Startup SoftKinetic just announced a new kind of advertising, one that combines its gesture-control technology with Intel's video analytics. The goal is for people to walk up to a digital display equipped with SoftKinetic's 3D camera and move their arms (or the rest of their body) to interact with the display, similar to Microsoft Kinect. Then, as you're moving, Intel's AIM technology can identify your age and gender, which is crucial information for advertisers ? and also useful for personalizing the content to each viewer.
Jacob Rogers had been bullied at Cheatham County Central High School for the past four years, but at the start of his senior year, it had become so bad he dropped out of school before taking his own life. "He started coming home his senior year saying 'I don't want to go back. Everyone is so mean. They call me a faggot, they call me gay, a queer,'" friend Kaelynn Mooningham said.
Jacob Rogers had been bullied at Cheatham County Central High School for the past four years, but at the start of his senior year, it had become so bad he dropped out of school before taking his own life. "He started coming home his senior year saying 'I don't want to go back. Everyone is so mean. They call me a faggot, they call me gay, a queer,'" friend Kaelynn Mooningham said.
LONDON (Reuters) ? British police arrested four current and former staff of Rupert Murdoch's best-selling Sun tabloid plus a policeman on Saturday as part of an investigation into suspected payments by journalists to officers, police and the newspaper's publisher said.
Police also searched the paper's London offices at publisher News International, News Corp's British arm, in a corruption probe linked to a continuing investigation into phone hacking at its now closed News of the World weekly tabloid.
News Corp's Management and Standards Committee, set up in the wake of the phone hacking scandal, said Saturday's operation was the result of information it had passed to police.
"News Corporation made a commitment last summer that unacceptable news gathering practices by individuals in the past would not be repeated," the committee said in a statement confirming the arrests of four "current and former employees" of the Sun.
The committee is conducting a lawyer-led internal review of News International's remaining titles, which also include The Times and The Sunday Times newspapers, as part of a drive to mend the reputational damage done by the phone hacking scandal.
The committee's investigation into The Sun was "well advanced," News International chief executive Tom Mockridge said in an email sent to staff.
"News International is confronting past mistakes and is making fundamental changes about how we operate which are essential for our business.
"Despite this very difficult news, we are determined that News International will emerge a stronger and more trusted organization," he added.
News International was providing legal support for the four arrested "colleagues," Mockridge said.
The arrests included The Sun's crime editor Mike Sullivan, its head of news Chris Pharo, and former deputy editor Fergus Shanahan, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters.
Also arrested was the paper's former managing editor Graham Dudman, now a training director at News International, the source said.
Police said a 48-year-old man from north London and two other men from Essex, east of London, aged 48 and 56, were arrested at their homes. The fourth man, aged 42, was arrested after reporting to an east London police station.
A Sun reporter, who asked not to be named, said: "Everyone is a bit shocked, there is disbelief really. But there is a big difference between phone hacking and payments to the police."
A 29-year-old policeman serving with the Met Police's Territorial Policing Command, was arrested at the central London police station where he worked.
All five were being questioned on suspicion of corruption.
OPERATION ELVEDEN
Police searched the arrested men's homes as well as The Sun's offices in Wapping, east London.
Thirteen people have now been arrested over allegations that journalists paid police in return for information.
Their detentions are part of Operation Elveden - one of three criminal investigations into news-gathering practices.
Last week, News International settled a string of legal claims after it admitted that people working for the tabloid had hacked in to the private phones of celebrities and others to find stories.
The phone hacking scandal drew attention to the level of political influence held by editors and executives at News International, and other newspapers in Britain.
It embarrassed British politicians for their close ties with newspaper executives and also the police, who repeatedly failed to investigate allegations of illegal phone hacking.
(Additional reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Ben Harding)
WASHINGTON ? The Obama administration said Friday that will expand its signature foreclosure-prevention program to try to help those with heavy debt loads avoid losing their homes.
The Home Affordable Modification Program will also be extended through 2013.
The government will triple the financial incentives for private lenders to reduce the principal amount of mortgages for homeowners at risk of losing their homes. And for the first time, the government will offer incentives for principal reductions to government-controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The three-year old program has strived to help those at risk of foreclosure lower their monthly payments. But it has failed to help more than half of those who have applied lower their payments on a permanent basis. Many have complained that the program is a bureaucratic nightmare.
The government has tried several different approaches to help struggling homeowners.
In his State of the Union address Tuesday, President Barack Obama said many Americans have suffered steep losses because of the housing crisis. And while he didn't address the criticism of his administration's efforts, Obama suggested the government could do a better job.
"While government can't fix the problem on its own, responsible homeowners shouldn't have to sit and wait for the housing market to hit bottom to get some relief," Obama said in his speech.
His administration has promised to unveil new legislation in the coming days to allow more homeowners to refinance their mortgages under a separate program, the Home Affordable Refinance Program.
Throughout the history of the $29 billion mortgage modification program, homeowners have complained that they were disqualified after banks lost their documents and failed to return phone calls. Banks have blamed homeowners for failing to submit needed paperwork.
Homeowners who are accepted into the program receive interest rates as low as 2 percent for five years. They can repay their loans over a longer period. The average savings for those who remain in the program is about $500 per month.
More than 1.7 million troubled homeowners received trial modifications over the past two years. Less than half of those who applied, or more than 900,000, have had their mortgage permanently lowered. A majority of the applicants have dropped out of the program altogether.
The Obama administration has blamed some of the nation's biggest mortgage lenders for not doing enough to help Americans avoid foreclosures. In June, the Treasury Department criticized four lenders ? JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Ocwen Loan Servicing ? and began withholding financial incentives of up to $1,000 per modification.
Wells Fargo, Ocwen and Bank of America got off the list in September and December. JPMorgan Chase has still been cited for rejecting people who were eligible for mortgage modifications.
ScienceDaily (Jan. 26, 2012) ? A hallmark of the individual is the cultivation of personal interests, but for some people, their intellectual pursuits might actually be genetically predetermined. Survey results published by Princeton University researchers in the journal PLoS ONE suggest that a family history of psychiatric conditions such as autism and depression could influence the subjects a person finds engaging.
