OSLO, Norway (AP) -- A Web camera in a Norwegian artist's living room in California allowed her sons in Norway and the Philippines to see that she had collapsed and call for help, one of the sons said Friday.
The mother had been unconscious for about two hours before her sons checked in, so there was also an element of luck, since they only use the camera a few times a week.
DESCRIPTION : Development of optimization algorithms for large scale agent based models of complex physical systems. The emphasis is on stochastic optimization of complex nonlinear problems, as modeled by agents, and their application to traffic simulations.
PREREQUISITES : University degree in any of the following disciplines : Physics, Computational and Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Electrical/Mechanical/Civil Engineering, Applied Mechanics. PhD studies at ETHZ are conducted in English and a good command of the English language is necessary. ETHZ encourages applications of female candidates.
ENTRANCE : February 2006 or by arrangement.
DURATION OF APPOINTMENT : 3 years (+an eventual 4th year).
FELLOWSHIP : Project funded by the ETH Research Foundation - Fellowships up to
60,000 CHF per year pending on qualifications.
APPLYING : Please send your applications in English by e-mail to :petros@ethz.ch
Please include :
* Curriculum Vitae (including contact information of two references)
* Grades of all University Classes
* A one page statement of your background and research interests
* GRE and TOEFL Scores (if available)
DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF APPLICATIONS : January 9th, 2006
CONTACT : Prof. Petros Koumoutsakos
Institute of Computational Science
Universitätstrasse 6
ETH Zurich
CH-8092, Switzerland
http://www.icos.ethz.ch/cse
Single-letter names under ".com," ".net" and ".org" were set aside in 1993 as engineers grew concerned about their ability to meet the expected explosion in demand for domain names. They weren't sure then whether a single database of names could hold millions -- more than 40 million in the case of ".com" today.
One idea was to create a mechanism for splitting a single database into 26 -- one corresponding to each letter. So instead of storing the domain name for The Associated Press under ".org," it would go under "a.org." In other words, "ap.org" would become "ap.a.org."
Now, engineers have concluded that won't be necessary. They have seen the address database grow to hold millions of names without trouble, so they are now willing to let go of the single-letter names they had reserved.
Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I'm not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it's everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I'm raising now is enough that I don't need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.
Believing there's no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don't travel in circles where people say, "I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith." That's just a long-winded religious way to say, "shut up," or another two words that the FCC likes less. But all obscenity is less insulting than, "How I was brought up and my imaginary friend means more to me than anything you can ever say or do." So, believing there is no God lets me be proven wrong and that's always fun. It means I'm learning something.
Believing there is no God means the suffering I've seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn't caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn't bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.
Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-o and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.
But bedbugs on Park Avenue? Ask the horrified matron who recently found her duplex teeming with the blood-sucking beasts. Or the tenants of a co-op on Riverside Drive who spent $200,000 earlier this month to purge their building of the pesky little thugs. The Helmsley Park Lane was sued two years ago by a welt-covered guest who blamed the hotel for harboring the critters. The suit was quietly settled last year.
And bedbugs, stealthy and fast-moving nocturnal creatures that were all but eradicated by DDT after World War II, have recently been found in hospital maternity wards, private schools and even a plastic surgeon's waiting room.
Bedbugs are back and spreading through New York City like a swarm of locusts on a lush field of wheat.
Last year the city logged 377 bedbug violations, up from just 2 in 2002 and 16 in 2003. Since July, there have been 449. "It's definitely a fast-emerging problem," said Carol Abrams, spokeswoman for the city housing agency.
And that new mattress delivered from a reputable department store, which kindly hauled away your old one? It may have spent all day in a truck wedged against an old mattress collected from a customer with a bedbug problem.
"My life has become all about bedbugs," she said as an exterminator arrived last week.
She said that to calm her friends and to ensure that she does not spread the bugs, she takes an extra set of clothing and changes when she arrives at their homes for overnight visits. "The psychological damage is probably the worst thing about it. I mean, how long will it be before I can sleep soundly and not worry about some creature sucking my blood?"
Still, for Ms. Scanlan, there has been a silver lining. The night after she discovered the bugs, she went out drinking, intent on avoiding her own bed. That evening she met a man at a bar, and, contrary to her usual instincts, accompanied him to his apartment. An encounter partly born of desperation soon blossomed into something more, she said.
"We've been together ever since," Ms. Scanlan said with a smile. "Thanks to the bedbugs, I've fallen in love."
CONCORD, New Hampshire (AP) -- To some, a never-enforced New Hampshire law requiring parental notification before a minor has an abortion is a backward step for women's rights. To others, it protects parents' right to know if their child is having an abortion.
The U.S. Supreme Court will consider those arguments Wednesday as it begins to weigh whether to reinstate a law that requires parental notification 48 hours before an abortion can be performed on a minor.
The 2003 law was struck down, days before it was to take effect, for failing to provide an exception to protect a minor's health.
