Putin formally nominated to reclaim presidency

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin agestures as he speaks during a United Russia party congress in Moscow, Russia, Sunday, Nov. 27, 2011. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has been formally nominated by the ruling United Russia party to run for president in next March's election. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin agestures as he speaks during a United Russia party congress in Moscow, Russia, Sunday, Nov. 27, 2011. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has been formally nominated by the ruling United Russia party to run for president in next March's election. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, right, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, left, seen as arrive at the United Russia party congress in Moscow on Sunday, Nov. 27, 2011. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has received a formal nomination from the ruling United Russia party to run for president in next March's election. Putin, who stepped down in 2008 after two presidential terms but has remained Russia's No. 1 leader, announced his intention to reclaim the top job in September. Sunday's nomination marks the official start of his election bid. (AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Alexei Druzhinin, Presidential Press Service)

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev gestures during his speech at the United Russia party congress in Moscow on Sunday, Nov. 27, 2011. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has received a formal nomination from the ruling United Russia party to run for president in next March's election. Putin, who stepped down in 2008 after two presidential terms but has remained Russia's No. 1 leader, announced his intention to reclaim the top job in September. Sunday's nomination marks the official start of his election bid. (AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Yekaterina Shtukina, Presidential Press Service)

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev speeches at the United Russia party congress in Moscow on Sunday, Nov. 27, 2011. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has received a formal nomination from the ruling United Russia party to run for president in next March's election. Putin, who stepped down in 2008 after two presidential terms but has remained Russia's No. 1 leader, announced his intention to reclaim the top job in September. Sunday's nomination marks the official start of his election bid. (AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Yekaterina Shtukina, Presidential Press Service)

MOSCOW (AP) ? Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Sunday sternly warned the West against interfering in Russia's elections in a speech before thousands of cheering supporters as he formally launched his presidential bid.

Putin, who stepped down in 2008 after two presidential terms but kept his hold on power, announced in September that he intended to reclaim the top job next year and on Sunday was formally nominated by his United Russia party.

The boisterous televised congress also was aimed at boosting support for Putin's party ahead of parliamentary elections one week away.

A veteran steel worker, a businessman, a farmer, a decorated military veteran and a film director stood up during the event to praise Putin as the only man capable of leading the country. The 11,000 delegates filling a Moscow sports arena chanted "the people trust Putin!"

"Our task is to build a strong, rich and prosperous Russia, a Russia of the 21st century," Putin told the congress.

He promised to strengthen the economy, improve living standards and social services and bolster the military. Putin also said he would pursue his project of forming a Eurasian Union that would boost integration among Russia and its ex-Soviet neighbors.

He used the occasion to lash out at the opposition, accusing his critics of playing a role in the Soviet collapse and robbing the country during the economic meltdown of the 1990s.

He said that Russia wants to develop cooperation with the West, but strongly warned it against paying too much attention to the Kremlin's critics and offering them financial support.

"We know that ... representatives of some countries meet with those whom they pay money, the so-called grant receivers, give them instructions and guidance for what 'work' they need to do to influence the election campaign in our country," Putin said.

"That's a wasted effort, like throwing money to the winds," he said.

Putin said those like the United States and European Union who provide grants to Russian non-governmental organizations "would do better using this money to pay back their domestic debt and stop conducting such a costly and inefficient foreign policy."

Putin has promised to make President Dmitry Medvedev his prime minister after the presidential vote in March. The planned job swap has angered many in Russia, who warn it will strengthen authoritarian tendencies and set the stage for Putin to serve as president for 12 more years and become the longest-serving leader since Communist times.

Recent polls have shown that United Russia's public approval ratings have plummeted, reflecting people's fatigue with what many perceive as the party of corrupt bureaucracy. Surveys predict that United Russia will maintain a majority in the lower house, but lose the current two-thirds majority allowing it to change the constitution.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2011-11-27-EU-Russia-Elections/id-af29f3b359bb45f8b66e465f8f448406

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US student says he was beaten after Cairo arrest (AP)

Forced to lie still for hours in the dark, the American students held during protests in Egypt were told they would be shot if they moved or made any noise, one of them said Sunday on his first full day home.

"It was the most frightening experience of my life, I believe," Derrik Sweeney said.

Speaking to The Associated Press by Skype from Jefferson City, Mo., Sweeney said the evening of Nov. 20 started peacefully in Cairo, with Tahrir Square "abuzz with ideas of democracy and freedom."

The three wandered the streets and wound up in a large group of protesters outside the Interior Ministory, Sweeney said. The demonstrations escalated, with the protesters yelling and perhaps throwing stones, he said.

"Eventually the police shot back something, I'm not exactly sure what," he said. "We didn't wait to see. But as soon as we saw some sort of firing coming from the gun and heard it, the whole crowd stampeded out and we sprinted away."

He said they fled to an area that seemed calmer and were approached by four or five Egyptians in plain clothes.

The Egyptians offered to lead them to safety but instead took them into custody, Sweeney said.

They were threatened to be force-fed gasoline, beaten and forced to lie in a near-fetal position in the dark for six hours with their hands in cuffs behind their backs, Sweeney said. He said they were told: "If you move or make any noise, we will shoot you."

"They were hitting us in the face and in the back of the neck," he said. "Not to the point of bleeding or I can't say I have any lasting major scars at this point, but they were hitting us."

Sweeney is 19 and studies at Georgetown University. He was arrested along with Luke Gates, 21, who attends Indiana University and is from Bloomington, Ind., and Gregory Porter, 19, who studies at Drexel University and is from Glenside, Pa.

The students flew home Saturday after an Egyptian court ordered their release two days earlier. The three were studying abroad at American University in Cairo, which is near Tahrir Square.

A popular uprising earlier this year forced out Egypt's longtime autocratic leader, Hosni Mubarak. But the democratic age that Egyptians hoped for has not followed. The military is in control, and protesters want it to hand power to civilians.

At least 43 protesters have been killed since Nov. 19 and 2,000 wounded, most of them in Cairo. Landmark parliamentary elections will start Monday.

Egyptian officials said they arrested the three students on the roof of a university building and accused them of throwing firebombs at security forces fighting with protesters.

But Sweeney denies doing anything to harm anyone and said he and the other Americans weren't ever on the roof or handling or throwing explosives.

"I don't know where that rooftop idea actually came from," he said. "We were never on a rooftop, we never entered a building. The American University campus building on that street where we were arrested ? there were a lot of people that had broken in there, it was swarmed with protesters ? but we were not on there. We were on a street."

