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Tuesday 25 June 2013
Deal of the Day ? 27? HP ENVY 27 IPS-panel LED-backlit LCD monitor with Beats Audio
Tuesday’s LogicBUY Deal is the 27″ HP?ENVY 27 LED-backlit LCD monitor (model no. C8K32AA#ABA) for?$375.99. ?Features: 1920 X 1080 edge-to-edge screen with 178? horizontal and vertical viewing angles 10,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, 250 nit brightness, 72% typical color gamut Inputs: VGA, DisplayPort, HDMI Beats Audio with 6W per channel Included cables:?5.9ft VGA, HDMI, audio 1-year [...]
Arab Idol winner gets hero's welcome in Gaza
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) ? Thousands of excited Gaza residents have mobbed the area's southern border crossing with Egypt to welcome home the winner of the Arab Idol talent contest.
Around 4,000 people gathered early Tuesday for the arrival of Mohammad Assaf, the 23-year-old who is the first Palestinian to win the popular reality show. His victory on Saturday sparked huge celebrations in the West Bank and Gaza.
Assaf is widely viewed as a unifying symbol in the Palestinian territories. His victory won praise from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and even some officials from Gaza's conservative Hamas rulers.
Assaf is on the Egyptian side of the border and is expected to cross shortly.
After a stop in the Palestinian territories, he plans on moving to Dubai to continue his recording career.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/arab-idol-winner-gets-heros-welcome-gaza-092642845.html
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Giving children non-verbal clues about words boosts vocabularies
June 24, 2013 ? The clues that parents give toddlers about words can make a big difference in how deep their vocabularies are when they enter school, new research at the University of Chicago shows.
By using words to reference objects in the visual environment, parents can help young children learn new words, according to the research. It also explores the difficult-to-measure quality of non-verbal clues to word meaning during interactions between parents and children learning to speak. For example, saying, "There goes the zebra" while visiting the zoo helps a child learn the word "zebra" faster than saying, "Let's go to see the zebra."
Differences in the quality of parents' non-verbal clues to toddlers (what children can see when their parents are talking) explain about a quarter (22 percent) of the differences in those same children's vocabularies when they enter kindergarten, researchers found. The results are reported in the paper, "Quality of early parent input predicts child vocabulary three years later," published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Children's vocabularies vary greatly in size by the time they enter school," said lead author Erica Cartmill, a postdoctoral scholar at UChicago. "Because preschool vocabulary is a major predictor of subsequent school success, this variability must be taken seriously and its sources understood."
Scholars have found that the number of words youngsters hear greatly influences their vocabularies. Parents with higher socioeconomic status -- those with higher income and more education -- typically talk more to their children and accordingly boost their vocabularies, research has shown.
That advantage for higher-income families doesn't show up in the quality research, however.
"What was surprising in this study was that social economic status did not have an impact on quality. Parents of lower social economic status were just as likely to provide high-quality experiences for their children as were parents of higher status," said co-author Susan Goldin-Meadow, the Beardsley Ruml Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology at UChicago.
Although scholars have amassed impressive evidence that the number of words children hear -- the quantity of their linguistic input -- has an impact on vocabulary development, measuring the quality of the verbal environment -- including non-verbal clues to word meaning -- has proved much more difficult.
To measure quality, the research team reviewed videotapes of everyday interactions between 50 primary caregivers, almost all mothers, and their children (14 to 18 months old). The mothers and children, from a range of social and economic backgrounds, were taped for 90-minute periods as they went about their days, playing and engaging in other activities.
The team then showed 40-second vignettes from these videotapes to 218 adults with the sound track muted. Based on the interaction between the child and parent, the adults were asked to guess what word the parent in each vignette used when a beep was sounded on the tape.
A beep might occur, for instance, in a parent's silenced speech for the word "book" as a child approaches a bookshelf or brings a book to the mother to start storytime. In this scenario, the word was easy to guess because the mother labeled objects as the child saw and experienced them. In other tapes, viewers were unable to guess the word that was beeped during the conversation, as there were few immediate clues to the meaning of the parent's words. Vignettes containing words that were easy to guess provided high-quality clues to word meaning.
Although there were no differences in the quality of the interactions based on parents' backgrounds, the team did find significant individual differences among the parents studied. Some parents provided non-verbal clues about words only 5 percent of the time, while others provided clues 38 percent of the time, the study found.
The study also found that the number of words parents used was not related to the quality of the verbal exchanges. "Early quantity and quality accounted for different aspects of the variance found in the later vocabulary outcome measure," the authors wrote. In other words, how much parents talk to their children (quantity), and how parents use words in relation to the non-verbal environment (quality) provided different kinds of input into early language development.
"However, parents who talk more are, by definition, offering their children more words, and the more words a child hears, the more likely it will be for that child to hear a particular word in a high-quality learning situation," they added. This suggests that higher-income families' vocabulary advantage comes from a greater quantity of input, which leads to a greater number of high-quality word-learning opportunities. DMaking effective use of non-verbal cues may be a good way for parents to get their children started on the road to language.
Joining Cartmill and Goldin-Meadow as authors were University of Pennsylvania scholars Lila Gleitman, professor emerita of psychology; John Trueswell, professor of psychology; Benjamin Armstrong, a research assistant; and Tamara Medina, assistant professor of psychology at Drexel University.
The work was supported by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/U2KmlDslfMQ/130624152529.htm
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10 Things to Know for Today
Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today:
1. RUSSIA CALLS DEMAND FOR EXTRADITING SNOWDEN 'UNACCEPTABLE'
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov lashed out at the U.S. for warning negative consequences if Russia doesn't turn over the NSA leaker.
2. SEARCHING FOR SNOWDEN
Lavrov says Snowden hadn't crossed the Russian border. He didn't board a Cuba-bound flight he was registered on in Moscow and the country where he sought asylum doesn't know where he is.
3. ATTACK ON AFGHAN PRESIDENTIAL PALACE
Taliban militants with military-style uniforms infiltrated one of the most secure areas of the capital; all eight attackers died. It wasn't clear whether Karzai was at the palace.
4. INTERNET SHUTDOWN ON KOREA ANNIVERSRY
Major websites in both North and South Korea crashed for hours on the 63rd anniversary of the start of the Korean war.
5. WHAT PROSECUTORS WANT ZIMMERMAN JURY TO HEAR
They will ask a judge today to allow phone calls the ex-neighborhood watchman made to police about suspicious people in his neighborhood.
6. OBAMA'S CLIMATE CHANGE PLAN
The president will propose the first-ever carbon dioxide emission limits on new and existing power plants at a speech today.