Although preliminary, the findings provide a new look at the oft-studied link between psychiatric conditions and aptitude in the arts or sciences. While previous studies have explored this link by focusing on highly creative individuals or a person's occupation, the Princeton research indicates that the influence of familial neuropsychiatric traits on personal interests is apparently independent of a person's talent or career path, and could help form a person's basic preferences and personality.
Princeton researchers surveyed nearly 1,100 students from the University's Class of 2014 early in their freshman year to learn which major they would choose based on their intellectual interests. The students were then asked to indicate the incidence of mood disorders, substance abuse or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in their family, including parents, siblings and grandparents.
Students interested in pursuing a major in the humanities or social sciences were twice as likely to report that a family member had a mood disorder or a problem with substance abuse. Students with an interest in science and technical majors, on the other hand, were three times more likely to report a sibling with an ASD, a range of developmental disorders that includes autism and Asperger syndrome.
Senior researcher Sam Wang, an associate professor in Princeton's Department of Molecular Biology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, said that the survey -- though not exhaustive nor based on direct clinical diagnoses -- presents the idea that certain heritable psychiatric conditions are more closely linked to a person's intellectual interests than is currently supposed.
During the past several decades, Wang said, various researchers have found that, in certain people and their relatives, mood or behavior disorders are associated with a higher-than-average representation in careers related to writing and the humanities, while conditions related to autism exhibit a similar correlation with scientific and technical careers.
By focusing on poets, writers and scientists, however, those studies only include people who have advanced far in "artistic" or "scientific" pursuits and professions, potentially excluding a large group of people who have those interests but no particular aptitude or related career, Wang said. He and lead author Benjamin Campbell, a graduate student at Rockefeller University, selected incoming freshmen because the students are old enough to have defined interests, but are not yet on a set career path. (Princeton students do not declare a major until the end of sophomore year.)
"Until our work, evidence of a connection between neuropsychiatric disorders and artistic aptitude, for example, was based on surveying creative people, where creativity is usually defined in terms of occupation or proficiency in an artistic field," Wang said. "But what if there is a broader category of people associated with bipolar or depression, namely people who think that the arts are interesting? The students we surveyed are not all F. Scott Fitzgerald, but many more of them might like to read F. Scott Fitzgerald."
The Princeton research provides a new and "provocative" consideration that other scientists in this area can build upon, said Kay Redfield Jamison, a psychiatry and behavioral science professor at Johns Hopkins University and co-director of the university's Mood Disorders Center.
Jamison, who is well known for her research on bipolar disorder and her work on the artistic/mood disorder connection, said that while interests and choice of career are presumably related, Wang and Campbell present data suggesting that intellectual interests might also be independently shaped by psychiatric conditions, which provides the issue larger context.
In addition, the researchers focused on an age group that is not typically looked at specifically, but that is usually included in analyses that span various ages. Such a targeted approach lends the results a unique perspective, she said. Though the incidence of psychiatric conditions in the Princeton study was based on the students' own reporting and not definitive diagnoses, the rates Wang and Campbell found are not different from other populations, she noted.
"This is an additional way of looking at a complex problem that is very interesting," said Jamison, who played no role in the research project. "This work provides a piece of the puzzle in understanding why people go into particular occupations. In this field, it's important to do as many different kinds of studies as possible, and this is an interesting initial study with very interesting findings. It will provoke people to think about this question and it will provoke people to design other kinds of studies."
An implied connection between psychiatric conditions and a flair for art or science dates to at least Aristotle, who famously noted that those "eminent in philosophy, politics, poetry and the arts have all had tendencies toward melancholia."
Modern explorations of that relationship have examined the actual prevalence of people with neuropsychiatric disorders and their relatives in particular fields.
Among the most recent work, researchers at Sweden's Karolinska Institute reported in the British Journal of Psychiatry in November that of the 300,000 people studied, people with bipolar disorder, as well as their healthy parents and siblings, were more likely to have a "creative" job -- including a field in the arts or sciences -- than people with no familial history of the condition. Parents and siblings of people with schizophrenia also exhibited a greater tendency to have a creative job, though people with schizophrenia did not.
Various other studies in the past few decades have found a similar correlation between psychiatric disorders and "creativity," which is typically defined by a person's career or eminence in an artistic field such as writing or music. In their work, however, Wang and Campbell present those criteria as too narrow. They instead suggest that psychiatric disorders can predispose a person to a predilection for the subject matter independent of any concrete measure of creativity.
Jamison, in an editorial regarding the Karolinska study and published in the same journal issue, wrote that "having a creative occupation is not the same thing as being creative." Wang and Campbell approached their project from the inverse of that statement: Being creative does not necessarily mean a person has a creative occupation.
"A person is not just what they do for a living," Wang said. "I am a scientist, but not just a scientist. I'm also a guy who reads blogs, listens to jazz and likes to cook. In that same respect, I believe we have potentially broadened the original assertion of Aristotle by including not just the artistically creative, but a larger category -- all people whose thought processes gravitate to the humanistic and artistic."
As past studies have, Wang and Campbell suggest a genetic basis for their results. The correlation with interests and psychiatric conditions they observed implies that a common genetic path could lead relatives in similar directions, but with some people developing psychiatric disorders while their kin only possess certain traits of those conditions. Those traits can manifest as preferences for and talents in certain areas, Wang said.
"Altogether, results of our study and those like it suggest that scientists should start thinking about the genetic roots of normal function as much as we discuss the genetic causes of abnormal function. This survey helps show that there might be common cause between the two," Wang said.
"Everyone has specific individual interests that result from experiences in life, but these interests arise from a genetic starting point," Wang said. "This doesn't mean that our genes determine our fate. It just means that our genes launch us down a path in life, leading most people to pursue specific interests and, in extreme cases, leading others toward psychiatric disorders."