In an earlier telephone interview with the AP after he arrived at St. Louis' international airport, Sweeney said he and the other students' treatment improved dramatically after the first night. He spoke with a U.S. Embassy official, his mother and a lawyer. He said he denied the accusations during what he called proper questioning by Egyptian authorities.

"There was really marked treatment between the first night and the next three nights or however long it was," Sweeney said. "After that first night, we were treated in a just manner ... we were given food when we needed, and it was OK."

The students took separate flights out of Egypt, and Porter and Gates declined to recount details of their experience after arriving in Philadelphia and Indianapolis, respectively.

"I'm not going to take this as a negative experience. It's still a great country," Gates said.

Porter said only that he was thankful for the help he and the others received from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, administrators at the university they were attending, and attorneys in Egypt and the U.S.

"I'm just so thankful to be back, to be in Philadelphia right now," he said.

___

Associated Press photographers Jeff Roberson in St. Louis and Michael Conroy in Indianapolis contributed to this report. AP writers Kathy Matheson in Philadelphia, Bill Cormier in Atlanta and Andale Gross and Erin Gartner in Chicago also contributed.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111128/ap_on_re_us/us_egypt_american_students

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Diabetes drug shows promise in reducing risk of cancer

Thursday, November 24, 2011

An inexpensive drug that treats Type-2 diabetes has been shown to prevent a number of natural and man-made chemicals from stimulating the growth of breast cancer cells, according to a newly published study by a Michigan State University researcher.

The research, led by pediatrics professor James Trosko and colleagues from South Korea's Seoul National University, provides biological evidence for previously reported epidemiological surveys that long-term use of the drug metformin for Type-2 diabetes reduces the risk of diabetes-associated cancers, such as breast cancers.

The research appears in the current edition of PLoS One.

"People with Type-2 diabetes are known to be at high risk for several diabetes-associated cancers, such as breast, liver and pancreatic cancers," said Trosko, a professor in the College of Human Medicine's Department of Pediatrics and Human Development. "While metformin has been shown in population studies to reduce the risk of these cancers, there was no evidence of how it worked."

For the study, Trosko and colleagues focused on the concept that cancers originate from adult human stem cells and that there are many natural and man-made chemicals that enhance the growth of breast cancer cells.

Using culture dishes, they grew miniature human breast tumors, or mammospheres, that activated a certain stem cell gene (Oct4A). Then the mammospheres were exposed to natural estrogen ? a known growth factor and potential breast tumor promoter ? and man-made chemicals that are known to promote tumors or disrupt the endocrine system.

The team found that estrogen and the chemicals caused the mammospheres to increase in numbers and size. However, with metformin added, the numbers and size of the mammospheres were dramatically reduced. While each of the chemicals enhanced growth by different means, metformin seemed to be able to inhibit their stimulated growth in all cases.

"While future studies are needed to understand the exact mechanism by which metformin works to reduce the growth of breast cancers, this study reveals the need to determine if the drug might be used as a preventive drug and for individuals who have no indication of any existing cancers," he said.

"Though we still do not know the exact molecular mechanism by which it works, metformin seems to dramatically affect how estrogen and endocrine-disrupting chemicals cause the pre-existing breast cancers to grow."

In addition, further research needs to be done with human cultures to see if metformin can reduce the risk of pancreatic and liver cancers in Type-2 diabetics as well, he said.

###

Michigan State University: http://www.newsroom.msu.edu

Thanks to Michigan State University for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/115463/Diabetes_drug_shows_promise_in_reducing_risk_of_cancer

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Gingrich Keeps up the Heat (TIME)

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Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ review

Ice Cream Sandwich supports USB mass storage after all, Galaxy Nexus does not

European Galaxy Nexus owners complain of erratic volume issue (video)

Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ first impressions (video)

Each year, several dozen smartphones land on our collective desks. They come in different shapes and sizes, boast different features and sell at different price points. We take each of them for a spin and review most of them, but only a handful really stand out. This is especially true with Android handsets, where incremental updates appear to be the modus operandi. Every now and then a device comes along that we really look forward to getting our hands on. Google's line of Nexus smartphones falls into this category, setting the new standard for Android each year.

In early 2010, the Nexus One became the yardstick for all future Android handsets and, later that year, the launch vehicle for FroYo. A year ago, the Nexus S introduced us to Gingerbread on the popular Galaxy S platform. Now, a few weeks after being unveiled with much fanfare, we're finally able to sink our teeth into Ice Cream Sandwich with the Galaxy Nexus, arguably the latest addition to Samsung's critically acclaimed Galaxy S II family. So, does this highly anticipated device live up to our expectations? Is the Galaxy Nexus the smartphone to beat? Most importantly, is Ice Cream Sandwich ready to take Android to the next level? In a word, yes. Read on for our full review.

Gallery: Galaxy Nexus review

Continue reading Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ review

Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ review originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Nov 2011 12:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Climate change: South Africa has much to lose (AP)

JOHANNESBURG ? Imagine the savannas of South Africa's flagship Kruger Park so choked with brush, viewing what game is left is nearly impossible. The Cape of Good Hope without penguins. The Karoo desert's seasonal symphony of wildflowers silenced.

Climate change could mean unthinkable loss for South Africa, which hosts talks on global warming that will bring government negotiators, scientists and lobbyists from around the world to the coastal city of Durban next week.

Guy Midgley, the top climate change researcher at the South African National Biodiversity Institute, said evidence gleaned from decades of recording weather data, observing flora and fauna and conducting experiments makes it possible for scientists to "weave a tapestry of change."

Change is, of course, part of the natural world. But the implications of so much change happening at once pose enormous questions, said Midgley, who has contributed to the authoritative reports of the United Nations' Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In the Karoo, for example, where plants found nowhere else in the world have adapted to long, dry summers and winter rainfall, the weather pattern is changing.

Scientists have noted large die-offs linked to the stress of drought among one iconic Karoo denizen, the flowering quiver tree, a giant aloe that often is the only large plant visible across large stretches of desert. Quiver trees attract tourists, and insects, birds and mammals eat their flowers.

"Any change in climate is going to affect the flowers," said Wendy Foden, a southern African plant specialist with the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Barend Erasmus, an ecologist at Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand, worked on some of the first efforts to model how Africa might be affected by climate change. He led a 2001 study that raised the possibility that up to two-thirds of the species studied might disappear from Kruger National Park.

