Why Apple?s new ?Designed in California? ads are strategic for the USA

Jul 05, 2013 - 01:03 PM EDT ? AAPL: 416.70 (-4.10, -0.97%) | NASDAQ: 3443.67 (+10.274, +0.3%)

Friday, July 5, 2013 ? 11:29 am ? 23 Comments

?There was a recent report that Apple?s current ?Designed in California? ads were not a hit with consumers and various writers who reported on this urged Apple to change them and to start bringing out cool ads again,? Tim Bajarin writes for TechPinions. ?While the ads may not seem cool to some, for Apple these ads are very strategic and will run as long as it takes for Apple to hit home the message that the fruit of Apple?s labor starts here and regardless of where they are manufactured, these are American bred products.?

?Apple has been reading the tea leaves and has seen how Congress and many of the American people are going down a track to try and bring more manufacturing back to the US,? Bajarin writes. ?They also understand that creating US designed products will be more strategic to the USA?s long term vision of making the US much more relevant in a time of globalization.?

Bajarin writes, ?You may think that I am crazy suggesting this, but even Apple?s competitors are seeing that if the products are designed and manufactured over here that they may be seen more favorably by consumers. More importantly, it could give them favor with the US Government and the American people who are getting more and more concerned that the US is loosing its edge, especially to S. Korea and China.?

Read more in the full article here.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/wordpress/xhfA/~3/cwqmzd6jTc8/

portland weather clintonville battlestar galactica blood and chrome my morning jacket roger goodell psychosis dianna agron

5 Great Tips For Photographing Fireworks - Business Insider

Even if you have a camera with a bunch of automatic settings, shooting fireworks can be tricky.

Before you head out tonight to capture the fun, here's some tips put together by National Geographic.

1. Turn off your flash and set your camera to manual mode and try this setting:?ISO 100, f/11, at 1/2 second. Adjust?shutter speed as needed. More details here.

2. Photographing fireworks means slow shutter speeds. That means it is best to use a tripod.

3.? If you want to zoom in and show detail, you'll want a zoom lens that goes to at least 200mm. It's best to play with zoom/focus settings earlier in the day, while its still light out.

4. If your camera supports bulb mode or timed exposures that can be a great way to shoot fireworks. More details here.

5. When shooting people, like a friend holding a sparkler, focus on the face not the sparkler to try and trick the light meter.

Here's a bunch more tips on photographing fireworks from the Digital Photography's School's Darren Rowse.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/5-great-tips-for-photographing-fireworks-2013-7

snl lindsay lohan valley fever project x the lorax lorax fisker karma super tuesday states

Gulf Arabs greet Egypt's new leader, Turkey slams 'coup'

By Sami Aboudi

DUBAI (Reuters) - Gulf Arab states welcomed Egypt's interim leader on Thursday, hopeful his appointment would stem the rise of Islamists in the Middle East, but the military overthrow of an elected president drew a guarded response from Iran and condemnation from Turkey.

The United States expressed concern at the ouster of Mohamed Mursi on Wednesday and called for a swift return to democracy, as did the European Union. But they stopped short of calling it a coup, which might have led to sanctions.

The 54-nation African Union was likely to suspend Egypt for allowing "unconstitutional change", a senior AU source told Reuters.

For Gulf Arab states, which see Egypt as a strategic ally against any threat from non-Arab Iran across the Gulf, the appointment of constitutional court chief Adli Mansour as interim leader was met with congratulations and evident relief.

"We followed with all consideration and satisfaction the national consensus that your brotherly country is witnessing, and which had played a prominent role in leading Egypt peacefully out of the crisis it had faced," said the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan.

Kuwait's ruler, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, was quoted as praising Egypt's armed forces for the "positive and historic role" they played in preserving stability.

"CRITICAL PERIOD"

Saudi King Abdullah sent a message of congratulations on Wednesday "in this critical period of ... history", and Qatar, the only Gulf Arab state that backed Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood, welcomed the new leader on Thursday.

The official Qatar news agency reported that cables of congratulation had been sent to Mansour by Qatar's new emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani.

Qatar has been a major financier of Islamist groups around the Arab World and had provided billions of dollars in aid to Egypt since the 2011 revolution that ended the autocratic rule of Hosni Mubarak.

Iran, which sought to repair its strained ties with Egypt after Mursi's election a year ago, gave a guarded response, calling for the people's "legitimate demands" to be fulfilled and warning of "foreign and enemy opportunism".