Under the law, parents or guardians must be notified either in person or by certified mail.
In a separate policy reversal, the Bush administration has imposed its global gag rule on groups seeking funding for a large project to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa.
The Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE), a Washington-based health policy advocacy group, said it spotted the change in a request for applications (RFA) issued on November 18 by the US Agency for International Development for $193 million in grants for five years of programmes in Kenya.
The administration has broken its own written commitment not to subject global AIDS funds to these onerous restrictions, said CHANGE Executive Director Jodi Jacobson. "This shift in policy goes beyond hypocrisy to sheer irresponsibility and complete disregard for the lives and welfare of women and girls worldwide" she said.
The global gag rule, also called the Mexico City policy, already bars international family planning organizations from providing abortion referrals, counseling or services in their facilities or from discussing abortion laws in public, on pain of losing US. funding. In early 2003, President Bush sought to extend the rule to all State Department programmes, but was so heavily criticized that he issued an executive order exempting AIDS funding from the rule.
On Nov. 18, however, the new RFA twice included eligibility criteria requiring grant recipients to agree to abide by the Mexico City Policy, the Tiahrt Amendment and all U.S. AID policies and regulations. The Tiahrt Amendment, sponsored in 2001 by Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS), requires parental notification and consent for all information and medical care supplied to minors.
JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri (AP) -- The battle over embryonic stem cell research moved into the pews Sunday, as Roman Catholic priests across Missouri urged churchgoers to oppose a petition seeking a constitutional amendment that would protect the controversial work.
The petition drive was announced last month by a group of business leaders, patient advocates and researchers as a response to legislative efforts to ban a type of stem cell research known as therapeutic cloning.
Missouri's Catholic dioceses oppose it, and urged their priests statewide to begin a campaign Sunday aimed at keeping Catholics from signing the petition.
Alison Wismer Fries and her colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison compared 21 typical youngsters from Milwaukee to 18 children who had been adopted by Milwaukee area residents after spending their first year or so in Romanian and Russian orphanages. Using urine samples, they found that the adopted orphans had significantly lower levels of vasopressin--a hormone that plays a role in familial recognition--circulating in their systems than their peers.
Pete Vukusic and Ian Hooper of Exeter University in England studied the colored parts of the swallowtail's wings and found that the scales that comprised them contain photonic crystals whose atoms are spaced so precisely that only certain wavelengths of light can pass through. The crystals are also saturated with fluorescent pigments that help them create specific wavelengths of light, visible to us as bright colors.
Tiny, mirrorlike structures known as distributed Bragg reflectors reflect this fluorescent light as well as all the other light the photonic crystal allows to pass through. The result: butterfly wings that transform ordinary sunlight into brilliant greens and blues incredibly efficiently.
Thus what the butterflies evolved to do, scientists have built light-emitting diodes to do, employing the exact same components--photonic crystals and Bragg reflectors--in search of ever better ways to project and direct light. The findings are published in the current issue of Science.
Rats, like humans, love sugar. So it comes as no surprise that during two weeks of training for a recent lab experiment, the rodents queued up twice daily for small doses of sugar water. What researchers did not anticipate was the apparent effect of the sweet stuff on their stress levels: when they placed the rats in stressful circumstances at the end of those two weeks, the animals were less agitated than expected.
The balance of this email is pregenerated, but I think this is a
great cause and makes so much more sense than what we've got
going on now! Check it out.
Love you,
j
------
Dear Friend,
With so much junk food in schools and lack of opportunities for
physical activity -- our kids are paying the price with their
health. So I'm working with the Stir It Up campaign, a national
movement of parents bringing together everyone who cares about
kids to work for healthier eating and a healthier lifestyle for
all kids. It's a parents' movement that will put children first.
The first step in Stir It Up is to get the junk food out of our
schools, and the physical activity in.
I'm hoping you'll join me. Taking action online is quick, easy,
and I think it can really make a difference in our kids' lives
-- check it out here:
http://center.parentsaction.org/campaign/stir_it_up?rk=od_GQXd1xmBfW
***************************************
Powered by Parents' Action for Children
***************************************
Hey Jenn --
They have done this in California. It was an initiative of Governor SchwartzBeWithYou. The result is a huge black market of junk food in schools. Older kids leave schools, buy junk food, and bring it back to the school to resell. Some parents provide junk food and the kids end up selling it later.
I imagine that this ingenuity extends far back into elementary school as well. Economists have started to study food markets forming in elementary schools where snacks from home are starting to be traded for other goods and services. (link?) The market seems to follow microeconomics' supply and demand rules too. Things can be as complex and interesting as real money markets.
As long as there are people willing to eat junk food, I don't think regulation is going to help because there will always be some way to subvert that regulation. In fact, what you end up doing is hurting more people than you hope to help. People who refuse to stop eating junk food pay much higher costs, which encourages more people to trade junk food. In fact, you don't do much to reduce junk food you however you increase it's value to make it impossible for it ever to go away.
