Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/04/kim-kardashian-sex-tape-the-quasi-music-video/
Monday, April 29, 2013
Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
NASA is exploring ways to send a flotilla of small satellites to a destination, rather than one large orbiter. In a first test, three tiny satellites are now on orbit and beeping back at Earth. Why the idea could be an aid to scientific research.
NASA's Phonesat aims to demonstrate the ability to launch one of the lowest-cost, easiest-to-build satellites ever flown in space ? capabilities enabled by using off-the-shelf consumer smart phones.
Courtesy of NASA
EnlargeThat's no smart phone in your pocket or purse; that's the heart and soul of a satellite.
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Three satellites, to be exact, released into orbit on Sunday with the launch of Orbital Sciences Corp.'s new Antares rocket, the latest addition to NASA's stable of space-station resupply vehicles.
The tiny satellites, each occupying a cube four inches on a side, represent an experiment in using cheap but powerful off-the-shelf technology to run a new generation of small, affordable science satellites.
Two of these orbiters, which NASA has dubbed Phonesat 1.0, use the electronics and sensors packaged in a Google Nexus One smart phone to serve as on-board computers. Accelerometers that normally tell the phones which way you've oriented the screen now gather information on the satellites' orientation in space. And the cameras? Yep, snapshots of Earth from 156 miles up.
The third satellite, a prototype for Phonesat 2.0, uses a more powerful Nexus S, which also has a built-in gyroscope. Ultimately, engineers plan to use that extra capability to control solar panels and to control the spacecraft's orientation, instead of just recording it.
The notion of using a smart phone's innards to run a satellite grew out of informal hallway chatter, recalls James Cockrell, project manager for Phonesat at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.
The benchmark people often use as a point of comparison for the power of their favorite laptop or smart phone is the primitive computing power used in the Apollo program, which landed humans on the moon and brought them back safely in the late 1960s and early '70s.
Indeed, Mr. Cockrell describes a trip to the Internet that netted him the electronic-circuit diagram for the navigation and control computer used in Apollo's Lunar Excursion Module.
"Oh my goodness, you could build it in your basement" with a circuit board and a few transistors, he says.
A couple of years ago, he says, an engineer at NASA-Ames was drawing a similar comparison between his smart phone and today's satellites during an informal hallway chat. The engineer noted that a smart phone's processor is 10 to 15 times more powerful than the processors used in a conventional satellite's computer. A smart phone has much more memory. And it boasts a GPS receiver, gyroscopes, and accelerometers ? the sensors needed for navigation and to control a satellite's orientation.
"He said: 'I don't know why we couldn't make a satellite our of a smart phone,' " Cockrell recalls. Although it took a bit of additional salesmanship to convince folks higher up the organizational food chain, the Phonesat project was born.
The satellites cost about $3,500 each. The initial goals were modest: Survive the launch and beep at Earth.
So far, the satellites have successfully relayed their health ? operating temperatures, battery status, and other key indicators ? via small external transmitters.
"We call this our Sputnik moment," Cockrell says, referring to the simple "I'm alive" beeps that the world's first artificial satellite sent back to Earth in 1957.
As of Monday night, the two Phonesat 1 orbiters started taking pictures. Each satellite selected one image to beam back to Earth.
Before the beaming could begin, the image had to be cut into pieces. And yes, there's now an app for that.
And where NASA's flagship missions to the far reaches of the solar system use the agency's global Deep Space Network for communications, Phonesats are using what you could call NASA's cheap-and-not-so-deep space network ? ham-radio operators worldwide.
So far, some 100 hams have registered at www.phonesat.org, a site the program has set up to receive the packets. As of Tuesday evening, Cockrell estimated that the website had collected more than 300 packets, which computers on Earth must sort through to eliminate duplicates. Ultimately the mosaic will be assembled and displayed online.
The three Phonesats are expected to reenter the atmosphere and vaporize at the end of their 10- to 14-day romp on orbit.
The project already has Phonesats 3.0 and 4.0 on the drawing boards, an effort that eventually could pay dividends for space research, explains Bruce Yost, who heads the Edison Small Satellite Flight Demonstration Program at NASA-Ames.
NASA is exploring concepts for sending a flotilla of small satellites to a destination, rather than one large orbiter. The arrangement would allow sensors from several satellites to take measurements simultaneously around an entire planet to unravel the processes at work on the surface or in an atmosphere.
"If each one of those little pieces of the puzzle costs millions of dollars, then you're not really making any headway" toward getting such a mission approved, Mr. Yost explains. Given the private sector's heavy investment in phone R&D and the capabilities that have emerged, the argument goes, why keep satellite-control technology development in-house and reinvent the wheel?
Earth is likely to be an early target for such "swarm" exploration, Yost says. Scientists studying and forecasting space weather are interested in lofting a flotilla of satellites that could make simultaneous measurements of the solar wind or solar storms and their influence on various parts of the Earth's magnetic field.
Cockrell and his team also are working on an eight-spacecraft flotilla to test the feasibility of this idea of satellite swarms, Yost says.
Perhaps it's fitting that the first smart phones in space run on the Android operating system. There's no word on when or if iPhones will get a crack at serving as the seed around which a satellite grows. ?
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Thursday, April 25, 2013
"Senna" director to make Amy Winehouse documentary
LONDON (AP) ? The director of award-winning film "Senna" is making a documentary about the late soul singer Amy Winehouse.
Focus Features International says the movie will feature unseen archive footage to tell the story of the art and life of the musician, who died at age 27 in London in 2011 from accidental alcohol poisoning.
The Winehouse family said in a statement Thursday that it had been approached with many documentary proposals, but "Senna" director Asif Kapadia and producer James Gay-Rees presented a vision that would "look at Amy's story sensitively, honestly and without sensationalizing her."
"Senna," the acclaimed 2010 film, focused on the life of Brazilian F1 driver Ayrton Senna. The champion racer was killed in an accident in 1994.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/senna-director-amy-winehouse-documentary-115803856.html
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Israeli military shoots down drone
JERUSALEM (AP) ? Israel shot down a drone Thursday as it approached the country's northern coast, the military said. Suspicion immediately fell on the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon.
The incident was likely to raise already heightened tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, a bitter enemy that battled Israel to a stalemate during a monthlong war in 2006.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in northern Israel at the time of the incident, said he viewed the infiltration attempt with "utmost gravity."
"We will continue to do everything necessary in order to protect the security of the citizens of Israel," he said.
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, said the unmanned aircraft was detected as it was flying over Lebanon and tracked as it approached Israeli airspace.
Lerner said the military waited for the aircraft to enter Israeli airspace, confirmed it was "enemy," and then an F-16 warplane shot it down.
The drone was flying at an altitude of about 6,000 feet (1,800 meters) and was downed roughly five miles (eight kilometers) off the Israeli coast near the northern city of Haifa. Lerner said Israeli naval forces were searching for the remains of the aircraft.
He declined to say who sent the drone. But other military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to talk to the media, said they believed it was an Iranian-manufactured aircraft sent by Hezbollah. Hezbollah sent a drone into Israeli airspace last October that Israel also shot down.
Netanyahu was informed of the unfolding incident as he was flying north for a cultural event with members of the country's Druse minority. Officials said his helicopter briefly landed while the drone was intercepted before Netanyahu continued on his way.
