Fiery balloon accident kills 19 tourists in Egypt

LUXOR, Egypt (AP) ? The terror lasted less than two minutes: Smoke poured from a hot air balloon carrying sightseers on a sunrise flight over the ancient city of Luxor, it burst in a flash of flame and then plummeted about 1,000 feet to earth. A farmer watched helplessly as tourists trying to escape the blazing gondola leaped to their deaths.

Nineteen people were killed Tuesday in what appeared to be the deadliest hot air ballooning accident on record. A British tourist and the Egyptian pilot, who was badly burned, were the sole survivors.

The tragedy raised worries of another blow to the nation's vital tourism industry, decimated by two years of unrest since the 2011 revolution that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak. The southern city of Luxor has been hit hard, with vacant hotel rooms and empty cruise ships.

It also prompted accusations that authorities have let safety standards decline amid the political turmoil and infighting, although civil aviation officials said the balloon had been inspected recently and that the pilot may have been to blame, jumping out rather than stopping the fire.

Authorities suspended hot air balloon flights, a popular tourist attraction here, while investigators determined the cause.

The balloon was carrying 20 tourists ? from France, Britain, Belgium, Japan and Hong Kong ? and an Egyptian pilot on a flight over Luxor, 510 kilometers (320 miles) south of Cairo, officials said. The flights provide spectacular views of the ancient Karnak and Luxor temples and the Valley of the Kings, the burial ground of Tutankhamun and other pharaohs.

According to initial indications, the balloon was in the process of landing after 7 a.m. when a cable got caught around a helium tube and a fire erupted, according to an investigator with the state prosecutor's office.

The balloon then ascended rapidly, the investigator said. The fire detonated a gas canister and the balloon plunged about 300 meters (1,000 feet) to the ground, crashing in a sugar cane field outside al-Dhabaa village just west of Luxor, a security official said.

Both the investigator and the security official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

"I saw tourists catching fire and they were jumping from the balloon," said Hassan Abdel-Rasoul, a farmer in al-Dhabaa. "They were trying to flee the fire but it was on their bodies."

One of those on fire was a visibly pregnant woman, he said.

Amateur video taken from another balloon and shown on Al-Jazeera Mubasher television showed the balloon's final moments.

Smoke is seen rising for several seconds from the gondola, silhouetted against the risen sun. The balloon itself catches fire with a flash, and in an instant, it bursts and falls as a fireball to the ground, trailing smoke. Egyptians on the balloon filming the scene can be heard crying and gasping in horror at the sight.

The bodies of the tourists were scattered across the field around the remnants of the balloon, as rescue officials collected the remains.

The crash immediately killed 18, according to Luxor Gov. Ezzat Saad. Two Britons and the pilot were taken to a hospital, but one of the Britons died of his injuries soon after.

Among the dead were nine tourists from Hong Kong, four Japanese, two French, a Belgian and a second Briton, according to Egyptian officials, although there were conflicting reports on the nationality of the 19th victim.

In Tokyo, Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the Japanese victims were two couples in their 60s from Tokyo, but declined to give their names.

The toll surpasses what was believed by ballooning experts to be the deadliest accident in the sport's 200-year history: In 1989, 13 people were killed when their hot air balloon collided with another over the Australian outback near the town of Alice Springs.

Luxor has seen crashes in the past. In 2009, 16 tourists were injured when their balloon struck a cellphone transmission tower. A year earlier, seven tourists were injured in a similar crash.

After the 2009 accident, Egypt suspended hot air balloon flights for several months and tightened safety standards. Pilots were given more training, and a landing spot was designated for the balloons.

The head of the Civil Aviation Administration, Mohammed Sherif, told The Associated Press at the scene of the crash that the pilot had just renewed his license in January.

"Each time we renew the license, we check up the balloon and we test the pilot," Sherif said.

An aviation official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk to reporters, blamed the pilot, saying initial results of the investigation showed he jumped out when the fire began, instead of shutting off valves that would have prevented the gas canister from exploding.

But the crash raised accusations that standards have fallen. Mohammed Osman, head of the Luxor's Tourism Chamber, blamed civil aviation authorities, who are in charge of licensing and inspecting balloons, accusing them of negligence.

"I don't want to blame the revolution for everything, but the laxness started with the revolution," he said. "These people are not doing their job, they are not checking the balloons and they just issue the licenses without inspection."

The Civil Aviation Ministry, like much of the government administration, has seen political disputes since President Mohammed Morsi came to power in June as Egypt's first freely elected leader.

The ministry was long dominated by military officers or former officers, some of whom have resented control by a civilian president, particularly one from the Muslim Brotherhood. In other ministries, observers say Brotherhood members have been appointed, or included as volunteers, in many posts.

One civil aviation ministry official told the AP that standards have fallen since civilians were brought in to some middle-ranking positions. The official said inspections have become more lax, taking place once a month instead of weekly. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in order to talk about the industry.

The crash added to the woes for residents of Luxor. Scared off by the turmoil and tenuous security following the uprising, the number of tourists coming to Egypt fell to 9.8 million in 2011 from 14.7 million the year before, and revenues plunged 30 percent to $8.8 billion. Last year saw a slight rise, but most tourists go to the beach resorts of the Red Sea, staying away from Nile Valley sites like Luxor.

That has been devastating for the local economy, with some government estimates saying that 75 percent of the labor force is connected to tourism. Luxor's hotels are about 25 percent full in what is supposed to be the peak of the winter season.

Poverty swelled at the country's fastest rate in Luxor. In 2011, 39 percent of its population lived on less than $1 a day, compared with 18 percent in 2009, according to government figures.

Mohammed Haggag, owner of Viking, a company that runs seven balloons in Luxor, said the flight shutdown meant that the whole industry was suffering for one pilot's mistake.

"Why the mass punishment? Do you stop all flights when you have a plane crash?" he said. "You will cut the livelihoods for nearly 3,000 human beings who live on this kind of tourism."

Khaled Wanis, the owner of a shop selling tourist trinkets near Luxor Temple, said the past two years have been the worst he has ever seen.

"I can spend a week or 10 days before a customer knocks my door," he said. "Since I heard the news today, I felt ache in my heart.

"The general feeling is that Egypt is hard to visit and this is not a safe place to visit. The accident will only add to this feeling," Wanis said. "We are begging for tourists. Now, they get killed, so what do you expect?"

