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gilesjerica18 · 4 April 2013

4 April 2013 Last updated at 20:57 ET

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The WHO says there is currently no evidence of human-to-human transmission of the virus

The World Health Organization says there have now been five deaths in China from a new bird flu virus.

There have been 11 laboratory-confirmed cases of the H7N9 virus, a form of avian flu which had not been seen before in humans.

But the WHO says there is currently no evidence of human-to-human transmission of the virus.

Tests suggest that the virus could be treated with the anti-influenza drugs Tamiflu and Relenza.

Around 400 people who have been in close contact with the 11 cases are being monitored.

'Heightened surveillance'

The Chinese government has stepped up its disease surveillance and is retrospectively testing any recently reported cases of severe respiratory infection, to check if any cases had not been recognised as H7N9.

An inter-government task force has been formally established, and the animal health sector has intensified investigations into the possible sources of the virus.

China's government has also advised people to maintain good personal hygiene, including frequent hand-washing and avoid direct contact with sick or dead animals.

The WHO is not recommending any travel or trade restrictions.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22030882#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

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gilesjerica18 · Apr. 4, 2013

Apr. 4, 2013 ? Some 30 million years ago, Ganges river dolphins diverged from other toothed whales, making them one of the oldest species of aquatic mammals that use echolocation, or biosonar, to navigate and find food. This also makes them ideal subjects for scientists working to understand the evolution of echolocation among toothed whales.

New research, led by Frants Havmand Jensen, a Danish Council for Independent Research / Natural Sciences postdoctoral fellow at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, shows that freshwater dolphins produce echolocation signals at very low sound intensities compared to marine dolphins, and that Ganges river dolphins echolocate at surprisingly low sound frequencies. The study, "Clicking in shallow rivers," was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

"Ganges River dolphins are one of the most ancient evolutionary branches of toothed whales," says Jensen. "We believe our findings help explain the differences in echolocation between freshwater and marine dolphins. Our findings imply that the sound intensity and frequency of Ganges river dolphin may have been closer to the 'starting point' from which marine dolphins gradually evolved their high-frequent, powerful biosonar."

The scientists believe these differences evolved due to differences in freshwater and marine environments and the location and distribution of prey in those environments.

A complex, underwater environment

To sustain themselves, river dolphins must find their food, often small fish or crustaceans, in highly turbid water where visibility seldom exceeds a few inches. Like their marine relatives, they manage this using echolocation: They continuously emit sound pulses into the environment and listen for the faint echoes reflected off obstacles while paying special attention to the small details in the echoes that might signify a possible meal.

The environment that freshwater dolphins operate in poses very different challenges to a biosonar than the vast expanses of the sea where most dolphins later evolved. "Dolphins that range through the open ocean often feed on patchily distributed prey, such as schools of fish," Jensen says. "They have had a large advantage from evolving an intense biosonar that would help them detect prey over long distances, but we have little idea of how the complex river habitats of freshwater dolphins shape their biosonar signals."

Shy study animals with a surprisingly deep voice

To answer that question, the researchers recorded the echolocation signals of two species of toothed whales inhabiting the same mangrove forest in the southern part of Bangladesh: The Ganges river dolphin, an exclusively riverine species that is actually not part of the dolphin family but rather the Platanistidae family, and the Irrawaddy, a freshwater toothed whale from the dolphin family that lives in both coastal and riverine habitats.

Surprisingly, the echolocation signals turned out to be much less intense than those employed by marine dolphins of similar size and it seemed that the freshwater dolphins were looking for prey at much shorter distances. From this, the researchers surmise that both the dolphin species and the river dolphin were echolocating at short range due to the complex and circuitous river system that they were foraging in.

While both Irawaddy and Ganges river dolphin produced lower intensity biosonar, the Ganges river dolphin had an unexpectedly low frequency biosonar, nearly half as high as expected if this species had been a marine dolphin.

"It is very surprising to see these animals produce such low-frequent biosonar sounds. We are talking about a small toothed whale the size of a porpoise producing sounds that would be more typical for a killer whale or a large pilot whale," says Professor Peter Teglberg Madsen from Aarhus University in Denmark, an expert on toothed whale biosonar and co-author of the study.