Netanyahu repeatedly has warned that Hezbollah might try to take advantage of the instability in neighboring Syria, a key Hezbollah ally, to obtain what he calls game-changing weapons.
Israel has all but confirmed that it carried out an airstrike in Syria early this year that destroyed a shipment of sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles bound for Hezbollah.
A senior Lebanese security official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said Lebanon had no information on Thursday's incident.
Hezbollah spokesman Ibrahim Moussawi also said he had no information, adding the group would put out a statement if it had something to say on the issue.
When Israeli military shot down a Hezbollah drone on Oct. 6, it took days for Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah to confirm it in a speech. He warned at the time that it would not be the last such operation by the group. He said the sophisticated aircraft was made in Iran and assembled by Hezbollah.
___
Associated Press writers Zeina Karam in Beirut and Diaa Hadid in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/israeli-military-shoots-down-drone-142037543.html
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House GOP report: Hillary Clinton lied under oath about additional Benghazi security request (Michellemalkin)
AAPL: sweeter dividend, sour outlook
Apple (AAPL) will give shareholders $100 billion over the next two years by boosting its dividend 15 percent. Although AAPL beat earnings and revenue estimates for the quarter, it says revenue could fall this quarter.?
A man leaves an Apple store with an iPhone and an iPad in his hands in central Beijing earlier this month. AAPL stock initially rose after the electronics manufacturer announced a higher dividend and a stock buyback program. But it pulled back after Apple suggested its revenue could fall this quarter, which would be the first time in many years.
Alexander F. Yuan/AP/File
EnlargeApple?is opening the doors to its bank vault, saying it will distribute $100 billion in cash to its shareholders by the end of 2015. At the same time, the company said revenue for the current quarter could fall from the year before, which would be the first decline in many years.
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Apple?CEO Tim Cook also suggested that the company won't release any new products until the fall, contrary to expectations that there would be a new iPhone and iPads out this summer.
Apple?Inc. on Tuesday said it will expand its share buyback program to $60 billion ? the largest buyback authorization in history. It is also raising its dividend by 15 percent from $2.65 to $3.05 per share. That equates to a dividend yield of 3 percent at current stock prices. The average yield for the 20 largest dividend-paying companies in the U.S. is 3.1 percent, according to Standard & Poor's.
Investors have been clamoring for?Apple?to give them access to its cash hoard, which ended March at an unprecedented $145 billion.?Apple's?tight grip on its cash, along with the lack of ground-breaking new products has been blamed for the steep decline in its stock price over the winter.
News of the cash bonanza coincided with the company's release of a poor quarterly outlook for the three-month period that ends in June.
Apple?released its fiscal second quarter earnings after the stock market closed Tuesday. The company's stock initially rose 5 percent to $425 in extended trading, then retreated $2.63, or 0.7 percent, to $403.50 as the CEO talked about new products arriving in the fall.
The shares are still down 40 percent from a peak of $705.07 hit on Sept. 21, when the iPhone 5 went on sale.
"The decline in?Apple's?stock price over the last couple of quarters has been very frustrating for all of us ... but we'll continue to do what we do best," CEO Tim Cook said on a conference call with analysts after the release of the results. But he reinforced that the company's job is not to boost its stock price in the short term.
"The most important objective for?Apple?will always be creating innovative products," he added.
Apple's?results beat the consensus estimate of analysts who follow the company, though it posted its first profit decline in ten years.
Net income was $9.5 billion, or $10.09 per share, down 18 percent from $11.6 billion, or $12.30 per share, in the same period a year ago.
Revenue was $43.6 billion, up 11 percent from last year's $39.2 billion.
Analysts were expecting earnings of $9.97 per share on revenue of $42.3 billion, according to FactSet.
For the quarter that just started,?Apple?said it expects sales of $33.5 billion to $35.5 billion. In the same quarter last year, sales were $35 billion. Wall Street was expecting sales of $38 billion.
The June quarter is generally a weak one for?Apple, since consumers tend to wait for the next iPhone, which the company usually releases in the fall. But a year-over-year decline is a signal that?Apple?is failing to capitalize on the continued growth of smartphone sales. Sales are tapering off in U.S. and other mature markets, and not many consumers in India and China can afford iPhones.
"Our fiscal 2012 results were incredibly strong and that's making comparisons very difficult this year," said Cook.
Apple?shipped 37.4 million iPhones in the latest quarter, up 7 percent from a year ago. That confounded expectations that shipments might fall, but it was still a weak number compared to many previous quarters, when shipments doubled year over year. The average wholesale price of an iPhone also fell to $613 as?Apple?cut the price of its oldest model, the iPhone 4, to appeal to buyers in developing countries.
Apple?started paying a dividend last summer and has been buying back a modest number of shares, enough to balance the dilution created by its employee stock option program but not to make a dent in its cash pile. The company says it's now expanding the buybacks, which started in October and are set to run till the end of 2015, from $10 billion to $60 billion. It's raising the quarterly dividend starting with the payment due May 16.
The company has faced continued pressure from Wall Street over the use of its cash, which earns less than 1 percent in interest. Investors reason that if the company has no better use for the money, it should be handing it over to shareholders. The company had said it was considering ways to use the money, and this year engaged in a public debate with a hedge fund manager who wanted it to institute a new class of shares to attract dividend-loving investors.
Paradoxically, cash-flush?Apple?will be borrowing money to support the buybacks and dividends. That's because two-thirds of its cash resides in overseas accounts. It doesn't bring the money into the U.S. because it prefers not to pay U.S. corporate income taxes on it. Instead, it will be using cash from U.S.-derived revenue and U.S. accounts, plus borrowed money.
Apple?is effectively betting that the U.S. federal corporate tax rate of 35 percent ? one of the highest in the world ? will come down in the future, or that there will be a tax repatriation amnesty period, as there was in 2004.
When a company starts doling out its cash to shareholders, it's usually a sign that its growth is stalling and it's finding it hard to identify good ways to invest in its own business. But?Apple?is still growing fast by the standards of large companies, and its cash pile-up is a reflection of the extraordinary success of the iPhone.
Compared to its earnings,?Apple's?stock price is low. In buying?Apple?stock, investors are paying $9.20 for every dollar of?Apple's?annual net income. By comparison, they're willing to pay $24 for every dollar of Google's profit.
That suggests investors have concluded?Apple?will never again launch a revolutionary product like the iPhone or iPad. The commitment to bigger buybacks may reinforce that impression, said David Tan, a Georgetown University assistant professor of strategy who focuses on technology.
"How are we going to read into what this move says about?Apple's?long-term prospects?" Tan said. "Does this mean this is all that?Apple?has left to offer or is this just something temporary while we wait for the next big thing from the company?"
Investors have grown increasingly frustrated with?Apple. The company has only been releasing updates to its existing line of mobile devices and?computers?since Cook became CEO 20 months ago instead of blazing technological trails as it did with the iPod's 2001 unveiling, the iPhone's 2007 debut and the iPad's introduction in 2010, said Lauren Balter, an analyst for Oracle Investment Research. At the same time, Samsung Electronics has been gaining market share with larger smartphone screens and other features while Google Inc. is creating a buzz with its own Nexus tablets. Google is also expanding into "wearable?computing" with Internet-connected glasses that are expected to go on sale late this year or early next year.