Keep in mind, Jenn, that this is exactly what has gone on in the illegal drug market. By adding regulation, you've made it even harder for drugs to be used responsibly. I know that you understand this argument when it comes to illegal drugs; do you see how it also applies to junk food? (and perhaps to other things, maybe including prostitution, alcohol, cigarettes, and others? (even handguns?))
--Ted
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Conservative Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson told citizens of a Pennsylvania town that they had rejected God by voting their school board out of office for supporting "intelligent design" and warned them Thursday not to be surprised if disaster struck.
"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city," Robertson said on his daily television show broadcast from Virginia, "The 700 Club."
"And don't wonder why He hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for His help because he might not be there," he said.
In voting on Tuesday, eight Dover, Pennsylvania, school board members up for re-election lost their seats after trying to introduce a statement on "intelligent design" to high school biology students.
DOVER, Pennsylvania (AP) -- Voters came down hard Tuesday on school board members who backed a statement on intelligent design being read in biology class, ousting eight Republicans and replacing them with Democrats who want the concept stripped from the science curriculum.
THE Vatican has issued a stout defence of Charles Darwin, voicing strong criticism of Christian fundamentalists who reject his theory of evolution and interpret the biblical account of creation literally.
Cardinal Paul Poupard, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said the Genesis description of how God created the universe and Darwin's theory of evolution were "perfectly compatible" if the Bible were read correctly.
His statement was a clear attack on creationist campaigners in the US, who see evolution and the Genesis account as mutually exclusive.
"The fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim," he said at a Vatican press conference. He said the real message in Genesis was that "the universe didn't make itself and had a creator".
This idea was part of theology, Cardinal Poupard emphasised, while the precise details of how creation and the development of the species came about belonged to a different realm - science. Cardinal Poupard said that it was important for Catholic believers to know how science saw things so as to "understand things better".
His statements were interpreted in Italy as a rejection of the "intelligent design" view, which says the universe is so complex that some higher being must have designed every detail.
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (AP) -- In another time and place, college students wondering whether the campus cafe has any free seats, or their favorite corner of the library is occupied, would have to risk hoofing it over there.
But for today's student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, that kind of information is all just a click away.
MIT researchers did this by developing electronic maps that track across campus, day and night, the devices people use to connect to the network, whether they're laptops, wireless PDAs or even Wi-Fi equipped cell phones.
The maps were unveiled this week at the MIT Museum, where they are projected onto large Plexiglas rectangles that hang from the ceiling. They are also available online to network users, the data time-stamped and saved for up to 12 hours.
"With these maps, you can see down to the room on campus how many people are logged on," said Carlo Ratti, director of the school's SENSEable City Laboratory, which created the maps. "You can even watch someone go from room to room if they have a handheld device that's connected."
Researchers use log files from the university's Internet service provider to construct the maps. The files indicate the number of users connected to each of MIT's more than 2,800 access points. The map that can pinpoint locations in rooms is 3-D, so researchers can even distinguish connectivity in multistoried buildings.
While every device connected to the campus network via Wi-Fi is visible on the constantly refreshed electronic maps, the identity of the users is confidential unless they volunteer to make it public.
Those students, faculty and staff who opt in are essentially agreeing to let others track them.
Rich Pell, a 21-year-old electrical engineering senior from Spartanburg, South Carolina, was less than enthusiastic about the new system's potential for people monitoring. He predicted not many fellow students would opt into that.
"I wouldn't want all my friends and professors tracking me all the time. I like my privacy," he said.
"I can't think of anyone who would think that's a good idea. Everyone wants to be out of contact now and then."
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Pennsylvania ranks first among the top ten worst states for vehicle-deer collisions, according to an insurance survey published Thursday.
Coming in second and third were Michigan and Illinois, followed by Ohio and Georgia. Minnesota and Virginia ranked sixth and seventh respectively, while Indiana, Texas and Wisconsin rounded out the list at eighth, ninth and tenth.
Large populations of deer are edging out forest birds in North America, report scientists in this month's issue of the journal Biological Conservation.
Thompson had been released from his cell block for a visit with his attorney in a private booth, where Plexiglas separates inmates from attorneys, Martin said.
The room is not monitored by authorities and no deputies are present in the room -- an effort to protect attorney-client privilege. Only a few sheets of paper could be slipped under the window, he said.
"He managed to change out of the orange jumpsuit that inmates commonly wear," Martin said. "The inmate jumpsuit was found in the attorney booth."
It was not immediately clear whether Thompson had had an attorney visit him on Thursday, or whether he had merely gone to the area on the pretense of seeing his lawyer.
The measure also permits exploratory oil drilling in an Alaskan wilderness area. Five Republicans in the GOP-controlled Senate who oppose the drilling voted against the bill.
The Senate Republicans who opposed the budget bill over the drilling issue were Norm Coleman of Minnesota; Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine; Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island; and Mike DeWine of Ohio.