This study was published Jan. 26 in the journal PLoS ONE.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Princeton University. The original article was written by Morgan Kelly.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Benjamin C. Campbell, Samuel S.-H. Wang. Familial Linkage between Neuropsychiatric Disorders and Intellectual Interests. PLoS ONE, 2012; 7 (1): e30405 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0030405
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
(Reuters) ? NTT DoCoMo Inc (9437.T) will ask Google Inc (GOOG.O) to modify its Android operating system so that smartphones using it would put less pressure on networks, a move that could spark wider protests against the leading mobile software platform, the Nikkei reported.
The leading Japanese mobile phone service provider identified an Android application, which enables free-of-charge voice communication, as a major cause behind a service disruption that occurred on Wednesday, the business daily said.
Some Android applications send out control signals once every three to five minutes even when not in use. This translates to ten times that of a conventional mobile phone, placing additional strain on the network, the newspaper said.
A sharp rise in data consumption puts more pressure on wireless operators to speed up capacity investments, as they are struggling with clogged telecom networks to keep up with growing demand for data services on the go.
DoCoMo intends to request that Google make Android transmit control signals less often, since frequent service disruptions could hurt the popularity of Android phones, the Nikkei reported.
"Other operators have complained, some publicly, about the pressure Android apps in particular are putting on their networks," said John Jackson, analyst at British wireless consultancy CCS Insight.
The Japanese paper said that DoCoMo also hopes to team up with other mobile service providers, along with Google, to ask Android application developers to limit the frequency of control signals.
"I expect that at the very least operators worldwide will watch this dispute closely to see what remedy might be in the offing," Jackson said.
Other operators may use the dispute as an occasion to demand similar modifications, he said.
"Either way, DoCoMo's move comes at a challenging time for Google with the Android ecosystem failing to generate Apple-like (AAPL.O) revenue and OEM licensees coming under legal pressure from Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) in particular," he added
(Reporting by Meenakshi Iyer in Bangalore and Tarmo Virki in Helsinki; Editing by Joyjeet Das, Gary Hill)
Authorities in Italy say the captain of the ship wasted a precious hour, giving contradictory orders which was time passengers could have used to board lifeboats. NBC?s Michelle Kosinski reports.
WASHINGTON ? America's public school teachers are seeing their generations-old tenure protections weakened as states seek flexibility to fire teachers who aren't performing. A few states have essentially nullified tenure protections altogether, according to an analysis being released Wednesday by the National Council on Teacher Quality.
The changes are occurring as states replace virtually automatic "satisfactory" teacher evaluations with those linked to teacher performance and base teacher layoffs on performance instead of seniority. Politically powerful teachers' unions are fighting back, arguing the changes lower morale, deny teachers due process, and unfairly target older teachers.
The debate is so intense that in Idaho, for example, state superintendent Tom Luna's truck was spray painted and its tires slashed. An opponent appeared at his mother's house and he was interrupted during a live TV interview by an agitated man. Why? The Idaho legislature last year ended "continuing contracts" ? essentially equivalent to tenure ? for new teachers and said performance, not seniority, would determine layoffs. Other changes include up to $8,000 in annual bonuses given to teachers for good performance, and parent input on evaluations. Opponents gathered enough signatures to put a referendum that would overturn the changes on the November ballot.
Luna says good teachers shouldn't be worried.
"We had a system where it was almost impossible to financially reward great teachers and very difficult to deal with ineffective teachers. If you want an education system that truly puts students first, you have to have both," Luna said.
On Tuesday night, President Barack Obama weighed in on the issue during his State of the Union address. He said schools should be given the resources to keep and reward good teachers along with the flexibility to teach with creativity and to "replace teachers who just aren't helping kids learn."
Tenure protections were created in the early 20th century to protect teachers from arbitrary or discriminatory firings based on factors such as gender, nationality or political beliefs by spelling out rules under which they could be dismissed after a probationary period.
Critics say teachers too often get tenure by just showing up for work ? typically for three years, but sometimes less, and that once they earned it, bad teachers are almost impossible or too expensive to fire. The latest statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics, dating to the 2007-2008 school year, show about 2 percent of teachers dismissed for poor performance, although the numbers vary widely by school district.
The analysis by the National Council on Teacher Quality, a research and policy group that seeks to improve the quality of teaching, documents the shift in laws. In 2009, no state required student performance to be central to whether a teacher is awarded tenure; today, eight states do. The analysis also says four states now want evidence that students are learning before awarding tenure.
Other changes:
? In Florida, tenure protections were essentially made null and void with policy changes such as eliminating tenure-like benefits altogether for new teachers, but also spelling out requirements under which all teachers with multiple poor evaluations face dismissal.
? Rhode Island policies say teachers with two years of ineffective evaluations will be dismissed.
? Colorado and Nevada passed laws saying tenure can be taken away after multiple "ineffective" ratings.
? Eleven states now require districts to consider teacher performance when deciding who to let go.
? About half of all states have policies that require classroom effectiveness be considered in teacher evaluations.
? Florida, Indiana and Michigan adopted policies that require performance to be factored in teacher salaries.
A growing body of research demonstrates the dramatic difference effective teachers can play in student lives, from reducing teenage pregnancies to increasing a student's lifetime earnings. Meanwhile, while controversial, teacher evaluations have evolved in a way that proponents say allows better accounting of students' growth and of factors out of a teacher's control, like attendance.
The Obama administration has helped nudge the changes with its Race to the Top competition, which allowed states to compete for billions of education dollars, and offering states waivers around unpopular proficiency requirements in the No Child Left Behind education law. To participate in either, states have to promise changes such as tying teacher evaluations to performance.
"There's a real shift to saying all kids, especially our most disadvantaged kids, have access to really high quality and effective teachers. And, that's it's not OK for kids to have ... an ineffective teacher year after year," said Sandi Jacobs, vice president of the National Council on Teacher Quality.
Jacobs said tenure should be meaningful, but that in 39 states it's automatic.
"That's the problem with tenure, everybody gets it," she said. "If you're held to a high bar where you've really demonstrated that you are effective in the classroom, then there's nothing wrong with that as long as the due process rights that you do get are reasonable."