"The market is tired of the same old thing at?Apple," Balter said. "Investors are looking for innovation. The reality is that people are looking at other products now and they are looking at other cool features from competitors."
Apple?is rumored to be working on a "smart" watch and a revolutionary TV set, but it hasn't confirmed that. On Tuesday's call, Cook sounded slightly more open to making an iPhone with a larger screen, saying merely that Apple?would not ship a phone with a larger screen as long as that meant tradeoffs in other measures of screen quality, like brightness.
Cross Research analyst Shannon Cross said now that?Apple?has laid out plans for its cash hoard, investor focus will shift back to?Apple's?upcoming products.
"What I am hoping is now that we have gotten through this, people will start focusing a little bit more on the fundamentals," Cross said. "And I think the fundamentals this quarter showed that demand remains strong for their products. I don't think the?Apple?brand has been diminished at all, based on the numbers we have seen."
AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke contributed to this report from San Francisco.
Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/qLIdCSG3ou0/AAPL-sweeter-dividend-sour-outlook
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Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Pitt education professor awarded year's exclusive access to unique dataset on teacher evaluation
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 22-Apr-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Adam Reger
reger@pitt.edu
412-624-4238
University of Pittsburgh
Dataset was derived from the largest single effort to date dedicated to evaluating teacher effectiveness
PITTSBURGHA professor in the University of Pittsburgh's School of Education has been chosen to lead a team of researchers that is one of only 10 teams nationally to be granted one-year exclusive access to an unparalleled set of teacher-evaluation data that was collected during a three-year research project sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Tanner LeBaron Wallace, assistant professor of applied developmental psychology at Pitt, was recently awarded a Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) Early Career Research Grant, awarded by the National Academy of Education and the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. Wallace and her Youth Development Lab research team of Pitt graduate and undergraduate students will use the grantwhich includes an award of $25,000 funded by the William T. Grant Foundation and the Spencer Foundationto undertake a research project that is novel in its collaboration between adolescents and adults.
The grant provides early-career educational researchers with a year's "head start" access to the MET Longitudinal Database, a massive and rich source of data for those seeking to measure teaching effectiveness and to design fairer and more reliable methods of measuring instructor performance.
The database stems from the Gates Foundation-sponsored three-year research partnership project, which involved 2,500 fourth-through-ninth-grade teachers, working in 317 schools located in seven large school districts, and dozens of independent research teams. This project, which cost an estimated $50 million, was the largest single effort to date dedicated to evaluating teaching effectiveness. Data collected during two school years beginning in fall 2009 included student outcomes, student-completed surveys, video-recorded lessons, assessments of teachers' pedagogical and content knowledge, and teacher surveys. The seven school districts from which data were collected were the Charlotte-Mecklenburg (N.C.) Schools, the Dallas Independent Schools, the Denver Public Schools, the Hillsborough County (Fla.) Public Schools, the Memphis City Schools, New York City's system of public schools, and the Pittsburgh Public Schools. The Pittsburgh Public Schools district was included in the project as a pilot district, and data from that preliminary phase of the project are not included in the MET Database to be used by Wallace and the other grant awardees.
Wallace was awarded the grant for her proposal "Employing Urban Adolescent Interpretations of Instructional Practice to Distinguish Teacher Proficiency From Ceiling Effect in the Classroom Organizational Domain." The Pitt project will involve recruiting students from local public schools to view some of the video footage taken during the MET research phase.
The students will be shown classroom situations where the interpretations of adolescents and adult evaluators differed, with student survey responses indicating that a teacher had poor control over the classroom, but adult evaluators considering the teacher to have adequate control. By discussing the videos with the students in small groups, Wallace and her team hope to identify the factors that caused adolescents to view each situation as they did.
Wallace believes that her project's inclusion of adolescents' responses to video recordings of teachers' lessons is unprecedented.
"The hope is that from the results of this study we'll be able to refine our existing view of classroom management in ways that are more sensitive to what matters to adolescents and their willingness to engage in classroom learning activities," said Wallace. A common, and valid, critique of much work evaluating teacher effectiveness, she said, is that these studies are "adult-centric," and they fail to prioritize students' voices in the process.
"We want to integrate the perceptions of adolescents but really link these perceptions to instructional practice," she added. "I think it's a promising new direction in evaluating teachers."
The research project fits in with Wallace's broader research. She studies high schools as developmental spaces, analyzing the ways that adolescents and teachers build connections through classroom interactions as they grow and develop together.
A side benefit of the project that Wallace has noted is the building of community among the 10 teams of researchers that have received the MET Early Career Research Grant. Several "virtual" meetings of the research teams will be held throughout the year, with some in-person meetings scheduled as well. "The goal of these grants is to build a cohort of young scholars who are advancing our ability to accurately measure effective teaching, and I am thrilled to be part of the group," Wallace said.
The other teams that have received the grant are based at Boston University, Brigham Young University, Michigan State University, New York University, the Rockville Institute for the Advancement of Social Science, the University of Connecticut, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Texas at San Antonio, and Wayne State University.
Wallace and her team members underwent multiple rounds of security clearance before gaining access to the data via a virtual data enclave system that prevents them from downloading the data to computers. The team's access began on March 1, 2013, and will expire on March 1, 2014.
###
The MET Longitudinal Database research collection is stored at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research in the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. Visit http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/METLDB to learn more about the MET Longitudinal Database.
4/22/13/mab/cjhm
Editors: An image of Tanner LeBaron Wallace is available at http://www.news.pitt.edu/gatesteacherevaluation
Contact:
Adam Reger
412-802-5908 (cell)
[ | 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.
Public release date: 22-Apr-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Adam Reger
reger@pitt.edu
412-624-4238
University of Pittsburgh
Dataset was derived from the largest single effort to date dedicated to evaluating teacher effectiveness
PITTSBURGHA professor in the University of Pittsburgh's School of Education has been chosen to lead a team of researchers that is one of only 10 teams nationally to be granted one-year exclusive access to an unparalleled set of teacher-evaluation data that was collected during a three-year research project sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Tanner LeBaron Wallace, assistant professor of applied developmental psychology at Pitt, was recently awarded a Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) Early Career Research Grant, awarded by the National Academy of Education and the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. Wallace and her Youth Development Lab research team of Pitt graduate and undergraduate students will use the grantwhich includes an award of $25,000 funded by the William T. Grant Foundation and the Spencer Foundationto undertake a research project that is novel in its collaboration between adolescents and adults.
The grant provides early-career educational researchers with a year's "head start" access to the MET Longitudinal Database, a massive and rich source of data for those seeking to measure teaching effectiveness and to design fairer and more reliable methods of measuring instructor performance.