A new perspective on the evolution of biosonar

The study suggests that echolocation in toothed whales initially evolved as a short, broadband and low-frequent click. As dolphins and other toothed whales evolved in the open ocean, the need to detect schools of fish or other prey items quickly favored a long-distance biosonar system. As animals gradually evolved to produce and to hear higher sound frequencies, the biosonar beam became more focused and the toothed whales were able to detect prey further away.

However, the Ganges river dolphin separated from other toothed whales early throughout this evolutionary process, adapting to a life in shallow, winding river systems where a high-frequency, long-distance sonar system may have been less important than other factors such as high maneuverability or the flexible neck that helps these animals capture prey at close range or hiding within mangrove roots or similar obstructions.

Improved tools for counting animals

Freshwater dolphins are among the most endangered animal species. Only around a thousand Ganges river dolphins are thought to remain, and they inhabit some of the most polluted and overfished river systems on Earth. The results of this study will help provide local collaborators with a new tool in their struggle to conserve these highly threatened freshwater cetaceans. Using acoustic monitoring devices to identify the local species may help researchers estimate how many animals remain, and to identify what areas are most important to them.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

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

Journal Reference:

Frants H. Jensen, Alice Rocco, Rubaiyat M. Mansur, Brian D. Smith, Vincent M. Janik, Peter T. Madsen. Clicking in Shallow Rivers: Short-Range Echolocation of Irrawaddy and Ganges River Dolphins in a Shallow, Acoustically Complex Habitat. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (4): e59284 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0059284

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

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

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/CEzBgIwt_lA/130404152625.htm

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With their low graduation rates, insufficient student retention, and sliding test scores, some Memphis schools are among the worst in Tennessee. In an attempt to improve them, the state has wrested control from local school boards and placed the schools in a special state-run district called the Achievement School District. This special district was created with funding from the U.S Department of Education?s Race to the Top, a school-reform competition.

Tennessee is the latest state to invest in such a program for failing schools.

In the 1990s, New Jersey began running Newark's schools. Louisiana created the Recovery School District in 2003. This year, Michigan followed suit. Virginia lawmakers are also looking at a similar district for that state's failing schools.

At the heart of the program are charter schools that allow for intense student testing, performance pay for teachers, long school days and no teacher tenure. The district also incorporates recruits from Teach for America.

The Memphis district?s website states, ?Proving the Possible by moving the bottom 5% of schools in Tennessee to the top 25% within five years.? Teacher unions have criticized the district, and some parents have complained about the loss of neighborhood schools.

Race has also become an issue with critics who point out there are not enough black teachers in the district. And other critics say the schools are simply a small hub for the rich. Last month The Walton Family Foundation gave $1 million to fund training for four school leaders interested in running charters in the Achievement School District.

In January, Republican Governor Bill Haslam visited the Memphis district and said the program was changing the archaic methods of teaching as well as the roles of schools

?A lot of it is about giving more autonomy,? he said at the time. ?It?s about letting principals in school buildings and teachers in the classroom make more decisions because they have a better sense of how to do that than we do on Capitol Hill.?

The Achievement School District measures success with four tests for students throughout the school year. Haslam said the district was already seeing kindergarteners beginning to read at second-grade levels.

The state has high hopes for their innovative districts, and it isn't shy in its bragging. The district website states: "Memphis is Teacher Town, USA. In the coming years, thousands of our nation's top educators will eye Memphis as the best place to work in education and those teachers already in Memphis will have myriad options for career advancement."

Related Stories on TakePart:

? Naughty, Naughty: No Hand-Holding for Students in Tennessee

? Tennessee School in Hot Water for Telling Teens ?Don?t Ask, Don?t Tell?

? Failing Public Schools: Should They Learn From Thriving Charters?

Suzi Parker is an Arkansas-based?political and cultural journalist whose work frequently appears in?The Washington?Post?and?The Christian Science Monitor. She is the?author of two books. @SuziParker | TakePart.com?