___

Associated Press writers Haggag Salama in Luxor, Kelvin Chan in Hong Kong, Jill Lawless in London, Angela Charlton in Paris, and Malcolm Foster in Tokyo contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fiery-balloon-accident-kills-19-tourists-egypt-211739533.html

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Pope legacy: Teacher who returned to church roots

VATICAN CITY (AP) ? On Monday, April 4, 2005, a priest walked up to the Renaissance palazzo housing the Vatican's doctrine department and asked the doorman to call the official in charge: It was the first day of business after Pope John Paul II had died, and the cleric wanted to get back to work.

The office's No. 2, Archbishop Angelo Amato, answered the phone and was stunned. This was no ordinary priest. It was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, his boss, who under the Vatican's arcane rules had technically lost his job when John Paul died.

"It tells me of the great humility of the man, the great sense of duty, but also the great awareness that we are here to do a job," said Bishop Charles Scicluna, who worked with Ratzinger before he became Pope Benedict XVI, inside the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

In resigning, Scicluna said, Benedict is showing the same sense of humility, duty and service as he did after the Catholic Church lost its last pope.

"He has done his job."

___

When Benedict flies off into retirement by helicopter on Thursday, he will leave behind a church in crisis ? one beset by sex scandal, internal divisions and dwindling numbers.

But the 85-year-old pope can count on a solid legacy: While his very resignation was his most significant act, Benedict ? in a quieter way ? also set the church back on a conservative, tradition-minded path.

He was guided by the firm conviction that many of the ills afflicting the church could be traced to a misreading of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

He insisted that the 1962-65 meetings that brought the church into the modern era were not a radical break from the past, as portrayed by many liberals, but rather a continuation of the best traditions of the 2,000-year-old church.

Benedict was the teacher pope, a theology professor who turned his Wednesday general audiences into master classes about the Catholic faith and the history, saints and sinners that contributed to it.

In his teachings, he sought to boil Christianity down to its essential core. He didn't produce volumes of encyclicals like his predecessor, just three: on charity, hope and love. (He penned a fourth, on faith, but retired before finishing it.)

Considered by many to be the greatest living theologian, he authored more than 65 books, stretching from the classic "Introduction to Christianity" in 1968 to the final installment of his triptych on "Jesus of Nazareth" last year ? considered by some to be his most important contribution to the church. In between he produced the "Catechism of the Catholic Church" ? essentially a how-to guide to being a Catholic.

Benedict spent the bulk of his early career in the classroom, as a student and then professor of dogma and fundamental theology at universities in Bonn, Muenster, Tuebingen and Regensburg, Germany.

"His classrooms were crowded," recalled the Rev. Joseph Fessio, a theology student of Ratzinger's at the University of Regensburg from 1972-74, and now the English-language publisher of his books.

"I don't recall him having notes," Fessio said. "He would stand at the front of the class, and he wasn't looking at you, not with eye contact, but he was looking over you, almost meditating."

It's a style that he's kept for 40 years.

"If you hear him give a sermon, he's speaking not from notes, but you can write it down and print it," Fessio said. "Every comma is there. Every pause."

___

Benedict never wanted to be pope and he didn't take easily to the rigors of the job. Elected April 19, 2005, after one of the shortest conclaves in history, Benedict was, at 78, the oldest pope elected in 275 years and the first German in nearly a millennium.

At first he was stiff.

Giovanni Maria Vian, editor of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, recalled that in the early days Benedict used to greet crowds with an awkward victory gesture "as if he were an athlete."

"At some point someone told him that wasn't a very papal gesture," Vian said. Benedict changed course, opting for an open-armed embrace or an almost effeminate twinkling of his fingers on an outstretched hand as a way of connecting with the crowd.

"No one is born a pope," Vian said. "You have to learn to be a pope."

And slowly Benedict learned.

Crowds accustomed to a quarter-century of superstar John Paul II, grew to embrace the soft-spoken, scholarly Benedict, who had an uncanny knack for being able to absorb different points of view and pull them together in a coherent whole.

He traveled, though less extensively than John Paul, and presided over Masses that were heavy on Latin, Gregorian chant and the silk brocaded vestments of his pre-Vatican II predecessors.

Benedict seemed genuinely surprised by the warm reception he received ? as well as the harsh criticism when things went wrong, as they did when he lifted the excommunication of a bishop who turned out to be a Holocaust-denier.

For a theologian who for decades had worked toward reconciliation between Catholics and Jews, the outrage was fierce and painful.

Benedict was also burdened by what he called the "filth" of the church: the sins and crimes of its priests.

As prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Benedict saw first-hand the scope of sex abuse as early as the 1980s, when he tried unsuccessfully to persuade the Vatican legal department to let him remove abusive priests quickly.

But it was 2001 before he finally stepped in, ordering all abuse cases sent to his office for review.

"We used to discuss the cases on Fridays; he used to call it the Friday penance," recalled Scicluna, who was Ratzinger's sex crimes prosecutor from 2002-2012.

Still, to this day, Benedict hasn't sanctioned a single bishop for covering up abuse.

"Unfortunately, Pope Benedict's legacy in the abuse crisis is one of mistaken emphases, missed opportunities, and gestures at the margin, rather than changes at the center," said Terrence McKiernan of BishopAccountability.org, an online resource of abuse documentation.

He praised Benedict for meeting with victims, and acknowledged the strides the Vatican made under his leadership. But, he said Benedict ignored the problem for too long, "prioritizing concerns about dissent over the massive evidence of abuse that was pouring into his office."

"He acted as no other pope has done when pressed or forced, but his papacy has been reactive on this central issue," McKiernan said in an email.

Benedict also gets poor grades from liberal Catholics, who felt abandoned by a pope who seemed to roll back the clock on the modernizing reforms of Vatican II and launched a crackdown on Vatican nuns, deemed to have strayed too far from his doctrinal orthodoxy.

Some priests are now living in open rebellion with church teaching, calling for a rethink on everything from homosexuality to women's ordination to priestly celibacy.

"As Roman Catholics worldwide prepare for the conclave, we are reminded that the current system remains an 'old boys club' and does not allow for women's voices to participate in the decision of the next leader of our church," said Erin Saiz Hanna, head of the Women's Ordination Conference, a group that ordains women in defiance of church teaching.

The group plans to raise pink smoke during the conclave "as a prayerful reminder of the voices of the church that go unheard."

___

But Benedict won't be around at the Vatican to see it. His work is done. "Mission Accomplished," Vian said.

And as the pope told 150,000 people in his final speech as pope: "To love the church is to have the courage to make difficult, painful choices, always keeping in mind the good of the church, not oneself."