7. IMMIGRATION TEST CLEARS WAY FOR SENATE VOTE
Senate passage of the overhaul that allows millions a chance at citizenship is likely this week, but House Republicans have shown little support.
8. WHY THE WEATHER IS SO EXTREME
The AP's Seth Borenstein says the jet stream that generally rushes from west to east in a straight line has been wobbly and going north and south.
9. ANOTHER BUSINESS DROPS PAULA DEEN
Smithfield Foods, which sold hams with Deen's name on it, ended its relationship with the food celebrity after she admitted using racial slurs.
10. LAST-MINUTE GOALS POWER CHICAGO TO STANLEY CUP
Brian Bickell and Dave Bolland each scored 17 seconds apart to give the Blackhawks a 3-2 win over the Boston Bruins and its second Cup in four years.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/10-things-know-today-101340019.html
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An expansive physical setting increases a person's likelihood of dishonest behavior
June 24, 2013 ? A new study from researchers at leading business schools reveals that expansive physical settings (e.g. having a big desk to stretch out while doing work or a large driver's seat in an automobile) can cause individuals to feel more powerful, and in turn these feelings of power can elicit more dishonest behavior such as stealing, cheating, and even traffic violations.
"In everyday working and living environments, our body postures are incidentally expanded and contracted by our surroundings -- by the seats in our cars, the furniture in and around workspaces, even the hallways in our offices -- and these environments directly influence the propensity of dishonest behavior in our everyday lives," said Andy Yap, a key author of the research who spearheaded its development during his time at Columbia Business School.
The study states that while individuals may pay very little attention to ordinary and seemingly innocuous shifts in bodily posture, these subtle postural shifts can have tremendous impact on our thoughts, feelings and behavior. Building on previous research that expansive postures can lead to a state of power, and power can lead to dishonest behavior, the study found that expanded, nonverbal postures forced upon individuals by their environments could influence decisions and behaviors in ways that render people less honest. "This is a real concern. Our research shows that office managers should pay attention to the ergonomics of their workspaces. The results suggest that these physical spaces have tangible and real-world impact on our behaviors" said Andy Yap.
The research includes findings from four studies conducted in the field and the laboratory. One study manipulated the expansiveness of workspaces in the lab and tested whether "incidentally" expanded bodies (shaped organically by one's environment) led to more dishonesty on a test. Another experiment examined if participants in a more expansive driver's seat would be more likely to "hit and run" when incentivized to go fast in a video-game driving simulation.
To extend results to a real-world context, an observational field study tested the ecological validity of the effect by examining whether automobile drivers' seat size predicted the violation of parking laws in New York City. The field study revealed that automobiles with more expansive driver's seats were more likely to be illegally parked on New York City streets.
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/living_well/~3/jr5oOmq2d9k/130624133145.htm
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Cavalli Rules Out Sale Amid Renewed Investor Interest in Luxury ...
MILAN, Italy ??Cavalli Group, the Italian fashion house that dressed actress Jennifer Hudson at the Oscars, ruled out selling a stake any time soon, resisting interest from industry buyers, wealthy families and private-equity firms.
?We are on the radar of all these people, but our priority is to work on the business,? chief executive officer Gianluca Brozzetti said in an interview yesterday at a presentation of Cavalli?s spring-summer 2014 menswear collection in Milan. ?We are not entertaining any type of conversation with anybody.?
The luxury market will continue to consolidate as financial investors seek to tap rising demand in fast-growing economies and large luxury groups look to benefit from scale, according to Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Mario Ortelli. Potential buyers are ?looking at luxury with a lot of interest,? Cavalli said.
Deals this year include Gucci-owner Kering SA?s acquisitions of ring-maker Pomellato SpA and clothier Christopher Kane, and private-equity fund Clessidra SGR?s purchase of jeweler Buccellati Holding Italia SpA.
Gianni Versace SpA, an Italian maker of $950 flower-print jeans, said yesterday it expects to decide as soon as October if it will sell a minority stake publicly or privately to fund growth. Worldwide luxury sales will rise 4 percent to 5 percent this year as booming demand in Southeast Asia offsets a slowdown in China and Europe, Bain & Co. estimates.
Sales in Cavalli?s stores increased 23 percent between January and the first week of June, or 11 percent on a like-for- like basis, Brozzetti said, citing strong demand in North America, northern Europe and Asia. Southern Europe is beginning to recover after a tough start to the year, he also said.
The maker of $2,305 rayon jackets expects to register similar retail revenue growth in the second half of the year as it increases its store count to about 200, Brozzetti said.
Revenue reached 185 million euros in 2012. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization represented 11 percent of revenue.
By Andrew Roberts;?Editors: Paul Jarvis, Robert Valpuesta.
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Plants Perform Molecular Mathematics
Image: Nigel Cattlin/Getty
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How does a Venus flytrap know when to snap shut? Can it actually feel an insect?s tiny, spindly legs? And how do cherry blossoms know when to bloom? Can they...
Read More??
As if making food from light were not impressive enough, it may be time to add another advanced skill to the botanical repertoire: the ability to perform ? at least at the molecular level ? arithmetic division.
Computer-generated models published in the journal eLife?illustrate how plants might use molecular mathematics to regulate the rate at which they devour starch reserves to provide energy throughout the night, when energy from the Sun is off the menu. If so, the authors say, it would be the first example of arithmetic division in biology.?
But it may not be the only one: many animals go through periods of fasting ? during hibernations or migrations, for example ? and must carefully ration internal energy stores in order to survive. Understanding how arithmetic division could occur at the molecular level might also be useful for the young field of synthetic biology, in which genetic engineers seek standardized methods of tinkering with molecular pathways to create new biological devices.
?This is a new framework for understanding the control of metabolic processes,? says Rodrigo Guti?rrez, a plant-systems biologist at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile in Santiago, who was not involved in the work. ?I can immediately think of applying it to other problems.?
Divide and survive
Plants make the starch reserves they produce during the day last almost precisely until dawn. Researchers once thought that plants break down starch at a fixed rate during the night. But then they observed that the diminutive weed Arabidopsis thaliana, a plant favored for laboratory work, could recalculate that rate on the fly when subjected to an unusually early or late night.
To Alison Smith and Martin Howard of the John Innes Center in Norwich, UK, and their colleagues, this suggested that a more sophisticated molecular calculation was at work. The team hypothesized the existence of two molecules: one, S, that tells the plant how much starch remains, and another, T, that informs it about the time left until dawn.?