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/memphis-failing-schools-taken-over-charter-operators-003500342.html

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By Leah Rozen

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - This is an art-house movie with a capital "A." And you might as well capitalize the "R" and the "T," too, because films don't come artier than this. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

"Upstream Color" is the eagerly anticipated second film from Shane Carruth, an engineer turned self-taught filmmaker. His first movie was 2004's "Primer," an intriguing, geeky time-travel thriller made for a reported $7,000 - and which won the Grand Jury Prize for drama at the Sundance Film Festival.

Just as he did on "Primer," Carruth wears multiple hats for "Upstream Color": screenwriter, director, editor, director of photography, score composer and star. (Just typing that list tires me out; imagine how he must have felt.)

He has made a film of uncommon beauty, haunting mystery and massive obscurity. No one is going to understand or know exactly what's happening in the whole movie. And you're probably not supposed to,though Carruth claims otherwise in interviews.

Here is the plot synopsis, in its totality, from the production notes: "A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the lifecycle of an ageless organism. Identity becomes an illusion as they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of wrecked lives."

Here's what happens on screen: A woman, Kris (Amy Seimetz), is seemingly kidnapped and drugged by a man (Thiago Martins) who covertly has her ingest a maggot (or maybe it's a grub worm) which then multiplies inside her, slithering about just beneath her skin in scenes guaranteed to cause Goosebumps.

This man, identified only in the credits as The Thief, also steals all of Kris' money and her house. And he has her undergo some sort of crude medical procedure in which she exchanges blood or another body fluid with a pig.

When Kris comes out of all this, she's a shattered wreck, a sort of walking human shell with apparently no memory of exactly what happened. Then she meets Jeff (Carruth), who may have gone through a similar experience, and they become romantically involved.

Meanwhile, another major character keeps popping up who's simply identified as Sampler (Andrew Sensenig). He wanders around sampling and listening to natural sounds (rain, stones on metal, pigs snuffling, etc.) with a recorder and tending to pigs on a pig farm.

Carruth also tosses in lots of scenes of nature, filling the screen with fields, orchids, water and pigs. There are also many snuffling porkers, be they big, little, pink or muddy. And several characters read and quote from Henry David Thoreau's "Walden, or Life in the Woods," the 19th-century New England bachelor's treatise on nature and self-sufficiency.

What does it all mean? That none of us are in control? That human contact and love are what matters? That we're all connected to nature? Or maybe it's all some sort of hallucinogenic dream or, possibly, we're inside Kris' mental breakdown?

Take your pick. Probably a little of all of those and a whole lot more.

What's fascinating is how well the movie works despite its willful opacity. One is never bored watching "Upstream Color," especially during the first half, which is filled with images that shock. Unlike Terrence Malick's forthcoming "To the Wonder," another impressionist film that never explains itself and lays on the nature imagery with a heavy hand, Carruth's film manages to draw a viewer in rather than leaving one feeling excluded from some sort of personal reverie.

Seimetz, a director herself (the forthcoming "Sun Don't Shine"), has an Everywoman face, but one that's sharp and anxious beneath its placid blandness. Her Kris is all emotion, trying to save herself even as she has no idea who or what, if anything, might be trying to do her in.

For some viewers, "Upstream Color" will be an uphill struggle. But many others will find themselves alternately fascinated, repelled and excited by it.

Carruth clearly thinks that a film can communicate big ideas without its actually articulating and spelling them out. It remains for the rest of us to catch up to and begin fully to comprehend his new language.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/upstream-color-review-youll-shocked-repelled-confused-never-212639184.html

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Thursday, April 4, 2013. Zuckerberg says the company is not building a phone or an operating system. Rather, Facebook is introducing a new experience for Android phones. The idea behind the new Home service is to bring content right to you, rather than require people to check apps on the device. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg walks at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Thursday, April 4, 2013. Zuckerberg says the company is not building a phone or an operating system. Rather, Facebook is introducing a new experience for Android phones. The idea behind the new Home service is to bring content right to you, rather than require people to check apps on the device. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Thursday, April 4, 2013. Zuckerberg says the company is not building a phone or an operating system. Rather, Facebook is introducing a new experience for Android phones. The idea behind the new Home service is to bring content right to you, rather than require people to check apps on the device. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

MENLO PARK, Calif. (AP) ? With its new "Home" on Android gadgets, Facebook is trying to prove that a company doesn't have to make a smartphone or operating system to define how people interact with mobile technology. The audacious move will provide further insights into how pervasive Facebook has become, testing whether people want to be greeted with content from the social network every time they look at their phones.

