles, which are forms of genes, for this and other desirable traits."
Close explained that marker-assisted breeding can also be understood as being analogous to creating a painting.
"Imagine you have eight different sources of favorable alleles," he said. "You can make a painting by having a blue segment in one section of the canvass for drought adaptation, a yellow one in another section for aphid resistance, and so on. This way, you create what's called a genetic ideotype. You then use markers to cross one variety with another, and calculate how close each progeny is to the ideotype. The goal is to get a variety close to the genetic ideotype through the least number of steps. Because the marker system has good knowledge-based efficiency built into it, it can deliver a cowpea variety that is close to the ideotype in as little as four to five years."
UCR has already had much success in releasing new cowpea varieties in California and West Africa, and has a longterm blackeye breeding program funded by the California Dry Bean Advisory Board.
"The UCR Coachella Valley Agricultural Research Station closely resembles environmental conditions in West Africa," Roberts said. "The lessons learned here in breeding this legacy crop plant have already helped boost yield and consumer adoption in Africa."
UCR is host to a collection of more than 5,000 cowpea accessions from around the world. Researchers at the university, like, most recently, Close and Roberts, have been providing assistance to African scientists for several decades. In the late 1970s, Anthony Hall, a professor emeritus of crop physiology in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, pioneered research on cowpea at UCR. His research on cowpea physiology contributed to a deeper understanding of the legume's adaptation to drought, heat and poor soils; his efforts with several African breeders helped develop highly successful varieties in Senegal, Sudan and Ghana. He also led the effort to establish a genetic map for cowpea, published in 1997.
"The UCR cowpea team has trained many graduate students from Africa at UCR over the years," Close said. "Several of these young and bright scientists have returned to their countries of origin and applied in farms there the knowledge in cowpea genetic research they gained at UCR. As before, in both the Feed the Future projects we will emphasize direct training of African breeders to ensure effective adoption of best practices related to the use of genetic markers."
The research projects will support a number of UCR graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, support staff and visiting scientists in the labs of Close, Roberts and Lonardi.
###
The University of California, Riverside (http://www.ucr.edu) is a doctoral research university, a living laboratory for groundbreaking exploration of issues critical to Inland Southern California, the state and communities around the world. Reflecting California's diverse culture, UCR's enrollment has exceeded 21,000 students. The campus will open a medical school in 2013 and has reached the heart of the Coachella Valley by way of the UCR Palm Desert Center. The campus has an annual statewide economic impact of more than $1 billion. A broadcast studio with fiber cable to the AT&T Hollywood hub is available for live or taped interviews. UCR also has ISDN for radio interviews. To learn more, call (951) UCR-NEWS.
USAID is an independent agency that provides economic, development and humanitarian assistance around the world in support of the foreign policy goals of the United States. As stated in the President's National Security Strategy, USAID's work in development joins diplomacy and defense as one of three key pieces of the nation's foreign policy apparatus. USAID promotes peace and stability by fostering economic growth, protecting human health, providing emergency humanitarian assistance, and enhancing democracy in developing countries. These efforts to improve the lives of millions of people worldwide represent U.S. values and advance U.S. interests for peace and prosperity.
Feed the Future is the U.S. Government's global hunger and food security initiative. With a focus on smallholder farmers, particularly women, Feed the Future supports partner countries in developing their agriculture sectors to spur economic growth and trade that increase incomes and reduce hunger, poverty and undernutrition.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
"When considering social media, every teacher needs to ask, how will this empower me to be of greater service to my constituents?" said executive coach Greg Verdino. "How will it make learning more effective for my students? How will it better engage their parents? How will it factor into my professional development, peer relationships, and level of innovation as an educator?"
Social media is changing the way teachers teach and students learn.
When students from the Montclair Kimberley Academy visited Ireland a few years ago, they blogged about their experiences on Wordpress, posted photos on Flickr, uploaded videos to YouTube, and tweeted.
That social media engagement contributed to their education in new and profound ways, said William Stites, the teacher who led the class trip.
"By posting that material online, you open it up to a much larger audience," Stites, now the school's director of technology, told TechNewsWorld. "It makes the students feel truly published. They're true authors."
His experiments with social media storytelling have since become a model for other classes and instructors at the school, changing the nature of what it means to learn and to teach.
"The blog pulled all of those social pieces together in one place and allowed parents and others to access the content," Stites said. "We were able to build the number of followers that the Twitter feed had to include professors and politicians. Our pictures on Flickr were used in travel magazines, and our videos have been viewed around the world."
Brave New Social World
Social media has changed -- and will continue to change -- the educational landscape. Teachers and students are finding creative and always-evolving ways to use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, blogs, and other social networks to communicate, collaborate and share information.
"I spend every day with educators from around the world on social media, and we've seen exponential growth in the number of educators using social media," Elana Leoni, director of social media strategy and marketing for Edutopia, told TechNewsWorld. "More and more, educators are turning to social media to empower and engage their students, keep parents updated, and continue to professionally develop their skills by connecting to other educators."
How social media is being used, however, varies widely among educators and schools.