Research done since has made Erasmus less fearful for Kruger's animal population. But he predicts profound effects should a changing climate encourage the growth of thick shrubs, squeezing out zebra, antelope and cheetah.

Already, he said, zebra and wildebeest numbers are declining in Kruger as their grazing areas disappear. The question is how much of the cause is due to high concentrations of carbon dioxide, and how much depends on other factors, including man's encroachment.

Offshore, penguin expert Rob Crawford has looked at changes in the breeding grounds of African penguins and other seabirds, noting South Africa's northernmost penguin colony went extinct in 2006. Crawford and his colleagues wrote in a 2008 paper that the movements "suggest the influence of environmental change, perhaps forced by climate."

The African penguin, also known as the jackass penguin because of its braying call, is found only in southern Africa. A colony near Cape Town has long been a tourist draw.

One penguin parent stays behind to nest and care for offspring, while the other seeks food for the family. If the hunting partner is away too long, the nesting parent has to abandon the chick ? or starve. Species like sardines, on which the penguins depend, have been displaced.

"If they don't have sardines, they can't feed their chicks," Erasmus said. "And eventually the colonies just disappear."

The numbers of African penguins have plummeted from up to 4 million in the early 1900s to 60,000 in 2010, according to the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds. Researchers blame humans, who collected penguin eggs for food until the 1960s. More recently, a new threat came with oil spills and commercial fishing's competition for anchovies and sardines.

Erasmus said more research needs to be done, including studies on how plants and animals react to extreme conditions.

A colleague at his university, Duncan Mitchell, has taken up the challenge by tracking and studying antelope living in one of the hottest and driest corners of South Africa.

"We're hoping to find that they have a capacity to deal with water shortage that they're not having to use at the moment," Mitchell said.

"Climate change is going to happen," Mitchell said, adding it's already too late to influence temperatures and water levels over the next four decades. "What needs to be researched is coping with unmitigated climate change."

Coping might involve moving vulnerable animals to cooler habitats ? or ensuring they're not so hemmed in by human settlements that they cannot migrate on their own. Park rangers may have to work harder to remove trees to protect savannas. The South African government has called for expanding gene banks to conserve vulnerable species.

Sarshen Marais, a policy expert for Conservation International, says the work her organization is doing to eradicate foreign plants and help farmers better manage their land and water has gained importance.

Climate change experts fear water could become even scarcer in the future, but farmers can take steps that will help cash crops as well as wildlife. Conservation International has encouraged local communities to cut down thirsty foreign plants and sell the debris for fuel, allowing impoverished South Africans to earn while they save native species that are losing in the competition for water.

Researcher Erasmus acknowledges that in a developing country like South Africa, it can be hard to prioritize the plight of plants and animals. But he said an economic argument can be made, including the impact on people living in savannas who supplement their diets with small birds, other animals and wild greens, and who make money selling native fruits.

Tourism also is a consideration.

"Kruger is a cash cow for the whole of SANParks," he said, referring to the national parks department.

Foden, the plant specialist, said that when she thinks of her native South Africa, she thinks of wide spaces filled with a stunning diversity of plants and animals.

"If we were to lose that," she said, "we would lose so much of our identity."

___

Donna Bryson can be reached on http://twitter.com/dbrysonAP

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/africa/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111124/ap_on_re_af/af_climate_wild_south_africa

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Romney wins endorsement from Thune (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Wednesday announced the endorsement of South Dakota Sen. John Thune, a rising star in the Republican Party who had weighed a White House bid of his own.

"On the issues that I have been fighting for in my campaign ? creating a better business environment, lessening the regulatory burden, and ending Washington's spending addiction ? Sen. Thune has been a leading voice in the Senate," Romney said in a statement.

Thune was the latest high-profile Republican to back Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who opened the week with the backing of another emerging GOP star, Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire. Romney, who enjoys steady support in the polls and a sophisticated political and fundraising machine, is looking to demonstrate his strength with fewer than six weeks before the first nominating contests.

"Mitt Romney has shown throughout his life in the private sector, as leader of the Olympics, as governor and in this campaign that he will not back down from difficult challenges," Thune said in a statement. "His plans to revitalize the private sector and restore our country's fiscal health are drawn from his 25-year career as a conservative businessman."

Thune considered undertaking his own campaign for president before deciding to stay in the Senate and move up in his party's leadership. He first won his Senate seat by defeating Democratic Leader Tom Daschle in 2004 and coasted to a second term last year without a Democratic opponent.

Thune joined Romney in Des Moines on Wednesday. The endorsement came a day after Romney posted yet another strong debate performance and a day before most campaigns planned a brief break from politics for Thanksgiving.

Thune also is the latest of the Republicans who mulled a White House bid ? or, in the case of former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, actually launched one ? only to line up behind Romney.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who reconsidered his early insistence he would not run after party leaders pined for him, backed Romney last month.

Earlier this week, Rep. Charlie Bass of New Hampshire joined Romney's campaign. Bass, who served six terms in Congress before losing his re-election bid in 2006, only to win back his seat in 2010, was named a national adviser to the campaign. He joins other New Hampshire notables, including Ayotte, former Sen. Judd Gregg and former Gov. John H. Sununu.

Romney has long enjoyed a strong advantage in New Hampshire, where he placed second during his 2008 White House bid and where he owns a vacation home. Romney, the former governor of neighboring Massachusetts, has high name recognition in New Hampshire and has built a solid get-out-the-vote operation.

But he's starting to eye Iowa as a target as well. He recently opened a campaign office there, and his campaign gave first word of the Thune endorsement to The Des Moines Register and The Sioux City Journal in the hopes of building buzz there.

In 2008, Romney spent $7 million on Iowa airwaves and built an enormous statewide organization, but he never won over conservatives who dominate the early decision-making.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111123/ap_on_el_pr/us_romney_thune

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Fiks, Reflective Rim-Strips for Bikes

You can have the brightest bike lights in town, but if a car driver decides to run an intersection, he’s not going to see you from side-on. If you have a city or touring bike, you can buy tires with reflective strips. If you have a more minimal ride, or a bike with skinny little [...]

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Astronomers find that galaxies are the ultimate recyclers

Public release date: 21-Nov-2011
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Nicolas Lehner
Nicolas.Lehner.8@nd.edu
574-631-5755
University of Notre Dame

A team of researchers from several universities and institutions, including University of Notre Dame physics faculty Chris Howk and Nicolas Lehner, has demonstrated how galaxies continue to form stars by recycling vast amounts of hydrogen gas and heavy elements across billions of years.