The researchers built mathematical models to show that, in principle, the interactions of such molecules?could indeed drive the rate of starch breakdown such that it reflected a continuous computation of the division of the amount of remaining starch by the amount of time until dawn.
For example, the models predicted that plants would adjust the rate of starch breakdown if the night were interrupted by a period of light. During that period of light, the plants could again produce starch. When the lights went out again, the rate of starch breakdown should adjust to that increase in stored starch, the models predicted ? a result that the researchers confirmed in Arabidopsis plants.
The team then trawled the literature looking for Arabidopsis mutants with known handicaps at different steps along the starch-degradation pathway. These showed that the models were compatible with the behavior of these mutants, which result in a higher than usual amount of starch remaining at the end of the night.
Simple principles
To find proteins that might be interacting directly with their hypothesized S/T computation system, the researchers also subjected these mutants to an unexpectedly early night ? a situation that would normally cause plants to slow starch degradation. They found one mutant that could not alter the rate at which it consumed starch in response to this situation. That suggests that the mutated gene, called PWD,?normally regulates this response, and may be an important player in the plant?s molecular calculations.?
Guti?rrez says that the concept of biological arithmetic division provides a simple modeling principle that can stimulate new ways of looking at metabolism, although he is not yet convinced that plants execute division in the way suggested by the model. ?Whether the plant is really doing that, I?m not sure,? he says. ?But it?s a fascinating approach.?
Source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=plants-perform-molecular-mathematics
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Turtles have fingerprints? New genetic technique reveals paternity and more
June 24, 2013 ? For 220 million years they have roamed the seas, denizens of the bustling coral reef and the vast open ocean. Each year, some emerge from the pounding surf onto moonlit beaches to lay their eggs. Throughout human history, we have revered them, used them, and worked to protect them, but we have only begun to understand these ancient, iconic creatures. Now, with all five of the sea turtle species in the U.S. threatened or endangered, knowledge is more crucial than ever.
NOAA scientist Dr. Peter Dutton leads a team that's trying to answer some important questions about marine turtles. What will happen as sea levels rise, covering the nesting beaches turtles have used for hundreds of years? Which turtle laid this mysterious clutch of eggs on a remote beach? Where in the ocean do they mate, and how big is this population?
Thanks to a recent breakthrough in the genetics lab, Dutton and his colleagues have a clever way to find answers. Like detectives, they have learned that fingerprints help solve the puzzle?genetic fingerprints. For decades, most sea turtle studies and conservation efforts have focused on nesting females and hatchlings, because they're easiest for humans to access. Male sea turtles, which don't come ashore, are elusive characters.
Dutton's team has pioneered a technique that allows them to fill in the blanks using tiny DNA samples from nesting females and hatchlings. As Dutton and his colleague Dr. Kelly Stewart wrote in a recent article, "Hidden in a hatchling's DNA is its entire family history, including who its mother is, who its father is, and to what nesting population it belongs." (See: http://seaturtlestatus.org/sites/swot/files/report/030612_SWOT7_p12_Sea%20Turtle%20CSI.pdf)
This innovative tool is opening up new avenues in marine turtle conservation. Population recovery goals are based on how long turtles take to reach maturity, and genetic fingerprinting can help reveal this key piece of information, which may be different for each population. Dutton's team developed the technique while studying endangered leatherbacks on St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. In the last four years, they have sampled 20,353 hatchlings there, and discovered the genetic identity of the fathers, even when multiple males have sired a single clutch of eggs; how often individual turtles mate and their reproductive success; and the ratio of males to females among the breeding turtles.
On Padre Island National Seashore in Texas, critically endangered Kemp's ridley turtles have been leaving scattered nests along remote beaches, but females are often long gone by the time monitors find the nests. There, NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center and the National Park Service are using the technique to match mystery nests to mother turtles. Identifying who's nesting where and when, survival rate, and breeding success over many years will help us monitor this small population and gauge the impact of major events like disasters.
In the most surprising news yet, green turtles have begun nesting in the main Hawai'ian islands for the first time in generations. Green turtles, or honu, have nested in the remote Northwest Hawai'ian Islands, primarily on the quiet, low-lying beaches of French Frigate Shoals, a coral atoll about 500 miles from Honolulu.
Genetic fingerprinting shows that about 15 untagged females have become "founders" on the main Hawai'ian islands, boldly nesting where no one has nested before?at least not for hundreds of years. It's possible that this pioneer population could provide a kind of buffer as sea level rise threatens to shrink their traditional nesting beaches. Many questions remain, but for now science is giving turtles, and those who care about them, reason to hope.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/ldgcQeFmidI/130624143922.htm
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Reports: Snowden arrives in Moscow
By James Pomfret and Lidia Kelly
HONG KONG/MOSCOW (Reuters) - An aircraft believed to be carrying Edward Snowden landed in Moscow on Sunday after Hong Kong let the former U.S. security contractor leave the territory, despite Washington's efforts to extradite him to face espionage charges.
The anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said Snowden was heading for a "democratic nation" which it did not name, although a source at the Russian airline Aeroflot said he would fly on within 24 hours to Cuba and then planned to go to Venezuela.
Moscow airport officials said the flight from Hong Kong had landed but could not immediately confirm Snowden was on board. However, a source at Aeroflot said he had booked a seat on the service.
Snowden, who worked for the National Security Agency, had been hiding in Hong Kong since leaking details about U.S. surveillance activities to news media.
A spokesman for the government of Hong Kong, a former British colony which returned to China in 1997, said it had let Snowden depart because a U.S. request to have him arrested did not comply with the law.
The United States wanted him to be extradited to face trial and is likely to be furious about his departure. In Washington, a Justice Department official said it would seek cooperation with countries Snowden may try to go to.
"It's a shocker," said Simon Young, a law professor with Hong Kong University. "I thought he was going to stay and fight it out. The U.S. government will be irate."
A source at Aeroflot said Snowden would fly from Moscow to Cuba on Monday and then planned to go on to Venezuela. The South China Morning Post earlier said his final destination might be Ecuador or Iceland.
The WikiLeaks anti-secrecy website said it helped Snowden find "political asylum in a democratic country".
It added in an update on Twitter that he was accompanied by diplomats and legal advisers and was travelling via a safe route for the purposes of seeking asylum.
"The WikiLeaks legal team and I are interested in preserving Mr Snowden's rights and protecting him as a person," former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, legal director of WikiLeaks and lawyer for the group's founder Julian Assange, said in a statement.