"I think many of the best uses today are among the simplest," executive coach Greg Verdino told TechNewsWorld.
"I've seen examples of teachers using mainstream social networks like Facebook to maintain class, and Twitter to alert students of upcoming events like quizzes, tests, special subjects," he noted. "I've even heard of some instances in which teachers or administrators have improved attendance rates by sending SMS wake-up messages to students prone to absenteeism or tardiness."
Teaching Tools
For teachers, figuring out how and when to use social media requires answering a few basic questions.
"When considering social media, every teacher needs to ask, how will this empower me to be of greater service to my constituents?" explained Verdino. "How will it make learning more effective for my students? How will it better engage their parents? How will it factor into my professional development, peer relationships, and level of innovation as an educator?"
Social media platforms, in themselves, aren't educational tools. To use them as such, educators must think about how they can be adapted for specific purposes in and outside of the classroom.
"A lot of people mistakenly believe that social media is about the tools and technologies, when in fact it is really about how people use the tools and technology," said Verdino. "Begin with a solid understanding of how your students are using social today: what platforms they frequent; how they use them; their tolerance for interacting with teachers or other authority figures. These behavioral patterns must -- not should, must -- inform the approach any given teacher takes if she hopes to truly engage her students in meaningful and relevant ways."
Becoming Digital Citizens
One of the benefits of using social media in education is that it gives students an opportunity to develop digital portfolios that can be used when applying for colleges or jobs.
"It allows students to develop an electronic portfolio and digital footprint, so when they're applying to colleges people can find them online and see tangible things they've done," said Stites. "You can begin to talk with students about how to develop an online presence. You can begin to have those kind of conversations about how to conduct yourselves online in a way that's going to have a positive impact on your life."
A large part of what students learn by going social at school, after all, is how to be responsible digital citizens. Creating blogs and updating Twitter feeds require understanding how to maintain an online presence -- a skill that will well serve 21st Century students long after they leave school. Whether they use education-specific sites like Edmodo or more mainstream social media sites, students learn digital etiquette and communication strategies that are key to their future success.
"Our students need to be able to navigate the online social world in a safe, effective way," said Leoni. "They also need to be able to not only consume information online -- they need to be creators. Social media has empowered students around the world to express themselves in ways that were never possible before, and many students are already using social media outside of the classroom. We need to embrace it and seize the opportunity to truly teach them to navigate it in a safe, effective way."
Freelance writer Vivian Wagner has wide-ranging interests, from technology and business to music and motorcycles. She writes features regularly for ECT News Network, and her work has also appeared in American Profile, Bluegrass Unlimited, and many other publications. For more about her, visit her website.
Brain connectivity can predict epilepsy surgery outcomes
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
30-Oct-2013
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Contact: Jessica Studeny Jessica.studeny@case.edu 216-368-4692 Case Western Reserve University
Discovery from Case Western Reserve, Cleveland Clinic researchers may spare patients from disappointing results
A discovery from Case Western Reserve and Cleveland Clinic researchers could provide epilepsy patients invaluable advance guidance about their chances to improve symptoms through surgery.
Assistant Professor of Neurosciences Roberto Fernndez Galn, PhD, and his collaborators have identified a new, far more accurate way to determine precisely what portions of the brain suffer from the disease. This information can give patients and physicians better information regarding whether temporal lobe surgery will provide the results they seek.
"Our analysis of neuronal activity in the temporal lobe allows us to determine whether it is diseased, and therefore, whether removing it with surgery will be beneficial for the patient," Galn said, the paper's senior author. "In terms of accuracy and efficiency, our analysis method is a significant improvement relative to current approaches."
The findings appear in research published October 30 in the open access journal PLOS ONE.
About one-third of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy do not respond to medical treatment and opt to do lobectomies to alleviate their symptoms. Yet the surgery's success rate is only 60 to 70 percent because of the difficulties in identifying the diseased brain tissue prior to the procedures.
Galn and investigators from Cleveland Clinic determined that using intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) to measure patients' functional neural connectivity that is, the communication from one brain region to another - identified the epileptic lobe with 87 percent accuracy. An iEEG records electrical activity with electrodes implanted in the brain. Key indicators of a diseased lobe are weak and similar connections.
In the retrospective study, Galn and Arun Antony, MD, formerly a senior clinical fellow in the Epilepsy Center at Cleveland Clinic and now an assistant professor of neurology at the University of Pittsburgh, examined data from 23 patients with temporal lobe epilepsy who had all or part of their temporal lobes removed after iEEG evaluations performed at Cleveland Clinic. The researchers examined the results of patients' preoperative iEEG to determine the degree of functional connectivity that was associated with successful surgical outcomes.
"The concept of functional connectivity has been extensively studied by basic science researchers, but has not found a way into the realm of clinical epilepsy treatment yet," Antony said, the paper's first author. "Our discovery is another step towards the use of measures of functional connectivity in making clinical decisions in the treatment of epilepsy."
