AAAOct. 31, 20134:58 PM ET Kenya bombs Somali militant camp after mall attack AP
FILE - In this Dec. 15, 2008 file photo, a Kenya AIr Force F5 jet fighter takes to the sky from the Moi International Airport in Mombasa, Kenya. Kenya's military said Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013 that its air force has attacked a militant training camp in Somalia in retaliation for last month's al-Shabab assault on Nairobi's Westgate Mall. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - In this Dec. 15, 2008 file photo, a Kenya AIr Force F5 jet fighter takes to the sky from the Moi International Airport in Mombasa, Kenya. Kenya's military said Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013 that its air force has attacked a militant training camp in Somalia in retaliation for last month's al-Shabab assault on Nairobi's Westgate Mall. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - In this Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011 file photo, two Kenyan army soldiers shield themselves from the downdraft of a Kenyan air force helicopter as it flies away from their base near the seaside town of Bur Garbo, Somalia. Kenya's military said Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013 that its air force has attacked a militant training camp in Somalia in retaliation for last month's al-Shabab assault on Nairobi's Westgate Mall. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)
FILE - In this Saturday, Sept. 21, 2013, file photo, a woman who had been hiding during the gun battle runs for cover after armed police enter the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya after gunmen threw grenades and opened fire. Kenya's military said Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013 that its air force has attacked a militant training camp in Somalia in retaliation for last month's al-Shabab assault on Nairobi's Westgate Mall. (AP Photo/Jonathan Kalan, File)
FILE - In this Dec. 15, 2008 file photo, Kenyan Air Force F5 jet fighters stand at the Moi International Airport in Mombasa, Kenya. Kenya's military said Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013 that its air force has attacked a militant training camp in Somalia in retaliation for last month's al-Shabab assault on Nairobi's Westgate Mall. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - In this file photo taken from footage from Citizen TV, via the Kenya Defence Forces and made available Friday, Oct. 4, 2013, a man reported to be Umayr, one of the four armed militants, walks in a store at the Westgate Mall, during the four-day-long siege in Nairobi, Kenya which killed more than 60 people. Kenya's military said Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013 that its air force has attacked a militant training camp in Somalia in retaliation for last month's al-Shabab assault on Nairobi's Westgate Mall. (AP Photo/Kenya Defence Force via Citizen TV, File)
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Kenya's military says its air force has attacked a militant training camp in Somalia in retaliation for last month's al-Shabab assault on Nairobi's Westgate Mall.
Col. Cyrus Oguna said Thursday the militants who carried out the Westgate attack received training at the camp, which he said was 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of Binswor, Somalia.
Oguna said the military won't know how many of the 300 militants in the camp were killed or wounded until an assessment Friday. He said four military trucks were destroyed. Oguna said "many more" such attacks will be carried out.
The four-day siege of Westgate Mall began Sept. 21. The al-Qaida-affiliated al-Shabab said it carried out the attack, which killed at least 67 people, in retaliation for the Kenyan military's push into Somalia in 2011.
That's how many people signed up for Obamacare on Day 1, according to CBS News, and no that's not a misprint.
The Obama administration has kept the number of enrollments close to the vest. Its touted the number of visitors to the troubled HealthCare.gov website – 4.7 million – but hasn't released the actual number of enrollments.
But according to CBS News, notes from a "war room" meeting the day after the Affordable Care Act launched on Oct. 1 say "six enrollments have occurred so far." By the end of Day 2, enrollments totaled 248 nationwide.
The White House predicted 500,000 would sign up by the end of the month, according to a memo obtained by the Associated Press, and that was considered a "modest start" for the market.
CBS notes that in order to meet the goal of seven million enrollments by March 1, the exchanges need to enroll an average of 39,000 a day.
During Wednesday's Congressional hearing, Health and Human Services head Kathleen Sebelius was asked several times for the number of enrollments. She explained that the data was unreliable and would not be available until mid-November.
"We do not have any reliable data around enrollment, which is why we haven’t given it to date," she said.
The Obama administration has enlisted the services of computer engineers from tech companies such as Google and Oracle to help fix the troubled healthcare website, which has been plagued with issues from the start. As Sebelius testified Wednesday that the site "has never crashed," users trying to access it found a message that read, "The system is down at the moment."
How much is a brand worth? Not the stuff a company sells, or the buildings and factories it owns. Just, basically, the name of the company — and all of the customer loyalty attached to that name.
Charles Dharapak/AP
Charles Dharapak/AP
Oscar Yuan's job is to answer this question. He's a Vice President at the brand consulting firm Millward Brown Optimor.
I visited him recently and asked him the obvious question: How much is NPR's brand worth? He ran through some numbers — NPR's audience size, our budget — and came up with a very rough estimate: $400 million.
Not bad!
It puts us in the same ballpark as companies like JetBlue, Jack in the Box, and Barnes and Noble. Estimates of brand value vary widely from one analyst to another. (And Yuan warned us that he usually does these kind of calculations for for-profit companies.)
Some companies cash in on their brand value by licensing their name to other companies. So, for example, if you run a little-known company that makes toaster ovens, you can pay Black & Decker a fee and they'll let you sell your toaster oven as a Black & Decker. (Black & Decker appliances are now made by a company called Spectrum.)
Not actually made by Black & Decker.
Dan Bobkoff/NPR
Not actually made by Black & Decker.
Dan Bobkoff/NPR
AT&T has licensed its brand name to a company that makes phones; Procter & Gamble has licensed its Mr. Clean and Febreeze brands to companies that make mops and candles.