"What is being done to Mr Snowden and to Mr Julian Assange - for making or facilitating disclosures in the public interest - is an assault against the people."
Assange has taken sanctuary in the Ecuadorean embassy in London and said last week he would not leave even if Sweden stopped pursuing sexual assault claims against him because he feared arrest on the orders of the United States.
U.S. authorities have charged Snowden with theft of U.S. government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and wilful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorized person, with the latter two charges falling under the U.S. Espionage Act.
The United States had asked Hong Kong, a special administrative region (SAR) of China, to send Snowden home.
"The U.S. government earlier on made a request to the HKSAR government for the issue of a provisional warrant of arrest against Mr Snowden," the Hong Kong government said in a statement.
"Since the documents provided by the U.S. government did not fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law, the HKSAR government has requested the U.S. government to provide additional information ... As the HKSAR government has yet to have sufficient information to process the request for provisional warrant of arrest, there is no legal basis to restrict Mr Snowden from leaving Hong Kong."
It did not say what further information it needed.
The White House had no comment.
CHINA SAYS U.S. "BIGGEST VILLAIN"
Although Hong Kong retains an independent legal system, and its own extradition laws, Beijing has control over its foreign affairs. Some observers see Beijing's hand in Snowden's sudden departure.
Iceland refused on Friday to say whether it would grant asylum to Snowden, a former employee of contractor Booz Allen Hamilton who worked at an NSA facility in Hawaii.
Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said earlier this month that Russia would consider granting Snowden asylum if he were to ask for it and pro-Kremlin lawmakers supported the idea, but there has been no indication he has done so.
The South China Morning Post earlier quoted Snowden offering new details about the United States' spy activities, including accusations of U.S. hacking of Chinese mobile telephone companies and targeting China's Tsinghua University.
Documents previously leaked by Snowden revealed that the NSA has access to vast amounts of internet data such as emails, chat rooms and video from large companies, including Facebook and Google, under a government program known as Prism.
China's Xinhua news agency, referring to Snowden's accusations about the hacking of Chinese targets, said they were "clearly troubling signs".
It added: "They demonstrate that the United States, which has long been trying to play innocent as a victim of cyber attacks, has turned out to be the biggest villain in our age."
Venezuela, Cuba and Ecuador are all members of the ALBA bloc, an alliance of leftist governments in Latin America who pride themselves on their "anti-imperialist" credentials.
(Additional reporting by Fayen Wong in Shanghai, Nishant Kumar in Hong Kong and Andrew Cawthorne in Caracas; Alexei Anishchuk and Steve Gutterman in Moscow, and Tabassum Zakaria in Washington; Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by Anna Willard and David Stamp)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/former-nsa-contractor-snowden-leaves-hong-kong-moscow-080843121.html
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Monday 24 June 2013
Supermoon: Will it be 5 times larger? Not exactly. Still, cue 'Moonstruck.'
This year's supermoon ? it's also a strawberry moon ? will be (slightly) larger and brighter than others, because its full phase comes as the orb makes its closest approach to Earth.
A 'supermoon' rises behind the Temple of Poseidon in Cape Sounion, Greece. The phenomenon occurs when the moon passes closer to Earth than usual. The event this Sunday will make the moon appear larger than normal, but the difference is so small that most skywatchers won?t notice.
Dimitri Messinis/AP/File
EnlargeIt's bigger than a bleached beach ball, able to orbit Earth in 27.3 days ? it's supermoon! And it's coming to a night sky near you on June 23.
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It will be bright, beautiful, but definitely not "five times bigger" than usual, as some widely circulating web alerts suggest. More like 12 percent larger than average ? a difference too small to detect by eye without help from a camera.
Take a picture of Sunday's full moon high in the sky, then take a picture of another full moon of your choosing ? at roughly the height above the horizon using the same magnification. Set the two white disks side by side, and the difference is easier to see ? but nowhere near a five-fold difference.
Still, what can be finer on an early summer's night (or winter's night in the Southern Hemisphere) than sitting on the front porch or back deck and enjoying Earth's companion, weather willing?
In fact, it's a two-fer. The first full moon in June is called a strawberry moon, marking the harvest of strawberries after their short growing season ends, according to that annual compendium of weather prognostications, recipes, and lore, the Old Farmer's Almanac.
Supermoons occur once a year. This month's super-strawberry moon will be (slightly) larger and brighter than others because its full-moon phase comes as the moon makes its closest approach to Earth.
The moon's orbit around the third rock from the sun traces an elliptical path.? At closest approach, or perigee, the moon swings to within 362,570 kilometers (224,793 miles) of Earth, while its most-distant point, or apogee is 405,410 km. But those are averages.
Sunday night, the moon's perigee will come within 356,989 km of Earth, about 2 percent closer than average. And the moon reaches full status about 20 minutes after perigee.
As Phil Plait, an astronomer who pens the "Bad Astronomy" blog over at Slate.com puts it: "That's pretty nifty timing."
As with any full moon, Sunday's supermoon will appear unusually large when it's close to the horizon. In one sense, that makes any full moon super to view. But don't be fooled. As the late, great 18-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant noted: "The astronomer cannot prevent himself from seeing the moon larger at its rising than some time afterwards, although he is not deceived by this illusion."
If you miss this supermoon, it's not too early to mark your calendar for the next one. It should show up Aug. 10, 2014. And it's free!
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It may not be the ?one ring to rule them all?, but the Ringtool can fix a lot
There are tons of pocket tools out on the market these days, in many shapes sizes and forms. I am always looking for unique, simple to use and easy to carry pocket tools to refine and simplify my EDC (Every Day Carry). The Ringtool by Reductivist may be the replacement I am looking for. The [...]
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Unexpected discovery of the ways cells move could boost understanding of complex diseases
June 23, 2013 ? A new discovery about how cells move inside the body may provide scientists with crucial information about disease mechanisms such as the spread of cancer or the constriction of airways caused by asthma. Led by researchers at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), investigators found that epithelial cells -- the type that form a barrier between the inside and the outside of the body, such as skin cells -- move in a group, propelled by forces both from within and from nearby cells -- to fill any unfilled spaces they encounter.
The study appears June 23, 2013 in an advance online edition of Nature Materials.
"We were trying to understand the basic relationship between collective cellular motions and collective cellular forces, as might occur during cancer cell invasion, for example. But in doing so we stumbled onto a phenomenon that was totally unexpected," said senior author Jeffrey Fredberg, professor of bioengineering and physiology in the HSPH Department of Environmental Health and co-senior investigator of HSPH's Molecular and Integrative Cellular Dynamics lab.