___

Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pope-legacy-teacher-returned-church-roots-191501542.html

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Afraid of Negotiating? Just Consider It Expected of You

Many of us shy away from negotiating, even though not negotiating could cost you thousands of dollars on your salary, next car, or other big-ticket item. To feel more comfortable and confident negotiating, consider it expected of you.

The DailyWorth financial blog notes that many companies significantly mark up their items just so there's room to negotiate. These include furniture stores (80% or more mark up) and jewelry stores (as much as 200% mark up). Even nursing homes are willing to compromise on price. While not every store or service will be open to negotiating, these examples suggest that you shouldn't fear looking like a tightwad if you try to bargain.

The article also cites a recent study that showed when salary is described as negotiable, job applicants were more likely to pursue salary discussions. (This was true even for women, who typically don't negotiate salary as much as men do.)

So if you're nervous about negotiating something, just think of it as something you're supposed to do. For tips on getting started, see the source article below or our previous negotiating tips.

9 Tricks to Negotiate Anything | DailyWorth

Photo by Nizzam (Shutterstock)

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/s6aZBwdSJRc/afraid-of-negotiating-just-consider-it-expected-of-you

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How Computers Can Learn: For Starters, Chuck the Silicon

Just how stupid is your computer? The short answer is that it?s really, really stupid. The longer answer is that it?s stupider than a slime mold. The protoplasmic microbe known as the Physarum polycepharum can move from place to place by what?s known as shuttle streaming, which is a very fancy way of saying, well, oozing ? and one of the places it can ooze with surprising ease is through a maze. Put a food source at the beginning and end of a microscopic maze and, after eight hours of trial and error, the organism can change its shape so its front and back ends can both reach the goodies ? and by the shortest route possible too. In its own primitive way, through mindless chemical signals that respond only to the presence of nutrient, the slime mold learns ? something your computer will never, ever do.

Learning has always been what separates the nimble carbon-based information processing system from the rigid ? if powerful ? silicon one and has made the long-dreamed-of concept of artificial intelligence so elusive. The weakness of computer intelligence is also its central strength: its binary intelligence. No matter how big or powerful the system, all information is stored as nothing more than a series of on-off signals on microtransistors. There?s no high-charge, low-charge, sort of off, sort of on ? a universe of nuance that?s forever lost on the machine.

This is in sharp contrast to the way the synapses behave in the human or animal brain. Each neuron is synaptically connected to thousands of others around it, and the signals that run through them can vary in unlimited ways. They can be sudden and powerful (the house-shaking bam! of the first clap of thunder you hear as a baby) or they can be subtle and repetitive (the signature footfalls of the adults outside your bedroom that you must hear again and again before you distinguish mom?s from dad?s from the sitter?s). We learn instantly or in tiny increments, indelibly or forgettably, and all of this is encoded by electrochemical signals that run through our synaptic networks in an infinite variety of strengths and directions, changing the brain in the process ? which is what we mean by learning in the first place.

(MORE: Why Your Smartphone Will Be Your Next PC)

But the computer?s woeful lack of learning skills might be slowly changing, if, as engineers hope, the transistor can be replaced by what is known as the memristor ? or memory resistor. The concept of a memristor ? a logic gate that works like a human neuron ? has been around for decades, but as a new paper in the Journal of Physics, by physicist Andy Thomas of Germany?s Bielefeld University, points out, we might actually be getting close to putting theory into practice.

Last year, Thomas and his colleagues developed a memristor just to satisfy themselves that the thing could, in its primitive way, behave like a neuron in the brain. Like all memristors, it consisted of a charge-resistant nanomaterial sandwiched between two electrodes ? and that was pretty much it. But there?s magic in that resistance.

While traditional computers can do things with astonishing speed, every time they repeat the same task is like the first time. That?s because when transistors are done with the task, their on-off, binary circuits are, essentially, wiped clean. A memristor does things differently. When a current flows through it in one direction, it increases its resistance to the charge; a current flowing the other way causes resistance to decrease. And when the current goes off, the last level of resistance is preserved. The memristor, essentially, remembers that final charge.

(MORE: Lessons Learned From the New York Times-Tesla Motors Dustup)

?A memristor can store information more precisely,? Thomas said in a press release. ?[It delivers] the basis for the gradual learning and forgetting of an artificial brain.?

The new paper does not so much break new ground in engineering ? the memristor Thomas and his colleagues have this year is the same as the one last year ? but it does explain the audacious claim that a web of the things could eventually operate like a brain. For starters, there?s a flexibility that allows memristors to learn in different ways. A charge of a particular intensity for a particular time will produce a particular level of resistance ? and a charge of half the resistance for twice the time will produce the same level. This is a very brain-like way to operate. You can study distractedly for four hours to get ready for tomorrow?s test, or you can concentrate twice as hard and need just two hours to learn the same material.

A network of interconnected memristors can practice localized learning as well, which also mimics the brain. Every nerve cell in every lobe of your brain might ultimately be connected to every other one, if only via very circuitous routes, but that doesn?t mean that the whole massive network lights up when a charge goes through a single area. One set of circuits can have you humming a tune while other circuits are letting you draw a picture or work in the garden or do nothing at all. This kind of so-called input-specifity, Thomas reports, has also been observed in memristor systems, with only target pathways activated while adjacent ones remain still.

(MORE: North Korea to Allow Mobile Internet to Foreigners)

What?s more, memristors have the power to ignore, allowing current to pass only when a certain voltage threshold is achieved and blocking it if the level falls too low. That?s the key to the selective attention that allows you to read or think or watch a movie and either not notice or soon tune out distracting thoughts or sounds or smells round you.

Finally, memristors are energy efficient. A big computer brain with lots and lots of chips requires lots and lots of power ? since every transistor on every chip may eventually require a charge. But when the whole point of your system is to resist a charge, you run small and cool instead of big and hot. ?The need for less power is particularly obvious,? writes Thomas, ?if we compare the performance of the brain of even an invertebrate with a CPU and contrast power consumption.?

Silicon computers aren?t going anywhere soon ? or maybe even ever. The fact is, they do steam-shovel work like data processing and complex calculations infinitely better and faster than humans do. The subtler stuff ? the learning and creating and even imagining ? is so far limited to us. But it?s that so-far part that might be the key.