But many teachers feel under siege. They argue the evaluation systems are too dependent on standardized tests. While teachers' unions have gotten more on board with strengthening teacher evaluations, they often question the systems' fairness and want them designed with local teachers' input.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said unions understand the tenure process needs change, but that too often, school administrators have used it as an excuse to mismanage. "They want teachers to basically do exactly what they say, give them no resources and then blame them if they don't in a time of tremendous fiscal instability and fiscal pressures," Weingarten said.
In Boise, Idaho, Lane Brown, 56, a biology and horticulture teacher who moved from a private school a few years ago to a public alternative high school to seek new challenges after three decades of teaching, said her school's climate has dramatically changed.
"There's nobody in this building that doesn't understand it could be one of us, not just the newest teacher or the teacher with the fewest number of students. It could be anybody, ... which is scary. Every teacher here is saying, `I don't know if I'm going to have a job next year,'" Brown said.
In Florida, teachers fear expressing what they feel is best for students, said Andy Ford, president of the Florida Education Association.
"Teachers see positions not being filled, class sizes increasing, more demands, more testing, and you add all that together with their economic uncertainty about continued employment and it certainly doesn't allow you to go out and plan for long term investments like a home," Ford said.
Kathy Hebda, the deputy chancellor for education quality in Florida, said the contract-related changes were not done in "isolation," but as part of broader changes that improve accountability and provide teachers feedback.
Michelle Rhee, the former schools chancellor in Washington, D.C., acknowledged widespread mistrust among teachers about evaluations, but she said once teachers are brought into discussions, many are won over.
"If we know who the effective teachers are, if we know what kind of an impact effective teachers can have on individual kids and on our society overall, then why wouldn't we take the obvious step of utilizing the information on who are the most effective teachers to make our staffing decisions?" said Rhee, whose education advocacy group StudentsFirst is pushing for changes to layoff policies based on seniority.
Coming up, Missouri legislators appear poised to take up the contentious topic of teacher tenure. In Connecticut, the Connecticut Education Association launched a TV advertising campaign after Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and legislative leaders said education reform ? and possibly tenure ? will be the major focus of this legislative session. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie, both Republicans, are eyeing tenure law changes.
"Tenure laws will be under assault for many years to come," said Marjorie Murphy, a professor of history at Swarthmore College who wrote a book about the teacher labor movement. Murphy said ending tenure protections will "take over any sense of fair play between employer and employee. All of that will be gone."
_____
National Council on Teacher Quality: http://www.nctq.org/
____
Chris Blank in Jefferson City, Mo., and Jessie Bonner in Boise, Idaho, contributed to this report.
The wild early lives of today's most massive galaxiesPublic release date: 25-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Douglas Pierce-Price dpiercep@eso.org 49-893-200-6759 ESO
Dramatic star formation cut short by black holes
Astronomers have combined observations from the LABOCA camera on the ESO-operated 12-metre Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope [1] with measurements made with ESO's Very Large Telescope, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, and others, to look at the way that bright, distant galaxies are gathered together in groups or clusters.
The more closely the galaxies are clustered, the more massive are their halos of dark matter the invisible material that makes up the vast majority of a galaxy's mass. The new results are the most accurate clustering measurements ever made for this type of galaxy.
The galaxies are so distant that their light has taken around ten billion years to reach us, so we see them as they were about ten billion years ago [2]. In these snapshots from the early Universe, the galaxies are undergoing the most intense type of star formation activity known, called a starburst.
By measuring the masses of the dark matter halos around the galaxies, and using computer simulations to study how these halos grow over time, the astronomers found that these distant starburst galaxies from the early cosmos eventually become giant elliptical galaxies the most massive galaxies in today's Universe.
"This is the first time that we've been able to show this clear link between the most energetic starbursting galaxies in the early Universe, and the most massive galaxies in the present day," explains Ryan Hickox (Dartmouth College, USA and Durham University, UK), the lead scientist of the team.
Furthermore, the new observations indicate that the bright starbursts in these distant galaxies last for a mere 100 million years a very short time in cosmological terms yet in this brief time they are able to double the quantity of stars in the galaxies. The sudden end to this rapid growth is another episode in the history of galaxies that astronomers do not yet fully understand.
"We know that massive elliptical galaxies stopped producing stars rather suddenly a long time ago, and are now passive. And scientists are wondering what could possibly be powerful enough to shut down an entire galaxy's starburst," says Julie Wardlow (University of California at Irvine, USA and Durham University, UK), a member of the team.
The team's results provide a possible explanation: at that stage in the history of the cosmos, the starburst galaxies are clustered in a very similar way to quasars, indicating that they are found in the same dark matter halos. Quasars are among the most energetic objects in the Universe galactic beacons that emit intense radiation, powered by a supermassive black hole at their centre.
There is mounting evidence to suggest the intense starburst also powers the quasar by feeding enormous quantities of material into the black hole. The quasar in turn emits powerful bursts of energy that are believed to blow away the galaxy's remaining gas the raw material for new stars and this effectively shuts down the star formation phase.
"In short, the galaxies' glory days of intense star formation also doom them by feeding the giant black hole at their centre, which then rapidly blows away or destroys the star-forming clouds," explains David Alexander (Durham University, UK), a member of the team.
###
Notes
[1] The 12-metre-diameter APEX telescope is located on the Chajnantor plateau in the foothills of the Chilean Andes. APEX is a pathfinder for ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, a revolutionary new telescope that ESO, together with its international partners, is building and operating, also on the Chajnantor plateau. APEX is itself based on a single prototype antenna constructed for the ALMA project. The two telescopes are complementary: for example, APEX can find many targets across wide areas of sky, which ALMA will be able to study in great detail. APEX is a collaboration between the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), the Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) and ESO.
[2] These distant galaxies are known as submillimetre galaxies. They are very bright galaxies in the distant Universe in which intense star formation occurs. Because of this extreme distance, their infrared light from dust grains heated by starlight is redshifted into longer wavelengths, and the dusty galaxies are therefore best observed in submillimetre wavelengths of light.
More information
This research is presented in a paper to appear in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on 26 January 2012.