When people start downloading the Home software upon its April 12 release in the U.S., Facebook will become the new hub of their Android smartphones.

Switch on your phone and you'll see friends' photos, overlaid by status updates, links and eventually, advertisements in Facebook's quest to bring in more revenue and restore its stock price to where it stood when the company went public nearly 11 months ago.

About 80 percent of what currently appears within a Facebook user's News Feed will automatically be transferred into the "cover feed" of the Home service. For instance, a sibling's status update might be featured prominently on the phone's home screen when it's unlocked. Swipe a finger and there might be a photo posted by one of your best friends. Want to like what you see? Just tap on the home screen twice. Comments can be posted directly from the home screen, too.

If other friends happen to send you a message, their Facebook photo will pop up as a notification.

Other Facebook features, such as video, will be added to Home in future months. A Home version for Android-powered tablet computers also will be coming later this year.

Once they have had their fill of what Facebook is feeding them on the Home service, users can just swipe a finger on the screen to get to all the standard Android apps to listen to music, watch videos or send email.

At first, Home will only work on some Android devices, including HTC Corp.'s One X and One X Plus and Samsung Electronics Co.'s Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note 2. For now, Home isn't compatible with the Nexus phone designed by Google, a fierce Facebook rival whose pliable Android software is being modified to accommodate the new service.

A phone from HTC that comes pre-loaded with Home will be available starting April 12, with AT&T Inc. as the carrier. The HTC First will sell for $99.99 with a two-year data plan from AT&T.

Home is debuting after several years of speculation that Facebook intended to make its own phone or mobile operating system to drive more traffic to its social network. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the speculation never made sense to him because he believes a company-produced phone might only end up in the hands of 10 million to 20 million people. The Home service gives Facebook a chance to take control of the main screen of every phone running on Android, the leading mobile operating system. In the U.S. alone, about 64 million people will be relying on Android-driven phones this year, estimated the research firm eMarketer.

"Just building a phone isn't enough for Facebook," Zuckerberg said Thursday during Home's unveiling at the company's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters.

The idea behind the software is to bring Facebook content right to users' home screens, rather than requiring them to check various apps to see what their friends are up to, or to chat. Down the line, Facebook will integrate its existing camera app and other features. Though cameras and calls won't be built into the initial version of Home, Zuckerberg promised the software will be updated at least once a month to add more features and fix bugs.

"Home" comes amid rapid growth in the number of people who access Facebook from phones and tablet computers. Of the social network's 1.06 billion monthly users, 680 million log in using a mobile gadget. As a result, the money Facebook makes from mobile advertising is also growing. Taking over the entire screen of smartphones and, eventually, tablet computers will provide Facebook for a larger canvas for selling mobile ads.

Zuckerberg, already a multibillionaire, didn't dwell on Home's moneymaking potential Thursday. Instead, he depicted the software as a noble attempt to put a higher priority on personal relationships than utilitarian apps.

"Why do we need to go into all the apps in the first place to see what is going on with the people we care about," he asked.

"We think this is the best version of Facebook there is," he said.

That statement implies that using Facebook on Apple's iPhone and other smartphones may become a less enriching experience. Apple Inc., which rigidly controls how apps work on the operating system built for the iPhone and iPad, has ingrained more Facebook features into the most recent versions of its mobile software

Apple had no immediate comment about Home.

Zuckerberg said users can have an experience on Android phones unavailable on other platforms because Google makes the software available on an open-source basis. That allows phone manufacturers and software developers to adapt it to their needs.