(MORE: China?s Red Hackers: The Tale of One Patriotic Cyberwarrior)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/computers-learn-starters-chuck-silicon-130053836.html

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NATO, European governments, hit by "MiniDuke" cyber attack

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Hackers targeted dozens of computer systems at government agencies across Europe through a flaw in Adobe Systems Inc's software, security researchers said on Wednesday, while NATO said it too had been attacked.

The alliance said its systems had not been compromised, although it was sharing the details of the attack with NATO member states and remained vigilant. Security experts say governments and organizations such as NATO are attacked on a daily basis - although the sophistication varies wildly.

These particular attacks appeared both widespread and innovative, the private computer security firms announcing the discovery said, with one expert saying he believed a nation-state might be responsible.

Russia's Kaspersky Lab and Hungary's Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security, or CrySyS, said the targets of the campaign included government computers in the Czech Republic, Ireland, Portugal and Romania.

They also said a think tank, a research institute and a healthcare provider in the United States, a prominent research institute in Hungary and other entities in Belgium and Ukraine were among those targeted by the malicious software, which they have dubbed "MiniDuke".

The researchers suspect MiniDuke was designed for espionage, but were still trying to figure out the attack's ultimate goal.

"This is a unique, fresh and very different type of attack," said Kurt Baumgartner, a senior security researcher with Kaspersky Lab. "The technical indicators show this is a new type of threat actor that hasn't been reported on before."

He said he would not speculate on who the hackers might be.

The malware exploited a recently identified security flaw in Adobe's software. Adobe said a software patch issued last week should protect users from "MiniDuke" providing they downloaded it.

Boldizs?r Bencs?th, a cyber security expert who runs the malware research team at CrySyS, told Reuters that he had reported the incident to NATO, although it was not clear if that was what first alerted the alliance.

Bencs?th said he believed a nation-state was behind the attack because of the level of sophistication and the identity of the targets, adding that it was difficult to identify which country was involved.

Exactly how serious the attacks were was not immediately clear, nor who exactly the targets were or at what level European governments were alerted.

The Czech counterintelligence agency BIS said they were not aware of any massive hacking attacks on Czech institutions from abroad recently. The Czech National Security Bureau, responsible for government data, was not immediately available for comment. Neither were officials from other states said to be affected.

A NATO official in Brussels had earlier said the alliance was not directly hit, but he said later that he had been incorrect. He gave no further details.

The researchers, who declined to further elaborate on the targets' identities, released their findings as more than 20,000 security professionals gathered in San Francisco for the annual RSA conference.

USING ADOBE, TWITTER, GOOGLE

MiniDuke attacked by exploiting recently discovered security bugs in Adobe's Reader and Acrobat software, according to the researchers. The attackers sent their targets PDF documents tainted with malware, an approach that hackers have long used to infect personal computers.

The bugs were first identified two weeks ago by Silicon Valley security firm FireEye. The firm reported that hackers were infecting machines by circulating PDFs tainted with malicious software.

The MiniDuke operators used an unusual approach to communicate with infected machines, according to the researchers. The virus was programmed to search for Tweets from specific Twitter accounts that contained instructions for controlling those personal computers. In cases where they could not access those Tweets, the virus ran Google searches to receive its marching orders.

Officials with Twitter and Google could not immediately be reached.

Bencs?th said he believed the attackers installed "back doors" at dozens of organizations that would enable them to view information on those systems, then siphon off data they found interesting.

He said researchers had yet to uncover evidence that the operation had moved to the stage where operators had begun to exfiltrate data from their victims.

Privately, many Western government and private sector computer experts say China is the clear leader when it comes to state-sponsored cyber attacks to steal information - although they rarely say so publicly and Beijing angrily denies it.

According to cybersecurity expert Alexander Klimburg at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs, however, the closest attack to this in style was a Trojan dubbed "TinBa" identified two months ago and used for banking fraud attacks. That was suspected to have been built by Russian hackers, he said, talking down the prospect of state involvement.

"There are some interesting aspects to the attacks," said Klimburg, pointing to the use of Twitter. "(But) most of the attack does not seem that new at all. Some of the... 'tricks', such as using pictures to hide data, are more reminiscent of proficient students rather than government agencies."

(Additional reporting by Peter Apps in London, Jan Lopatka in Prague and Adrian Croft in Brussels; Editing by Jeremy Laurence, Leslie Gevirtz and Mohammad Zargham)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hackers-target-european-governments-via-adobe-bug-researchers-141356498--sector.html

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At more colleges, classes on genetics get personal

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) ? Bakir Hajdarevic didn't have to study for the most important test in a class last fall. He just had to spit ? a lot.

The 19-year-old freshman at the University of Iowa took an honors seminar on personal genetics in which students had the option of sending saliva samples so a testing company could use DNA to unlock some of their most personal health and family secrets. The results would tell them how likely they were to get some forms of cancer, whether they were carriers for genetic diseases, where their ancestors came from, and a trove of other information.

The class, taught at Iowa for the first time, is part of a growing movement in higher education to tackle the rapidly advancing field of personal genetics, which is revolutionizing medicine and raising difficult ethical and privacy questions. The classes are forcing students to decide whether it is better to be ignorant or informed about possible health problems ? a decision more Americans will confront as the price of genetic testing plummets and it becomes more popular.

Hajdarevic said he was eager to "find out about all the little mysteries" lurking in his DNA. Sure he was nervous that he might get bad news about cancer risks. But he said the curiosity to learn about himself ? and whether he needed to take steps to improve his health ? outweighed those concerns.

And so, one day last fall, he found himself in his dorm room struggling to spit into a test tube that he would mail to 23andMe, the Mountain View, Calif., testing company.

"It was like 10 minutes of spitting, literally," he recalled, laughing. "I ran out of spit really quickly. I was spitting for like 15 seconds and then I'd run out of juice."

Such episodes have become more common as similar classes have popped up on college campuses over the past three years with backing from 23andMe, which tests for about one million genetic variants possibly linked to tens of thousands of conditions and traits. The company announced in December it had raised $50 million from investors, and was cutting its price for its personal genotype testing from $299 to $99.

23andMe has offered universities discounts on the testing for the classes, along with course materials, and has partnered with dozens of universities and high schools. Stanford University, University of Illinois, the University of Texas and Duke University are some of the schools featuring courses on personal genetics this year, according to its website.

Some of the classes are geared toward medical, nursing and pharmacy students whose careers could be shaped by genetics, while others are for undergraduates hoping to learn more about a field often noted in popular culture. Most of the courses are electives, and students can opt out of the testing if they're uncomfortable. For students whose DNA is tested, the knowledge they glean is intensely personal and wide-ranging, from whether they are a carrier for cystic fibrosis to whether they are likely to be good sprinters.