As a standard preoperative test for lobectomy surgery, physicians analyze iEEG traces looking for simultaneous discharges of neurons that appear as spikes in the recordings, which indicate epileptic activity. This PLOS ONE discovery evaluates the data differently by examining normal brain activity in the absence of spikes and inferring connectivity.
###
Other Cleveland Clinic collaborators on this research included Andreas V. Alexopoulos, MD, MPH, Jorge A. Gonzlez-Martnez, MD, PhD, John C. Mosher, PhD, Lara Jehi, MD, Richard C. Burgess, MD, PhD, and Norman K. So, MD.
Dr. Galn is a scholar of The Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation and former fellow of The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
About Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine
Founded in 1843, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine is the largest medical research institution in Ohio and is among the nation's top medical schools for research funding from the National Institutes of Health. The School of Medicine is recognized throughout the international medical community for outstanding achievements in teaching. The School's innovative and pioneering Western Reserve2 curriculum interweaves four themes--research and scholarship, clinical mastery, leadership, and civic professionalism--to prepare students for the practice of evidence-based medicine in the rapidly changing health care environment of the 21st century. Nine Nobel Laureates have been affiliated with the School of Medicine.
Annually, the School of Medicine trains more than 800 MD and MD/PhD students and ranks in the top 25 among U.S. research-oriented medical schools as designated by U.S. News & World Report's "Guide to Graduate Education."
The School of Medicine's primary affiliate is University Hospitals Case Medical Center and is additionally affiliated with MetroHealth Medical Center, the Louis Stokes Cleveland Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and the Cleveland Clinic, with which it established the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University in 2002. http://casemed.case.edu
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Brain connectivity can predict epilepsy surgery outcomes
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
30-Oct-2013
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]
Share
Contact: Jessica Studeny Jessica.studeny@case.edu 216-368-4692 Case Western Reserve University
Discovery from Case Western Reserve, Cleveland Clinic researchers may spare patients from disappointing results
A discovery from Case Western Reserve and Cleveland Clinic researchers could provide epilepsy patients invaluable advance guidance about their chances to improve symptoms through surgery.
Assistant Professor of Neurosciences Roberto Fernndez Galn, PhD, and his collaborators have identified a new, far more accurate way to determine precisely what portions of the brain suffer from the disease. This information can give patients and physicians better information regarding whether temporal lobe surgery will provide the results they seek.
"Our analysis of neuronal activity in the temporal lobe allows us to determine whether it is diseased, and therefore, whether removing it with surgery will be beneficial for the patient," Galn said, the paper's senior author. "In terms of accuracy and efficiency, our analysis method is a significant improvement relative to current approaches."
The findings appear in research published October 30 in the open access journal PLOS ONE.
About one-third of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy do not respond to medical treatment and opt to do lobectomies to alleviate their symptoms. Yet the surgery's success rate is only 60 to 70 percent because of the difficulties in identifying the diseased brain tissue prior to the procedures.
Galn and investigators from Cleveland Clinic determined that using intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) to measure patients' functional neural connectivity that is, the communication from one brain region to another - identified the epileptic lobe with 87 percent accuracy. An iEEG records electrical activity with electrodes implanted in the brain. Key indicators of a diseased lobe are weak and similar connections.
In the retrospective study, Galn and Arun Antony, MD, formerly a senior clinical fellow in the Epilepsy Center at Cleveland Clinic and now an assistant professor of neurology at the University of Pittsburgh, examined data from 23 patients with temporal lobe epilepsy who had all or part of their temporal lobes removed after iEEG evaluations performed at Cleveland Clinic. The researchers examined the results of patients' preoperative iEEG to determine the degree of functional connectivity that was associated with successful surgical outcomes.
"The concept of functional connectivity has been extensively studied by basic science researchers, but has not found a way into the realm of clinical epilepsy treatment yet," Antony said, the paper's first author. "Our discovery is another step towards the use of measures of functional connectivity in making clinical decisions in the treatment of epilepsy."
As a standard preoperative test for lobectomy surgery, physicians analyze iEEG traces looking for simultaneous discharges of neurons that appear as spikes in the recordings, which indicate epileptic activity. This PLOS ONE discovery evaluates the data differently by examining normal brain activity in the absence of spikes and inferring connectivity.
###
Other Cleveland Clinic collaborators on this research included Andreas V. Alexopoulos, MD, MPH, Jorge A. Gonzlez-Martnez, MD, PhD, John C. Mosher, PhD, Lara Jehi, MD, Richard C. Burgess, MD, PhD, and Norman K. So, MD.
Dr. Galn is a scholar of The Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation and former fellow of The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
About Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine
Founded in 1843, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine is the largest medical research institution in Ohio and is among the nation's top medical schools for research funding from the National Institutes of Health. The School of Medicine is recognized throughout the international medical community for outstanding achievements in teaching. The School's innovative and pioneering Western Reserve2 curriculum interweaves four themes--research and scholarship, clinical mastery, leadership, and civic professionalism--to prepare students for the practice of evidence-based medicine in the rapidly changing health care environment of the 21st century. Nine Nobel Laureates have been affiliated with the School of Medicine.