The database stems from the Gates Foundation-sponsored three-year research partnership project, which involved 2,500 fourth-through-ninth-grade teachers, working in 317 schools located in seven large school districts, and dozens of independent research teams. This project, which cost an estimated $50 million, was the largest single effort to date dedicated to evaluating teaching effectiveness. Data collected during two school years beginning in fall 2009 included student outcomes, student-completed surveys, video-recorded lessons, assessments of teachers' pedagogical and content knowledge, and teacher surveys. The seven school districts from which data were collected were the Charlotte-Mecklenburg (N.C.) Schools, the Dallas Independent Schools, the Denver Public Schools, the Hillsborough County (Fla.) Public Schools, the Memphis City Schools, New York City's system of public schools, and the Pittsburgh Public Schools. The Pittsburgh Public Schools district was included in the project as a pilot district, and data from that preliminary phase of the project are not included in the MET Database to be used by Wallace and the other grant awardees.
Wallace was awarded the grant for her proposal "Employing Urban Adolescent Interpretations of Instructional Practice to Distinguish Teacher Proficiency From Ceiling Effect in the Classroom Organizational Domain." The Pitt project will involve recruiting students from local public schools to view some of the video footage taken during the MET research phase.
The students will be shown classroom situations where the interpretations of adolescents and adult evaluators differed, with student survey responses indicating that a teacher had poor control over the classroom, but adult evaluators considering the teacher to have adequate control. By discussing the videos with the students in small groups, Wallace and her team hope to identify the factors that caused adolescents to view each situation as they did.
Wallace believes that her project's inclusion of adolescents' responses to video recordings of teachers' lessons is unprecedented.
"The hope is that from the results of this study we'll be able to refine our existing view of classroom management in ways that are more sensitive to what matters to adolescents and their willingness to engage in classroom learning activities," said Wallace. A common, and valid, critique of much work evaluating teacher effectiveness, she said, is that these studies are "adult-centric," and they fail to prioritize students' voices in the process.
"We want to integrate the perceptions of adolescents but really link these perceptions to instructional practice," she added. "I think it's a promising new direction in evaluating teachers."
The research project fits in with Wallace's broader research. She studies high schools as developmental spaces, analyzing the ways that adolescents and teachers build connections through classroom interactions as they grow and develop together.
A side benefit of the project that Wallace has noted is the building of community among the 10 teams of researchers that have received the MET Early Career Research Grant. Several "virtual" meetings of the research teams will be held throughout the year, with some in-person meetings scheduled as well. "The goal of these grants is to build a cohort of young scholars who are advancing our ability to accurately measure effective teaching, and I am thrilled to be part of the group," Wallace said.
The other teams that have received the grant are based at Boston University, Brigham Young University, Michigan State University, New York University, the Rockville Institute for the Advancement of Social Science, the University of Connecticut, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Texas at San Antonio, and Wayne State University.
Wallace and her team members underwent multiple rounds of security clearance before gaining access to the data via a virtual data enclave system that prevents them from downloading the data to computers. The team's access began on March 1, 2013, and will expire on March 1, 2014.
###
The MET Longitudinal Database research collection is stored at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research in the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. Visit http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/METLDB to learn more about the MET Longitudinal Database.
4/22/13/mab/cjhm
Editors: An image of Tanner LeBaron Wallace is available at http://www.news.pitt.edu/gatesteacherevaluation
Contact:
Adam Reger
412-802-5908 (cell)
[ | 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.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-04/uop-pep042213.php
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An Evidence-Based Approach to Managing Chemotherapy-Induced ...
Presented by: Carrie Stricker, PhD, RN, AOCN
The Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania
Last Modified: April 22, 2013
This continuing education activity is designed for nurses and nurse practitioners in clinical practice to learn about the assessment, prevention and control of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV). This activity has been approved for 1.0 contact hour by the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Department of Nursing Development and Education, an approved provider of continuing nursing education by the PA State Nurses Association, an accredited approver by the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Commission on Accreditation.
To receive continuing education credits for this activity:
- Watch the video presentation by Dr. Stricker, which will open in a new window.
- Return to this page, click on the link to go to the posttest, fill in your contact information and complete the test.
- If you do not achieve a passing score, you will return to the test and be able to retake the posttest.
- If you achieve a score of 80% or higher, you can proceed to the evaluation form.
- Once you submit the evaluation, the CE certificate will pop up. Please print this for your records.
The educational objectives of this activity are:
- To describe the underlying mechanisms of chemotherapy induced nausea and vomiting (CINV).
- To discuss contemporary evidence for best practice in prevention and control of CINV.
- To overview strategies for translating CINV evidence into clinical practice, including via development and implementation of institutional guidelines.
PROCEED TO VIDEO PRESENTATION
An Evidence-Based Approach to Managing Chemotherapy-Induced Nausea and Vomiting - Continuing Education Post-Test
Source: http://www.oncolink.org/resources/article.cfm?c=412&id=1097
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Bruins end slide with 3-0 win over Panthers
Bruins end slide with 3-0 win over Panthers
By DOUG ALDENBy DOUG ALDEN, Associated Press?
?Singer Rene Rancourt, right, gestures toward a Watertown Police Honor Guard, left, on the ice before a NHL hockey game between the Boston Bruins and the Florida Panthers at the TD Garden in Boston, Sunday, April 21, 2013. The second suspect in the Monday, April 15, 2013, bombings that took place near the finish line of the Boston Marathon was captured in Watertown, Mass., Friday, April 19, 2013. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Singer Rene Rancourt, right, gestures toward a Watertown Police Honor Guard, left, on the ice before a NHL hockey game between the Boston Bruins and the Florida Panthers at the TD Garden in Boston, Sunday, April 21, 2013. The second suspect in the Monday, April 15, 2013, bombings that took place near the finish line of the Boston Marathon was captured in Watertown, Mass., Friday, April 19, 2013. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Florida Panthers right wing Jack Skille (12), left, grapples with Boston Bruins defenseman Johnny Boychuk (55), right, in the first period of an NHL hockey game at the TD Garden, in Boston, Sunday, April 21, 2013. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Boston Bruins left wing Milan Lucic, top, and Florida Panthers defenseman Dmitry Kulikov keep their eyes on the puck as they slam into the boards in the first period of an NHL hockey game at the TD Garden, in Boston Sunday, April 21, 2013. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Boston Bruins right wing Jaromir Jagr (68), right, of the Czech Republic, takes to the ice while trying to make a shot on-goal past Florida Panthers defenseman Mike Weaver (43), left, in the second period of an NHL hockey game at the TD Garden in Boston, Sunday, April 21, 2013. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Boston Bruins center Chris Kelly (23), bottom, is greeted by fans as he steps off the ice and under a placard with the phrase "Boston Strong" after warming up before an NHL hockey game against the Florida Panthers at the TD Garden in Boston, Sunday, April 21, 2013. The phrase Boston Strong refers to the city's response and recovery following the Monday, April 15, 2013, bomb attacks near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
BOSTON (AP) ? Jaromir Jagr scored his second goal as a member of the Bruins and Boston ended a four-game winless streak with a 3-0 victory over Florida on Sunday.
The Bruins were playing the second of back-to-back afternoon games after hosting the Penguins in a 3-2 loss Saturday. The game was originally scheduled for Friday night, but postponed because of the lockdown and manhunt for one of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers.
Tuukka Rask stopped 28 shots for his fourth shutout of the season and the Bruins pulled into a tie with idle Montreal for first place in Northeast Division with 59 points. The Bruins have four games to play, one more than the Canadiens as the longtime rivals try to lock up the division in the final week of the regular season.