Robinson Home, a company based in Buffalo, New York, makes kitchen products under license from brands like Sunbeam, Pyrex, Oneida and Rubbermaid. "You're buying all the goodwill that they built up with the consumer, and the trustworthiness and the expectation of quality that comes with that brand name," Jim Walsh, the company's CEO, told me.
Robinson does all the design, finds a manufacturer and sells products to stores. The big companies approve the designs and get a cut of sales.
I asked Oscar Yuan, the guy who told me NPR's brand was worth $400 million, how NPR might capitalize on its brand.
"Could we start a television show?" he said. "Could we open stores? Could we possibly have an amusement park with Terry Gross and Carl Kasell there?"
Maybe not. There are plenty of stories of disastrous licensing deals. Colgate — of toothpaste fame — briefly licensed its name to frozen dinners. Bic, which makes disposable pens and lighters, licensed its name for disposable underwear.
Perhaps the most famous cautionary tale in the brand-licensing business is Pierre Cardin. The high-end designer spent the 1980s licensing his name to anything. At one point, there were Pierre Cardin frying pans. In the end, all the licensing ruined his image
That's the problem with brand value. The more you try to exploit it, the less value it has.
Contact: Gertie Skaarup skaarup@nbi.dk 45-35-32-53-20 University of Copenhagen - Niels Bohr Institute
Darach Watson has been awarded the Lundbeck Foundation Research Prize for Young Scientists for his outstanding and innovative research in astrophysics, where he has developed a groundbreaking method for measuring distances in the cosmos using the light from distant quasars. The result was selected by Physics World as one of the year's most important breakthroughs in physics.
Darach Watson is from Ireland and received his PhD from University College in Dublin. He came to Denmark in 2003 and has been a core member of the Dark Cosmology Centre at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen since 2005. He is a leading expert in X-ray astronomy and has played a key role in the important developments in the research of supernovae (exploding massive stars) and gamma-ray bursts (violent outbursts of gamma radiation.
"His research style is original and inventive and by combining different techniques and ideas, he creates new knowledge," explains Jens Hjorth, professor and head of the Danish National Research Foundation's Dark Cosmology Centre at the Niels Bohr Institute.
New groundbreaking methods
Darach Watson has broken new ground in several areas. In 2006, he developed a new method to study the properties of cosmic dust. The method is now one of the most advanced for studying the detailed properties of cosmic dust in distant galaxies.
In 2011, he made his most important discovery to date. He developed a new method for measuring long distances in space using the light from quasars (active black holes). Again, it was ability to think differently, innovatively and originally that gave him the idea.
"During a lecture, as one of my colleagues was talking about quasars, I suddenly got the idea that if the brightness of the quasar was related to the size of the gas cloud surrounding it and if you could measure the size of this cloud, you could calculate the distance to the quasar," explains Darach Watson. The idea proved to be brilliant. He explains that quasars have many advantages. They are common throughout the universe and they are stable sources that do not fade and disappear after a short time like supernovae. They are also extremely luminous and can be observed at much greater distances than other sources for distance measurement. Most important, he points out, is that the measurements can be very accurate.
History Chemistry Physics - Astrophysics
But what was it exactly that led him to astrophysics?
"I always knew I wanted to do a PhD. My father was a professor of Irish and Dean of the Faculty of Celtic Studies and my mother had a PhD in history. I was interested in many topics and when I was in my last year of secondary school, I talked with my mother about what I should choose to study at university: chemistry or history. She said I could always become a professional research scientist and an amateur historian, but it was almost impossible to be an amateur scientist. I followed her advice and chose chemistry. Halfway through my studies, I discovered what really excited me were the physical processes; what the elements could do and what the physical mechanism was. At the same time, I looked at the curriculum for physics superfluidity, high-energy particle physics, relativity theory and gravity, superconductivity, plasmas and I thought it sounded incredibly exciting. So I switched to physics. When I had to decide what to do my PhD on, I discovered that astrophysics was the most interesting branch of physics," explains Darach Watson.
Enthusiastic research
Suddenly, he got a chance to work with gamma-ray bursts explosions of massive stars, the most violent explosions in the universe since the Big Bang and he jumped at the opportunity. They managed to obtain the first high-quality X-ray spectrum of a gamma-ray burst and discovered the signature of a supernovae in that spectrum. He can still remember the walk home after the discovery, "I was so elated," he explains. It is this excitement that is still the driving force for his research in astrophysics. But history has not been forgotten.
"What I find peculiar is that my love for and interest in history has crept into my science. My research is related to the history of the universe on a large scale: how it was formed and evolved, how stars and galaxies develop over time and how we ended up where we are now," says Darach Watson thoughtfully and welcomes the recognition his research has now received with the Lundbeck Foundation Research Prize for Young Scientists.
###
For more information contact:
Darach Watson, Associate professor, Dark Cosmology Centre, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, +45 3532-5994, darach@dark-cosmology.dk
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Darach Watson receives Lundbeck Research Prize
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
31-Oct-2013
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Contact: Gertie Skaarup skaarup@nbi.dk 45-35-32-53-20 University of Copenhagen - Niels Bohr Institute
Darach Watson has been awarded the Lundbeck Foundation Research Prize for Young Scientists for his outstanding and innovative research in astrophysics, where he has developed a groundbreaking method for measuring distances in the cosmos using the light from distant quasars. The result was selected by Physics World as one of the year's most important breakthroughs in physics.