Annually, the School of Medicine trains more than 800 MD and MD/PhD students and ranks in the top 25 among U.S. research-oriented medical schools as designated by U.S. News & World Report's "Guide to Graduate Education."
The School of Medicine's primary affiliate is University Hospitals Case Medical Center and is additionally affiliated with MetroHealth Medical Center, the Louis Stokes Cleveland Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and the Cleveland Clinic, with which it established the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University in 2002. http://casemed.case.edu
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A rough-and-tumble, enjoyable yarn about a group of 16-year-old punk-rock wannabes from Guadalajara.
Venue
Morelia Film Festival (Competition)
Director
Samuel Kishi Leopo
Cast
Alejandro Gallardo, Arnold Ramirez, Rafael Andrade Munoz, Moises Galindo, Jaime Miranda, Petra Iniguez Robles
MORELIA -- The teenage members of a Mexican punk-rock band with a single-song repertoire struggle to come up with a second tune so they can compete in a battle of the bands in We Are Mari Pepa (Somos Mari Pepa), the feature debut of 29-year-old director Samuel Kishi Leopo, who expands his eponymous 2011 short into an appropriately rough-and-tumble yet finally very enjoyable yarn.
Though Mari Pepa can’t quite decide whether it’s really the story of the band’s 16-year-old guitar player or, as the title seems to suggest, the story of all of the band members, who all still live all home, Kishi Leopo demonstrates a good eye for youth culture and the foibles of adolescence and manages to imbue his characters with an infectious and youthful spirit that the young actors, all encoring, unaffectedly get across in their characterizations.
This Morelia competition title’s international bow will take place at AFI and the film should pursue a successful world festival tour, with an outside chance of niche pickups, especially in the Hispanosphere.
Alex (Alejandro Gallardo) is the long-locked guitarist of the Guadalajara-based band Mari Pepa (“‘Mari’ stands for marijuana, ‘Pepa’ refers to the female genitals,” Alex explains). The makeshift group further consists of the slightly awkward Rafa (Rafael Andrade Munoz), with a green baseball cap on backwards, behind the drums; the charismatic Bolter (Arnold Ramirez) on vocals and curly-haired Moy (Moises Galindo), the only proud owner of an actual girlfriend, on bass.
Their signature (and only) song is a punk-rock piece whose shouty refrain simply repeats the line “I wanna cum in your face, Natasha,” in English, though it’s made abundantly clear that perhaps only Moy ever got beyond second base. One of the film’s best scenes is a beautifully observed, rather uncomfortable moment when Moy brings his girlfriend along to a rehearsal, with the other boys simultaneously annoyed and intimidated by her presence and in awe and slightly jealous of Moy.
Leopo and co-screenwriter Sofia Gomez Cordova cap off the moment with some tension-defusing humor, when the alien presence in the boys’ midst cluelessly asks if they “know any One Direction songs?” Leopo supplies all his characters with varying reactions that are translated into body language that evolves throughout the sequence, not just when someone has a line of dialog, ensuring the moment feels just right both in the fore- and background.
There’s an surprising scene in which Alex, looking to make some cash after his guitar’s stolen, attends a HerbaLife sales-pitch meeting and he unexpectedly runs into the unemployed father of one of his bandmates, whom he later sees sitting alone in his car in front of his home in what feels like the moment Alex realizes that adult life isn’t necessarily all that it’s made out to be. That said, the film’s portrait of the Mexican middle class mostly lacks any Y tu mamatambien-like social commentary that would put these boys’ adolescent struggles in a larger societal context.
Though Gallardo has great chemistry with his peers, it’s his character’s relationships with adults that provide the most poignant drama, including the scenes with his ailing grandmother (Petra Iniguez Robles,also from the short). This storyline has the most traditional resolution, though Leopo manages to give it its own twist by introducing Alex’s half-brother, a plucky kid who apes his older sibling but who’s clearly still got a lot of growing up to do to get to where Alex is at the film’s end.
Technically, MariPepa’s also got a punky vibe and footage includes some low-grade images shot by Alex on his beloved, if battered, digital camera. The music, written by the director’s brother, Kenji Kishi, is perfect punk-rock wannabe material.
Venue: Morelia Film Festival (Competition) Production companies: Teonanacatl Audiovisual, Cebolla Films Cast: Alejandro Gallardo, Arnold Ramirez, Rafael Andrade Munoz, Moises Galindo, Jaime Miranda, Petra Iniguez Robles Director: Samuel Kishi Leopo Screenwriters: Samuel Kiski Leopo, Sofia Gomez Cordova Producers: Toiz Rodriquez Director of photography: Octavio Arauz Production designer: Rebeca del Real Music: Kenji Kishi Costume designer: Clara del Real Aguiler Editor: Yordi Capo, Carlo Espinoza Sales: Figa Films No rating, 95 minutes
The story of the iPad, continuing with the iPad 2, which introduced not only a sleeker design, but a more focused purpose
On March 2, 2011, Steve Jobs returned to the keynote stage after a long period of medical leave. It was the second-to-last keynote he'd ever conduct, and he received a long, loud standing evasion. He and Apple had been working on something for a long time, and he didn't want to miss it. The original iPad was supposed to have been magical, but no one, not even Apple, had known exactly how it would weave its spell. A year later and they had a much, much better idea. Where previously they'd known they'd had something, now they were beginning to understand just exactly what they had. It was thinner. It was lighter. It was faster. It was more smartly covered. And it could hold an entire band in its garage. It was the iPad 2.