Mursi visited Tehran on one of his first official trips abroad, but the two countries have found themselves supporting opposite sides of a civil war in Syria that has taken on increasingly sectarian overtones.

"Certainly the resistant nation of Egypt will protect its independence and greatness from foreign and enemy opportunism during the difficult conditions that follow," Fars news agency quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Araqchi as saying.

Syria, fighting to crush a two-year-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, urged Mursi to step down on Wednesday and realize "that the overwhelming majority of the Egyptian people reject him", Information Minister Omran Zoabi was quoted as saying by state news agency SANA.

Neighboring Israel avoided any show of satisfaction over Mursi's ouster, although a confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed hope Mansour's appointment would lead to the restoration of largely frozen contacts with Cairo.

"Yesterday's events strengthen the feeling that perhaps we have passed the bad period and perhaps now there will be a chance to have diplomatic ties with whomever will govern Egypt in the near future," Tzachi Hanegbi told Army Radio.

"ILLICIT MEANS"

Straddling the Middle East and Europe, Turkey was harshly critical of Egypt's army, saying its overthrow of Mursi was "unacceptable" - a marked difference from its would-be partners in the European Union, which avoided repeated questions on whether it was a military coup.

"It is unacceptable for a government that has come to power through democratic elections to be toppled through illicit means and, even more, a military coup," Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters in Istanbul.

Turkey has a history of military coups and is run by a government with Islamist roots which has faced weeks of often violent protests.

Some Western countries were concerned about the overthrow. "The dismissal of the democratically elected President Mursi by the military is very questionable. Military intervention as a way to resolve conflicts in a democratic system is not acceptable," Austrian Deputy Chancellor and Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger said in a statement.

NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he was gravely concerned.

U.S. President Barack Obama stopped short of condemning the move. "I now call on the Egyptian military to move quickly and responsibly to return full authority back to a democratically elected civilian government as soon as possible through an inclusive and transparent process," he said in a statement.

(Additional reporting by Aaron Maasho in Addis Ababa, Adrian Croft in Brussels, Patricia Zengerle in Washington, Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem, Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul, Silvia Westall in Kuwait, Sami Aboudi and Marcus George in Dubai, writing by Elizabeth Piper; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gulf-arabs-greet-egypts-leader-turkey-slams-coup-141308151.html

jared leto jared leto Tony Snell shabazz muhammad alyssa milano Ben McLemore Spain vs Italy

28 injured at Calif. fireworks when platform tips

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. (AP) ? More than two dozen people were injured when a wood platform holding live fireworks tipped over, sending the pyrotechnics into a crowd at a Fourth of July show northwest of Los Angeles, authorities said Friday.

Between 8,000 and 10,000 revelers were settling into their seats for the fireworks extravaganza at a Simi Valley park Thursday night when the spectacle of lights that were supposed to be launched in the sky never took off. Instead, a bright plume of red and white bursts spread across the ground, injuring 28 people and sending others fleeing for safety.

Police were still investigating what led to the explosion, but they said early indications show a platform designed and built to hold the fireworks gave way.

"For some unknown reasons the structure that holds these ordinances collapsed and caused them to be firing into the crowd," Simi Valley police Cmdr. Stephanie Shannon.

Four people were listed in serious condition, but their injuries were not considered life-threatening. Sixteen more were taken to hospitals with minor to moderate injuries. The remainder were treated at the park where emergency crews, already on hand as a safety precaution, set up a triage area.

Meanwhile, a worker at a fireworks show in North Myrtle Beach, S.C., was injured Thursday evening when a shell exploded prematurely. The explosion at the Cherry Grove Pier caused the show to end early, after just six minutes, and left a hole in the pier.

In California, a video clip aired on KCAL-TV shows a pair of firework blasts at or near the ground. Another clip, posted on YouTube and shot from a distance, shows three ground-level bursts. The fireworks continue for almost another minute before stopping.

"There was a big boom, everybody started running down the street, people were screaming," Justice Allen, 17, of Simi Valley told the Los Angeles Times. "Everybody was just terrified. People hid in bushes."

Authorities estimate people were 900 feet away from where the fireworks were being launched. One police officer who ran into the crowd when the blasts occurred had shrapnel tear through his leather belt and his clothing, Shannon said. He had minor injuries to his back.

Shannon said most people responded admirably and left in an orderly fashion. A bomb squad was at the park to deactivate the remainder of the fireworks.

Shannon said the fireworks primarily shot in one direction.

"They are going to travel the same distance across the park as they would in the air," she said. "The ones that had actually ignited that had to run their fuse were going directly into the crowd."