Recognizing that text messaging is one of the most important tasks on a mobile phone, Facebook programmed Home to include a feature called "chat heads." This lets users communicate with their friends directly from their home screens ? without opening a separate app.

"What Facebook wants is to put itself at the front of the Android user experience for as many Facebook users as possible and make Facebook more elemental to their customers' experience," said Forrester analyst Charles Golvin.

While the Home service probably makes sense for Facebook, Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin thinks the company is overestimating "the extent to which this is something their users want."

"I'm sure there are people out there whose lives revolve around their social network and for them it makes sense to have it front and center," Golvin said. "But this doesn't describe the majority of consumers."

Google Inc. is among the companies hoping that Golvin is correct. The Internet search leader gives away its Android software for free, in the hope that it will steer phone users to ads sold by Google. With Home, Facebook will be muscling its way in between Android users and Google, creating an opportunity for Facebook to seize the advertising advantage.

This is not the first time a big Internet company has co-opted Android: Amazon.com's Kindle Fire tablets run a version of Android that strips out all Google services, replacing them with Amazon's equivalents. Google responded by releasing its own tablet to compete against the Kindle Fire last year.

The mobile advertising market is growing quickly, thanks in large part to Facebook and Twitter, which also entered the space in 2012. EMarketer expects U.S. mobile ad spending to grow 77 percent this year to $7.29 billion, from $4.11 billion last year.

Facebook, meanwhile, is expected to reel in $1.53 billion in worldwide mobile ad revenue this year according to eMarketer, up from $470.7 million last year.

Facebook's stock rose 82 cents, or 3.1 percent, to close Thursday at $27.07. That's 29 percent below its initial public offering price of $38. Meanwhile, the Standard & Poor's 500 index has surged by 20 percent since Facebook's rocky debut.

___

Barbara Ortutay reported from New York. AP Technology Writer Peter Svensson contributed to this story from New York.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2013-04-04-Facebook-Mobile/id-bec188b87cbd47f38bc846f13d66137c

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Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford thanks his fiance Maria Belen Chapur as he addresses supporters in Mount Pleasant, S.C., on Tuesday, April 2, 2013, after winning the GOP nomination for the U.S. House seat he once held. Sanford is trying to make a comeback after his political career was derailed four years ago when he disappeared from the state only to return to admit the couple was having an affair. Sanford's wife, Jenny, later divorced him. (AP Photo/Bruce Smith)

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (AP) ? The race for a vacant South Carolina congressional seat has turned into the big-name contest political junkies had hoped for.

Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, a Republican trying to make a comeback after his political career was derailed by his admission of an extramarital affair four years ago, faces Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch (KOHL'-buhrt), the sister of political satirist Stephen Colbert (kohl-BEHR'). The special election is May 7.

Sanford defeated former Charleston County Councilman Curtis Bostic in the GOP primary runoff Tuesday, clearing another hurdle in his quest for political redemption.

Colbert Busch, a businesswoman, has long aspired to political office. She says jobs is her top priority.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-04-03-1st%20District-South%20Carolina/id-069b23956c864b89a964eb067abda27b

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gilesjerica18

You could call WebKit the glue that binds the modern web: the rendering engine powers Apple's Safari, Google's Chrome, and many mobile browsers past and present. Things are about to unstick a little. Google believes that Chromium's multi-process approach has added too much complexity for both the browser and WebKit itself, so it's creating a separate, simpler fork named Blink. Although the new engine will be much the same as WebKit at the start, it's expected to differ over time as Google strips out unnecessary code and tweaks the underlying platform. We'd also expect it to spread, as the company has confirmed to us that both Chrome and Chrome OS will be using Blink in the future. We're safely distant from the Bad Old Days of wildly incompatible web engines, but the shift may prove a mixed blessing -- it could lead to more advancements on the web, but it also gives developers that much more code to support.

Update: The Next Web has confirmed that Opera, which recently ditched its Presto engine for Webkit, will indeed be using Blink as it's already hitching its proverbial wagon to Chromium.

Filed under: Internet, Software, Google

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Source: Chromium Blog

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/crB0MezloNQ/

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