“With more than 15 million iPads sold, iPad has defined an entirely new category of mobile devices,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “While others have been scrambling to copy the first generation iPad, we’re launching iPad 2, which moves the bar far ahead of the competition and will likely cause them to go back to the drawing boards yet again.”
During the iPad 2 event, Steve Jobs said people had made fun of Apple for using the word "magical" to describe their tablet, but that it had turned out to be just that. He proclaimed 2010 as the year of the iPad. He teased 2011 as the year of the copycats before announcing what he thought it really was: the year of the iPad 2.
Faster, thinner, Lighter
The iPad 2, code named K94 and model number iPad 2,1, has the same 9.7-inch, 1024x768, 132ppi screen as the original, and came in the same Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + 3G HSPA/EVDO Rev. A - hello Verizon! - models. It was considerably faster, however, sporting a new Apple A5 chipset with dual-core 1GHz ARM Cortex A9 processors, dual-core PowerVR SGX543MP2 graphics processors, and double the RAM at 512MB. It was up to twice as fast for CPU, and up to 9 times as fast for GPU tasks.
16, 32, and 64GB of NAND Flash storage remained the same as well, as did the 25 watt-hour battery. Bluetooth stayed at 2.1 + EDR, by a gyroscope joined the sensor array.
Thinner and lighter was taken care of by an all-new design that reduced it from 0.53- to 0.34-inches - making it 33% thinner - and from 1.5 to 1.33lbs. Jobs made sure to mention several times on stage that the numbers were deceptive and at those tiny sizes and weights, small reductions made for big differences in how it felt. It wasn't a breakthrough, certainly nothing that changed it from a 2-handed to a 1-handed device, or made it easier to use for long periods of time without resting it on a surface, but it was a significant improvement.
The iPad 2 also added cameras. Two of them. a rear-facing 1.3 megapixel/720p camera (what Apple now markets as iSight), and a front-facing 0.3 megapixel/VGA camera (FaceTime). They were... terrible. But they were cameras. It also added a second color. In addition to black and aluminum, you could get the iPad 2 with an iPhone 4-style white front plate instead.
Prices stayed exactly the same, starting at $499.
There were, however, some new accessories. First was a $29 HDMI to 30-pin Dock connector dongle allowed for mirroring the display to an HDTV. Second, was the Smart Cover. It could fold into a typing or viewing stand, and thanks to magnets embedded into the cover and the iPad 2, it stuck on and aligned automatically, and it could wake the iPad when it opened and sleep it again when it closed. They came in polyurethane for $39 and leather for $69, and in a variety of colors.
It shipped with iOS 4.3, which added a few new features in addition to what iOS 4 had brought to the iPhone. They included the Nitro JavaScript engine for Safari, Home Sharing for iTunes streaming from OS X to iOS, improvements to AirPlay, and a return of the hardware orientation lock as a hardware switch option. It also added FaceTime for video calls, and an iOS version of Photo Booth to the built-in apps.
Also debuting at the same event as the iPad 2, adding to the 65,000 tablet-optimized apps that were already in the App Store - were two new Apple apps, mobile versions of Apple's iLife mainstays, iMovie and GarageBand. They were, to put it mildly, a revelation. Randy Ubillos showed off iMovie, with an old time movie theater main screen, and what would become Apple's new, signature, editing interface. It was precise, it was multitrack. It was amazing. GarageBand was perhaps even more impressive. You could plug in and use real instruments, but it also supported touch instruments right on the iPad. Xander Soren handled that demo, and immediately set a new standard for mobile apps. They showed, arguably for the first time, what the iPad really meant for the future of personal computing. It mean very personal computing. or as Apple had come to call it, post-PC.
Jobs ended the event by focusing on that, and repeating his belief that "technology alone was not enough", while standing at the crossroads of technology and liberal arts.
Better magic
The iPad 2 launched on March 11 in the U.S., and 25 additional countries on March 25. Apple:
While competitors are still struggling to catch up with our first iPad, we’ve changed the game again with iPad 2,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’re experiencing amazing demand for iPad 2 in the US, and customers around the world have told us they can't wait to get their hands on it. We appreciate everyone’s patience and we are working hard to build enough iPads for everyone.
The headline additions to iPad 2 are front- and rear-facing cameras, the absence of which was my biggest disappointment with version one. Now you can plunge into FaceTime, Apple's nifty video chat program previously available only on the iPhone 4, iPod Touch and some Macintosh computers. With a brand new Apple A5 dual-core processor, the iPad 2 is snappier, too, though it's not as if the first-generation model was a laggard. Apple claims the graphics in the new machine have nine times the horsepower of the original. That's difficult to measure, but Epic Citadel, a stunning, graphics-rich game, played smoothly in my tests.