The annual July Fourth celebration has been sponsored by the city and the local Rotary Club for the past 43 years. Shannon said she had no information about the company hired for the fireworks show.

Simi Valley, home to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, is about 40 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-07-05-Fireworks%20Show-Blast/id-2b2ea2b51b0e49418f79dfa4d8c7f883

amare stoudemire tallest building in the world the pitch brandon inge freedom tower freedom tower eric church

Link between fear and sound perception discovered

June 30, 2013 ? Anyone who's ever heard a Beethoven sonata or a Beatles song knows how powerfully sound can affect our emotions. But it can work the other way as well -- our emotions can actually affect how we hear and process sound. When certain types of sounds become associated in our brains with strong emotions, hearing similar sounds can evoke those same feelings, even far removed from their original context. It's a phenomenon commonly seen in combat veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in whom harrowing memories of the battlefield can be triggered by something as common as the sound of thunder. But the brain mechanisms responsible for creating those troubling associations remain unknown. Now, a pair of researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has discovered how fear can actually increase or decrease the ability to discriminate among sounds depending on context, providing new insight into the distorted perceptions of victims of PTSD.

Their study is published in Nature Neuroscience.

"Emotions are closely linked to perception and very often our emotional response really helps us deal with reality," says senior study author Maria N. Geffen, PhD, assistant professor of Otorhinolaryngology: Head and Neck Surgery and Neuroscience at Penn. "For example, a fear response helps you escape potentially dangerous situations and react quickly. But there are also situations where things can go wrong in the way the fear response develops. That's what happens in anxiety and also in PTSD -- the emotional response to the events is generalized to the point where the fear response starts getting developed to a very broad range of stimuli."

Geffen and the first author of the study, Mark Aizenberg, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in her laboratory, used emotional conditioning in mice to investigate how hearing acuity (the ability to distinguish between tones of different frequencies) can change following a traumatic event, known as emotional learning. In these experiments, which are based on classical (Pavlovian) conditioning, animals learn to distinguish between potentially dangerous and safe sounds -- called "emotional discrimination learning." This type of conditioning tends to result in relatively poor learning, but Aizenberg and Geffen designed a series of learning tasks intended to create progressively greater emotional discrimination in the mice, varying the difficulty of the task. What really interested them was how different levels of emotional discrimination would affect hearing acuity -- in other words, how emotional responses affect perception and discrimination of sounds. This study established the link between emotions and perception of the world -- something that has not been understood before.

The researchers found that, as expected, fine emotional learning tasks produced greater learning specificity than tests in which the tones were farther apart in frequency. As Geffen explains, "The animals presented with sounds that were very far apart generalize the fear that they developed to the danger tone over a whole range of frequencies, whereas the animals presented with the two sounds that were very similar exhibited specialization of their emotional response. Following the fine conditioning task, they figured out that it's a very narrow range of pitches that are potentially dangerous."

When pitch discrimination abilities were measured in the animals, the mice with more specific responses displayed much finer auditory acuity than the mice who were frightened by a broader range of frequencies. "There was a relationship between how much their emotional response generalized and how well they could tell different tones apart," says Geffen. "In the animals that specialized their emotional response, pitch discrimination actually became sharper. They could discriminate two tones that they previously could not tell apart."

Another interesting finding of this study is that the effects of emotional learning on hearing perception were mediated by a specific brain region, the auditory cortex. The auditory cortex has been known as an important area responsible for auditory plasticity. Surprisingly, Aizenberg and Geffen found that the auditory cortex did not play a role in emotional learning. Likely, the specificity of emotional learning is controlled by the amygdala and sub-cortical auditory areas. "We know the auditory cortex is involved, we know that the emotional response is important so the amygdala is involved, but how do the amygdala and cortex interact together?" says Geffen. "Our hypothesis is that the amygdala and cortex are modifying subcortical auditory processing areas. The sensory cortex is responsible for the changes in frequency discrimination, but it's not necessary for developing specialized or generalized emotional responses. So it's kind of a puzzle."