Biologists, engineers, and physicists from HSPH and IBEC worked together to shed light on collective cellular motion because it plays a key role in functions such as wound healing, organ development, and tumor growth. Using a technique called monolayer stress microscopy -- which they invented themselves -- they measured the forces affecting a single layer of moving epithelial cells. They examined the cells' velocity and direction as well as traction -- how some cells either pull or push themselves and thus force collective movement.
As they expected, the researchers found that when an obstacle was placed in the path of an advancing cell layer -- in this case, a gel that provided no traction -- the cells moved around it, tightly hugging the sides of the gel as they passed. However, the researchers also found something surprising -- that the cells, in addition to moving forward, continued to pull themselves collectively back toward the gel, as if yearning to fill the unfilled space. The researchers dubbed this movement "kenotaxis," from the Greek words "keno" (vacuum) and "taxis" (arrangement), because it seemed the cells were attempting to fill a vacuum.
This new finding could help researchers better understand cell behavior -- and evaluate potential drugs to influence that behavior -- in a variety of complex diseases, such as cancer, asthma, cardiovascular disease, developmental abnormalities, and glaucoma. The finding could also help with tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, both of which rely on cell migration.
In carcinomas, for instance -- which represent 90% of all cancers and involve epithelial cells -- the new information on cell movement could improve understanding of how cancer cells migrate through the body. Asthma research could also get a boost, because scientists think migration of damaged epithelial cells in the lungs are involved in the airway narrowing caused by the disease.
"Kenotaxis is a property of the cellular collective, not the individual cell," said Jae Hun Kim, the study's first author. "It was amazing to us that the cellular collective can organize to pull itself systematically in one direction while moving systematically in an altogether different direction."
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/z8YbWatzDnE/130623145100.htm
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Prize-winning pianist caught between anger and ecstasy
By Barbara Lewis
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Competitions are for horses, not for artists was the verdict of the great Hungarian composer and pianist Bela Bartok.
And there is a part of Israeli pianist Boris Giltburg, declared winner on June 1 of one of the world's most prestigious and grueling music contests, that agrees.
He won Belgium's Queen Elisabeth Competition in spite of a memory lapse that froze him as he performed Mozart in the semi-finals. His mother and grandmother, both pianists, left the room where they were listening, convinced it was all over, as was Giltburg.
"What I most wanted to do was crawl away, but I knew I couldn't. It's a feeling of utter hopelessness," he told Reuters, relaxing at last over chocolate dessert in a Brussels brasserie.
After the performance, he forced himself to play back the recording and discovered, contrary to his expectations, he had not actually stopped.
His right hand had continued to play "something", he said. But the revelation, was that, after the blackout, he recovered, his playing improved, his muscles relaxed and Mozart flowed.
Still, he was incredulous that he was selected for the finals - and the next ordeal in the form of a week of confinement in Waterloo, near Brussels.
In the "Chapelle musicale" (literally musical chapel), built for the purpose, the 12 finalists, denied all access to the outside world, had to learn a fiendishly difficult new work by French composer Michel Petrossian, as well as rehearsing their chosen performance pieces - in Giltburg's case a Beethoven sonata and a Rachmaninov concerto.
To add to the hot-house atmosphere, in which everyone was acutely aware of everyone else's talent, Petrossian's piece was 16 minutes long, compared with the average of about 10 minutes for the surprise work handed to the contestants at this stage.
That meant 50 percent more highly complex music to learn.
'A BIT ANGRY'
Torn between anger and despair, Giltburg, who has just turned 29, said it was one of the toughest weeks of his life so far and the anger has not subsided.
"I'm a bit angry at the world for not having come up with another way of discovering talent other than competitions," he said.
He vows he would never be on a jury, making the kind of decision that determines someone's future, but at the same time he brims with gratitude for the judges who selected him - themselves performers aware that even superb pianists can forget a few notes.
Set up by Belgium's Queen Elisabeth, the Brussels-based contest is one of a handful of truly great springboards for a musician's career. On the strength of it, Giltburg has more than 80 concerts worldwide before the end of the year.
They include performances in Russia, where he was born, and Israel, where he has lived since his family emigrated there in 1990.
While the family was on the move, Giltburg briefly tried to learn the violin, but there was no affinity and he persuaded his reluctant mother, who thought there were enough pianists in the family, that she had to teach him. "She's still my harshest critic," he said.
He also studied with Israel's Arie Vardi and attended the Buchmann-Mehta Academy of Music, part of Tel Aviv University.
For the future, he said there will be no more competitions, only concert performances, which he loves.
"It's my main driver forward. There comes a point where you can't advance any more without performing before an audience. It's the real thing, which is un-simulate-able," he said.
In concerts, technical perfection takes second place to creating an atmosphere and communicating and Giltburg has a mission to reach beyond the typical classical audience.
He has a Facebook page and a blog to try to explain to the non-initiated classical music's power. "Music, as a creation of humanity, there's little I would place above it," he said. "I want to bring the same kind of feeling to everybody."
(Editing by Paul Casciato)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/prize-winning-pianist-caught-between-anger-ecstasy-172836567.html
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Mystery of the gigantic storm on Saturn
June 24, 2013 ? We now understand the nature of the giant storms on Saturn. Through the analysis of images sent from the Cassini space probe belonging to the North American and European space agencies (NASA and ESA respectively), as well as the computer models of the storms and the examination of the clouds therein, the Planetary Sciences Group of the University of the Basque Country has managed to explain the behaviour of these storms for the very first time. The article explaining the discovery, the lead author being Enrique Garc?a Melendo, researcher at the Fundaci? Observatori Esteve Duran -- Institut de Ci?ncies de l'Espai, of Catalonia, was published in Nature Geosciences.
Approximately once every Saturnian year -- equivalent to 30 Earth years -- an enormous storm is produced on the ringed planet and which affects the aspect of its atmosphere on a global scale. These gigantic storms are known as Great White Spots, due to the appearance they have on the atmosphere of the planet. The first observation of one of these was made in 1876; the Great White Spot of 2010 was the sixth one to be observed. On this occasion the Cassini space vehicle was able to obtain very high resolution images of this great meteorological structure. The storm initiated as a small brilliant white cloud in the middle latitudes of the northern hemisphere of the planet, and grew rapidly and remained active for more than seven months. Over this time an amalgam of white clouds was generated which expanded to form a cloudy and turbulent ring with a surface area of thousands of millions of square kilometres. Two year age the Planetary Sciences Group presented a first study of the storm and which was published on the front cover of Nature on the 7th of July, 2011. Now, with this new research, the hidden secrets of the phenomenon have been revealed, studying in detail the "head" and the "focus" of the Great White Spot.