This is a generation that grew up sharing details of their lives on Facebook, and these students said they were eager to know more about themselves.

"I thought the coolest thing about the whole class was that you would be able to test your own genetics to find out things about yourself. That's what drew me in," said University of Iowa freshman Morgan Weis, who plans a career in nursing. When her results came back, "I told my friends, 'Come look at this, it's so cool'. I was pretty excited about it."

This semester, Stanford professor Stuart Kim is teaching a class for medical students and graduate students in genetics and computer science for a fourth time. He says his students will never forget the class when they learn whether they are sensitive to the blood-thinner Warfarin; that knowledge could be critical if they ever suffer a stroke, because too large or small a dose could kill them. But he dreads the day when testing informs a student: That man who raised you? He's not your biological father.

"That will happen one of these days," he said.

He said 90 percent of the students have opted to test their own DNA rather than a random person's, and a class survey found that students who did so retained more information.

University of Iowa professor Jeff Murray has been teaching human genetics for 25 years, and developed last fall's class after reading about similar ones elsewhere. He talked through the pros and cons of testing with students, and spent two class periods examining 23andMe's consent form. Murray encouraged students to consult with their parents, through their consent was not required ? students were all 18 or older. Only a few opted out of the testing after they or their parents raised concerns.

"Some people just didn't want to know if they are going to get breast cancer or Alzheimer's," said one of Murray's students, Alexis Boothe, 18. "Personally, I wanted to know."

She said she was not surprised when she learned she's seven times more likely than the average person to develop Crohn's disease, a bowel disorder, since it runs in her family. But now she said she can make sure not to smoke and watch her stress, two triggers. Boothe said she was amused when she learned that she shares northern European ancestors with the singer Jimmy Buffett, and when a third cousin she doesn't know sent her a message through the company.

For Hajdarevic, one surprising result was that he may be lactose intolerant. Although he's eaten dairy without issue his whole life, he can now monitor for symptoms that could develop later. He also learned he's a carrier for the mild form of a rare genetic disease, Alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency.

But overall, he says, he was relieved.

"I was kind of scared going in, like, 'Oh my God, I might have a high risk factor for some kind of cancer'," he said. "But knock on wood, according to the test, I don't really have much to worry about."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/more-colleges-classes-genetics-personal-083634243.html

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Clever battery completes stretchable electronics package: Can stretch, twist and bend -- and return to normal shape

Feb. 26, 2013 ? Northwestern University's Yonggang Huang and the University of Illinois' John A. Rogers are the first to demonstrate a stretchable lithium-ion battery -- a flexible device capable of powering their innovative stretchable electronics.

No longer needing to be connected by a cord to an electrical outlet, the stretchable electronic devices now could be used anywhere, including inside the human body. The implantable electronics could monitor anything from brain waves to heart activity, succeeding where flat, rigid batteries would fail.

Huang and Rogers have demonstrated a battery that continues to work -- powering a commercial light-emitting diode (LED) -- even when stretched, folded, twisted and mounted on a human elbow. The battery can work for eight to nine hours before it needs recharging, which can be done wirelessly.

The new battery enables true integration of electronics and power into a small, stretchable package. Details will be published Feb. 26 by the online journal Nature Communications.

"We start with a lot of battery components side by side in a very small space, and we connect them with tightly packed, long wavy lines," said Huang, a corresponding author of the paper. "These wires provide the flexibility. When we stretch the battery, the wavy interconnecting lines unfurl, much like yarn unspooling. And we can stretch the device a great deal and still have a working battery."

Huang led the portion of the research focused on theory, design and modeling. He is the Joseph Cummings Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.

The power and voltage of the stretchable battery are similar to a conventional lithium-ion battery of the same size, but the flexible battery can stretch up to 300 percent of its original size and still function.

Rogers, also a corresponding author of the paper, led the group that worked on the experimental and fabrication work of the stretchable battery. He is the Swanlund Chair at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Huang and Rogers have been working together for the last six years on stretchable electronics, and designing a cordless power supply has been a major challenge. Now they have solved the problem with their clever "space filling technique," which delivers a small, high-powered battery.

For their stretchable electronic circuits, the two developed "pop-up" technology that allows circuits to bend, stretch and twist. They created an array of tiny circuit elements connected by metal wire "pop-up bridges." When the array is stretched, the wires -- not the rigid circuits -- pop up.

This approach works for circuits but not for a stretchable battery. A lot of space is needed in between components for the "pop-up" interconnect to work. Circuits can be spaced out enough in an array, but battery components must be packed tightly to produce a powerful but small battery. There is not enough space between battery components for the "pop-up" technology to work.

Huang's design solution is to use metal wire interconnects that are long, wavy lines, filling the small space between battery components. (The power travels through the interconnects.)

The unique mechanism is a "spring within a spring": The line connecting the components is a large "S" shape and within that "S" are many smaller "S's." When the battery is stretched, the large "S" first stretches out and disappears, leaving a line of small squiggles. The stretching continues, with the small squiggles disappearing as the interconnect between electrodes becomes taut.

"We call this ordered unraveling," Huang said. "And this is how we can produce a battery that stretches up to 300 percent of its original size."

The stretching process is reversible, and the battery can be recharged wirelessly. The battery's design allows for the integration of stretchable, inductive coils to enable charging through an external source but without the need for a physical connection.

Huang, Rogers and their teams found the battery capable of 20 cycles of recharging with little loss in capacity. The system they report in the paper consists of a square array of 100 electrode disks, electrically connected in parallel.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Northwestern University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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

---

Journal Reference:

1. Sheng Xu, Yihui Zhang, Jiung Cho, Juhwan Lee, Xian Huang, Lin Jia, Jonathan A. Fan, Yewang Su, Jessica Su, Huigang Zhang, Huanyu Cheng, Bingwei Lu, Cunjiang Yu, Chi Chuang, Tae-il Kim, Taeseup Song, Kazuyo Shigeta, Sen Kang, Canan Dagdeviren, Ivan Petrov, Paul V. Braun, Yonggang Huang, Ungyu Paik, John A. Rogers. Stretchable batteries with self-similar serpentine interconnects and integrated wireless recharging systems. Nature Communications, 2013; 4: 1543 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2553

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/matter_energy/technology/~3/8rXHnZdluCo/130226113828.htm

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Shiite militant threatens Iranian exiles in Iraq

BAGHDAD (AP) ? The head of a new Shiite militant group in Iraq on Tuesday threatened to carry out more attacks on a camp for Iranian exiles that was struck by dozens of rockets and mortar shells earlier this month.