The team is composed of Ryan C. Hickox (Dartmouth College, Hanover, USA; Department of Physics, Durham University (DU); STFC Postdoctoral Fellow, UK), J. L. Wardlow (Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of California at Irvine, USA; Department of Physics, DU, UK), Ian Smail (Institute for Computational Cosmology, DU, UK), A. D. Myers (Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Wyoming, USA), D. M. Alexander (Department of Physics, DU, UK), A. M. Swinbank (Institute for Computational Cosmology, DU, UK), A. L. R. Danielson (Institute for Computational Cosmology, DU, UK), J. P. Stott (Department of Physics, DU, UK), S. C. Chapman (Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, UK), K. E. K. Coppin (Department of Physics, McGill University, Canada), J. S. Dunlop (Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, UK), E. Gawiser (Department of Physics and Astronomy, The State University of New Jersey, USA), D. Lutz (Max-Planck-Institut fur extraterrestrische Physik, Germany), P. van der Werf (Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, The Netherlands), A. Wei (Max-Planck-Institut fur Radioastronomie, Germany).
The year 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world's most productive astronomical observatory. It is supported by 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world's most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world's largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is the European partner of a revolutionary astronomical telescope ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. ESO is currently planning a 40-metre-class European Extremely Large optical/near-infrared Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become "the world's biggest eye on the sky".
ALMA, an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.
Links
- Research paper: http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1206/eso1206.pdf
- Information about APEX: http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/apex.html
- Images related to APEX: http://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/category/apex/
Contacts
Ryan Hickox
Dartmouth College
Hanover, New Hampshire, USA
Tel: +1 603 646 2962
Email: ryan.c.hickox@dartmouth.edu
Douglas Pierce-Price
ESO ALMA/APEX Public Information Officer
Garching, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6759
Email: dpiercep@eso.org
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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The wild early lives of today's most massive galaxiesPublic release date: 25-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Douglas Pierce-Price dpiercep@eso.org 49-893-200-6759 ESO
Dramatic star formation cut short by black holes
Astronomers have combined observations from the LABOCA camera on the ESO-operated 12-metre Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope [1] with measurements made with ESO's Very Large Telescope, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, and others, to look at the way that bright, distant galaxies are gathered together in groups or clusters.
The more closely the galaxies are clustered, the more massive are their halos of dark matter the invisible material that makes up the vast majority of a galaxy's mass. The new results are the most accurate clustering measurements ever made for this type of galaxy.
The galaxies are so distant that their light has taken around ten billion years to reach us, so we see them as they were about ten billion years ago [2]. In these snapshots from the early Universe, the galaxies are undergoing the most intense type of star formation activity known, called a starburst.
By measuring the masses of the dark matter halos around the galaxies, and using computer simulations to study how these halos grow over time, the astronomers found that these distant starburst galaxies from the early cosmos eventually become giant elliptical galaxies the most massive galaxies in today's Universe.
"This is the first time that we've been able to show this clear link between the most energetic starbursting galaxies in the early Universe, and the most massive galaxies in the present day," explains Ryan Hickox (Dartmouth College, USA and Durham University, UK), the lead scientist of the team.
Furthermore, the new observations indicate that the bright starbursts in these distant galaxies last for a mere 100 million years a very short time in cosmological terms yet in this brief time they are able to double the quantity of stars in the galaxies. The sudden end to this rapid growth is another episode in the history of galaxies that astronomers do not yet fully understand.
"We know that massive elliptical galaxies stopped producing stars rather suddenly a long time ago, and are now passive. And scientists are wondering what could possibly be powerful enough to shut down an entire galaxy's starburst," says Julie Wardlow (University of California at Irvine, USA and Durham University, UK), a member of the team.
The team's results provide a possible explanation: at that stage in the history of the cosmos, the starburst galaxies are clustered in a very similar way to quasars, indicating that they are found in the same dark matter halos. Quasars are among the most energetic objects in the Universe galactic beacons that emit intense radiation, powered by a supermassive black hole at their centre.
There is mounting evidence to suggest the intense starburst also powers the quasar by feeding enormous quantities of material into the black hole. The quasar in turn emits powerful bursts of energy that are believed to blow away the galaxy's remaining gas the raw material for new stars and this effectively shuts down the star formation phase.
"In short, the galaxies' glory days of intense star formation also doom them by feeding the giant black hole at their centre, which then rapidly blows away or destroys the star-forming clouds," explains David Alexander (Durham University, UK), a member of the team.
###
Notes
[1] The 12-metre-diameter APEX telescope is located on the Chajnantor plateau in the foothills of the Chilean Andes. APEX is a pathfinder for ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, a revolutionary new telescope that ESO, together with its international partners, is building and operating, also on the Chajnantor plateau. APEX is itself based on a single prototype antenna constructed for the ALMA project. The two telescopes are complementary: for example, APEX can find many targets across wide areas of sky, which ALMA will be able to study in great detail. APEX is a collaboration between the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), the Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) and ESO.
[2] These distant galaxies are known as submillimetre galaxies. They are very bright galaxies in the distant Universe in which intense star formation occurs. Because of this extreme distance, their infrared light from dust grains heated by starlight is redshifted into longer wavelengths, and the dusty galaxies are therefore best observed in submillimetre wavelengths of light.
More information
This research is presented in a paper to appear in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on 26 January 2012.
The team is composed of Ryan C. Hickox (Dartmouth College, Hanover, USA; Department of Physics, Durham University (DU); STFC Postdoctoral Fellow, UK), J. L. Wardlow (Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of California at Irvine, USA; Department of Physics, DU, UK), Ian Smail (Institute for Computational Cosmology, DU, UK), A. D. Myers (Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Wyoming, USA), D. M. Alexander (Department of Physics, DU, UK), A. M. Swinbank (Institute for Computational Cosmology, DU, UK), A. L. R. Danielson (Institute for Computational Cosmology, DU, UK), J. P. Stott (Department of Physics, DU, UK), S. C. Chapman (Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, UK), K. E. K. Coppin (Department of Physics, McGill University, Canada), J. S. Dunlop (Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, UK), E. Gawiser (Department of Physics and Astronomy, The State University of New Jersey, USA), D. Lutz (Max-Planck-Institut fur extraterrestrische Physik, Germany), P. van der Werf (Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, The Netherlands), A. Wei (Max-Planck-Institut fur Radioastronomie, Germany).