For Apple’s competitors in the tablet-device market, the iPad 2 is a bucket of water to the face. After more than a year of struggling to catch up to the original iPad, here’s a new model that addresses many of the iPad’s deficiencies, dramatically improves its speed, and doesn’t cede any ground on price, features, or battery life. The iPad 2 raises the bar Apple set a year ago—and it’s time for the rest of the industry to scramble again to catch up.
For everyone else, the iPad 2 is a triumph, an iPad that’s even more iPad than the original. And the original one was really good. The first iPad was a bolt from the blue, a device that defined an entire category, and a tough act to follow. The iPad 2 follows it with aplomb.
I used my original iPad a lot... until iPhone 4 was released. I still kept most of my apps and games on iPad but because iPhone 4 was so much faster I just picked it up far more often. iPad 2 has changed that paradigm again. The combination of the big screen and Apple A5 processor has made it my go-to device once more (when I'm not in feet-down mobile, of course.) It's by no means perfect, and we've listed many of the most glaring and frustrating imperfections above, but iPad 2 looks better, it feels better, and it just works better.
Cliched as it sounds, the iPad 2 was the first complete iPad, and the template from which all others have followed.
The experience fight
The iPad's competitors remained confused. They saw the tablet post-iPad the way they'd seen it pre-iPad - as simply another form factor for the traditional PC. Like a laptop or netbook was simply a smaller PC, so too they felt the tablet was simply a smaller laptop or netbook. It was evident in their marketing. "Amateur hour is over." "Tell your wife it has a dual-core processor."
Competitors told people they could have a more traditional PC experience than the iPad. They could have multiple windows and desktops. They could have Flash. They could have everything the vast majority of them never, not ever wanted.
Despite Apple having spent over a year teaching the world just exactly how to sell hundreds of thousands of tablets, no one else seemed able to leave the PC behind. Yet that's exactly what mainstream customers wanted. The PC alienated them. It was intimidating and inaccessible, and more of the same was the so much less appealing, they stayed away in droves. They brought specs to an experience fight, and their primary use case ended up being preventing warehouse shelves from floating up off the floor.
To this day, it's a lessen very few outside Apple have learned, and one Apple themselves don't always remember - The tablet wasn't meant to replace the PC for mainstream users. It was meant to succeed it.
One year later
Apple sold 15 million iPads in 2010, more than all Tablet PCs sold in history before that. They sold 15.4 million iPad 2 tablets in Q4 2011 alone. Almost 30 million from March to December. From 65,000 tablet-optimized apps, they reached 200,000. Year of the iPad 2 indeed...
The U.S. government ran a deficit of $680 billion in the financial year that ended last month — the first time since 2008 that the annual shortfall has been under $1 trillion. It represents a fall from $1.09 trillion in 2012, but as the AP reports, "It's still the fifth-largest deficit of all time."
The Treasury Department announced the news along with the White House budget office Wednesday.
"Under President Obama, the nation's deficit has fallen for the past four years," Treasury Secretary Lew said. "It is now less than half of what it was when the president took office."
From the White House, NPR's Tamara Keith reports for our Newscast unit:
"The higher revenue comes from a stronger economy and tax changes agreed to as part of the fiscal cliff deal. The savings come from the automatic across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester, fewer people using food stamps, and the drawdown of troops in Afghanistan, among other things."
If you're wondering how to interpret the numbers — or just how to talk about them in a casual, yet politically charged, setting — The Atlantic is offering its help, with its "Your Guide to Arguing About It" feature.
As you would expect, the Treasury and the Office of Management and Budget can also help. Their report includes a breakdown of revenue sources and outlays for fiscal year 2013. Among the highlights:
Individual income taxes were $1.316 trillion, $6.7 billion higher than the Mid-Session Review estimate.
Corporation income taxes were $273.5 billion, $5.2 billion lower than the MSR estimate.
Outlays for the Department of Defense were $607.8 billion.
Outlays for the Department of Health and Human Services were $886.3 billion.
"Higher wages and salaries made collections of individual and payroll taxes strong throughout the year," the agencies say.
As we reported earlier Wednesday, the Federal Reserve says it's staying the course and will not taper its bond-buying program, as it awaits more positive signs that the U.S. economy is moving forward.
NEW YORK (AP) — Smoking may be a bad habit — but New York City lawmakers want their residents to be older and wiser before deciding to take it up.
The New York City Council voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to raise the age for purchasing cigarettes from 18 to 21, a move that would make the nation's most populous city among only a handful in the United States to target young smokers by barring them from buying smokes. It also approved a bill that sets a minimum $10.50-a-pack price for tobacco cigarettes and steps up law enforcement on illegal tobacco sales.
"This will literally save many, many lives," said an emotional City Councilman James Gennaro, the bill's sponsor, whose mother and father died from tobacco-related illnesses. "I've lived with it, I've seen it ... but I feel good today."
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is a strong supporter of the tough smoking restrictions, has 30 days to sign the bills into law. The minimum age bill will take effect 180 days after enactment.