The visiting Panthers honored local law enforcement by wearing Boston Police hats during their pregame skate. Bruins fans once again took over the singing of the national anthem, a practice that started last week in the first game since the deadly explosions at the marathon finish line.
Autographed Bruins jerseys worn during Sunday's game were to be given to fans as part of an annual promotion, but instead went to first responders, a change requested by the fans. The Bruins remained on the ice after the game, each skating over and taking off his jersey and handing it to first responders and law enforcement officials who helped at the Boston Marathon bombings and in apprehension of one of the suspected bombers.
Jagr scored 3:03 into the game and rookie Dougie Hamilton added his fifth goal of the season on a slap shot from the blue line in the second period, giving the Bruins goals from their oldest and youngest player. Jagr, who has eight points in nine games for Boston, is 41; Hamilton is 19.
Brad Marchand picked up his team-high 18th goal when he backhanded the puck into an empty net with 1:22 remaining.
Florida has lost six in a row and seven of eight, although the Panthers did improve slightly on defense in this latest loss. The Panthers had been outscored 17-5 during the first three games of a four-game road trip, which ended Sunday.
Jacob Markstrom stopped 36 shots for Florida, one day after allowing six straight goals in a 6-2 loss at New Jersey.
NOTES: Bruins D Adam McQuaid (lower body) and F Nathan Horton (upper body) were out of the lineup. ... Boston C Carl Soderberg, who made his NHL debut on Saturday, assisted on Jagr's goal for his first NHL point. ... The Panthers' last won on April 7, beating Ottawa 2-1. ... Florida has not scored more than three goals in any game this month.
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Monday, April 22, 2013
Would Lochte take risks on his show? Oh, jeah!
By Ree Hines, TODAY contributor
On Sunday night, fans of Ryan Lochte got a glimpse of what life's like for the five-time Olympic gold medalist when he's not hanging out poolside thanks to his new reality TV show, "What Would Ryan Lochte Do?" But for those who missed the premiere, there's still a chance to find out the answer to the show's title question.
During a Monday morning visit to TODAY, Lochte revealed that he'd do just about anything -- the bigger the risk, the better.
"I?m not your average Olympian," he said. "You know when you think about Olympians, you think about (how) they eat, they train, they sleep. That?s it. For me that?s not the case at all. I like doing other stuff. I like going out and having a good time. I like doing stuff I could probably get myself hurt in, like playing basketball, skateboarding, surfing -- you name it, I'm doing it."
And viewers will see it -- not that he's only sharing the exciting stuff with the public. After all, the cameras capture everything!
"The first, like, couple of days ? I was awake and brushing my teeth and the camera was right there," Lochte recalled. "I'm going downstairs to eat breakfast before swim practice, the camera's there. The camera is there 24/7, and I wasn?t used to that."
But now he doesn't mind the living under the lens. In fact, he's found one big perk that's come from it.
"The best thing about this show was I got really close with my family," the swimmer explained. "I mean, I was seeing them maybe once or twice every three months (before). (With) this show, I saw them once or twice every week, and it just brought us a lot closer together."?
Catch more from Lochte -- and his family -- when "What Would Ryan Lochte Do?" airs next Sunday at 10 p.m. on E!
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The unfolding of a 5-day manhunt for bomb suspects
The twin explosions that ripped through the crowd near the finish line of the Boston Marathon triggered a massive manhunt that paralyzed a city. Two bombs set off about ten seconds and 100 yards apart signaled the end of one race and the start of another ? to identify and find those responsible. This is how that race unfolded.
___
MONDAY, APRIL 15
? Just before 3 p.m., an explosion shatters the cheers on Boylston Street near the finish line of one of Boston's largest and most cherished events. More than 17,000 runners already had crossed the finish line, but thousands more still were headed for the site of the bombing. Ten seconds later, a second explosion shatters windows and bodies. Sirens and screams erupt as rescuers scramble and the crowd panics.
"They just started bringing people in with no limbs," runner Tim Davey of Richmond, Va., said of his view from inside a medical tent that had been set up to care for fatigued runners.
? The blasts killed three people ? 8-year-old Martin Richard, of Boston; 29-year-old Krystle Campbell, of Medford; and 23-year-old Lu Lingzi, a Boston University graduate student from China ? and injured more than 180 others, but it would be hours before the chaos cleared enough to give authorities a true sense of the casualties. Or even where the bombs had been hidden. If they had been hidden.
? A citywide shutdown that will become nearly complete by the end of the week begins by early evening. A no-fly zone is created over the bombing sites, major sporting events are canceled, people are urged to stay indoors, SWAT team members with machine guns patrol hospitals. And the world takes notice, beefing up security at nuclear plants, public transit systems and anywhere crowds gather.
? Is it terrorism? Americans are eager for answers, but when President Barack Obama addresses the nation three hours after the explosion, he stops short of that. "We will find out who did this. We'll find out why they did this," Obama said in his brief statement. "Any responsible individuals, any responsible groups, will feel the full weight of justice."
? Knowing that thousands of smartphones and cameras were in the crowd, by nightfall authorities officially tap the power of crowd sourcing and put out the call for pictures, videos and tips.
___
TUESDAY, APRIL 16
? The day begins with a city ? and a nation ? on edge and without answers. No suspects. No motives. No claims of responsibility. An apartment in nearby Revere was searched overnight, but no details emerge. Copley Plaza ? the typically bustling site of the bombings ? was blocked to vehicles and pedestrians.
? By noon, Obama inches the nation forward but only barely. Calling the bombings "a heinous and cowardly act," he says they are being investigated as an act of terrorism, but authorities still don't know who is responsible. Later in the day, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says the bombings don't appear to be part of a large plot, but security on public transit nationwide ? and around the world ? remains high.
? A picture of the bombs begins to emerge. Based on debris at the site, investigators determine the bombs were crudely fashioned from ordinary kitchen pressure cookers packed with explosives, nails and ball bearings. And they were hidden in black backpacks and left on the ground.
? Pictures of the victims emerge, too. Photos flood social media. There is 8-year-old Martin Richard, smiling and holding a sign that calls for peace and reads, "No more hurting people." And there is 27-year-old Jeff Bauman Jr., being pushed in a wheelchair from the scene of the explosions, bloodied with both legs blown off below the knees.
? It would be another two days before pictures of the suspects, 19-year-old Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev and his brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, would emerge. But already the younger of the two appears nervous. The owner of an auto body shop near the brothers' Cambridge home later recalled a visit from Dzhokhar on Tuesday.
Gilberto Junior said the usually easygoing teen often stopped by to talk cars and soccer. But on Tuesday, he was biting his nails and trembling. The mechanic told Dzhokhar he hadn't had a chance to work on a Mercedes the teen had dropped off for bumper work. "I don't care. I don't care. I need the car right now," Junior says Dzhokhar told him.
___
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17
? Investigators plow through thousands of tips, scour the rooftops and roads around the blast site, and use sophisticated software to sift through mountains of images and video for patterns or unusual behavior. Obama signs an emergency declaration to send federal aid to Massachusetts.
? Amid conflicting ? and ultimately false ? reports of a break in the case, investigators discover department store surveillance footage shot near the site of the bombs that shows a man dropping off a bag believed to contain one of the bombs. But officials say they still don't know the man's name.