Darach Watson is from Ireland and received his PhD from University College in Dublin. He came to Denmark in 2003 and has been a core member of the Dark Cosmology Centre at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen since 2005. He is a leading expert in X-ray astronomy and has played a key role in the important developments in the research of supernovae (exploding massive stars) and gamma-ray bursts (violent outbursts of gamma radiation.
"His research style is original and inventive and by combining different techniques and ideas, he creates new knowledge," explains Jens Hjorth, professor and head of the Danish National Research Foundation's Dark Cosmology Centre at the Niels Bohr Institute.
New groundbreaking methods
Darach Watson has broken new ground in several areas. In 2006, he developed a new method to study the properties of cosmic dust. The method is now one of the most advanced for studying the detailed properties of cosmic dust in distant galaxies.
In 2011, he made his most important discovery to date. He developed a new method for measuring long distances in space using the light from quasars (active black holes). Again, it was ability to think differently, innovatively and originally that gave him the idea.
"During a lecture, as one of my colleagues was talking about quasars, I suddenly got the idea that if the brightness of the quasar was related to the size of the gas cloud surrounding it and if you could measure the size of this cloud, you could calculate the distance to the quasar," explains Darach Watson. The idea proved to be brilliant. He explains that quasars have many advantages. They are common throughout the universe and they are stable sources that do not fade and disappear after a short time like supernovae. They are also extremely luminous and can be observed at much greater distances than other sources for distance measurement. Most important, he points out, is that the measurements can be very accurate.
History Chemistry Physics - Astrophysics
But what was it exactly that led him to astrophysics?
"I always knew I wanted to do a PhD. My father was a professor of Irish and Dean of the Faculty of Celtic Studies and my mother had a PhD in history. I was interested in many topics and when I was in my last year of secondary school, I talked with my mother about what I should choose to study at university: chemistry or history. She said I could always become a professional research scientist and an amateur historian, but it was almost impossible to be an amateur scientist. I followed her advice and chose chemistry. Halfway through my studies, I discovered what really excited me were the physical processes; what the elements could do and what the physical mechanism was. At the same time, I looked at the curriculum for physics superfluidity, high-energy particle physics, relativity theory and gravity, superconductivity, plasmas and I thought it sounded incredibly exciting. So I switched to physics. When I had to decide what to do my PhD on, I discovered that astrophysics was the most interesting branch of physics," explains Darach Watson.
Enthusiastic research
Suddenly, he got a chance to work with gamma-ray bursts explosions of massive stars, the most violent explosions in the universe since the Big Bang and he jumped at the opportunity. They managed to obtain the first high-quality X-ray spectrum of a gamma-ray burst and discovered the signature of a supernovae in that spectrum. He can still remember the walk home after the discovery, "I was so elated," he explains. It is this excitement that is still the driving force for his research in astrophysics. But history has not been forgotten.
"What I find peculiar is that my love for and interest in history has crept into my science. My research is related to the history of the universe on a large scale: how it was formed and evolved, how stars and galaxies develop over time and how we ended up where we are now," says Darach Watson thoughtfully and welcomes the recognition his research has now received with the Lundbeck Foundation Research Prize for Young Scientists.
###
For more information contact:
Darach Watson, Associate professor, Dark Cosmology Centre, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, +45 3532-5994, darach@dark-cosmology.dk
[
| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: Gertie Skaarup skaarup@nbi.dk 45-35-32-53-20 University of Copenhagen - Niels Bohr Institute
Darach Watson has been awarded the Lundbeck Foundation Research Prize for Young Scientists for his outstanding and innovative research in astrophysics, where he has developed a groundbreaking method for measuring distances in the cosmos using the light from distant quasars. The result was selected by Physics World as one of the year's most important breakthroughs in physics.
Darach Watson is from Ireland and received his PhD from University College in Dublin. He came to Denmark in 2003 and has been a core member of the Dark Cosmology Centre at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen since 2005. He is a leading expert in X-ray astronomy and has played a key role in the important developments in the research of supernovae (exploding massive stars) and gamma-ray bursts (violent outbursts of gamma radiation.
"His research style is original and inventive and by combining different techniques and ideas, he creates new knowledge," explains Jens Hjorth, professor and head of the Danish National Research Foundation's Dark Cosmology Centre at the Niels Bohr Institute.
New groundbreaking methods
Darach Watson has broken new ground in several areas. In 2006, he developed a new method to study the properties of cosmic dust. The method is now one of the most advanced for studying the detailed properties of cosmic dust in distant galaxies.
In 2011, he made his most important discovery to date. He developed a new method for measuring long distances in space using the light from quasars (active black holes). Again, it was ability to think differently, innovatively and originally that gave him the idea.
"During a lecture, as one of my colleagues was talking about quasars, I suddenly got the idea that if the brightness of the quasar was related to the size of the gas cloud surrounding it and if you could measure the size of this cloud, you could calculate the distance to the quasar," explains Darach Watson. The idea proved to be brilliant. He explains that quasars have many advantages. They are common throughout the universe and they are stable sources that do not fade and disappear after a short time like supernovae. They are also extremely luminous and can be observed at much greater distances than other sources for distance measurement. Most important, he points out, is that the measurements can be very accurate.
History Chemistry Physics - Astrophysics
But what was it exactly that led him to astrophysics?