The team of astronomers analysed the images taken from the Cassini probe in order to measure the winds in the "head" of the storm, the focus where the activity originated. In this region the storm interacts with the circulating atmosphere, forming very intense sustained winds, typically of 500 kilometres an hour. "We did not expect to find such violent circulation in the region of the development of the storm, which is a symptom of the particularly violent interaction between the storm and the planet's atmosphere," commented Enrique Garc?a. They were also able to determine that these storm clouds are at 40 km above the planet's own clouds.
Information about the mechanisms causing meteorological phenomena
The research revealed the mechanism that produces this phenomenology. The team of scientists designed mathematical models capable of reproducing the storm on a computer, providing a physical explanation for the behaviour of this giant storm and for its lengthy duration. The calculations show that the focus of the storm is deeply embedded, some 300 km above the visible clouds. The storm transports enormous quantities of moist gas in water vapour to the highest levels of the planet, forming visible clouds and liberating enormous quantities of energy. This injection of energy interacts violently with the dominant wind of Saturn to produce wind storms of 500 km/h. The research also showed that, despite the enormous activity of the storm, this was not able to substantially modify the prevailing winds which blow permanently in the same direction as Earth's parallels, but they did interact violently with them. An important part of the computer's calculations were made thanks to the Centre de Serveis Cient?fics i Acad?mics de Catalunya (CESCA), and the computer services at the Institut de Ci?ncies de l'Espai (ICE), also based in the Catalan capital of Barcelona.
Apart from the curiosity of knowing the physical processes underlying the formation of these giant storms on Saturn, the study of these phenomena enable us to enhance our knowledge of the models employed in research into meteorology and the behaviour of Earth's atmosphere, in a very different environment and impossible to simulate in a laboratory. "The storms on Saturn are, in a way, a test bank of the physical mechanisms underlying the generation of similar meteorological phenomena on Earth," commented Agust?n S?nchez Lavega, Director of the Planetary Sciences Group at the UPV/EHU.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/0vE3bz4zmR0/130624075753.htm
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Wildfire grows, but teams work to save Colo. town
DEL NORTE, Colo. (AP) ? A wildfire threatening a tourist region in southwestern Colorado mushroomed to about 100 square miles Saturday, but officials said that they remained optimistic they could protect the town of South Fork.
The rapid advance of the erratic blaze prompted the evacuation of hundreds of summer visitors and the town's 400 permanent residents Friday, and it could be days before people are allowed back into their homes, cabins and RV parks, fire crew spokeswoman Laura McConnell said. South Fork Mayor Kenneth Brooke estimated that 1,000 to 1,500 people were forced to flee.
Saturday night, officials provided an estimate of the size of the wildfire burning through a rugged and remote mountainous region, but said they wouldn't have a better idea of its size until infrared imaging is done overnight.
Some business owners were being allowed back into South Fork during the day Saturday to tie up issues left unattended in the rush to leave.
Officials, meanwhile, closely monitored an arm of the blaze moving toward the neighboring town of Creede.
"We were very, very lucky," said Rio Grande County Commissioner Carla Shriver. "We got a free pass yesterday."
McConnell said no structures had been lost and the fire was still about 5 miles from the town.
The blaze had been fueled by dry, hot, windy weather and a stand of dead trees, killed by a beetle infestation. The fire's spread had slowed for a while Saturday morning after the flames hit a healthy section of forest. Fire crews remained alert as more hot, dry and windy weather was forecast.
The wildfire, a complex of three blazes, remains a danger, officials said.
"The fire is very unpredictable," Shriver told evacuees at Del Norte High School, east of the fire. "They are saying they haven't quite seen one like this in years. There is so much fuel up there."
Winds picked up Saturday afternoon and a heavy black again permeated the air in Del Norte, where a Red Cross shelter was set up for evacuees. Anticipating the mandatory South Fork evacuation would last for days, the Red Cross promised more supplies and portable showers.
Ralph and Leilani Harden of Victoria, Texas, spend summers in South Fork.
"We jumped out of the South Texas hot box into the Colorado frying pan," Ralph Harden said.
Bob and Sherry Mason bought the Wolf Creek Ski Lodge on the Western Edge of South Fork about a year and a half ago.
"This (wildfire) was in our contingency plan being in Colorado, but we didn't expect it this soon," Bob Mason said.
New fire crews, meanwhile, descended from other areas to join more than 32 fire engines stationed around South Fork, with hoses and tankers at the ready. Firefighters also worked to move potential fuel, such as lawn furniture, propane tanks and wood piles, away from homes and buildings.
The town of Creede's 300 residents were under voluntary evacuation orders as officials feared the fire could reach the roads leading out of town.
The heavy black smoke, broken up only by an orange glow over the outlines of the San Juan mountains, was so thick Friday that the plume helped keep an 18-square-mile wildfire burning 100 miles to the east near Walsenburg from spreading as fast as it would have otherwise.
Susan Valente, an on-site spokeswoman for the fire near Walsenburg, said the shade helped keep the forest from drying out in the hot afternoon sun. Residents from 300 homes remain evacuated while in the city of Walsenburg and the town of Aguilar remain on pre-evacuation notice, meaning residents must be ready to flee at a moment's notice.
"Fire conditions are prime with the combination of fuels, heat, winds and low humidity," fire information officer Mike Stearly of the Rocky Mountain Area Coordination Center, "It's expected to be like this through next Tuesday."
There are 12 wildfires burning in Colorado that have scorched 133 square miles, which includes the Black Forest fire that destroyed 511 homes north of Colorado Springs and is the most destructive in Colorado history.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/wildfire-grows-teams-save-colo-town-041754819.html
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Why you should write down every expense
A worker counts US dollar bills inside a money changer in Manila in April. Hamm argues that the act of writing down what you spend can make you more mindful, and critical, of your finances.
Romeo Ranoco/Reuters/File
EnlargeMegan wrote in recently with a long story that I?ll use in a future Reader Mailbag, but in a paragraph that didn?t have to do with her story, she asked a seemingly simple question.
Skip to next paragraph Trent HammThe Simple Dollar is a blog for those of us who need both cents and sense: people fighting debt and bad spending habits while building a financially secure future and still affording a latte or two. Our busy lives are crazy enough without having to compare five hundred mutual funds ? we just want simple ways to manage our finances and save a little money.
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What made you shift from not paying attention to what you spent to worrying about spending a nickel extra on toilet paper?