Solving that puzzle promises new insight into the causes and possible treatment of PTSD, and the question of why some individuals develop it and others subjected to the same events do not. "We think there's a strong link between mechanisms that control emotional learning, including fear generalization, and the brain mechanisms responsible for PTSD, where generalization of fear is abnormal," Geffen notes. Future research will focus on defining and studying that link.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/Wq0G_0EHIi4/130630145002.htm

PlanetSide 2 sweet potato casserole Pumpkin Pie Recipe wii u wii u American Music Awards turkey brine

Cloud behavior expands habitable zone of alien planets

July 1, 2013 ? A new study that calculates the influence of cloud behavior on climate doubles the number of potentially habitable planets orbiting red dwarfs, the most common type of stars in the universe. This finding means that in the Milky Way galaxy alone, 60 billion planets may be orbiting red dwarf stars in the habitable zone.

Researchers at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University based their study, which appears in Astrophysical Journal Letters, on rigorous computer simulations of cloud behavior on alien planets. This cloud behavior dramatically expanded the habitable zone of red dwarfs, which are much smaller and fainter than stars like the sun.

Current data from NASA's Kepler Mission, a space observatory searching for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars, suggest there is approximately one Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of each red dwarf. The UChicago-Northwestern study now doubles that number.

"Most of the planets in the Milky Way orbit red dwarfs," said Nicolas Cowan, a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern's Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics. "A thermostat that makes such planets more clement means we don't have to look as far to find a habitable planet."

Cowan is one of three co-authors of the study, as are UChicago's Dorian Abbot and Jun Yang. The trio also provide astronomers with a means of verifying their conclusions with the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2018.

The formula for calculating the habitable zone of alien planets -- where they can orbit their star while still maintaining liquid water at their surface -- has remained much the same for decades. But the formula largely neglects clouds, which exert a major climatic influence.

"Clouds cause warming, and they cause cooling on Earth," said Abbot, an assistant professor in geophysical sciences at UChicago. "They reflect sunlight to cool things off, and they absorb infrared radiation from the surface to make a greenhouse effect. That's part of what keeps the planet warm enough to sustain life."

A planet orbiting a star like the sun would have to complete an orbit approximately once a year to be far enough away to maintain water on its surface. "If you're orbiting around a low mass or dwarf star, you have to orbit about once a month, once every two months to receive the same amount of sunlight that we receive from the sun," Cowan said.

Tightly orbiting planets

Planets in such a tight orbit would eventually become tidally locked with their sun. They would always keep the same side facing the sun, like the moon does toward Earth. Calculations of the UChicago-Northwestern team indicate that the star-facing side of the planet would experience vigorous convection and highly reflective clouds at a point that astronomers call the sub-stellar region. At that location the sun always sits directly overhead, at high noon.

The team's three-dimensional global calculations determined for the first time the effect of water clouds on the inner edge of the habitable zone. The simulations are similar to the global climate simulations that scientists use to predict Earth climate. These required several months of processing, running mostly on a cluster of 216 networked computers at UChicago. Previous attempts to simulate the inner edge of exoplanet habitable zones were one-dimensional. They mostly neglected clouds, focusing instead on charting how temperature decreases with altitude.

"There's no way you can do clouds properly in one-dimension," Cowan said. "But in a three-dimensional model, you're actually simulating the way air moves and the way moisture moves through the entire atmosphere of the planet."

These new simulations show that if there is any surface water on the planet, water clouds result. The simulations further show that cloud behavior has a significant cooling effect on the inner portion of the habitable zone, enabling planets to sustain water on their surfaces much closer to their sun.

Astronomers observing with the James Webb Telescope will be able to test the validity of these findings by measuring the temperature of the planet at different points in its orbit. If a tidally locked exoplanet lacks significant cloud cover, astronomers will measure the highest temperatures when the dayside of the exoplanet is facing the telescope, which occurs when the planet is on the far side of its star. Once the planet comes back around to show its dark side to the telescope, temperatures would reach their lowest point.

But if highly reflective clouds dominate the dayside of the exoplanet, they will block a lot of infrared radiation from the surface, said Yang, a postdoctoral scientist in geophysical sciences at UChicago. In that situation "you would measure the coldest temperatures when the planet is on the opposite side, and you would measure the warmest temperatures when you are looking at the night side, because there you are actually looking at the surface rather than these high clouds," Yang said.

Earth-observing satellites have documented this effect. "If you look at Brazil or Indonesia with an infrared telescope from space, it can look cold, and that's because you're seeing the cloud deck," Cowan said. "The cloud deck is at high altitude, and it's extremely cold up there."