"I always knew I wanted to do a PhD. My father was a professor of Irish and Dean of the Faculty of Celtic Studies and my mother had a PhD in history. I was interested in many topics and when I was in my last year of secondary school, I talked with my mother about what I should choose to study at university: chemistry or history. She said I could always become a professional research scientist and an amateur historian, but it was almost impossible to be an amateur scientist. I followed her advice and chose chemistry. Halfway through my studies, I discovered what really excited me were the physical processes; what the elements could do and what the physical mechanism was. At the same time, I looked at the curriculum for physics superfluidity, high-energy particle physics, relativity theory and gravity, superconductivity, plasmas and I thought it sounded incredibly exciting. So I switched to physics. When I had to decide what to do my PhD on, I discovered that astrophysics was the most interesting branch of physics," explains Darach Watson.
Enthusiastic research
Suddenly, he got a chance to work with gamma-ray bursts explosions of massive stars, the most violent explosions in the universe since the Big Bang and he jumped at the opportunity. They managed to obtain the first high-quality X-ray spectrum of a gamma-ray burst and discovered the signature of a supernovae in that spectrum. He can still remember the walk home after the discovery, "I was so elated," he explains. It is this excitement that is still the driving force for his research in astrophysics. But history has not been forgotten.
"What I find peculiar is that my love for and interest in history has crept into my science. My research is related to the history of the universe on a large scale: how it was formed and evolved, how stars and galaxies develop over time and how we ended up where we are now," says Darach Watson thoughtfully and welcomes the recognition his research has now received with the Lundbeck Foundation Research Prize for Young Scientists.
###
For more information contact:
Darach Watson, Associate professor, Dark Cosmology Centre, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, +45 3532-5994, darach@dark-cosmology.dk
[
| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Darach Watson receives Lundbeck Research Prize
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
31-Oct-2013
[
| E-mail
]
Share
Contact: Gertie Skaarup skaarup@nbi.dk 45-35-32-53-20 University of Copenhagen - Niels Bohr Institute
Darach Watson has been awarded the Lundbeck Foundation Research Prize for Young Scientists for his outstanding and innovative research in astrophysics, where he has developed a groundbreaking method for measuring distances in the cosmos using the light from distant quasars. The result was selected by Physics World as one of the year's most important breakthroughs in physics.
Darach Watson is from Ireland and received his PhD from University College in Dublin. He came to Denmark in 2003 and has been a core member of the Dark Cosmology Centre at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen since 2005. He is a leading expert in X-ray astronomy and has played a key role in the important developments in the research of supernovae (exploding massive stars) and gamma-ray bursts (violent outbursts of gamma radiation.
"His research style is original and inventive and by combining different techniques and ideas, he creates new knowledge," explains Jens Hjorth, professor and head of the Danish National Research Foundation's Dark Cosmology Centre at the Niels Bohr Institute.
New groundbreaking methods
Darach Watson has broken new ground in several areas. In 2006, he developed a new method to study the properties of cosmic dust. The method is now one of the most advanced for studying the detailed properties of cosmic dust in distant galaxies.
In 2011, he made his most important discovery to date. He developed a new method for measuring long distances in space using the light from quasars (active black holes). Again, it was ability to think differently, innovatively and originally that gave him the idea.
"During a lecture, as one of my colleagues was talking about quasars, I suddenly got the idea that if the brightness of the quasar was related to the size of the gas cloud surrounding it and if you could measure the size of this cloud, you could calculate the distance to the quasar," explains Darach Watson. The idea proved to be brilliant. He explains that quasars have many advantages. They are common throughout the universe and they are stable sources that do not fade and disappear after a short time like supernovae. They are also extremely luminous and can be observed at much greater distances than other sources for distance measurement. Most important, he points out, is that the measurements can be very accurate.
History Chemistry Physics - Astrophysics
But what was it exactly that led him to astrophysics?
"I always knew I wanted to do a PhD. My father was a professor of Irish and Dean of the Faculty of Celtic Studies and my mother had a PhD in history. I was interested in many topics and when I was in my last year of secondary school, I talked with my mother about what I should choose to study at university: chemistry or history. She said I could always become a professional research scientist and an amateur historian, but it was almost impossible to be an amateur scientist. I followed her advice and chose chemistry. Halfway through my studies, I discovered what really excited me were the physical processes; what the elements could do and what the physical mechanism was. At the same time, I looked at the curriculum for physics superfluidity, high-energy particle physics, relativity theory and gravity, superconductivity, plasmas and I thought it sounded incredibly exciting. So I switched to physics. When I had to decide what to do my PhD on, I discovered that astrophysics was the most interesting branch of physics," explains Darach Watson.
Enthusiastic research
Suddenly, he got a chance to work with gamma-ray bursts explosions of massive stars, the most violent explosions in the universe since the Big Bang and he jumped at the opportunity. They managed to obtain the first high-quality X-ray spectrum of a gamma-ray burst and discovered the signature of a supernovae in that spectrum. He can still remember the walk home after the discovery, "I was so elated," he explains. It is this excitement that is still the driving force for his research in astrophysics. But history has not been forgotten.
"What I find peculiar is that my love for and interest in history has crept into my science. My research is related to the history of the universe on a large scale: how it was formed and evolved, how stars and galaxies develop over time and how we ended up where we are now," says Darach Watson thoughtfully and welcomes the recognition his research has now received with the Lundbeck Foundation Research Prize for Young Scientists.
###
For more information contact:
Darach Watson, Associate professor, Dark Cosmology Centre, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, +45 3532-5994, darach@dark-cosmology.dk
[
| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Texting has become such a normal way to communicate that it's hard to imagine that we ever used our voices to tell our better halves, "Hey, I got the milk."
But when it comes to a committed relationship, researchers say it's better not to lean too heavily on the texts for the tough stuff. Stick to "I <3 U" rather than "I M sooo disappointed in you!!"