The researchers also identified large masses of previously undetected material surrounding galaxies, and described the large-scale flows of this gas. The results were published in three papers in the Nov. 18 edition of the journal Science.

The leaders of the three studies are Lehner of Notre Dame, Todd Tripp of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Jason Tumlinson of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. The researchers used the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope to detect the mass in the halos of the Milky Way and more than 40 other galaxies. The process uses absorption lines in the high-resolution spectra of background quasars or stars to detect the gases in the clouds, which are invisible to other kinds of imaging. Data from the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona, Keck in Hawaii and the Magellan Telescope in Chile were also key to the studies by measuring the properties of the galaxies.

"We show that not only there is enough mass in the gas flows in halos of galaxies to sustain star formation over billions of years, but also the mass in the hot halos of star-forming galaxies is phenomenalas large as the mass of gas in the disk of a galaxy," says Lehner.Clouds of ionized hydrogen within 20,000 light years of the Milky Way disk contain enough material to make 100 million suns. About one solar mass of that gas falls into the Milky Way every year, comparable to the rate at which our galaxy makes stars. The cycle could continue for several billion years.

In more distant galaxies, the team found element-rich halos around star-forming galaxies, including surprising levels of heavy elements up to 450,000 light years beyond the visible portion of the galactic disks. The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph measured 10 million solar masses of oxygen in a galaxy's halo, which corresponds to about 1 billion solar masses of gas.

The light of a distant quasar shines through the invisible gaseous halo of a foreground galaxy. Elements in the halo absorb certain frequencies of light. They become detectable, and can be used to measure the halo's mass.

Some of the galaxies that form stars at a very rapid rate, perhaps a hundred solar masses per year, can drive million-degree Fahrenheit gas very far out into intergalactic space at speeds of up to 2 million miles per hour. This is fast enough for the gas to escape forever and never refuel the parent galaxy. "We have observed hot gas in the process of moving out of a galaxy and into intergalactic space," Tripp says.

"Our results confirm a theoretical suspicion that galaxies expel and can recycle their gas, but they also present a fresh challenge to theoretical models to understand these gas flows and integrate them with the overall picture of galaxy formation," Tumlinson says.

###

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

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.

Public release date: 21-Nov-2011
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Nicolas Lehner
Nicolas.Lehner.8@nd.edu
574-631-5755
University of Notre Dame

A team of researchers from several universities and institutions, including University of Notre Dame physics faculty Chris Howk and Nicolas Lehner, has demonstrated how galaxies continue to form stars by recycling vast amounts of hydrogen gas and heavy elements across billions of years.

The researchers also identified large masses of previously undetected material surrounding galaxies, and described the large-scale flows of this gas. The results were published in three papers in the Nov. 18 edition of the journal Science.

The leaders of the three studies are Lehner of Notre Dame, Todd Tripp of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Jason Tumlinson of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. The researchers used the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope to detect the mass in the halos of the Milky Way and more than 40 other galaxies. The process uses absorption lines in the high-resolution spectra of background quasars or stars to detect the gases in the clouds, which are invisible to other kinds of imaging. Data from the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona, Keck in Hawaii and the Magellan Telescope in Chile were also key to the studies by measuring the properties of the galaxies.

"We show that not only there is enough mass in the gas flows in halos of galaxies to sustain star formation over billions of years, but also the mass in the hot halos of star-forming galaxies is phenomenalas large as the mass of gas in the disk of a galaxy," says Lehner.Clouds of ionized hydrogen within 20,000 light years of the Milky Way disk contain enough material to make 100 million suns. About one solar mass of that gas falls into the Milky Way every year, comparable to the rate at which our galaxy makes stars. The cycle could continue for several billion years.

In more distant galaxies, the team found element-rich halos around star-forming galaxies, including surprising levels of heavy elements up to 450,000 light years beyond the visible portion of the galactic disks. The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph measured 10 million solar masses of oxygen in a galaxy's halo, which corresponds to about 1 billion solar masses of gas.

The light of a distant quasar shines through the invisible gaseous halo of a foreground galaxy. Elements in the halo absorb certain frequencies of light. They become detectable, and can be used to measure the halo's mass.

Some of the galaxies that form stars at a very rapid rate, perhaps a hundred solar masses per year, can drive million-degree Fahrenheit gas very far out into intergalactic space at speeds of up to 2 million miles per hour. This is fast enough for the gas to escape forever and never refuel the parent galaxy. "We have observed hot gas in the process of moving out of a galaxy and into intergalactic space," Tripp says.

"Our results confirm a theoretical suspicion that galaxies expel and can recycle their gas, but they also present a fresh challenge to theoretical models to understand these gas flows and integrate them with the overall picture of galaxy formation," Tumlinson says.

###

---

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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.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/uond-aft112111.php

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In the Minds of Others (preview)

Features | Mind & Brain See Inside

Reading fiction can strengthen your social ties and even change your personality

By Keith Oatley ?| November 20, 2011

Image: Shawn Van Daele/Getty Images

In Brief

1. Reading stories can fine-tune your social skills by helping you better understand other human beings.
2. Entering imagined worlds builds empathy and improves your ability to take another person?s point of view.
3. A love affair with narrative may gradually alter your personality?in some cases, making you more open to new experiences and more socially aware.

We recognize Robert Louis Stevenson?s Long John Silver by his commanding presence, his stoicism and the absence of his left leg, cut off below the hip. Although we think we know the roguish Silver, characters such as he are not of this world, as Stevenson himself admitted in Longman?s Magazine in 1884. He described fictional characters as being like circles?abstractions. Scientists use circles to solve problems in physics, and writers and readers likewise use fictional characters to think about people in the social world.

Psychologists once scoffed at fiction as a way of understanding people because?well?it?s made up. But in the past 25 years cognitive psychologists have developed a new appreciation for the significance of stories. Just as computer simulations have helped us understand perception, learning and thinking, stories are simulations of a kind that can help readers understand not just the characters in books but human character in general. In 1986 psychologist Jerome Bruner, now at New York University School of Law, argued persuasively that narrative is a distinctive and important mode of thought. It elaborates our conceptions of human or humanlike agents and explores how their intentions collide with reality.