? Boston remains under a heavy security presence, with police officers stationed on street corners across the city. National Guardsmen have set up tents on the Boston Common and stationed tactical vehicles.
___
THURSDAY, APRIL 18
? Obama and other dignitaries attend an interfaith service at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. "You will run again!" Obama tells the city.
? Using facial recognition technology and a painstaking frame-by-frame search, investigators have narrowed their search to images of two young men, Suspect No. 1 and Suspect No. 2. But officials still don't know who they are. And as of 1 p.m., they won't publicly describe them.
? At 5:10 p.m., investigators reveal the photos and video of the two men, a tactic intended to apply pressure in hopes the men will be identified or reveal themselves. But it comes with risk. The men could reveal themselves by lashing out with more violence. Within moments, the images trigger a flood of responses that overwhelm the FBI's website.
"We consider them to be armed and extremely dangerous," FBI Agent Richard DesLauriers said.
? About five hours later, something happens. It's not clear what, but something snaps and the city of Boston seems to spin violently out of control for nearly 24 hours.
? At 10:20 p.m., shots are heard on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, across the Charles River from Boston in Cambridge. Ten minutes later, a 26-year-old MIT campus police officer, Sean Collier, is found shot multiple times in his car and pronounced dead.
? Shortly after, two armed men carjack a Mercedes SUV in Cambridge. They hold the driver for half an hour, then release him unharmed. That man runs into a gas station and calls police. Whatever the carjackers had told him during his time with them convinces police they are dealing with the bombing suspects.
? The search for the Mercedes leads to a chase that ends in Watertown. Residents there describe war zone-like scenes, with the suspects hurling explosive devices from the car and exchanging gunfire with police. The men were prepared. They had collected pipe bombs, grenades and improvised explosive devices, police say. A transit police officer, 33-year-old Richard Donohue, is shot and critically wounded.
? In the course of the gunfire, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev is shot. His brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, escapes in a stolen vehicle, running over his wounded brother as he flees, according to police. In his wake are 200 spent shells. Tamerlan Tsarnaev dies shortly after at a Boston hospital from multiple gunshot wounds and a possible blast injury. Meanwhile, at some point his brother abandons his car and flees on foot.
___
FRIDAY, APRIL 19
? Gunshots and explosions are heard in Watertown around 1 a.m. Police SWAT teams, sharpshooters and FBI agents descend on an area stretching from Watertown to Cambridge, surrounding buildings. Police helicopters buzz overhead and armored vehicles rumble through the streets. Trains are searched. And by 4:30 a.m., residents of eastern Watertown are told to stay in their homes.
? An hour later, the lockdown is extended across Boston, affecting more than 1 million people. Open your door only for uniformed officers, they are told. Mass transit is shut down, including Amtrak trains to New York. Businesses are told not to open. It is a city paralyzed. Signs up and down the highways leading into Boston warn to avoid the city.
"We believe this man to be a terrorist," Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said. "We believe this to be a man who's come here to kill people."
? Investigators begin a methodical, door-to-door sweep of Watertown. By midmorning, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth closes and evacuates its campus after confirming that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was registered there. Around midday, the suspects' uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, of Maryland, pleads on television: "Dzhokhar, if you are alive, turn yourself in and ask for forgiveness."
? Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had somehow evaded an army. As night fell, authorities start scaling back the hunt. Mass transit is allowed to resume and people are told they can leave their homes.
? But just as that order is lifted, there is a break. A man in Watertown sees blood on a boat parked in a yard. When he pulls back the tarp, he sees a man covered in blood and calls police. When authorities arrive, they try to talk the suspect ? already weakened by a gunshot wound received some 20 hours earlier ? into getting out of the boat.
? He doesn't. Police say the 19-year-old suspect exchanges gunfire with law enforcement for an hour while holed up in the boat before being captured.
? Just before 9 p.m., Boston police take to Twitter: "CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won. Suspect in custody."
? People pour into the streets. Church bells ring. American flags are waved. A city erupts again.
___
J.M. Hirsch tweets at http://twitter.com/JM_Hirsch
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/unfolding-5-day-manhunt-bomb-suspects-004153220.html
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Reese Witherspoon, husband arrested in Atlanta
Atlanta Dept. of Corrections
Mug shots of Reese Witherspoon and James Toth taken after their Atlanta arrest.
By Randee Dawn, TODAY contributor
Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon was arrested and jailed for a short time in Atlanta early Friday morning, according to an incident report originally obtained by Variety.?Her husband, CAA agent James Toth, was also arrested and jailed.
Toth was spotted by an Atlanta police officer while driving in the wrong lane, and now faces one DUI charge, and a second for "failure to maintain lane," according to the report, which was also obtained by TODAY.com. Witherspoon faces a charge of disorderly conduct.?
The pair were pulled over when Toth's failure to maintain his lane was cause for suspicion of driving while intoxicated, and Witherspoon found herself handcuffed after refusing to stay in the car while the officer administered a field sobriety test on her husband.
"Mrs. Witherspoon began to hang out the window (of her car) and say that she did not believe that I was a real police officer," Officer J. Pyland noted in his report. "I told Mrs. Witherspoon to sit on her butt and be quiet."
The back-and-forth between Witherspoon and Officer Pyland escalated until he arrested her and put her in the rear of his vehicle.
The report also quoted Witherspoon as asking, "Do you know my name?" The officer says he answered that he didn't need to know her name "right now," and she told him, "You're about to find out who I am," later adding, "You are going to be on national news."
The couple were released at around 3:30 a.m. on Friday morning. A court appearance is scheduled for 8 a.m. Monday morning in Atlanta Municipal Court, but Variety said their attorney is likely to request a posponement.?
Witherspoon has been in Atlanta recently filming an independent film, "The Good Lie." The pair have been married since 2011 and she gave birth to their son Tennessee James Toth last September.
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For bombing suspects, question may be who led whom
BOSTON (AP) ? Tamerlan Tsarnaev ranted at a neighbor about Islam and the United States. His younger brother, Dzhokhar, relished debating people on religion, "then crushing their beliefs with facts."
The older brother sought individual glory in the boxing ring, while the younger excelled as part of a team. Tamerlan "swaggered" through the family home like a "man-of-the-house type," one visitor recalls, while Dzhokhar seemed "very respectful and very obedient" to his mother.
The brothers, now forever linked in the Boston Marathon bombing tragedy, in some ways seemed as different as siblings could be. But whatever drove them to allegedly set off two pressure-cooker bombs, their uncle is certain Dzhokhar was not the one pulling the strings.
"He's not been understanding anything. He's a 19-year-old boy," Ruslan Tsarni said of his brother's youngest child, who is clinging to life in a Boston hospital after a gunbattle with police. "He's been absolutely wasted by his older brother. I mean, he used him. He used him for whatever he's done. For what we see they've done. OK?"
Criminologist James Alan Fox says the uncle's intuition is justified. In cases like this, he says, it is highly unusual for the younger participant ? in this case, a sibling ? to be the leader.
"I would be surprised," says Fox, a professor of Criminology, Law and Public Policy at Boston's Northeastern University. "Very surprised."