The year 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world's most productive astronomical observatory. It is supported by 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world's most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world's largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is the European partner of a revolutionary astronomical telescope ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. ESO is currently planning a 40-metre-class European Extremely Large optical/near-infrared Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become "the world's biggest eye on the sky".
ALMA, an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.
Links
- Research paper: http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1206/eso1206.pdf
- Information about APEX: http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/apex.html
- Images related to APEX: http://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/category/apex/
Contacts
Ryan Hickox
Dartmouth College
Hanover, New Hampshire, USA
Tel: +1 603 646 2962
Email: ryan.c.hickox@dartmouth.edu
Douglas Pierce-Price
ESO ALMA/APEX Public Information Officer
Garching, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6759
Email: dpiercep@eso.org
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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.
Rapid urbanization as well as cultural habits explain Gulf states' rise in heart disease prevalencePublic release date: 25-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: ESC Press Office press@escardio.org 33-492-948-627 European Society of Cardiology
European Society of Cardiology extends its scientific activities beyond Europe and into the emerging regions of the world
While the rapid improvement in socio-economic conditions is thought responsible for the high rates of cardiovascular disease in the Gulf states, deep-rooted cultural factors also play a part. "We're sitting on a time bomb," says Professor Hani Najm, Vice-President of the Saudi Heart Association, whose annual conference begins Friday 27 January. "We will see a lot of heart disease over the next 15 to 20 years. Already, services are saturated. We now have to direct our resources to the primary prevention of risk factors throughout the entire Middle East."
World Health Organization figures show that up to 60% of males in Arab countries and up to 70% of females are overweight and obese. Prevalence rates of diabetes and hypertension are around 25%, while inactivity rates among the over-20s are even higher. But the explanation, says Professor Najm, is not just rapid urbanisation and ubiquitous travel by car. There are, in addition, many social and cultural barriers to exercise, especially among women, who find it difficult to find the opportunities and encouragement to take organised exercise.
Smoking - cigarettes and waterpipe
And now there is further evidence that the cultural heritage of the Middle East may present yet another growing risk factor in the region's battle against heart disease. The waterpipe - also know as the hookah or shisha - is now said to be used by up to 34% of Middle Eastern adolescents. Despite a perception that the risk of the waterpipe may be less than those of cigarettes, a recent report suggests that its "harmful effects are similar to those of cigarettes", and that the waterpipe may offer "a bridge" to cigarette smoking.(1) The greatest prevalence of use - with up to 34% reported - is currently among adolescents and women.
A recent study from the Gulf Registry of Acute Coronary Events (GRACE), the region's largest, found that 38% of patients registered were cigarette smokers and 4.4% waterpipe smokers.(2) The study, which included 6,701 consecutive acute coronary patients in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, found that the waterpipe smokers were older than the cigarette smokers and more likely to be female.
However, despite the relatively low rate of waterpipe smoking among the patients in this registry study, other studies report more widespread use throughout the region, and especially among the younger age groups. A study from 2004 found that 22% of men in two villages of Egypt reported current or past use of waterpipes, and the habit is increasingly evident even among student communities in the USA, Canada and Germany. The GRACE investigators said: "Although the prevalence of waterpipe smoking in the current registry was low (4.4%), with the current trend of popularity it is expected that physicians and specifically cardiologists across the globe can expect increasing number of their patients with Acute Coronary Syndromes to be waterpipe tobacco smokers."
They attribute this rising popularity to the introduction of a sweet processed tobacco, the mistaken belief that any harmful effect is less than that of cigarettes, and a dearth of health warnings (as well as a dearth of data). Yet the investigators propose that waterpipe smoking may be associated with greater toxin exposure (because of longer episodes of use as well as more and larger "puffs", with smoke inhalation as much as 100 times more than from a cigarette). They explain that a single waterpipe episode lasts between 30 and 60 minutes and may involve more than 100 inhalations, each approximately 500 ml in volume (with the smoke passing first through water). "Thus," they write, "while smoking a single cigarette might produce a total of approximately 500-600 ml of smoke, a single waterpipe use episode might produce about 50,000 ml of smoke."
The primary prevention of cardiovascular disease in the Middle East will occupy a full session of this year's Annual Conference of the Saudi Heart Association, which, for the second year, will also feature a one-day collaborative programme with the European Society of Cardiology. Professor Najm highlights the efforts of the Association (and many regional health ministries) to develop prevention programmes, and regrets that the smoking policies of many countries - including Saudi Arabia - are not fully enforced. "The basic messages still need to be delivered," he says. "With such a high prevalence of risk factors in our populations, especially among the young, I still expect rates of cardiovascular disease to increase even further over the next 20 years."
###
Note to editors
(1) Maziak W. The global epidemic of waterpipe smoking. Addictive Behaviors 2011; 36: 1-5.
(2) Al Suwaidi J, Zubaid M, El-Menyar AA, et al. Prevalence and outcome of cigarette and waterpipe smoking among patients with acute coronary syndrome in six Middle-Eastern countries. Eur J Cardiovasc Prevent Rehab 2011; DOI: 10.1177/1741826710393992
(3). Maziak W, Ward KD, Soweid RAA, Eissenberg T. Tobacco smoking using a waterpipe: a re-emerging strain in a global epidemic. Tobacco Control 2004; 13: 327-333.
* Details of the ESC's programme can be found at http://www.escardio.org/congresses/global-activities/saudi-arabia/saudi-heart/Pages/welcome.aspx
* Details of the SHA congress can be found at http://www.sha-conferences.com/
The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) represents more than 71,200 cardiology professionals across Europe and the Mediterranean. Its mission is to reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease in Europe.
Contact:
ESC Press Office
European Society of Cardiology
press@escardio.org
+33 492 94 86 27
[ | 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.