It would be easy to answer this with a broad answer of saying that it had to do with the realization of my responsibilities as a parent and with changes in my personal values and beliefs.
Looking back, though, I think it had to do with something much more ?real? and practical than that.
For several months ? just shy of a year, actually ? I made a habit of writing down every penny that I spent. If I spent a quarter on a piece of gum, I wrote it down.
I kept track of this in my pocket notebook. It wasn?t really hard. I just had to make a routine of jotting down every single expenditure in that notebook. If I didn?t have time immediately, I jammed a receipt in there and wrote it down.
What I found is that as I was writing down each expense in that notebook, I became really critical of that expense.
I?d write down $100 spent at the grocery store and I?d think to myself, ?Really? I blew $100 at the store. Why?? Then I?d find myself studying the receipt and questioning a lot of the items on there. ?Did I really need that item?? ?Couldn?t I have just bought the generic??
Over a period of time, I began to really question everything I spent money on. It became a very natural thing to look for a lower-cost alternative.
I wanted badly to reach a point where I wasn?t shaking my head at myself whenever I wrote down an entry in that notebook.
Eventually, I reached that point, more or less. I went weeks without writing down anything that made me uncomfortable or made me want to seek out a lower-cost alternative. It was at that point that I put the habit aside.
That period of time reshaped the way I think about spending. Every little dime matters and, as you?re spending money or considering it, it?s worth thinking about whether or not there?s a better way to go about this purchase. Do I really need to buy this item? Is there a cheaper alternative that?s just as good?
Forcing yourself to go through every single expense is a real eye-opener. It?s not just a matter of buying the slightly more expensive toilet paper. It?s about dozens ? even hundreds ? of those types of decisions we make each week, and they really add up, on the order of hundreds of dollars per month.
Try it. Get yourself a little pocket notebook and a pen and take it with you everywhere. Write down every single little thing you spend money on. As you?re actually writing it down, think about whether that was a good use of your money. Was there a better way to do it that achieves the same or similar results with less expense? Did I really need to buy that item or service?
The amount of waste will probably shock you.
The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on www.thesimpledollar.com.
Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/N6_zOBO1zqs/Why-you-should-write-down-every-expense
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A Saturday's Work at Gizmodo in Mouse Movement
While you folks are doing your Saturday thing and maybe checking out ol' Giz now and then, somebody's gotta write it. That somebody is me, and this is what it looks like. From a cursor's-eye perspective anyway.
You may have seen these kind of visualzations before; they're the product of an awesome little program called IOGraph that you can download and mess with yourself. You should. It's useless and fun.
IOGraphs are nothing new, but I've been wanting to make one for a Saturday's work for a while, and here it is in all it's 8.1 hours of glory. The lines are mouse movement (duh) and the fat circles are cursor stops. The concentric circles?from what I can tell?have nothing to do with clicking though, and are essentially randomized to provide a little bit of dot variation.
As you can see, it's pretty busy, especially up in the Chrome-tab area. And it's peppered with cursor stops from little spasms of writing here and there, and a healthy chunk of j-pressing Google Reader-age. So there you have it, in case you ever wondered. Now go enjoy your Saturday night; you can bet your ass I'll be enjoying mine. Away from the computer.
Source: http://gizmodo.com/a-saturdays-work-at-gizmodo-in-mouse-movement-544107127
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Planetary Resources Kickstarter Meets Its Initial Goal
From the same page:
"New demand has recently strained supply, and there is growing concern that the world may soon face a shortage of the rare earths.[19] In several years from 2009 worldwide demand for rare earth elements is expected to exceed supply by 40,000 tonnes annually unless major new sources are developed. "
"As a result of the increased demand and tightening restrictions on exports of the metals from China, some countries are stockpiling rare earth resources."
Also, I did not say that there aren't many of them. I said there are considerable difficulties in mining them. Which is probably the main reason why China is the supplier no.1 . There is a lot of stuff dispersed amongst the oceans, too, it is just unfeasible to extract it (yet).
There is nothing wrong with pursuing asteroid mining, just like there isn't anything wrong with trying to come up with new technologies to extract rare earths better, or make collection from elements in the ocean more practical. I firmly oppose this view that just because X does not either immediately yield any gains or has no 100% guarantee of suceeding it is pointless. If you think the invested money could be used elsewhere better, why not yank money off yet another weapons development project, which cost orders of magnitude more than three asteroid mining programs?
Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/0Ke-zrPU3Ss/story01.htm
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Ferragamo promises a young, carefree summer
MILAN (AP) ? The Ferragamo summer promises to be young and carefree, with Bermuda shorts, leather sandals and a large backpack the only musts for the warm weather traveler.
To set the mood for the colorful 2014 menswear collection, Massimiliano Giornetti, the label's creative director, created a suitably atmospheric backdrop ? a long, white runway was set off by a big blue sky projected on a mega screen.
At the collection's presentation Sunday, the second day of Milan's Fashion Week, Giornetti at times took the summer suit trend of Bermuda shorts and a matching jacket a step further by cutting the sleeves off the jacket, or using unconventional colors such as pea green and lobster red.
The designer also favored large geometric patterns, a recurring theme in this round of preview collections, and light and billowy overcoats, which are also popular for next summer.
Salvatore Ferragamo, founder of the label, began his rise to fashion fame as a shoemaker in the 1920s. After a stint in Hollywood he set up shop in Florence, where the company still has its headquarters. As the family company expanded it added luxury leather goods and clothing.
Next summer's footwear features a sturdy sports sandal, worn with bare feet or a funky crumpled leather sock.
The new Ferragamo backpack comes in luxurious leather, and is reminiscent of an old-fashioned mountaineering bag.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ferragamo-promises-young-carefree-summer-154812991.html
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Gionee ELIFE E6 smarphone leaks with 5-inch 1080p display, quad-core SoC and 13MP cam
It looks like the battle for affordable smartphone flagships is heating up. Hot on the heels of TCL / Alcatel's tasty $280 Idol X comes word of Gionee's ELIFE E6, also boasting a 5-inch 1080p display, 1.5GHz quad-core processor (MediaTek MT6589T) with 2GB RAM and 13-megapixel BSI camera with flash. In addition to these main specs, the Chinese handset allegedly packs a 5MP front-facing shooter and 2000mAh+ battery, runs Android 4.2.1 (Jellybean) and features a svelte 8mm profile. Gionee is officially expected to launch the ELIFE E6 in Beijing on July 10th for somewhere between $320 and $360. Availability is unknown, but with MediaTek's SoC supporting both 42Mbps HSPA+ and TD-SCDMA (no LTE here, folks), this phone is likely destined to China, India and other APAC nations.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
Via: VR-Zone
Source: GizChai
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/8cgfSTA_XCA/
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Sunday 23 June 2013
Jon Stewart appears on Egypt's 'Daily Show'
June 22, 2013 at 9:58 AM ET
CAIRO - Jon Stewart took his politically engaged American satire to Cairo on Friday, appearing on a show hosted by the man known as "Egypt's Jon Stewart," who has faced investigation for insulting the president and Islam.