Texting terms of endearment really seems to help. Affirmations like that are associated not just with a more stable and satisfying relationship, but with mitigating hurts and frustrations.
But texting more isn't always better. Women who texted their partner a lot considered the relationship more stable, while men who received those texts or texted a lot themselves said they were less satisfied with the relationship.
"That surprised us," says Lori Schade, a marriage and family therapist at Brigham Young University, who led the study. Sending more texts may be a sign of a failing relationship. That might sound counterintuitive, she says, but it may be a way for men to back out of the relationship, or at least stay out of the line of fire. "Maybe it was a way for then to check out or not have to show up, by using their cellphone instead."
Schade and her colleagues surveyed 276 young adults from 2009 to 2011. All were in committed relationships; more than half were either engaged or married. Almost all texted their partner multiple times a day.
That didn't surprise Schade. She sees couples in therapy, and has gotten used to having one person whip out their phone to prove their partner's awfulness. "They'll come in and want to show me the hurtful messages."
A lot of time those nasty texts are sent to get the partner's attention, Schade thinks. But it can backfire. "Face to face you can raise your voice," she tells Shots. "The way to do that with texting is to be more aggressive in the language. They do it quickly without a lot of thought. But there may be unintended consequences."
Indeed, real life has a lot going for it when it comes to negotiating the intricacies of a long-term relationship. In texting, people "tend to keep responding," Schade says. "They have time to think about it and stew about it and then respond again. It's almost harder to disconnect."
And texts don't fade with time. It's easy to create an archive of slights and scroll through them, reviving the hurt.
So moving the discussion offline can be a good strategy, Schade says, especially when tackling tough issues. "Just slowing down is good," she says. "You may need ways to say, 'This is getting too heated for me. I need to talk with you later about this in person.' "
Women were more likely than men to use texting to try to manage the relationship, whether to apologize, work out differences or make decisions, the study found. But that approach was associated with poorer relationship quality, too. Schade says that's probably another example of work best left done face to face.
The results, which were published online Wednesday in the Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy, are exploratory. They don't prove that the texting behavior caused relationship issues, but give a first glimpse. One other interesting finding: Couples almost never communicate with each other on Facebook.
Sending lots of love or lighthearted comments tended to buffer the negatives, the researchers found. That warm fuzzy glow can spread far beyond the tiny screen, too.
So for connubial bliss, go for an electronic update of an old saw: If you can't think of something nice to say, don't text it at all.
Every disaster has its moment of clarity. Physicist Richard Feynman dunks an O-ring into ice water and everyone understands instantly why the shuttle Challenger exploded. This week, the Obamacare O-ring froze for all the world to see: Hundreds of thousands of cancellation letters went out to people who had been assured a dozen times by the president that “If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan. Period.” The cancellations lay bare three pillars of Obamacare: (a) mendacity, (b) paternalism and (c) subterfuge.
FILE - In this Sept. 6, 2013 file photo, President Barack Obama walks with Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel toward a group photo outside of the Konstantin Palace in St. Petersburg. In geopolitics just as on the local playground, even best friends don't tell each other everything. And everybody's dying to know what the other guy knows. Revelations that the U.S. was monitoring the cellphone calls of up to 35 world leaders, including close allies, have brought into high relief the open-yet-often-unspoken secret _ and suggested the incredible reach of new-millennium technology. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
FILE - In this Sept. 6, 2013 file photo, President Barack Obama walks with Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel toward a group photo outside of the Konstantin Palace in St. Petersburg. In geopolitics just as on the local playground, even best friends don't tell each other everything. And everybody's dying to know what the other guy knows. Revelations that the U.S. was monitoring the cellphone calls of up to 35 world leaders, including close allies, have brought into high relief the open-yet-often-unspoken secret _ and suggested the incredible reach of new-millennium technology. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
FILE This Oct. 29, 2013 file photo shows Director of National Intelligence James Clapper pausing while testifying on Capitol Hill in Washington. In geopolitics just as on the local playground, even best friends don't tell each other everything. And everybody's dying to know what the other guy knows. Revelations that the U.S. was monitoring the cellphone calls of up to 35 world leaders, including close allies, have brought into high relief the open-yet-often-unspoken secret _ and suggested the incredible reach of new-millennium technology. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci, File)
This photo provided by The Guardian Newspaper in London shows Edward Snowden, who worked as a contract employee at the National Security Agency, on Sunday, June 9, 2013, in Hong Kong. In geopolitics just as on the local playground, even best friends don't tell each other everything. And everybody's dying to know what the other guy knows. Revelations that the U.S. was monitoring the cellphone calls of up to 35 world leaders, including close allies, have brought into high relief the open-yet-often-unspoken secret _ and suggested the incredible reach of new-millennium technology. (AP Photo/The Guardian, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras)
FILE - In this Friday, May 15, 1998 file photo, Jonathan Pollard speaks during an interview in a conference room at the Federal Correction Institution in Butner, N.C. In geopolitics just as on the local playground, even best friends don't tell each other everything. And everybody's dying to know what the other guy knows. Revelations that the U.S. was monitoring the cellphone calls of up to 35 world leaders, including close allies, have brought into high relief the open-yet-often-unspoken secret _ and suggested the incredible reach of new-millennium technology. (AP Photo/Karl DeBlaker, File)
In geopolitics, just as on the playground, even best friends don't tell each other everything. And everybody's dying to know what the other guy knows.