Seven people were killed in the Feb. 9 attack on the camp near Baghdad airport that houses members of Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or MEK, the militant wing of a Paris-based Iranian opposition group. Iraq's government, which maintains friendly ties with Tehran, considers the MEK a terrorist group and wants its members out of country.

Tuesday's comments from Wathiq al-Batat suggest he shares the government's goal, even if he disagrees with its handling of the exiles. In a phone interview with The Associated Press, al-Batat said his newly formed Mukhtar Army group was behind the attack and promised more attacks to come.

"It is time for the people of the MEK to leave Iraq. We have demanded that the government kick the group out of the country, but the Iraqi government did not respond positively to our demand," he said. "We will strike them again until they leave."

It was not possible to independently confirm al-Batat's claim that his group was behind the attacks, but Iraqi officials and MEK members say they are taking his threats seriously. No other groups have taken responsibility.

"Mukhtar Army" appeared on threatening leaflets delivered to Sunni households in a Baghdad neighborhood last week warning residents to leave or face grave consequences.

The MEK opposes Iran's clerical regime and has carried out assassinations and bombings in Iran. It fought alongside Saddam Hussein's forces in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, and several thousand of its members were given sanctuary in Iraq. It renounced violence in 2001. The Obama administration took it off the U.S. terrorism list last September.

The refugee camp is located on a former American military base known as Camp Liberty. It is meant to be a temporary way station while the United Nations works to relocate the exiles abroad.

MEK members reluctantly began moving to Camp Liberty last year. They previously lived in a compound known as Camp Ashraf in northeastern Iraq. It was twice raided by Iraqi security forces, leaving more than three dozen people dead.

Al-Batat was a senior official in the Hezbollah Brigades, which is believed to be funded and trained by Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard. It was among the Shiite militias that targeted U.S. military bases months before troops pulled out in December 2011.

Earlier this month, he announced he was forming a new group known as the Mukhtar Army. He continues to use the Hezbollah name as well, suggesting he is trying to claim rightful leadership of that group. It is unclear what links, if any, he maintains with Iraq's Hezbollah.

Although Iraq's Hezbollah Brigades and the better-known Hezbollah in Lebanon are both backed by Iran, they appear to operate largely independently from one another.

Al-Batat is a wanted man. The Iraqi government issued an arrest warrant against him shortly after he announced the formation of the Mukhtar Army.

"The security forces are now even more determined to arrest him following these recent statements" about the camp attack, said Ali al-Moussawi, a spokesman for the prime minister.

Al-Batat said Tuesday he is in Iraq but declined to say where.

The Iranian opposition group that oversees the MEK, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, sees al-Batat and his followers as an arm of Iran's Quds Force, which oversees external operations of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

"In reality the operation against Camp Liberty was carried out by the Iranian regime with the cooperation of the government of Iraq," alleged Shahin Gobadi, a spokesman for the Paris-based opposition group. "Al-Batat is part of this terror machine."

Gobadi called for the MEK members to be returned to Camp Ashraf, where the refugees feel they would be more secure.

In Tuesday's interview, al-Batat described himself as a follower of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He said his group receives weapons and other support from Iran, but declined to provide details. He has previously said he is advised by Iran's Quds Force.

An Iranian Revolutionary Guard official dismissed suggestions it supports any armed group in Iraq, saying, "the claims are aimed at defaming the Guard. We do not see any reason to respond to such baseless claims." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.

The U.N. envoy to Iraq, Martin Kobler, urged Baghdad to thoroughly investigate the Camp Liberty attack and to share their findings with the UN. The Iraqi government is responsible for the safety of camp residents.

"We continue to remind them of their obligation and urge them to take all appropriate measures to protect residents and ensure their security," Kobler told the AP.

Iraq's Interior Ministry spokesman, Lt. Col. Saad Maan Ibrahim, said security measures have been intensified after the recent rocket attack on camp.

___

Associated Press writers Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad and Nasser Karimi in Tehran contributed reporting.

___

Follow Adam Schreck on Twitter at http://twitter.com/adamschreck

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-02-26-ML-Iraq/id-cbcea073ec6f43888fa74ec771613134

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The New Yahoo Prohibits Telecommuting, Irks Communications ...

Last week Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer unveiled the property?s new look and features. But one aspect of her rebranding that escaped our attention was an absolute refusal to allow employees to work remotely. As an internal memo put it, ?We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.? In other words, come to the office every day or you?re fired.

Some of Mayer?s team members didn?t appreciate this change; a group of ?very irked Yahoo employees? leaked the note to The Wall Street Journal on Friday, turning the whole thing into something of a PR headache. As Edelman PR notes in this tweet, lots of people are talking about ?working from home? right now?to Yahoo?s detriment.

The reasoning behind the decision makes sense: The company found that many of its telecommuters, in departments from marketing to engineering, weren?t actually getting much work done. Yahoo didn?t even seem to realize that some of them were still getting paid.

We get it?that?s bad news. But we wonder whether ?no working from home, ever? is really the best solution.

We find Mayer?s absolutism strange coming from a veteran of Silicon Valley, where many see the classic 9-5 workday as an antiquated relic. And we can see why lots of communications people are upset?last we heard, the ?job? is really a 24/7 lifestyle in which telecommuting and teleconferencing play an important role.

Of course a company can?t tolerate ?employees? who?ve found a way to get paid for sitting at home and being unproductive. But more and more people are working from home at least sometimes?and that?s especially true in the tech and content creation industries.

Was Mayer right to forbid telecommuting altogether? Should she stay firm or back down in the interest of her company?s image?

UPDATE: We didn?t even really think about how this change would affect working mothers. The fact that new mom Mayer recently had a nursery installed next to her office probably doesn?t sit too well with the career moms on her staff.

Source: http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser/the-new-yahoo-prohibits-telecommuting-irks-communications-team_b58455

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First lady's anti-obesity campaign prompts change

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Wal-Mart is putting special labels on some store-brand products to help shoppers quickly spot healthier items. Millions of schoolchildren are helping themselves to vegetables from salad bars in their lunchrooms, while kids' meals at Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurants automatically come with a side of fruit or vegetables and a glass of low-fat milk.

The changes put in place by the food industry are in response to the campaign against childhood obesity that Michelle Obama began waging three years ago. More changes are in store.