Rapid urbanization as well as cultural habits explain Gulf states' rise in heart disease prevalencePublic release date: 25-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: ESC Press Office press@escardio.org 33-492-948-627 European Society of Cardiology
European Society of Cardiology extends its scientific activities beyond Europe and into the emerging regions of the world
While the rapid improvement in socio-economic conditions is thought responsible for the high rates of cardiovascular disease in the Gulf states, deep-rooted cultural factors also play a part. "We're sitting on a time bomb," says Professor Hani Najm, Vice-President of the Saudi Heart Association, whose annual conference begins Friday 27 January. "We will see a lot of heart disease over the next 15 to 20 years. Already, services are saturated. We now have to direct our resources to the primary prevention of risk factors throughout the entire Middle East."
World Health Organization figures show that up to 60% of males in Arab countries and up to 70% of females are overweight and obese. Prevalence rates of diabetes and hypertension are around 25%, while inactivity rates among the over-20s are even higher. But the explanation, says Professor Najm, is not just rapid urbanisation and ubiquitous travel by car. There are, in addition, many social and cultural barriers to exercise, especially among women, who find it difficult to find the opportunities and encouragement to take organised exercise.
Smoking - cigarettes and waterpipe
And now there is further evidence that the cultural heritage of the Middle East may present yet another growing risk factor in the region's battle against heart disease. The waterpipe - also know as the hookah or shisha - is now said to be used by up to 34% of Middle Eastern adolescents. Despite a perception that the risk of the waterpipe may be less than those of cigarettes, a recent report suggests that its "harmful effects are similar to those of cigarettes", and that the waterpipe may offer "a bridge" to cigarette smoking.(1) The greatest prevalence of use - with up to 34% reported - is currently among adolescents and women.
A recent study from the Gulf Registry of Acute Coronary Events (GRACE), the region's largest, found that 38% of patients registered were cigarette smokers and 4.4% waterpipe smokers.(2) The study, which included 6,701 consecutive acute coronary patients in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, found that the waterpipe smokers were older than the cigarette smokers and more likely to be female.
However, despite the relatively low rate of waterpipe smoking among the patients in this registry study, other studies report more widespread use throughout the region, and especially among the younger age groups. A study from 2004 found that 22% of men in two villages of Egypt reported current or past use of waterpipes, and the habit is increasingly evident even among student communities in the USA, Canada and Germany. The GRACE investigators said: "Although the prevalence of waterpipe smoking in the current registry was low (4.4%), with the current trend of popularity it is expected that physicians and specifically cardiologists across the globe can expect increasing number of their patients with Acute Coronary Syndromes to be waterpipe tobacco smokers."
They attribute this rising popularity to the introduction of a sweet processed tobacco, the mistaken belief that any harmful effect is less than that of cigarettes, and a dearth of health warnings (as well as a dearth of data). Yet the investigators propose that waterpipe smoking may be associated with greater toxin exposure (because of longer episodes of use as well as more and larger "puffs", with smoke inhalation as much as 100 times more than from a cigarette). They explain that a single waterpipe episode lasts between 30 and 60 minutes and may involve more than 100 inhalations, each approximately 500 ml in volume (with the smoke passing first through water). "Thus," they write, "while smoking a single cigarette might produce a total of approximately 500-600 ml of smoke, a single waterpipe use episode might produce about 50,000 ml of smoke."
The primary prevention of cardiovascular disease in the Middle East will occupy a full session of this year's Annual Conference of the Saudi Heart Association, which, for the second year, will also feature a one-day collaborative programme with the European Society of Cardiology. Professor Najm highlights the efforts of the Association (and many regional health ministries) to develop prevention programmes, and regrets that the smoking policies of many countries - including Saudi Arabia - are not fully enforced. "The basic messages still need to be delivered," he says. "With such a high prevalence of risk factors in our populations, especially among the young, I still expect rates of cardiovascular disease to increase even further over the next 20 years."
###
Note to editors
(1) Maziak W. The global epidemic of waterpipe smoking. Addictive Behaviors 2011; 36: 1-5.
(2) Al Suwaidi J, Zubaid M, El-Menyar AA, et al. Prevalence and outcome of cigarette and waterpipe smoking among patients with acute coronary syndrome in six Middle-Eastern countries. Eur J Cardiovasc Prevent Rehab 2011; DOI: 10.1177/1741826710393992
(3). Maziak W, Ward KD, Soweid RAA, Eissenberg T. Tobacco smoking using a waterpipe: a re-emerging strain in a global epidemic. Tobacco Control 2004; 13: 327-333.
* Details of the ESC's programme can be found at http://www.escardio.org/congresses/global-activities/saudi-arabia/saudi-heart/Pages/welcome.aspx
* Details of the SHA congress can be found at http://www.sha-conferences.com/
The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) represents more than 71,200 cardiology professionals across Europe and the Mediterranean. Its mission is to reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease in Europe.
Contact:
ESC Press Office
European Society of Cardiology
press@escardio.org
+33 492 94 86 27
[ | 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.
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. ? What would Steven Tyler, the American Idol judge, think of Steven Tyler, who sang the national anthem at the AFC championship game on Sunday?
Let's just say the rendition probably wouldn't get him to Hollywood.
The 63-year-old frontman for the Boston-based rock group Aerosmith warbled "The Star-Spangled Banner" before the New England Patriots played the Baltimore Ravens. Tyler appeared with his trademark scarf ? this one with the Patriots logo in red, white and blue sequins.
A favorite in the region because of his local ties, Tyler was cheered by the crowd anyway.
A 3-year-old?boy and his parents are lucky to be alive after falling through thin ice on a pond in Arlington, Mass.
Soon after venturing onto the ice Sunday evening, cracks appeared and the family fell in. A friend who was with?them immediately called 911; within three minutes the first rescuers were in the water.
The rescue operation, part of which was?shown?by NBC affiliate WHDH TV in the video above, took place in the dark with fire personnel shining lights on rescuers who themselves went through the ice and into the water. They then?formed a?human chain to reach the family 25 yards from shore.