Among barbs aimed at Egypt's ruling Islamists and others, Stewart praised host Bassem Youssef for taking risks to poke fun. "If your regime is not strong enough to handle a joke," he said, "then you don't have a regime."
Youssef is a cardiologist whose online comedy clips inspired by Stewart's "Daily Show" won him wild popularity and a prime-time TV show after the 2011 revolution that ended military rule. He paid tribute to his guest as a personal inspiration as the pair traded gags over Stewart's impressions of a visit to Cairo.
Stewart in turn played down any difficulties his wit created for him in the United States, telling Youssef: "I tell you this, it doesn't get me into the kind of trouble it gets you into. I get in trouble, but nowhere near what happens to you."
With Egypt still in ferment and elected Islamist President Mohamed Mursi facing off against liberals who fear he plans to smother personal freedoms, Youssef was released on bail after being questioned in March over alleged insults to Mursi and the channel he appears on was threatened with losing its licence.
Criticising such moves, which have also drawn reproaches for Egypt from the U.S. government, Stewart said: "A joke has never shot tear gas at a group of people in a park. It's just talk.
"What Bassem is doing ... is showing that satire can still be relevant, that it can carve out space in a country for people to express themselves. Because that's all democracy is."
He took aim at Mursi's controversial decision this week to name a member of a hardline Islamist movement blamed for a massacre of tourists at Luxor in the 1990s as governor of that city. Having been brought into the studio hooded and presented as a "spy," he spoke a few words in Arabic before saying Egypt's president had honoured him: "I am now the mayor of Luxor."
Stewart also appeared to take a gentle dig at the opposition, who hope demonstrations planned for June 30 can force Mursi from power after just a year in office. It took Americans 100 years before a president was impeached for the first time, Stewart said: "For you guys to do it in one year, it's very impressive."
Perhaps the biggest laugh in the studio, though, was for a simple crack at Egypt's perennial traffic chaos: "I know this is an ancient civilisation," he said. "Have you thought about traffic lights?"
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters.
Source: http://www.today.com/entertainment/cairo-egypts-jon-stewart-hosts-daily-shows-jon-stewart-6C10418946
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Taliban offer adds urgency to Idaho POW rally
HAILEY, Idaho (AP) ? The tearful mother of the only known U.S. prisoner of war said Saturday she's feeling "very optimistic" about his eventual release after his Taliban captors offered last week to exchange him for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl's mother, Jani Bergdahl, spoke to about 2,000 people gathered in Hailey, his hometown, in a city park where he played as a toddler and little boy.
About 400 in the crowd arrived astride motorcycles, adorned in leather and patches commemorating America's military missing in action.
Bowe Bergdahl, 27, was taken prisoner in Afghanistan on June 30, 2009. First Jani Bergdahl, then his father, Bob Bergdahl, who accompanied the motorcycle procession on his son's 1978 dirt bike, spoke for a combined 15 minutes about rejuvenated hopes that their son's now-four-year ordeal will soon come to a joyful close.
"We are feeling very optimistic this week," his mother, before addressing her son directly. "Bowe, we love you, we support you, and are eagerly awaiting your return home. I love you my son, as I have, from the first moment I heard of you, the never-ending, unconditional love a mother has for her child."
Buses also brought POW-MIA activists to the event from as far as Elko, Nev.
Though yellow ribbons on Main Street trees and "Bring Bowe Home" placards in Hailey shop windows are a constant reminder of the 27-year-old Bergdahl's captivity, organizers of the event said the Taliban offer has lent an addition element of urgency ? and hope ? to Saturday's gathering.
Many in the crowd said they were Vietnam veterans; some of them supported the proposed prisoner exchange without reservation.
"Give them their guys and get our guy home," said David Blunt, of Elko, Nev., who said he served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam as a medic. "Bring our guy home. He's suffered enough."
Bergdahl is believed held somewhere in Pakistan, but the Taliban said they would free him in exchange for five of their most senior operatives at Guantanamo Bay, the American installation on the southeastern tip of Cuba that's housed suspected terrorists following the Sept. 11 attacks.
The militant group's exchange proposition came just days ahead of possible talks between a U.S. delegation and Taliban members.
Bergdahl's father, Bob Bergdahl, urged those gathered at Hailey's Hop Porter Park to remember everyone, regardless of nationality, who had suffered during the 12-year conflict in Afghanistan that began following the Sept. 11 attacks.
He described his son as "part of the peace process."
"I wish she was the only mother that was suffering in that way," Bob Bergdahl said of his wife. "Mothers all over the world are suffering because of this war, and I don't forget that for even one day."
He addressed his son's captors in Pashto, the Afghan language he's learned since Bowe Bergdahl went missing.
Bob Bergdahl, who has grown a beard and wore all black at Saturday's event, said that while he is physically in Idaho, he's living vicariously through his son, having set his cell phone to Afghan time, in a bid to share as much as he can his son's experience in exile.
Both mother and father talked of Bergdahl as an adventurer, a young man who once helped crew a sailboat through the Panama Canal, disembarked in San Francisco and then rode a bicycle south along the Pacific Ocean to meet family in Santa Barbara, Calif., 350 miles away.
He joined the military at 22 because "he honestly thought he could help the people of Afghanistan," Bob Bergdahl said.
On June 6, the family said it received its first letter from their son in his handwriting in four years, ferried through the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The circumstances of his capture aren't completely clear, though U.S. officials on July 2, 2009, told The Associated Press a soldier had been taken after walking off his base following his duty shift. For some of the motorcycle riders who participated Saturday, those details are something to be sifted through later, after Bergdahl is safely in the arms of his family.
"He didn't go over there on his own," said Randy Danner, a former U.S. Air Force member from Mountain Home, who rode his motorbike to Hailey with a group called the Green Knights. "No matter the circumstances, for our men and women over there who have put themselves in harm's way, we have a duty to support them in any way we can."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/taliban-offer-adds-urgency-idaho-pow-rally-081600377.html
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