Influencing policy posed more of a challenge for the first lady, and not everyone welcomed her effort, criticizing it as a case of unwanted government intrusion.

Still, nutrition advocates and others give her credit for using her clout to help bring a range of interests to the table. They hope the increased awareness she has generated through speeches, her garden and her physical exploits will translate into further reductions in childhood obesity rates long after she leaves the White House.

About one-third of U.S. children are overweight or obese, which puts them at increased risk for any number of life-threatening illnesses, including diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease.

While there is evidence of modest declines in childhood obesity rates in some parts of the country, the changes are due largely to steps taken before the first lady launched "Let's Move" in February 2010.

With the program entering its fourth year, Mrs. Obama heads out Wednesday on a two-day promotional tour with stops in Mississippi, Illinois and Missouri. She has been talking up the program on daytime and late-night TV shows, on the radio and in public service announcements with Big Bird. She also plans discussions next week on Google and Twitter.

"We're starting to see some shifts in the trend lines and the data where we're starting to show some improvement," the first lady told SiriusXM host B. Smith in an interview broadcast Tuesday. "We've been spending a lot of time educating and re-educating families and kids on how to eat, what to eat, how much exercise to get and how to do it in a way that doesn't completely disrupt someone's life."

Larry Soler, president and chief executive of the Partnership for a Healthier America, said Mrs. Obama has "been the leader in making the case for the time is now in childhood obesity and everyone has a role to play in overcoming the problem." The nonpartisan, nonprofit partnership was created as part of "Let's Move" to work with the private sector and to hold companies accountable for changes they promised to make.

Conservatives accused Mrs. Obama of going too far and dictating what people should ? and shouldn't ? eat after she played a major behind-the-scenes role in the passage in 2010 of a child nutrition law that required schools to make foods healthier. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican Party's vice presidential nominee in 2008, once brought cookies to a school and called the first lady's efforts a "nanny state run amok."

Other leaders in the effort, such as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, have felt the backlash, too. Last fall, Bloomberg helped enact the nation's first rule barring restaurants, cafeterias and concession stands from selling soda and other high-calorie drinks in containers larger than 16 ounces.

Despite the criticism, broad public support exists for some of the changes the first lady and the mayor are advocating, according to a recent Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll.

More than eight in 10 of those surveyed, 84 percent, support requiring more physical activity in schools, and 83 percent favor government providing people with nutritional guidelines and information about diet and exercise. Seventy percent favor having restaurants put calorie counts on menus, and 75 percent consider overweightness and obesity a serious problem in this country, according to the Nov. 21-Dec. 14 survey by telephone of 1,011 adults.

Food industry representatives say Mrs. Obama has influenced their own efforts.

Mary Sophos of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents the country's largest food companies, including General Mills and Kellogg's, said an industry effort to label the fronts of food packages with nutritional content gained momentum after Mrs. Obama, a mother of two, attended one of their meetings in 2010 and encouraged them to do more.

"She's not trying to point fingers," Sophos said. "She's trying to get people to focus on solutions."

A move by the companies signaling willingness to work with Mrs. Obama appears to have paid off as the Obama administration eased off some of the fights it appeared ready to pick four years ago.

The Food and Drug Administration has stalled its push to mandate labeling on the front of food packages, saying it is monitoring the industry's own effort. A rule that would require calorie counts on menus has been delayed as the FDA tries to figure out whom to apply it to. Supermarkets, movie theaters and other retailers have been lobbying to be exempted.

The industry also appears to have successfully warded off a move by the Federal Trade Commission to put in place voluntary guidelines for advertising junk food to kids. Directed by Congress, the guidelines would have discouraged the marketing of certain foods that didn't meet government-devised nutritional requirements. The administration released draft guidelines in 2011 but didn't follow up after the industry said they went too far and angry House Republicans summoned an agency official to Capitol Hill to defend them.

Besides labeling its store brands, Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, also pledged to cut sodium and added sugars by 25 percent and 10 percent, respectively, by 2015, and remove industrially produced trans fats.

Leslie Dach, an executive vice president, said sodium in packaged bread has been cut by 13 percent, and added sugar in refrigerated flavored milk, popular among kids, has been cut by more than 17 percent. He said Wal-Mart shoppers have told the company that eating healthier is important to them. Giving customers what they want is also good for business.

New York reported a 5.5 percent decline in obesity rates in kindergarteners through eighth-graders between the 2006-07 and 2010-11 school years, according a report last fall by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which studies health policy. In Philadelphia, the decline was 4.7 percent among students in grades K-12 between the 2006-07 and 2009-10 school years, the foundation said.

Declines also were reported in California and in Mississippi, where Mrs. Obama stops Wednesday.

In Philadelphia, an organization called the Food Trust has worked since 1992 to help corner stores offer fresh foods, connect schools with local farms, bring supermarkets to underserved areas and ensure that farmers' markets accept food stamps, according to Robert Wood Johnson.

New York City requires chain restaurants to post calorie information on menus. Licensed day care centers also must offer daily physical activity, limit the amount of time children spend in front of TV and computer screens, and set nutrition standards.

Both cities also made changes to improve the quality of foods and beverages available to students in public schools.

___

Online:

Let's Move: http://www.letsmove.gov

___

Follow Darlene Superville and Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dsupervilleap and http://www.twitter.com/mcjalonick

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-02-27-Michelle%20Obama/id-f458882bef7147f78987cb585db37037

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A $400 Touchscreen Windows 8 Laptop Is Your Deal of the Day

When folks started screaming about the Chromebook Pixel's absurd starting price, this is what they were talking about. Never mind the fact you can pick up a Chromebook for $250 any day of the week — for $400 from Best Buy, you can pick up a fully-fledged Photoshop-and-Word-capable 11-inch Asus Touchscreen Laptop running Windows 8. Hell, you can get three of these laptops for the same price as a Chromebook Pixel. They even run Chrome. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/uXPNdZTrC24/a-400-touchscreen-windows-8-laptop-is-your-deal-of-the-day

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Fujitsu Stylistic S01 hands-on: a smartphone even grandma can use

Not every smartphone needs to have piles of RAM an inhumanly fast quad-core CPU and a comically large 1080p display. For some niches of the market those things are not only unnecessary, but potentially a huge negative. Fujitsu's Stylistic S01 is one of those phones that eschews high-end specs for practical features aimed at a particular segment of the market -- namely, your grandparents. The four-inch WVGA display and dual-core 1.4GHz Snapdragon would have been par for the course a year or two ago, now they're getting a bit dated. But that's ok, they're serve up the heavily skinned Ice Cream Sandwich here just fine.