If the James Webb Telescope detects this signal from an exoplanet, Abbot noted, "it's almost definitely from clouds, and it's a confirmation that you do have surface liquid water."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/space_time/nasa/~3/g9tQ0dZnz1k/130701135131.htm

pau gasol trade michael madsen day light savings day light savings spring forward daylight saving time 2012 grapes of wrath

Researchers find 2 new methods to determine ALK status

Public release date: 1-Jul-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Kristal Griffith
Kristal.Griffith@iaslc.org
720-325-2952
International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer

Tests continue trend in personalized medicine for lung cancer patients

DENVER The implementation of personalized health care in cancer relies on the identification and characterization of cancer biomarkers and the availability of accurate detection systems and therapies for those biomarkers. Anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK), a tyrosine kinase, is a more recently characterized cancer biomarker in nonsmall-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). To identify NSCLC patients with ALK gene rearrangement in clinical trials, researchers have used the methods known as fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) or immunohistochemistry (IHC). While IHC is a less complex and less costly technology than FISH, both methods present challenges.

Now research published in the August issue of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology (JTO), describes the development and evaluation of two new methodologies.

To improve IHC assay sensitivity, the researchers incorporated the novel, nonendogenous hapten 3-hydroxy-2-quinoxaline and tyramide amplification into a diaminobenzidine and horseradish peroxidasebased assay. The new detection system proved to be very useful for detecting low levels of ALK protein expression in NSCLC.

They also developed a brightfield IHCin situ hybridization combination assay (geneprotein assay) for the concurrent visualization of ALK protein and ALK gene arrangement. This allows the concurrent visualization of ALK gene and ALK protein status in single cells, allowing more accurate ALK status determination even in heterogeneous specimens.

The authors say, "this tool for simultaneously assessing both ALK protein expression (IHC) and ALK gene rearrangement (ISH) in NSCLC will be valuable for research on the mechanisms driving ALK-dependent malignancies and as a model of new diagnostic approach for identifying patients who might benefit from ALK-targeted therapies. More generally, it also provides proof of concept for the development of new methodologies for the simultaneous assessment of gene structure and protein-expression status in a single cell.

###

The lead author of the study is Dr. Hiroaki Nitta. Dr. Koji Tsuta is an IASLC co-author.

About the IASLC:

The International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) is the only global organization dedicated to the study of lung cancer. Founded in 1974, the association's membership includes more than 3,500 lung cancer specialists in 80 countries. To learn more about IASLC please visit http://www.iaslc.org.

---

[ | 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: 1-Jul-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Kristal Griffith
Kristal.Griffith@iaslc.org
720-325-2952
International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer

Tests continue trend in personalized medicine for lung cancer patients

DENVER The implementation of personalized health care in cancer relies on the identification and characterization of cancer biomarkers and the availability of accurate detection systems and therapies for those biomarkers. Anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK), a tyrosine kinase, is a more recently characterized cancer biomarker in nonsmall-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). To identify NSCLC patients with ALK gene rearrangement in clinical trials, researchers have used the methods known as fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) or immunohistochemistry (IHC). While IHC is a less complex and less costly technology than FISH, both methods present challenges.

Now research published in the August issue of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology (JTO), describes the development and evaluation of two new methodologies.

To improve IHC assay sensitivity, the researchers incorporated the novel, nonendogenous hapten 3-hydroxy-2-quinoxaline and tyramide amplification into a diaminobenzidine and horseradish peroxidasebased assay. The new detection system proved to be very useful for detecting low levels of ALK protein expression in NSCLC.

They also developed a brightfield IHCin situ hybridization combination assay (geneprotein assay) for the concurrent visualization of ALK protein and ALK gene arrangement. This allows the concurrent visualization of ALK gene and ALK protein status in single cells, allowing more accurate ALK status determination even in heterogeneous specimens.

The authors say, "this tool for simultaneously assessing both ALK protein expression (IHC) and ALK gene rearrangement (ISH) in NSCLC will be valuable for research on the mechanisms driving ALK-dependent malignancies and as a model of new diagnostic approach for identifying patients who might benefit from ALK-targeted therapies. More generally, it also provides proof of concept for the development of new methodologies for the simultaneous assessment of gene structure and protein-expression status in a single cell.

###

The lead author of the study is Dr. Hiroaki Nitta. Dr. Koji Tsuta is an IASLC co-author.

About the IASLC:

The International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) is the only global organization dedicated to the study of lung cancer. Founded in 1974, the association's membership includes more than 3,500 lung cancer specialists in 80 countries. To learn more about IASLC please visit http://www.iaslc.org.

---

[ | 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/2013-07/iaft-rft070113.php

channing tatum Jennifer Aniston naomi watts Oscar Nominations 2013 Beasts of the Southern Wild 2013 Oscars academy awards