Revelations that the U.S. has been monitoring the cellphone calls of up to 35 world leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have brought into high relief the open-yet-often-unspoken secret that even close allies keep things from one another — and work every angle to find out what's being held back.
So it is that the Israelis recruited American naval analyst Jonathan Pollard to pass along U.S. secrets including satellite photos and data on Soviet weaponry in the 1980s. And the British were accused of spying on U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in the lead-up to the Iraq War. And the French, Germans, Japanese, Israelis and South Koreans have been accused of engaging in economic espionage against the United States.
But now the technology revealed by former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden has underscored the incredible new-millennium reach of the U.S. spy agency. And it is raising the question for some allies: Is this still OK?
National Intelligence Director James Clapper, for his part, testified this week that it is a "basic tenet" of the intelligence business to find out whether the public statements of world leaders jibe with what's being said behind closed doors.
What might the Americans have wanted to know from Merkel's private conversations, for example? Ripe topics could well include her thinking on European economic strategy and Germany's plans for talks with world powers about Iran's nuclear program.
There is both motive and opportunity driving the trust-but-verify dynamic in friend-on-friend espionage: Allies often have diverging interests, and the explosion of digital and wireless communication keeps creating new avenues for spying on one another. Further, shifting alliances mean that today's good friends may be on the outs sometime soon.
"It was not all that many years ago when we were bombing German citizens and dropping the atomic bomb on the Japanese," says Peter Earnest, a 35-year veteran of the CIA and now executive director of the International Spy Museum in Washington.
News that the U.S. has tapped foreign leaders' phones was an eye-opener to many — the White House claims that even President Barack Obama wasn't aware of the extent of the surveillance — and has prompted loud complaints from German, French and Spanish officials, among others.
It's all possible because "an explosion in different kinds of digital information tools makes it possible for intelligence agencies to vacuum up a vast quantity of data," says Charles Kupchan, a former Clinton administration official and now a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations. "When you add together the Internet, wireless communications, cellphones, satellites, drones and human intelligence, you have many, many sources of acquiring intelligence."
"The magnitude of the eavesdropping is what shocked us," former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said in a radio interview. "Let's be honest, we eavesdrop, too. Everyone is listening to everyone else. But we don't have the same means as the United States, which makes us jealous."
Protests aside, diplomats the world around know the gist of the game.
"I am persuaded that everyone knew everything or suspected everything," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said of the reports of U.S. monitoring.
And while prime ministers and lawmakers across Europe and Asia say they are outraged, Clapper told Congress that other countries' own spy agencies helped the NSA collect data on millions of phone calls as part of cooperative counterterror agreements.
Robert Eatinger, the CIA's senior deputy general counsel, told an American Bar Association conference on Thursday that European spy services have stayed quiet throughout the recent controversy because they also spy on the U.S.
"The services have an understanding," Eatinger said. "That's why there wasn't the hue and cry from them."
And another intelligence counsel says the White House can reasonably deny it knows everything about the U.S. spying that's going on.
"We don't reveal to the president or the intelligence committees all of the human sources we are recruiting. ... They understand what the programs are, and the president and chairs of the intelligence committees both knew we were seeking information about leadership intentions," said Robert Litt, general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. "They both saw reporting indicating what we were getting if not indicating the source."
Still, Claude Moraes, a British Labor Party politician and member of the European Union delegation that traveled to Washington this week for talks about U.S. surveillance, was troubled by the broad net being cast by U.S. intelligence.
"Friend-upon-friend spying is not something that is easily tolerable if it doesn't have a clear purpose," he said. "There needs to be some kind of justification. ... There is also a question of proportionality and scale."
Obama has promised a review of U.S. intelligence efforts in other countries, an idea that has attracted bipartisan support in Congress.
The United States already has a written intelligence-sharing agreement with Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand known as "Five Eyes," and France and Germany might be interested in a similar arrangement.
Paul Pillar, a professor at Georgetown University and former CIA official, worries that a backlash "runs the risk of restrictions leaving the United States more blind than it otherwise would have been" to overseas developments.
The effort to strike the right balance between surveillance and privacy is hardly new.
University of Notre Dame political science professor Michael Desch, an expert on international security and American foreign and defense policies, says the ambivalence is epitomized by Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson's famous line, "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail." Stimson, who served under President Herbert Hoover, shut down the State Department's cryptanalytic office in 1929.
"Leaks about NSA surveillance of even friendly countries such as Brazil, Mexico, and now France make clear that we no longer share Stimson's reticence on this score," Desch said. "While such revelations are a public relations embarrassment, they also reflect the reality that in this day in age, gentlemen do read each other's mail all of the time, even when they are allies."
In fact, a database maintained by the Defense Personnel Security Research Center covering Americans who committed espionage against the U.S. includes activity on behalf of a wide swath of neutral or allied countries since the late 1940s. U.S. citizens have been arrested for conducting espionage on behalf of South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Israel, the Netherlands, Greece, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Ghana, Liberia, South Africa, El Salvador and Ecuador, according to the database.
___
Associated Press Writers Deb Riechmann and Kimberly Dozier contributed to this report.
___
Follow Nancy Benac on Twitter at http://twitter.com/nbenac
Most kids go through a stage in which they're afraid of the dark. Any creaking floorboard, rustling shutter, or random bump in the night fill them with terror. Good! Here's why, and why we should maybe never grow out of it.