Whatever their fraternal pecking order, when the bullets began flying in Watertown on Thursday night and 26-year-old Tamerlan went down, his younger brother ran him over ? dragging him for about 30 feet ? before ditching the car and fleeing on foot. After a 24-hour manhunt that shut down most of the Boston metropolitan area, police cornered the gravely wounded Dzhokhar hiding in a boat in a backyard, only blocks from where his brother bled out.
Officials said Dzhokhar was in serious condition Saturday, unable to communicate. So, at least for now, investigators and the public are left with only enigma.
The ethnic Chechen family came to this country in 2002, after fleeing troubles in Kyrgyzstan and then Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim republic in Russia's North Caucasus. They settled in a working-class part of Cambridge, where the father, Anzor Tsarnaev, opened an auto shop.
He returned to Dagestan about a year ago.
Luis Vasquez went to high school with Tamerlan and later helped coach Dzhokhar's soccer team at Cambridge Rindge and Latin. With the father gone, Vasquez said, the older brother assumed a kind of paternal role, at least where the girls in the family were concerned.
"He was very protective of his (younger) sister, Bella," Vasquez said. "He would keep an eye out, making sure she's good, making sure she's not having a hard time."
Vasquez chalked it up to "his culture" and "what his family expected out of him."
David Mijares, who trained in boxing with Tamerlan in high school and later coached the younger brother in soccer, agreed that his friend felt pressure to take his father's place.
"He had to be a man at a very early age," says Mijares. "That would be, in my opinion, a huge reason for who he was, all serious and no nonsense."
John Pinto said the pair were frequent patrons at his Midwest Grill, just a couple of blocks from their house. When they walked in, he said, Tamerlan was always in the lead.
"I think the big brother is more the command guy, boss," Pinto said, puffing out his chest for emphasis.
That said, Dzhokhar was very much his own man. While he would tag along to Tamerlan's boxing practices, the younger brother was into wrestling.
In one of his tweets, he complained that his mother was trying to arrange a marriage for him, as she'd done for his sisters.
"she needs to (hash)chillout," he tweeted on July 12. "i'll find my own honey."
Tamerlan preceded his brother at the prestigious Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School, which counts celebrities Matt Damon and Ben Affleck among its alumni. But he does not appear to have been a standout student and athlete whose reputation Dzhokhar would have felt pressure to live up to.
"To be perfectly honest, I did not know he HAD an older brother from the start," said classmate Alexandros Stefanakis, who played pickup basketball games and hung out with Dzhokhar outside school.
Anne Kilzer of Belmont would go to the Tsarnaev home for regular facials from the boys' mother, Zubeidat. She said the older brother was a "macho guy," whereas Dzhokhar seemed more cerebral.
The few times that Tamerlan was there, he would wave his mother off when she tried to introduce him. "He sort of swaggered through," she said. "Sort of a man-of-the-house type."
In a blog entry, Kilzer's daughter, Alyssa, suggested that the mother became increasingly religious as their acquaintance progressed. For instance, she began wearing a hijab, the traditional Muslim headscarf.
"She started to refuse to see boys that had gone through puberty, as she had consulted a religious figure and he had told her it was sacrilegious," Alyssa Kilzer wrote. "She was often fasting. She told me that she had cried for days when her oldest son, Tamerlan, told her that he wanted to move out, going against her culture's tradition of the son staying in the house with the mother until marriage."
She said the mother also expressed some rather strident views about the U.S. government. But it was difficult to know who was influencing whom in the household.
"During this facial session she started quoting a conspiracy theory, telling me that she thought 9-11 was purposefully created by the American government to make America hate Muslims," Alyssa Kilzer wrote. "'It's real,' she said. 'My son knows all about it. You can read on the internet.'"
Kilzer didn't say to which son the mother was referring. Kilzer, who is studying in Scotland, could not immediately be reached.
Tsarni told The Associated Press from his home in Maryland that a deep rift opened between him and his sister-in-law, but that he tried to maintain a relationship with the boys. However, that effort began to fall apart several years ago, he said, when Tamerlan "started carrying all this nonsense associated with religion, with Islamic religion."
When he asked his older nephew why he wasn't in school, he said Tamerlan gave an enigmatic answer. "Oh, I'm in God's business," the young man replied.
Tamerlan would throw out foreign words like "jihad" and "Inshallah" ? Arabic for "God willing" ? without really understanding their meaning, he said. Though Tsarni is himself Muslim, he said he does not worship at a mosque.
The uncle was surprised when he learned that Tamerlan had gotten married to an American woman ? a "good Christian family girl," who his nephew said was about to convert to Islam.
In February, Alexander Podobryaev, who lives a couple of houses from the Tsarnaevs, exchanged pleasantries with Tamerlan as they shoveled snow. He says the man pointed to a woman in a black Muslim headscarf and identified her as his wife.
Others began noticing signs of Tamerlan's increasing agitation.
One of the brothers' neighbors, Albrecht Ammon, said he had a bizarre encounter with Tamerlan in a pizza shop about three months ago. The older brother argued with him about U.S. foreign policy, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and religion.
He said Tamerlan referred to the Bible as a "cheap copy" of the Quran, and that many of this country's wars "are based upon the Bible ? how it's an excuse to invade other countries."
"He had nothing against the American people," Ammon said. "He had something against the American government."
Dzhokhar, on the other hand, was "real cool," Ammon said. "A chill guy."
While his older brother was railing about religion and world politics, Dzhokhar seemed more interested in the HBO series "Game of Thrones" and other television shows.
"Breaking Bad taught me how to dispose of a corpse," he tweeted on Jan. 16, referring to the popular AMC series about a dying chemistry teacher who turns to cooking methamphetamine to leave a nest egg for his family.
He did tweet about religion, but they were hardly the words of a hard-core zealot.
"This night deserves Hennessy a bad b---- and an o of weed," he wrote on Nov. 17. "the holy trinity"
On Nov. 29, he wrote: "I kind of like religious debates, just hearing what other people believe is interesting and then crushing their beliefs with facts is fun." And on Jan. 15: "I don't argue with fools who say Islam is terrorism it's not worth a thing, let an idiot remain an idiot."
However, he acknowledged in another message around Christmas that the "Brothers at the mosque either think I'm a convert or that I'm from Algeria or Syria."
Fox said it's not unheard of for the younger person in a crime team to be the dominant personality. But he said it's rare.
"In this case, the older brother is the one that seems to have become religious and drawn to Islam," Fox said. "The older brother dropped out of school ... whereas the younger brother, it was all positives."
But, he said, "the age factor is critical here."
Tamerlan was a fairly gifted boxer, but preened about fighting prowess that often fell far short. His younger brother seemed content to be part of a team.
Marvin Salazar was two years older than Dzhokhar when they attended Community Charter Schools of Cambridge, where they played intramural soccer together. He was impressed by the younger boy's smarts and drive, but noted that while Dzhokhar was very fast, he wasn't the kind of kid who needed to showboat and score goals.
"I remember he told me he liked to play midfield," the 21-year-old said. "He's the guy who sets everybody up for the plays. He's one of the most important people."
He was also on his high school wrestling team.
Tamerlan once said he had no American friends. His brother had lots of them, but fellow students at UMass-Dartmouth say he also hung out with some Russian speakers.