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Republicans seek Iowa social conservatives' nod (AP)

DES MOINES, Iowa ? Most of the Republican presidential candidates, with the notable exception of Mitt Romney, set their sights on early-voting Iowa for a discussion on the role of religious faith in public life, along with hot-button social issues such as marriage and abortion.

The setting was a forum Saturday night hosted by a new evangelical group trying to leave its mark on the campaign in a state where influential social conservatives have struggled to rally behind an alternative to Romney. While the former Massachusetts governor has stayed near the top of national polls, some Republican activists have misgivings about his record on cultural issues.

Romney's six more socially conservative challenges are actively competing in Iowa to emerge as the preferred candidate among Christian conservatives with just six weeks to go until the Jan. 3 caucuses.

"People are getting close to decision time," former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum told The Associated Press at a campaign stop in Des Moines. "I think you're going to see some coalescing in the next couple of weeks."

Jobs, the economy and the deficit are voter priorities in Iowa and nationally, but it was a focus on social issues that drew the 2012 hopefuls to the event sponsored by The Family Leader, an organization started last by a former Republican candidate for governor, Bob Vander Plaats.

Scheduled to join Santorum were Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, businessman Herman Cain, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Texas Rep. Ron Paul and Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Romney declined the invitation and was campaigning in New Hampshire. He is not competing aggressively for the social conservative vote in Iowa as he did in the 2008 presidential race. His leaner Iowa campaign is focused more on holding supporters from his second-place finish four years ago and appealing to economic conservatives.

But Romney also has avoided multicandidate events in early-voting states, even one this month in Iowa by the National Association of Manufacturers and co-hosted by Gov. Terry Branstad, a pro-business Republican.

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman also planned to skip the event. He, too, has a mixed record on social issues, has avoided campaigning in Iowa and is focusing his early-state campaign on New Hampshire, home of the leadoff primary.

___

Online:

The Family Leader: http://www.thefamilyleader.com

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111119/ap_on_el_pr/us_republicans_iowa

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Decatur Christmas parade entries wanted

Decatur Christmas parade entries wanted
The Decatur Daily
The Decatur Jaycees and the Decatur Morgan County Chamber of Commerce are the parade sponsors. Entry forms can be obtained at www.decaturjaycees.com. The deadline for entering is Nov. 29. The entry fee is $25 and all checks should be made to the ...

Source: http://decatur.waff.com/news/community-spirit/63687-decatur-christmas-parade-entries-wanted

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PFT: Jets can't hide Sanchez anymore

We handle the biggest injury news in the rumor mill.

The rest goes right here, in the most popular running injury segment with?chicken dancers.

1. 49ers running back Frank Gore (knee) is officially questionable, but he?s fully expected to start. It?s possible backup Kendall Hunter will get more work than usual.?CB Tarell Brown (knee) and DT Ray McDonald (hamstring) are also questionable.

2. Cardinals?LB Joey Porter (knee) and S Kerry Rhodes (foot) are both out. At some point, I?ll stop mentioning them each week. That point will not be this week.

3. The Bills could get tackle?Demetrius Bell (shoulder) back. He?s questionable, as is wideout Stevie Johnson. ?Safety George Wilson, who has played well this year, is doubtful with a neck injury.

4. The Panthers list?TE Jeremy Shockey (ribs) as doubtful.?LB Dan Connor (shoulder) is questionable, but he didn?t practice Friday.

5. ?We told you before A.J. Green (knee) was doubtful for the Bengals.?DE Carlos Dunlap (hamstring) is questionable, but was able to practice on a limited basis late in the week.

6. Ravens?WR Lee Evans (ankle) is questionable after practicing on a limited basis. He?s a gametime decision, but he?s closer to playing than he has since November. Ray Lewis (foot) is officially questionable, although he?s not expected to play.

7. Redskins?T Jammal Brown (groin), S LaRon Landry (achilles), and T Sean Locklear (ankle) are all questionable. Santana Moss (hamstring) is out again.

8. The Jaguars will be without?DT Terrance Knighton (ankle) and?DE Aaron Kampman (hamstring). Luckily, they play the Browns so you probably won?t notice.

9.?RB Montario Hardesty (calf) is questionable for the Browns. He?s been out the last few weeks.

10. The Raiders are without wideout WR Jacoby Ford (foot) and RB Darren McFadden (foot). Richard Seymour (knee) and Michael Huff (ankle) both didn?t practice all week. They are questionable, but look unlikely to play.

11. Vikings?LB Erin Henderson (hamstring) and TE Visanthe Shiancoe (hamstring) are both questionable. They were able to practice on a limited basis.

12. The Chargers are without four key starters:?DE Luis Castillo (tibia), WR Malcom Floyd (hip), T Marcus McNeill (neck), and LB Shaun Phillips (foot) are all out. Chicago should eat up San Diego?s line.

13. Three Seahawks that suffered concussions last week are probable. ?WR Doug Baldwin, S Kam Chancellor, and WR Sidney Rice are all probable with ?head? injuries.

14. Rams?T Jason Smith (head) and RB Carnell Williams (calf) are both out.?WR Danario Alexander (hamstring) is doubtful.

15.?Packers DE Mike Neal?(knee) is questionable for the first time in a while. ?He?s a gametime decision.

16. Bears?CB D.J. Moore (ankle) won?t be able to get earn a fine this week. He?s doubtful.

17.?Falcons?T Sam Baker (back) could finally return. He?s questionable after practicing on a limited basis.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/11/18/jets-can-no-longer-hide-mark-sanchez/related

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Scandal leaves Paterno's reputation in tatters

FILE - In this Oct. 22, 2011 file photo, Penn State coach Joe Paterno stands on the field before his team's NCAA college football game against Northwestern, in Evanston, Ill. Former Penn State coach Paterno has a treatable form of lung cancer, according to his son. Scott Paterno says in a statement provided to The Associated Press by a family representative that the 84-year-old Joe Paterno is undergoing treatment and that "his doctors are optimistic he will make a full recovery." (AP Photo/Jim Prisching, File)

FILE - In this Oct. 22, 2011 file photo, Penn State coach Joe Paterno stands on the field before his team's NCAA college football game against Northwestern, in Evanston, Ill. Former Penn State coach Paterno has a treatable form of lung cancer, according to his son. Scott Paterno says in a statement provided to The Associated Press by a family representative that the 84-year-old Joe Paterno is undergoing treatment and that "his doctors are optimistic he will make a full recovery." (AP Photo/Jim Prisching, File)

FILE - In this Aug. 2, 2010 file photo, Penn State coach Joe Paterno, left, and Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany chat during Big Ten football media day in Chicago. The Big Ten has taken Paterno's name off the Big Ten's football championship trophy. Delany said Monday, Nov. 14, 2011 that it is "inappropriate" to keep Paterno's name on the trophy that will be awarded Dec. 3 after the first Big Ten title game. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green, File)

A half-century in the making, Joe Paterno's impeccable reputation was shattered in a matter of days.