"It's interesting how much people long to fill in the gaps when someone in the public eye doesn't share their personal life. I understand their frustration," the 36-year-old actress shared. "I like how people will post pictures of me with other women that I adore, hugging on red carpets, and say, 'See?' Are we so uncomfortable with love between two people of the same gender that we immediately label it as sexual? But I've never been bothered by the lesbian rumor. There's nothing offensive about it, so there's no reason to be offended."
Washington is notoriously private about her personal life and secretly tied the knot with San Francisco 49ers cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha in late June. As Us exclusively reported on Wednesday, Oct. 30, the couple is expecting their first child together. "She's about four months along," a source told Us of Washington.
The Emmy nominee is a big supporter of marriage equality and says she's proud her ABC political thriller Scandal represents diversity.
"Something that brings me great joy is knowing what Scandal's audience looks like in terms of African-American households and knowing that so many African-American people and families are being introduced to our characters James and Cyrus," she said of a gay couple, Chief of Staff Cyrus Beene (Jeff Perry) and political journalist James Novak (Dan Bucatinsky) on the show. "It's really exciting that millions of viewers each week are living life with this amazing, complex couple, stepping into their gay marriage and adoption experience, which is such a vital storyline in our show."
As proud of the show as she is, the actress isn't afraid to poke fun at her character Olivia Pope. In promo clips for her Nov. 2 hosting gig on Saturday Night Live, the expectant star joked about the "scandalous" show.
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on ...
It doesn't hit theaters until Christmas Day, but Ron Burgundy is making sure you remember him this Halloween in a new "Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues" video.
In the highly-anticipated sequel, San Diego's top news team heads to the Big Apple to take New York's first 24-hour news channel by storm.
Beijing (AFP) - China's manufacturing activity expanded at its strongest pace in 18 months in October, the government announced Friday, another sign of increasing strength in the world's second-largest economy.
The official purchasing managers' index (PMI) advanced to 51.4 last month from 51.1 in September, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on its website.
The index -- which measures manufacturing activity in Chinese factories and workshops -- is a widely observed monitor of the country's economic health. A reading above 50 indicates expansion while anything below signals contraction.
China's economic growth in the third quarter of this year accelerated to 7.8 percent year-on-year, snapping two quarters of slowing expansion, according to official data released last month.
"China’s official PMI rose to 51.4 in October, surprising slightly on the upside, suggesting that the economy is still in an expansion mode," ANZ bank economists Liu Li-Gang and Zhou Hao said in a report after the release.
The announcement came just ahead of the scheduled release Friday by British bank HSBC of a closely watched private survey of PMI activity.
Its preliminary result last week showed that October PMI hit 50.9, its strongest pace in seven months and a significant improvement from September's 50.2. It was the highest since 51.6 in March.
CWRU researchers aim nanotechnology at micrometastases
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
31-Oct-2013
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Contact: Kevin Mayhood kevin.mayhood@case.edu 216-368-4442 Case Western Reserve University
To infiltrate and quash aggressive cancers that survive traditional therapy
CLEVELANDResearchers at Case Western Reserve University have received two grants totaling nearly $1.7 million to build nanoparticles that seek and destroy metastases too small to be detected with current technologies.
They are targeting aggressive cancers that persist through traditional chemotherapy and can form new tumors. The stealthy travel and growth of micrometastases is the hallmark of metastatic disease, the cause of most cancer deaths worldwide.
The group, led by Efstathios Karathanasis, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and radiology, will spend the next five years perfecting molecular coatings, called ligands, that enable nanochains injected into a patient's blood to home in on micrometastases. The National Cancer Institute awarded the group $1.6 million to pursue the work.
The Ohio Cancer Research Associates awarded the group another $60,000 to increase the efficiency and rapid dispersal of chemotherapy drugs the nanochains tote inside the metastases.
The grants will build on earlier work by Karathanasis, Mark Griswold, professor of radiology and director of MRI research at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, and Ruth Keri, professor of pharmacology at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and associate director of research at the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center. They and colleagues invented a nanochain that explodes a barrage of chemotherapy drugs inside a tumor.
"When a patient is diagnosed with cancer, he or she undergoes surgery to remove the primary tumor, then undergoes chemotherapy to kill any residual disease, including distant micrometastases," Karathanasis said.
"Chemotherapy drugs are very potent, but because they are randomly dispersed throughout the body in traditional chemotherapy, they aren't effective with the aggressive forms of cancer," he continued. "You have to give the patient so much of the drug that it would kill the patient before killing those micrometastases."
But delivering the killer drug only to micrometastases is a challenge. They are hidden among healthy cells in such small numbers they don't make a blip on today's imaging screens.
Contrary to traditional drugs, you can control how a nanoparticle travels in the bloodstream by changing its size and shape. "You can think of nanoparticles as a pile of leaves in the back yard," Karathanasis said. "When the wind blows, each leaf has a different trajectory because each has a different weight, size and shape. As engineers, we study how nanoparticles flow inside the body."
The group built a nanochain with a tail made of magnetized iron oxide links and a balloon-like sphere filled with a chemotherapy drug. The chains are designed to tumble out of the main flow in blood vessels, travel along the walls and latch onto integrins, the glue that binds newly forming micrometastasis onto the vessel wall.
When chains congregate inside tumors, researchers place a wire coil, called a solenoid, outside the animal models. Electricity passed through the solenoid creates a radiofrequency field, which causes the magnetic tails on the chains to vibrate, breaking open the chemical-carrying spheres and launching the chemotherapeutic drug deep into a metastasis.
In testing a mouse model of breast cancer metastasis, the chains killed 3000 times the number of cancerous cells as traditional chemotherapy, extended life longer and in some cases completely eradicated the disease, while limiting damage to healthy tissue.