"We know that tobacco dependence can begin very soon after a young person first tries smoking so it's critical that we stop young people from smoking before they ever start," Bloomberg said in a statement.
With Wednesday's vote, New York is by far the biggest city to bar cigarette sales to 19- and 20-year-olds. Similar legislation is expected to come to a vote in Hawaii this December. The tobacco-buying age is 21 in Needham, Mass., and is poised to rise to 21 in January in nearby Canton, Mass. The state of New Jersey is also considering a similar proposal.
Lawmakers who pushed for the change cite city statistics that show youth smoking rates have plateaued at 8.5 percent since 2007.
"We have to do more and that's what we're doing today," said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. "We have a real chance of leading the country and the world."
The city's current age limit is 18, a federal minimum that's standard in many places. Smoking in city parks and beaches is already prohibited as it is in restaurants.
Advocates say higher age limits help prevent, or at least delay, young people from taking up a habit that remains the leading cause of preventable deaths nationwide.
Smoker Stephen McGorry, 25, agreed with that view as he took a drag outside a midtown Manhattan bar.
"It just makes it harder for young people to smoke," said McGorry, who started lighting up at 19. He added that had the age been 21 when he took up the habit, "I guarantee I wouldn't be smoking today."
But cigarette manufacturers have suggested young adult smokers may just turn to black-market merchants. And some smokers say it's unfair and patronizing to tell people considered mature enough to vote and serve in the military that they're not old enough to decide whether to smoke.
"New York City already has the highest cigarette tax rate and the highest cigarette smuggling rate in the country," said Bryan D. Hatchell , a spokesman for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, which makes Camel and other brands. "Those go hand in hand and this new law will only make the problem worse."
A coalition of bodegas and tobacco store owners funded by tobacco-manufactures also slammed the council's vote Wednesday, particularly the bill that sets the minimum prices and bans tobacco product discounts and coupons.
Ramon Murphy, president of the Bodega Association of the U.S., said the new rules will drive people to illegal sellers who do not care about the age of their buyers.
Another anti-smoking initiative pushed by the Bloomberg administration was previously shelved ahead of Wednesday's vote.
The mayor proposed in March a bill modeled on laws in Iceland, Canada, England and Ireland to require shops to keep tobacco products in cabinets, drawers, under the counter, behind a curtain or in other concealed spots until a customer asked for them. He said the displays "invite young people to experiment with tobacco."
But a similar measure had been rescinded in suburban Haverstraw, N.Y., after cigarette manufacturers sued. They said it violated their companies' free speech rights to communicate with consumers about their products' availability and prices.
The city Health Department said in a statement that the measure was taken off the table because "with the arrival of e-cigarettes, more time is needed to determine how best to address this problem."
E-cigarette makers say their products are healthier than tobacco, and a trade association leader bristled at the city's proposal to prevent people under 21 from buying them.
"Is 21 the right number? People can join the Army at 18," said Ray Story, founder of the Atlanta-based Tobacco Vapor Electronic Cigarette Association.
Newsstand clerk Ali Hassen, who sells cigarettes daily to a steady stream of customers from nearby office buildings, said he didn't know if the new age restrictions would do any good.
While he wouldn't stop vigilantly checking identification to verify customers' age, Hassen doubted the new rules would thwart determined smokers.
"If somebody wants to smoke, they're going to smoke," he said.
When Ted Cruz lies, he appears to be praying. His lips narrow, almost disappearing into his face, and his eyebrows shift abruptly, rising like a drawbridge on his forehead into matching acute angles. He attains an appearance of supplication, an earnest desire that men and women need to listen, as God surely listens. Cruz has large ears; a straight nose with a fleshy tip, which shines in camera lights when he talks to reporters; straight black hair slicked back from his forehead like flattened licorice; thin lips; a long jaw with another knob of flesh at the base, also shiny in the lights. If, as Orwell said, everyone has the face he deserves at fifty, Cruz, who is only forty-two, has got a serious head start. For months, I sensed vaguely that he reminded me of someone but I couldn’t place who it was. Revelation has arrived: Ted Cruz resembles the Bill Murray of a quarter-century ago, when he played fishy, mock-sincere fakers. No one looked more untrustworthy than Bill Murray. The difference between the two men is that the actor was a satirist.
Sprint is flexing its network muscle with technologies to combine frequencies for gigabit-speed performance and to let subscribers maintain data sessions while moving from one band of the network to another.
On Wednesday, the fourth-largest U.S. carrier bragged about its new capabilities and demonstrated a high-speed service it calls Sprint Spark, with current peak speeds of 50-60Mbps (bits per second) and the potential to exceed 1Gbps. It also promoted three upcoming handsets that will be able to take advantage of all three of its spectrum bands.
Sprint is in catch-up mode against its bigger rivals, Verizon Wireless and AT&T, and is looking to use its huge spectrum holdings as an advantage. The company is deploying LTE in its 800MHz and 1.9GHz bands as well as the 2.5GHz spectrum it acquired with Clearwire, on which the Sprint Spark service runs. Sprint prides itself on its Network Vision project, which has built a network that's flexible enough to support multiple technologies.