On March 14, 2012, Dzhokhar tweeted: "a decade in america already, i want out" That same day, he added, "im trying to grow a beard"
Dzhokhar became naturalized last September, federal officials told the AP. His older brother had a green card but may have been thwarted in his quest for U.S. citizenship by an assault charge, his father told The New York Times.
If Tamerlan recorded his thoughts, they have not yet surfaced ? at least publicly. His brother left a trail on the Internet, although in an Aug. 7, 2012 tweet, he called himself a "heavy sleeper and a great liar"
In March, Dzhokhar tweeted: "Evil triumphs when good men do nothing." A week and a half earlier, he reminded his followers, "Never underestimate the rebel with a cause."
The day of the bombing, he wrote: "There are people that know the truth but stay silent & there are people that speak the truth but we don't hear them cuz they're the minority"
Tsarni is confident authorities will find that Tamerlan was his younger brother's "mentor."
"Dzhokhar, of course, was looking up at him," he said.
But their body language the day of the bombings seems to suggest at least a partnership of equals.
In one of the now infamous photos the FBI released to the public in hopes of tips, the older brother has his head down, the visor pulled low over his face as if he's trying to hide. Dzhokhar, by contrast, has his white baseball cap turned backward, revealing his entire face, his chin is thrust confidently into the air.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/bombing-suspects-may-led-whom-001538013--spt.html
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Friday, April 19, 2013
Pakistan's medical schools _ where the women rule
KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) ? In a lecture hall of one of Pakistan's most prestigious medical schools, a handful of male students sits in the far top corner, clearly outnumbered by the rows and rows of female students listening intently to the doctor lecturing about insulin.
In a country better known for honor killings of women and low literacy rates for girls, Pakistan's medical schools are a reflection of how women's roles are evolving. Women now make up the vast majority of students studying medicine, a gradual change that's come about after a quota favoring male admittance into medical school was lifted in 1991.
The trend is a step forward for women in Pakistan, a largely conservative Muslim country. But there remain obstacles. Many women graduates don't go on to work as doctors, largely because of pressure from family and society to get married and stop working ? so much so that there are now concerns over the impact on the country's health care system.
At Dow Medical College in the southern port city of Karachi, the female students said they are adamant they will work.
Standing in the school's courtyard as fellow students ? almost all of them women ? gathered between classes, Ayesha Sultan described why she wants to become a doctor.
"I wanted to serve humanity, and I believe that I was born for this," said Sultan, who is in her first year. "The women here are really striving hard to get a position, especially in this country where women's discrimination is to the zenith, so I think that's why you find a lot of women here."
For years, a government-imposed quota mandated that 80 percent of the seats at medical schools went to men and 20 percent to women. Then the Supreme Court ruled that the quota was unconstitutional and that admission should be based solely on merit.
Now about 80 to 85 percent of Pakistan's medical students are women, said Dr. Mirza Ali Azhar, the secretary general of the Pakistan Medical Association. Statistics gathered by The Associated Press show that at medical schools in some deeply conservative areas of the country such as Baluchistan in the southwest and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in the northwest, men still outnumber women. But in Punjab and Sindh provinces, which turn out the vast bulk of medical students, the women dominate. At Dow, it is currently about 70 percent women to 30 percent men.
In comparison, about 47 percent of medical students in the U.S. are women, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
There are a number of different reasons why men don't make the cut, say students, faculty and medical officials. Medical school takes too long and is too difficult. Boys have more freedom to leave the house than girls, so they have more distractions. Boys want a career path in business or IT that will make them more money and faster, in part because they need to earn money to raise families.
"In our society, girls are working harder. They are just more concentrated on their studies," said Azhar. Boys also see how hard doctors have to work even after they get their degree. "They do not like to work hard as a matter of fact."
Ammara Khan is fully prepared for the years that it will take to fulfill her dream of becoming a neurosurgeon. She decided she wanted to pursue neurosurgery after watching an operation while volunteering at the Aga Khan University Hospital in Karachi.
"It's like an adrenaline rush, and I knew I wanted to be that and nothing else," she said.
Still, medical officials and students acknowledge many women don't go on to practice medicine.
At Dow, for example, just about all the male graduates work as doctors, but only an estimated half the women do, says Dr. Umar Farooq, the school's pro-vice chancellor. Nationwide figures on how many women graduates forgo actual practice don't exist, but despite years of increased women's enrollment, the gender breakdown of doctors remains lopsided. Of the 132,988 doctors registered with the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council, 58,789 are women. The number of female specialists is even smaller: 7,524 out of 28,686.
The pressure on women to get married, have kids and stay home to raise them is powerful.
The prestige of a medical degree gives a woman a boost in marriage prospects, so many parents push their daughters to enroll, many students and faculty said. Prospective in-laws like the idea of having a doctor in the family and want their sons to have an educated wife to ensure the grandchildren are educated as well.
But that doesn't mean they want the woman to actually use her degree and take away from child-raising time.
"They want a doctor label but they don't want it to go anywhere. They don't think you're a real person who might want to specialize or work on it," said Beenish Ehsan, a student at Dow.
Her own family supports her completing the initial five years of medical college. But when she started talking about further studies for a specialization, they worried it would take away from her future family life.
"They're like, 'No, but you'll take care of the house, won't you?'" Ehsan said.
"You have to convince them," she said, adding that too many women don't push back against their families. "Sometimes girls give up too soon, I feel."
There are also cultural impediments. Women who do work often don't want to do so in rural areas far from their families or don't want night shifts, given the country's deteriorating law and order. Some male patients only want to be treated by men because they don't want women touching them or because they perceive the men to be smarter and more qualified.
During the 2010 floods that devastated Pakistan, Dow wanted to send medical students to Sindh province to treat victims but were hindered by the school's overwhelmingly female enrollment, admissions director Rana Qamar Masood said. The boys could go on their own for long stretches. The girls were also lobbying heavily to go, but the school decided to send them in teams on buses with chaperones out of concern for their safety. They would return home each evening, thus limiting how far they could travel.
"We are responsible for these girls. How can we send them out to these hard-hit areas?" she said. "These are the ground realities in our society."
Amid concerns over the number of the doctors in the future, proposals are being touted to rebalance the student body. Masood said she would support some sort of gender bias in admissions to bring in more male students. The PMA has floated the idea of building a number of medical schools just for boys. Already there are five medical schools for women.
Among the students, some said a new quota was necessary. Others said it would be unfair.
"That would be injustice. Girls are studying harder," said one male student, Aleem Uddin Khan, who said it took him two tries to get into Dow. "If we want the seats, we should study hard."
The debate here echoes the "mommy wars" in the U.S., where women have been trying to figure out the balance between work and home life for years.
Midhat Lakhani, a Dow student, has only to look to her mother, who's a doctor, to know it's possible to pursue a career and have a family. Her mom took her postgraduate exams 15 days after giving birth to Midhat's sister.
"You have to be supermom, obviously," she said.
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Associated Press writer Adil Jawad in Karachi, Riaz Khan in Peshawar, Abdul Sattar in Quetta and Zarar Khan in Islamabad contributed to this report.
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Follow Rebecca Santana at http://www.twitter.com/ruskygal.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pakistans-medical-schools-where-women-rule-060142084.html
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