He's out of a job, and his name has been scraped off the Big Ten title trophy. He's been taken to task by everyone from the president of the United States to his good friend, Bobby Bowden. Flaws in his program, once barely whispered about, are now an open topic. Although Penn State says it isn't touching Paterno's statue outside Beaver Stadium, the fact that someone even asked indicates how far his stock has fallen.

The admirable graduation rates, the players who were as good off the field as they were on, the financial support for Penn State that had nothing to do with football ? all of it has been undone by the one thing Paterno did not do. Go to the police with an abuse allegation.

"This is a scandal large enough that this is going to hang on his legacy," said Frank Fitzpatrick, a Philadelphia Inquirer columnist and author of two books on Paterno and Penn State, including the new biography, "Pride of the Lions."

"It's incredibly sad, I think. That's not to excuse what he did or say he doesn't deserve it," Fitzpatrick added. "It's still sad for a guy who, I think, really did try. ... To see it all end so unceremoniously and so ugly, it's just hard to take."

The tumult isn't over, either. Penn State said Friday that the NCAA will examine the school's handling of the child sex-abuse scandal involving former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, invoking that dreaded question of "institutional control."

Later that day, Paterno's son Scott announced that his father is being treated for lung cancer. The cancer, diagnosed during a follow-up visit last weekend for a bronchial illness, is treatable, and Scott Paterno said doctors are "optimistic he will make a full recovery."

Even before the news about Paterno's health, those who admired him had started to view the 84-year-old coach as a tragic figure.

"This is difficult for everybody who knows Joe or anybody who cares about Joe," former Nebraska coach Tom Osborne, a close friend of Paterno's, said last week. "I feel bad about him and his family. I feel bad about the people who were victimized ? very bad about them."

It's been two weeks since Sandusky, Paterno's one-time heir apparent, was accused of sexually abusing eight boys in a 15-year span, setting off a child sex-abuse scandal that stunned Penn State and forever altered the image of major college football's winningest coach.

Paterno is not the target of any criminal investigation. But Penn State's board of trustees fired him Nov. 9 because it felt the coach did not go far enough in alerting authorities after then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary told Paterno he witnessed an alleged assault in March 2002.

McQueary, now Penn State's wide receivers coach, told a grand jury he saw Sandusky raping a boy of about 10 in the showers at the Penn State football building. McQueary went to Paterno, though it is not clear if he described the alleged attack in as graphic detail as he did to the grand jury. Paterno then told athletic director Tim Curley and university vice president Gary Schultz, whose responsibilities included oversight of the campus police.

No one called police.

"Did he make a mistake? Sure, he made a mistake," former Ohio State coach John Cooper said. "And is he paying the price. Absolutely and rightfully so. ... But I'm not going to forget all the good things he did."

But public opinion quickly turned against the man who for so long had been the moral compass of college athletics, the one person who could always be counted on to do the right thing in a business where so many others have gone wrong.

A day after Paterno was fired, two Pennsylvania senators announced they were rescinding their support for Paterno's nomination for the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom. The Big Ten announced Monday it was renaming its trophy for the conference title game, saying it would be "inappropriate" to keep Paterno's name on it.

"The trophy and its namesake are intended to be celebratory and aspirational, not controversial," Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said.

Much of the anger stems from disillusionment, said psychologist Stan Teitelbaum, author of "Sports Heroes, Fallen Idols."

Society has a need for heroes, Teitelbaum said, and Paterno fit the bill perfectly with his "Success with Honor" philosophy. He steered Penn State clear of the tawdry scandals that sullied the reputations of high-profile programs such as Ohio State, USC and Miami, and demanded that his players conduct themselves with high character and morals.

He prized education ? his name is on a library at Penn State, not an athletic facility ? and Penn State could talk about "student-athletes" without drawing snickers. The Nittany Lions had 47 academic All-Americans under Paterno, a national-best 15 in the past five years alone. Penn State's graduation rate consistently ranks among the best in the Big Ten; in 2010, its 84 percent rate trailed only Northwestern's 95.

When Paterno was revealed as flawed ? as human ? people who had invested so much faith in him felt betrayed, Teitelbaum said.

"Joe Paterno was perceived as a very benign father figure. Father figures are supposed to protect us from the dangers of the world," Teitelbaum said. "As more and more things came out, people became more and more disappointed and disappointment turns to anger. He was supposed to have spared us."

There is an element of schadenfreude in Paterno's humbling, too.

Paterno was proud of being able to claim the moral high ground and made no attempt to hide it. He once said he wouldn't retire because he didn't want to leave coaching to the Jackie Sherrills and Barry Switzers of the world.

Switzer won three national titles at Oklahoma, but his Sooners were college football's renegades. Oklahoma was slapped with three years' probation for major recruiting violations, and five players were arrested on felony charges before Switzer stepped down in June 1989. Sherrill had brushes with the NCAA at both Texas A&M and Mississippi State.

"There were a lot of people who felt Joe was sanctimonious and holier than thou and pious when there wasn't any reason to be," Fitzpatrick said. "In that sense, that attitude set him up for a fall like this. People aren't cheerful that Joe's going through something like this but some are thinking, 'See, I told you. Even at mighty blessed Penn State.'

"But I don't think anyone expected it going wrong to this extent."

___

Follow Nancy Armour at http://www.twitter.com/nrarmour

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2011-11-19-Penn%20State-Paterno's%20Legacy/id-6caecef11f564361b184f94d7803d124

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Talking About Size, Shape May Aid Math Skills (HealthDay)

THURSDAY, Nov. 17 (HealthDay News) -- Learning how to describe the size and shape of objects at a young age helps children develop their spatial skills, researchers say.

Their study of 52 preschool children found that those who heard their parents use spatial terms and then used those words themselves had higher scores on spatial skills tests.