The UI has large buttons and simplified widgets that are carefully crafted to be easy to manipulate for those with less dexterity in their digits. And, unlike most phones, a glancing touch wont be enough to accidentally launch the camera or maps. While an initial touch wil temporarily select an option, you'll have to actually press just a bit harder than you're accustomed to in order to confirm your selection. In addition to minimizing accidental app launches, it also gets a little bit closer to recreating the tactile sensation of dialing on a physical numeric pad.

Gallery: Fujitsu Stylistic S01 hands-on: a smartphone even grandma can use

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

Comments

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/J6u1hOhypfs/

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Laughing Rooster Is Hysterical (VIDEO)

Here's your new spirit animal.

Via Daily Picks & Flicks

Also on HuffPost:

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/24/laughing-rooster-is-hysterical_n_2755024.html

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The Solution for Fast Emergent Business Industry | Outsourcing ...

Everyone has the potential to start-up their unique businesses. Taking the risk to dive into the wide range of marketing industry can result in 3 separate results: business boing up and going down. It may seem that planning and starting an enterprise is a tough obligation with regards to building an enterprise, but it is the supremacy to keep or superior, to advance the expansion continuing development of the company. There is absolutely no business minded individual who would enhance his goals being stuck in stagnant mode. In able to the enterprise to outlive the competitive marketing industry now days, founders must be geared up enough to handle complicated situations.

If your company has become stuck for so long and also you cannot pursue it even though you have push hard, should your company never gain anything as a result of economy rate of the nation, if ?your company&rsquos system work and allow you to no longer of course, if your company is really in need of serious help. If these ifs has been a delinquent on your profitable earnings, then it must be the right time to get help. Bear in mind that an issue wouldn?t normally exist alone, solutions will always be there a little step behind.

Introducing the Empower Me Marketing Tactics. This firm is very design to relieve the problems of business personnel in terms of business matters. ?They offer an exceptional and ideal strategic planning to produce a business moves forward, appraise the capacity and repair what has have to be changed through better. They extend their proven experiences and skillful knowledge to leverage the organization&rsquos rank, through strategy consulting, giving advice to CEO, media content, implementation services and other programs connected to develop the growth of the company and face and attain a triumph experience after some time.

The Empower Me is not only resource to make your organization level up. It?s your choice actually to select the right person that will help you enhance your company&rsquos growth. The guaranteed result from Empower Me is you?ll be taught, you will learn and you will probably see the progress after you master the appropriate way of building a good business. This consultant&rsquos priority is to effectively and naturally help ever see person on downcast to get a possiblity to improve their respective commerce. When you are their service, you will also be able to to collaborate together by conglomerating yourself to use them and build sensible interactions regarding business venture.

This entry was posted in general and tagged empower me, empower network. Bookmark the permalink.

Source: http://karlsher.3owl.com/the-solution-for-fast-emergent-business-industry/

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100% 56 Up

All Critics (51) | Top Critics (21) | Fresh (51) | Rotten (0)

What ultimately is so compelling about 56 Up is the universality of the experiences. We were all once children. And we all will die. And in between, there is everything else.

We feel good, refreshed and depressed in watching these people get older, also embarrassed in moments and cautioned about the passage of time.

Apted, himself now in his early 70s, says he hopes to continue the series further. Long may it live.

Watching "56 Up" gives you the wonderful feeling of seeing a sociological experiment blossom into something novelistically rich and humane.

Time has been neither kind nor cruel to the 13 men and women profiled in "56 UP." It has just been time, which is what this groundbreaking series is about.

We are all older now, and this series proves it in a most deeply moving way.

Those British kids are now 56

Watching the eighth film is intriguing but, in a way, disappointing. At this point in the game, it feels as if all the characters have determined their lots in life and are simply plodding through their interviews.

Quite simply one of the great documentary projects in the history of cinema, an engrossing sociological experiment on film; and though this mostly mellow installment isn't as revelatory as some earlier ones, it's still a remarkable document.

... feels like a retrospective and summation of the whole series, with ample quotation from the previous films, an approach that makes it interesting even for viewers who haven't seen the previous installments.

A completely unique and remarkable documentary project.

Apted skillfully weaves old footage with the new, and we become poignantly aware of another factor shaping their lives (and our own): biology, as the we watch the once-cute kids grow gray and heavy.

Perhaps the boldest and probably longest running sociological experiment on film.

I think the best thing about this movie (and the entire series) is that it forces the viewer to think about their own lives. It's kind of an awakening experience.

Once again, Apted assembles a captivating documentary that's profoundly educational, essential viewing to aid the understanding of the human experience.

"56 Up" is well worth seeing.

56 Up is still moving and philosophic, though not as exciting as earlier episodes, which had more drama.

The running time is over two hours, but the lives here are richly revealed and vastly rewarding.

Apted possesses the unsettling ability to shape perceptions of their lives and personalities from inside an editing suite, a fact that the members of his flock begin to recognize at varying points throughout their adult years.

No quotes approved yet for 56 Up. Logged in users can submit quotes.

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/56_up/

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Monday Brief: Mobile World Congress, Nokia Music+, and more!

• Mobile Nations Podcast Feed
• Mobile Nations on iTunes
• Mobile Nations YouTube
• Debug 8: Grant Paul aka chpwn
• ZEN and TECH 52: Fitness month sleep and relaxation special!

• HTC One: Your guide to the 2013 Android reboot
• Android at Mobile World Congress 2013 - what to expect from this year's show
• Google I/O 2013 registration opens March 13

• How to transfer your BlackBerry 7 data to a BlackBerry 10 device using BlackBerry Link
• Top 10 tips for the BlackBerry 10 calendar
• Sorry, this Z10 gross margin analysis is totally out to lunch

• 'Chubby Checker' lawsuit filed against HP over endowment size estimator
• Enyo 2.2 lands with Windows 8 and BlackBerry 10 support
• Raspberry Pi used as an Ares 2-Enyo-node.js Server

• iPad mini: 4 months later
• Comparing iPhone weather app screens
• Win a FREE iPad mini in your choice of AnoStyle color!

• Nokia Music+ goes live in the U.S. Market, let the unlimited downloads begin!
• Windows Phone Portico update rolling out in new wave, including Verizon?s HTC 8X
• The 'Spring into TEGRA' Contest: Win a Tegra-powered Windows 8 RT Tablet!

?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/4GeiupWNpGo/story01.htm

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