"From the time of the call being initiated to us, which was just before 5:30,?til all victims were out of the water was approximately 10 to 11 minutes," Arlington Fire Chief Robert Jefferson told WHDH. "They were very lucky in that sense but this time of year we preach to everybody that no body of water is safe no matter how cold it's been, no matter how thick that ice may be."
Maria Terra-Diaz, one of those rescued,?told WHDH that?the family was "doing very?well" and was "very thankful" to rescuers.
"We just decided to go for a stroll on the pond and we didn't think ? yeah, just not thinking too much," she added.
MONTREAL ? A Rwandan man has been deported from Canada for allegedly helping incite Rwanda's 1994 genocide.
Leon Mugesera was taken to an airport in Montreal by Canadian border-services agents and Rwanda's Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo later confirmed in a twitter account note on Monday that he had left on a plane bound for Kigali, Rwanda's capital. Canadian officials did not comment.
Mugesera, 59, had been living in Canada for nearly two decades and was wanted in Rwanda on charges stemming from the 1994 massacre.
A former Rwandan political operative, Mugesera delivered a fiery anti-Tutsi speech in the leadup to the 1994 genocide. In that 1992 speech, he referred to Tutsis as "cockroaches" and called for their extermination.
He is among the first Western refugee claimants to be sent back to face charges.
This NOAA satellite image taken Monday, Jan. 23, 2012 at 12:45 a.m. EST shows widespread cloud cover over the Eastern Valleys as a strong low pressure system move through the Mid-Mississippi Valley and the western Ohio Valley. Snow showers develop on the western edge of the low in Iowa and southern Minnesota, while a mix of freezing rain, rain, snow and thunderstorms form in Michigan. Additional bands of heavy rain and strong thunderstorms form ahead of the system from Indiana and Ohio through Mississippi. Strong thunderstorms from Mississippi through central Tennessee may have the potential to turn severe with hail, damaging wind, and tornadoes. (AP PHOTO/WEATHER UNDERGROUND)
This NOAA satellite image taken Monday, Jan. 23, 2012 at 12:45 a.m. EST shows widespread cloud cover over the Eastern Valleys as a strong low pressure system move through the Mid-Mississippi Valley and the western Ohio Valley. Snow showers develop on the western edge of the low in Iowa and southern Minnesota, while a mix of freezing rain, rain, snow and thunderstorms form in Michigan. Additional bands of heavy rain and strong thunderstorms form ahead of the system from Indiana and Ohio through Mississippi. Strong thunderstorms from Mississippi through central Tennessee may have the potential to turn severe with hail, damaging wind, and tornadoes. (AP PHOTO/WEATHER UNDERGROUND)
CLAY, Ala. (AP) ? Two people were killed in the Birmingham, Ala., area as storms pounded the South and Midwest, prompting tornado warnings in a handful of states early Monday.
Jefferson County sheriff's spokesman Randy Christian said a 16-year-old boy was killed in Clay and an 82-year-old man died in the community of Oak Grove.
A storm system produced a possible tornado that moved across northern Jefferson County around 3:30 a.m., causing damage in Oak Grove, Graysville, Fultondale, Centerpoint, Clay and Trussville, Christian said. He said several homes were destroyed and numerous injuries were reported.
"Some roads are impassable, there are a number of county roads where you have either debris down, trees down, damage from homes," said Yasamie Richardson, a spokeswoman for the Alabama Emergency Management Agency. Jefferson County experienced "significant damage," she said.
As day broke, rescue crews used chainsaws to clear fallen trees off roads in Clay, northeast of Birmingham. Searchers went door-to-door calling out to residents, many of whom were trapped by trees that crisscrossed their driveways.
Stevie Sanders woke up around 3:30 a.m. and realized bad weather was on the way. She, her parents and sister hid in the laundry room of their brick home as the wind howled and trees started cracking outside.
"You could feel the walls shaking and you could hear a loud crash. After that it got quiet, and the tree had fallen through my sister's roof," said Sanders, 26.
The family was OK, and her father, Greg Sanders, spent the next hours raking his roof and pulling away pieces of broken lumber.
"It could have been so much worse," he said. "It's like they say, we were just blessed."
In Clanton, about 50 miles south of Birmingham, rescuers were responding to reports of a trailer turned over with people trapped, City Clerk Debbie Orange said.
In Arkansas, there were possible tornadoes in Arkansas, Dallas, Lonoke, Prairie and Cleveland counties Sunday night. The storms also brought hail and strong winds as they moved through parts of Arkansas, Tennessee, Illinois and Mississippi.
Tornado warnings were issued for parts of Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama.
The storm also caused officials to reschedule a planned Monday meeting in Montgomery to receive a study on Alabama's response to a system of killer storms that raked the state last April. That storm killed more than 240 people in the state. Among the hardest hit areas then was Tuscaloosa, where 50 were killed.
In the event you haven't tired of Siri hacks, here comes yet another unintended use of the ole robo-handmaiden. This time, however, her jailbroken powers of automation are strictly for vanilla iOS purposes, so you won't find any demonstrations of car stereo or TV channel changing here. Instead, recently liberated iPhone 4S owners can look forward to a software package called VoiceUtils, available through Cydia, that allows Cupertino's best gal to open first- and third-party apps, unlock your phone (barring password protection) and even reboot. See? It's not exactly the most exciting exploit of Apple's much-touted software, but it is resoundingly practical. If you haven't taken a swig of greenpois0n's Absinthe just yet and are keen to extend your iDevice's voice recognition functionality, now might be the time to drink deeply.
Startup SoftKinetic just announced a new kind of advertising, one that combines its gesture-control technology with Intel's video analytics. The goal is for people to walk up to a digital display equipped with SoftKinetic's 3D camera and move their arms (or the rest of their body) to interact with the display, similar to Microsoft Kinect. Then, as you're moving, Intel's AIM technology can identify your age and gender, which is crucial information for advertisers ? and also useful for personalizing the content to each viewer.
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Public release date: 25-Jan-2012
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