In the study, researchers counted the number of times children and their caregivers (mostly mothers) used words that were related to the size and shape of objects, such as "circle," "tall," "wide," "bent" or "edge" during several 90 minute sessions, each four months apart.

On average, parents used 167 words related to spatial concepts during 13.5 hours of recorded time, though the range was from five to 525 such words. Kids averaged 74 words related to spatial concepts, but the range was four to 191.

Then, when they were 4.5 years old, children were tested on their spatial skills, such as their ability to mentally rotate objects.

Children who'd heard and used more spatial terms did better on the tests. For every 45-word increase in kids' use of spatial terms, scores on spatial tests were 23 percent higher, according to the University of Chicago researchers.

They said this is the first study to show that learning to use a wide range of spatial words affects children's spatial skills, which are important in mathematics, science and technology.

"Our results suggest that children's talk about space early in development is a significant predictor of their later spatial thinking," study co-author and psychology professor Susan Levine said in a university news release.

The study appears in the November issue of the journal Developmental Science.

The findings provide additional evidence for the importance of exposing young children to words related to mathematical concepts, Levine said. In an earlier study, she and her colleagues found that talking about mathematics with young children greatly improved their math abilities.

More information

Canada's Ontario Ministry of Education offers a parent's guide for teaching math to children.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/parenting/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20111118/hl_hsn/talkingaboutsizeshapemayaidmathskills

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Ohioan: Craigslist jobseeker hid after being shot (AP)

CALDWELL, Ohio ? A South Carolina man who was shot while responding to a Craigslist ad for a job in southeastern Ohio had hidden in the woods for several hours and then showed up at a woman's house covered in blood, the woman said Friday.

Authorities investigating the wounding of that man and the death of another man charged a 16-year-old boy with attempted murder and complicity to attempted murder on Friday. The teen and another suspect were in custody.

"The investigation is moving swiftly but also deliberately," Noble County Sheriff Stephen Hannum and Prosecutor Clifford Sickler said in a news release announcing the charges.

Rose Schockling called police after the wounded man came to her farmhouse on a hill in the tiny village of Fulda. She said the man was lucky he'd come the way he did because there were no houses for more than 2 miles in the other direction.

"Thank God he didn't go the other way, he'd never find anybody," she said.

Hannum and Sickler said no further information would be released because a judge on Friday had issued a gag order. Authorities had said the order was sought by the attorney for a juvenile suspect who wanted to keep authorities and prosecutors from speaking about what the lawyer described as a "highly sensational" case.

Cadaver dogs found the body of a Florida man this week in a grave in a remote area outside Caldwell, a small village about 80 miles east of Columbus, Hannum said.

The man who visited Schockling was bloody and told her he'd been shot several hours earlier and hid in woods until it was dark, when he began walking, she said. He said he came to her place because it was the first well-lighted house he could see.

The man told the 74-year-old Schockling that he'd answered an ad on Craigslist for a job and was told he'd be erecting fences for a cattle farm. Schockling said there's no farm of the size the man described nearby, with most of the surrounding countryside being either woods or strip mines.

The Akron Beacon Journal identified as suspects a 52-year-old man from Akron, about 90 miles away, and a 16-year-old student from Stow-Munroe Falls High School in the Akron area.

Jail officials said they could not confirm that they were holding an inmate who was a suspect in the case.

Stow-Munroe Falls Superintendent Russ Jones identified the juvenile suspect as a 16-year-old junior at the high school. On Friday, Jones declined to elaborate on the teen's background or activities but said there was no security issue at the school.

"The incident in question originated from Noble County, which is in southeastern Ohio, had nothing to do in any way, shape or form with any of our students or staff nor at school grounds," he said.

Hannum said the South Carolina man escaped from the remote area on Nov. 6 and went to police, who later found a hand-dug grave that they believe had been intended for him.

The man had been told to carry his belongings to Ohio because he'd be living at the farm, and investigators believe robbery was the motive, he said.

Five days later, authorities received a call from the Florida man's twin sister, concerned that her brother had not been heard from since Oct. 22 in Parkersburg, W.Va., the sheriff said. The twin, in Boston, said her brother had responded to what she believed was the same Craigslist ad, which sought a caretaker for cattle on a 688-acre farm.

Investigators then found the Florida man's body.

Authorities had said an autopsy on the Florida man was being performed Thursday. A message seeking comment was left Friday for the Noble County coroner.

___

Associated Press writers Thomas J. Sheeran in Cleveland and Kantele Franko in Columbus contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/crime/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111118/ap_on_re_us/us_craigslist_jobseeker_killed

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Obama sending Clinton to repressive Myanmar (AP)

BALI, Indonesia ? Seizing an opportunity for historic progress in repressive Myanmar, President Barack Obama is dispatching Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to the long-isolated nation next month in an attempt to accelerate fledgling reforms.

The move is the most dramatic sign yet of an evolving relationship between the United States and Myanmar, also known as Burma, which has suffered under brutal military rule for decades. Obama said Friday there had been "flickers of progress" since new civilian leadership took power in March.

"If Burma continues to travel down the road of democratic reform, it can forge a new relationship with the United States of America," Obama said as he announced Clinton's trip while on a diplomatic mission to southeast Asia.

Clinton will be the first U.S. secretary of state to visit Myanmar in more than 50 years.

In exploring a breakthrough engagement with Myanmar, Obama first sought assurances of support from democracy leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. She spent 15 years under house arrest by the nation's former military dictators but is now in talks with the civilian government about reforming the country.

The two spoke by phone on Thursday night while Obama was flying to Bali on Air Force One.

By sending in his chief diplomat, Obama is taking a calculated political risk in a place where repression is still common. He warned that if the country fails to commit to a true opening of its society, it will continue to face sanctions and isolation. But he said that the current environment is a rare opening that could help millions of people "and that possibility is too important to ignore."

Myanmar is subject to wide-ranging trade, economic and political sanctions from the U.S. and other Western nations, enforced in response to brutal crackdowns on pro-democracy protesters in 1988 and 2007 and its refusal to hand power to Suu Kyi's party after the 1990 elections.

Clinton said that while there may be an opening for a democracy push in Myanmar, the U.S. was proceeding cautiously.

"We're not ending sanctions. We're not making any abrupt changes," she said during an interview with Fox News. "We have to do some more fact-finding and that's part of my trip."

Suu Kyi's lawyer, Nyan Win, welcomed news of Clinton's visit.

"It is time for the U.S. to make such a high-level visit. This is going to be a very crucial visit," Win said.