In the 2.5GHz band, Sprint plans to combine different sets of frequencies and make them act like one block of spectrum. The company used this technique in a demonstration at its Silicon Valley lab on Wednesday, showing peak throughput of 1.3Gbps (bits per second). More aggregation could offer as much as 2Gbps, Sprint said.
Other contributors to Spark performance include multiple antennas, transmitters and receivers. Sprint also plans to deploy small cells for coverage, capacity and speed starting next year, while keeping the number of full-size "macro" cells on its network steady at about 55,000 for the next few years.
The Sprint Spark service is available now in five markets: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami and Tampa, Florida. It will reach 100 million U.S residents by the end of next year, Sprint estimated.
Now the only missing piece is the hardware to enjoy Spark. The first devices that will be able to use all three of Sprint's bands will go on sale Nov. 8, the carrier said. They are the LG G2, Samsung Galaxy Mega and Samsung Galaxy S4 mini. The Samsung devices will get a software upgrade for tri-band capability shortly after launch, and the LG will get its upgrade early next year.
Sprint's tri-band devices will be able to move from one band without interrupting a subscriber's data session, the carrier said. However, speeds will vary: Using LTE on its 1.9GHz spectrum, Sprint estimates peak speeds of 30Mbps and average speeds of 6Mbps to 8Mbps.
The overall reach of Sprint's LTE will hit about 200 million by the end of this year and rise to 250 million by the middle of next year, the company said. Also on Wednesday, Sprint reported financial results for the third quarter, including a total subscriber count of 54.9 million and a net loss of 313,000 subscribers.
Stephen Lawson covers mobile, storage and networking technologies for The IDG News Service. Follow Stephen on Twitter at @sdlawsonmedia. Stephen's e-mail address is stephen_lawson@idg.com
Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service , IDG News Service
Stephen Lawson covers mobile, storage and networking technologies for the IDG News Service. More by Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service
Huddled together just before the first of this year's awards-season roundtables got underway at the historic Mack Sennett Studios in Silver Lake, the six invited actors were eager to discuss one thing: Christopher Nolan. "Is he a big guy?" one of the participants asked Matthew McConaughey, who was taking a break from shooting the director's Interstellar on the Sony lot. Queried another, "Does he talk a lot?" McConaughey, 43, demurred as he joked with his Dallas Buyers Club co-star Jared Leto, 41, who had flown in the night before from Michigan, where he performed with his band 30 Seconds to Mars. The duo joined Josh Brolin, 45, Jake Gyllenhaal, 32, Michael B. Jordan, 26, and Forest Whitaker, 52, in a candid discussion about everything from flubbed auditions to Brazilian waxing.
Let's start with a question about reinvention. How do you not get stale?
JARED LETO: Panic. Desperation.
JAKE GYLLENHAAL: Bills.
JOSH BROLIN: Fear -- there's always fear. You re-create yourself in every movie, don't you?
FOREST WHITAKER: There's a good fear, and there's a negative fear. There's a thing you confront when you're going into something new and you come to this sort of abyss, and then you push yourself. It makes you try different things.
MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You mentioned two types of fear, and the one that's good is when you're scared. You don't know what's on the other side, but you're like: "I'm gonna dive in. I know there's something there; I don't know how to define it yet. I don't know the equation, but I'm gonna come up and I'll understand it." It takes you to the cliff, and you should be scared because the cliff drops, and you don't have a net.
BROLIN: I've never had that feeling in any movie where I actually feel like I'm nailing it.
WHITAKER: You don't feel the magic of it once in a while?
BROLIN: Never ever.
LETO: I get a terminal dissatisfaction on films. If I was bad in one scene, it's impossible to let go. And it can make or break my day. If I drank, I would probably drink a lot.
Have you ever said no to something because you're afraid?
LETO: Oh yeah. I've talked myself out of auditions a hundred times. I auditioned for [Robert] De Niro seven times, years and years ago. I remember auditioning for Terrence Malick, and the casting director upended a couch, and we were supposed to hide behind it and shoot imaginary guns! [Laughter.] In that audition, I literally stood up, took a few imaginary bullets and shoved [the casting director]. I said: "I can't do this. This is like a bad high school play," and I walked out. And then Terrence called me -- you guys I'm sure have met him; he's the most gentle and amazing guy in the world -- and he's like: "Uh, Jared? I'd love you to be in my film."
Have you ever thought of quitting?
LETO: I did for six years, almost.
BROLIN: Six years you didn't work? Wow.
GYLLENHAAL: [Smiles.] It's only appropriate as an indulgent actor to think about quitting 'cause it's such an intense job.
WHITAKER: It takes a lot from you.
LETO: I was focusing on other passions, and time kind of flew by. But it can be heartbreaking. You make these little movies -- most of the time they don't work.
BROLIN: That goes back to what we were saying about feeling like you're [not] really nailing something. I remember [1996's] Flirting With Disaster -- I did the movie and never felt like we were nailing it at all. And then I saw the movie …
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