Due to their random dispersal, negligible amounts of a typical conventional chemo drug can reach into a metastasis. In recent testing, a remarkable 6 percent of the nanochains injected in a mouse model congregated within a micrometastatic site of only a millimeter in size. The researchers want even better.
Using the federal grant, the researchers will develop nanochains with at least two ligands, which are molecular coatings designed to draw and link the chains to micrometastases.
The different ligands will seek different locations on cancerous cells, increasing the odds of finding and attacking the target.
Using the Ohio grant, the researchers will find the optimal size of the nanochains, tail and the payload of drugs to make them as efficient and speedy killers as possible. By including fluorescent materials in the nanochains, they will be able to see the chains slip from the blood stream, congregate in micrometastases and explode the drugs inside, and make improvements from there.
Other members of the research group include Vikas Gulani, assistant professor of radiology at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and director of MRI at UH Case Medical Center, Chris Flask, director of the Imaging Core Center in the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center and an assistant professor of radiology, and William Schiemann, an associate professor at the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center.
"Such work would not happen in other places", Karathanasis said. "This is truly interactive research with my lab, the Laboratory for Nanomedical Engineering, the Case Center for Imaging Research and the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center."
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CWRU researchers aim nanotechnology at micrometastases
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
31-Oct-2013
[
| E-mail
]
Share
Contact: Kevin Mayhood kevin.mayhood@case.edu 216-368-4442 Case Western Reserve University
To infiltrate and quash aggressive cancers that survive traditional therapy
CLEVELANDResearchers at Case Western Reserve University have received two grants totaling nearly $1.7 million to build nanoparticles that seek and destroy metastases too small to be detected with current technologies.
They are targeting aggressive cancers that persist through traditional chemotherapy and can form new tumors. The stealthy travel and growth of micrometastases is the hallmark of metastatic disease, the cause of most cancer deaths worldwide.
The group, led by Efstathios Karathanasis, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and radiology, will spend the next five years perfecting molecular coatings, called ligands, that enable nanochains injected into a patient's blood to home in on micrometastases. The National Cancer Institute awarded the group $1.6 million to pursue the work.
The Ohio Cancer Research Associates awarded the group another $60,000 to increase the efficiency and rapid dispersal of chemotherapy drugs the nanochains tote inside the metastases.
The grants will build on earlier work by Karathanasis, Mark Griswold, professor of radiology and director of MRI research at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, and Ruth Keri, professor of pharmacology at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and associate director of research at the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center. They and colleagues invented a nanochain that explodes a barrage of chemotherapy drugs inside a tumor.
"When a patient is diagnosed with cancer, he or she undergoes surgery to remove the primary tumor, then undergoes chemotherapy to kill any residual disease, including distant micrometastases," Karathanasis said.
"Chemotherapy drugs are very potent, but because they are randomly dispersed throughout the body in traditional chemotherapy, they aren't effective with the aggressive forms of cancer," he continued. "You have to give the patient so much of the drug that it would kill the patient before killing those micrometastases."
But delivering the killer drug only to micrometastases is a challenge. They are hidden among healthy cells in such small numbers they don't make a blip on today's imaging screens.
Contrary to traditional drugs, you can control how a nanoparticle travels in the bloodstream by changing its size and shape. "You can think of nanoparticles as a pile of leaves in the back yard," Karathanasis said. "When the wind blows, each leaf has a different trajectory because each has a different weight, size and shape. As engineers, we study how nanoparticles flow inside the body."
The group built a nanochain with a tail made of magnetized iron oxide links and a balloon-like sphere filled with a chemotherapy drug. The chains are designed to tumble out of the main flow in blood vessels, travel along the walls and latch onto integrins, the glue that binds newly forming micrometastasis onto the vessel wall.
When chains congregate inside tumors, researchers place a wire coil, called a solenoid, outside the animal models. Electricity passed through the solenoid creates a radiofrequency field, which causes the magnetic tails on the chains to vibrate, breaking open the chemical-carrying spheres and launching the chemotherapeutic drug deep into a metastasis.
In testing a mouse model of breast cancer metastasis, the chains killed 3000 times the number of cancerous cells as traditional chemotherapy, extended life longer and in some cases completely eradicated the disease, while limiting damage to healthy tissue.
Due to their random dispersal, negligible amounts of a typical conventional chemo drug can reach into a metastasis. In recent testing, a remarkable 6 percent of the nanochains injected in a mouse model congregated within a micrometastatic site of only a millimeter in size. The researchers want even better.
Using the federal grant, the researchers will develop nanochains with at least two ligands, which are molecular coatings designed to draw and link the chains to micrometastases.
The different ligands will seek different locations on cancerous cells, increasing the odds of finding and attacking the target.
Using the Ohio grant, the researchers will find the optimal size of the nanochains, tail and the payload of drugs to make them as efficient and speedy killers as possible. By including fluorescent materials in the nanochains, they will be able to see the chains slip from the blood stream, congregate in micrometastases and explode the drugs inside, and make improvements from there.
Other members of the research group include Vikas Gulani, assistant professor of radiology at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and director of MRI at UH Case Medical Center, Chris Flask, director of the Imaging Core Center in the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center and an assistant professor of radiology, and William Schiemann, an associate professor at the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center.
"Such work would not happen in other places", Karathanasis said. "This is truly interactive research with my lab, the Laboratory for Nanomedical Engineering, the Case Center for Imaging Research and the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center."
###
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on ...