Senior Obama administration officials said the U.S. wants to see a number of actions from Myanmar, including the release of more political prisoners; serious internal domestic diplomacy between the government and ethnic groups, some of which have been in civil war for decades; and further assurances with regards to interactions with North Korea.

The administration's policy toward Myanmar has focused on punishments and incentives to get the country's former military rulers to improve dire human rights conditions. The U.S. imposed new sanctions on Myanmar but made clear it was open to better relations if the situation changed.

Myanmar's nominally civilian government has declared its intention to liberalize the hardline policies of the junta that preceded it. It has taken some initial steps, such as easing censorship, legalizing labor unions, suspending an unpopular, China-backed dam project, and working with Suu Kyi.

Officials said Clinton would travel to Myanmar Dec. 1, making stops in Yangon and Naypyitaw.

A U.S. opening with Myanmar would also contribute to Obama's goals of rebalancing power in the region, as Burma's military leaders for long had close ties to China.

Beijing has poured billions of dollars of investment into Myanmar to operate mines, extract timber and build oil and gas pipelines. China has also been a staunch supporter of the country's politically isolated government and is Myanmar's second-biggest trading partner after Thailand.

Administration officials stressed that the new engagement with Myanmar was not about China. They said the Obama administration consulted with China about the move and said they expected China to be supportive. They argued that China wants to see a stable Burma on its borders, so that it doesn't risk problems with refugees or other results of political instability.

Human rights groups welcomed Obama's announcement as an opportunity to compel further reforms.

"We've been arguing a long time that political engagement and political pressure are not mutually exclusive," Benjamin Zawacki, Amnesty International's Southeast Asia researcher, told The Associated Press, adding that Clinton "should not miss the opportunity in this historic visit to pressure the government and speak very clearly that the human rights violations taking place there need to stop."

Elaine Pearson, the deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said the Burmese government must realize that a visit by Clinton "puts them on notice, not lets them off the hook for their continually atrocious human rights record."

Obama was to see Burma's president during the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, that brought him to Bali. The two have met before, at an ASEAN meeting in Singapore, when Thein Sein was prime minister.

ASEAN announced Friday that Myanmar would chair the regional bloc in 2014, a significant perch that Myanmar was forced to skip in 2006 because of intense criticism of its rights record.

Obama attended a meeting Friday afternoon with the heads of ASEAN, whose 10 members include host Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. The group will expand for the East Asia Summit, a forum that also counts China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, New Zealand, Russia and the U.S. as members.

The president held one-on-one meetings on the sidelines of the summit with leaders from Indonesia, India, Malaysia and the Philippines. Administration officials said Obama discussed the issue of Myanmar in his meetings with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Philippine President Benigno Aquino III.

Earlier, in a move promoting American trade, Obama presided over a deal that will send Boeing planes to an Indonesian company and create jobs back home, underscoring the value of the lucrative Asia-Pacific market to a president needing some good economic news.

Obama stood watch as executives of Boeing and Lion Air, a private carrier in Indonesia, signed a deal that amounts to Boeing's largest commercial plane order. Lion Air ordered 230 airplanes, and the White House said it would support tens of thousands of jobs in the U.S.

____

Associated Press writers Aye Aye Win in Yangon and Alisa Tang in Bangkok contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111118/ap_on_re_as/as_obama

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Gingrich says he received Freddie Mac compensation

URBANDALE, Iowa (AP) ? Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has acknowledged receiving personal compensation from Freddie Mac, the federally backed housing agency, but says he doesn't know exactly how much he was paid.

The former House speaker left open the possibility that his consulting firm received between $1.6 million and $1.8 million. Gingrich says he received a portion of that for providing "strategic advice for a long period of time" after he left Congress.

That amount is significantly higher than the $300,000 figure Gingrich was questioned about last week.

Gingrich spoke with reporters in Iowa on Wednesday. He defended Freddie Mac's role and said every American should be interested in expanding housing opportunities. The federally backed mortgage lender has become a focal point of anti-government sentiment because of the housing crisis.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/apdefault/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-11-16-US-Gingrich-Freddie-Mac/id-889ee1e26ea64ff2865f4ca8c80ab37c

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Android Fragmentation, by the Numbers (ContributorNetwork)

The new version of Google's open-source Android operating system, called Ice Cream Sandwich, was recently unveiled. But unlike with Apple's iPhone, where every device that can run a new operating system version is upgraded immediately, the new Samsung Galaxy Nexus will be the only smartphone to run Ice Cream Sandwich for some time. Even the Verizon Droid RAZR, unveiled hours before Google's Ice Cream Sandwich event, won't see an Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade until early 2012.

The reasons why are varied, but they basically amount to that Android devices aren't as big a priority for their manufacturers and carriers as the iPhone is to Apple and its partners. Moreover, Android device owners are used to only getting a new operating system version when they get a new phone. So even the Nexus One, Google's first flagship smartphone, has finally stopped receiving OS updates, fewer than two years after it launched.

In fact, as Michael DeGusta's "Android Orphans" infographic shows, the Android smartphone world is heavily fragmented between operating system versions, and phones quickly get stuck with out-of-date software. Here's a rundown of the facts:

11: Months it took from the release of Android 2.3 Gingerbread for it to have more users than the next-latest version, Android 2.2 Froyo. That's as of "the two-week period ending Nov. 3." Gingerbread was released in December 2010.

44.4: Percent of Android devices in use that are running Gingerbread. This includes not just smartphones, but tablets that use the smartphone OS instead of the newer Honeycomb version of Android, which was designed for tablets.

1.9: Percent of Android devices in use that are running Honeycomb, according to Google's statistics, reinforcing the reports Android tablets are selling poorly. More than half of Honeycomb devices are running Android 3.1 or earlier instead of the latest version of Honeycomb, Android 3.2.

13: Percent of Android devices running the Eclair version of Android or earlier. Eclair 2.1 was released in January 2010, making it almost 2 years old.

1: Year before the T-Mobile G1, Google and HTC's first Android handset was running an out-of-date version of Android.

5: Android smartphones DeGusta tracked that were at least one version out of date when they were sold in the first half of 2010.

0: IPhones Apple is selling, and has probably ever sold, that ran an out-of-date version of iOS at the time of their sale, including the iPhone 3GS, which is currently "free" on a new two-year contract.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/personaltech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20111115/us_ac/10377955_android_fragmentation_by_the_numbers

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