This week it's the NBA's turn to kick off its regular season, with high profile matchups like Bulls vs. Heat and Clippers vs. Lakers on Tuesday night, while the MLB wraps up the World Series. Pixar's latest flick Monsters University hits Blu-ray, while Battlefield 4 and Assassin's Creed IV: Black ...
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/WK0htivm1LY/Where is Casey Stengel when we need him? In 1962 as the manager of the brand new and determinedly hapless New York Mets -- 40 wins, 120 losses -- he looked up and down his bench one dismal day and wondered, "Can't anybody here play this game?" That phrase kept coming at me recently as I watched the impressively inept performance of the Obama administration in both foreign and domestic policy. On a given day, this administration makes the '62 Mets look good.
This is a surprise -- at least to me. If Barack Obama has an image, it is of the infinitely cool, cerebral leader.
The man can give a rousing speech, but he is, at heart, a planner and a plodder. Both his presidential campaigns were exercises in micromanagement -- digital all the way. Obama was the better candidate, but he had, by far, the better organization.
Yet this same man has lately so mishandled both domestic and foreign policy that he is in mortal peril of altering his image. This unsettling and uncharacteristic incompetence became shockingly clear when Obama failed to come to grips with the Syrian civil war. I did not agree with the president's do-nothing policy, but at least it was both a policy and intellectually coherent. What followed, though, was both intellectually incoherent and pathetically inconsistent -- a "red line" that came out of nowhere and then mysteriously evaporated, and a missile strike that was threatened and then abandoned. It was a policy so wavering that if Obama were driving, he would be forced to take a breathalyzer.
The debacle of the Affordable Care Act's website raised similar questions about confidence. This was supposed to be Obama's Big Deal. The president has other accomplishments -- navigating out of the Great Recession was no minor feat -- but restoring the status quo does not get your face on Mount Rushmore. It takes achievement, a program -- something new and wonderful. The Affordable Care Act was supposed to be it.
Something went wrong. People could not sign up. Why? Not sure. Who's at fault? Apparently no one. An act of God. Something that could never have been foreseen. Another president might have had someone in the White House calling every day -- no, twice a day -- to make sure the program was going to work. But no, it was a shock to everyone, and when the White House rolled out its gigantic cake -- maestro, some music please -- no one jumped out.
Pathetic.
Here, I must mention that bit of theater in which various world leaders wax indignant about their telephone conversations being bugged by the National Security Agency. This is not Obama's doing since the program predated his time in office. But the decibel level of the outrage does suggest that in Germany, France, Brazil and elsewhere, Obama's standing is not what it once was. He and America are no longer held in either awe or respect and the bugging program, instead of seeming a necessary evil, looks both clumsy and silly. Bugging Angela Merkel's personal phone -- she who once said that when she thinks of Germany she thinks of "well-sealed windows" -- puts at risk the poor NSA listener. He must be catatonic by now.
But the reaction of the bugged has been nothing compared to the bleat of anger coming from the Middle East. The Saudis, who usually whisper their differences, have severely upped the volume and now talk dismissively of Obama and America. They didn't like the way we washed our hands of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, a steadfast and durable ally, and then dealt with the Syrian civil war in such a wobbly fashion. In recent days, the kingdom has rejected a seat on the U.N. Security Council and, in the person of its intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, has said the U.S.-Saudi relationship is strained. Bandar, a former ambassador to Washington, can hardly be dismissed as anti-American.
Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, and in the long run Riyadh and Washington were always going to make an odd couple. But the current spat is not about values but about reliability and performance. The Obama administration has botched Syria and, in the Saudi (and Israeli) view, cannot be trusted to deal firmly with Iran. An erratic presidency has made the world a bit less safe.
History will someday provide perspective and say, possibly, that Syria and Obamacare did not matter. I doubt it. At the least, they help validate the once-frivolous Republican charges of incompetence. A competent president would beware. As Casey Stengel might note, strike three is coming up.
Source: http://feeds.celebritybabies.com/~r/celebrity-babies/~3/-uDnV7s8I78/Eva Hu-Stiles virtually interacts with her grandmother. iPad assist by Elise Hu-Stiles.
Eva Hu-Stiles virtually interacts with her grandmother. iPad assist by Elise Hu-Stiles.
This week, we're exploring the tech frontier through the eyes of our children. So we're starting with the littlest ones — babies. Can certain kinds of screen time help babies learn?
To find some answers, I employed the help of my 1-year-old daughter, Eva. She's still a wobbly walker and the sum total of her speaking skills sound like gibberish. But she has no problem activating Siri, the virtual assistant on my iPhone. Her 16-month-old friend, Lily, is even savvier with the gadgets.
"She knows how to turn the iPad on, she knows how to slide her finger across," says her mom, Kim Trainor.
That gets to the technology tension in modern parenting: You want your kids to be technologically adept — but without giving them so much screen time that it's not healthy for development.
"If I think about my childhood, a lot of these things didn't exist. And obviously my parents didn't have to think about what the exposure might do to us," Trainor says. The tech frontier for our kids is changing so fast that the guidelines are barely keeping up with it.
Case in point: Just two years ago, when San Francisco-based nonprofit Common Sense Media surveyed families with children 8 and under, just 8 percent owned tablets like iPads. That's now jumped five-fold — to 40 percent. And the percent of children with access to some sort of smartphones and tablets has jumped from half of those surveyed to 75 percent. (Read the full report.)
Pediatricians discourage passive screen time for children 2 and under.
Baby Lily's mom says she follows her pediatrician's guideline to discourage screen time until after her daughter turns 2. But the doctor behind the American Academy of Pediatrics 2011 policy guideline discouraging screen time for kids under 2 says it specifically concerns passive screen viewing. That is, plopping the baby in front of a TV or film, or having media on in the background.
"The concern for risk is that some kids who watch a lot of media actually have poor language skills, so there's a deficit in their language development. We also have concerns about other developmental issues because they're basically missing out on other developmentally appropriate activities," says Dr. Ari Brown, the lead author on the American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement discouraging screen time for babies under 2.
On Monday, the pediatrics group released updated media guidelines for children and adolescents. While still discouraging screen time for children under 2, the policy recommends a balanced approach to media in the homes instead of blanket bans. We've laid out some of the latest thinking on screen time for babies and toddlers, below.
There's a key difference between passive screen time and active screen time.
Research indicates that activities like Skyping or FaceTime — in which the baby communicates with a live human on the screen — can actually help babies learn.
"[Lily] watched her little message from her dad who had bought her a ball and said, 'This is a ball.' " Trainor says that when Lily called her father on Skype a few days later, she associated him with the ball. "She went 'ball, ball, ball,' " Trainor says.
Vanderbilt University developmental psychologist Georgene Troseth conducts some of the country's leading research on children and screens. She says Skyping isn't like watching TV because it's a social interaction.
"We're finding pretty consistently — in fact, two recent studies with actual Skype [calls] — that children do seem to learn better when there is social interaction from a person on video. So it's kind of encouraging with FaceTime or Skype for parents and grandparents to know that [with] that interaction, the children might actually be willing to learn from a person on a screen because of the social interaction showing them what's on the screen is connected to their lives," Troseth says.
The research on touch-screen apps is unclear. Apps and games labeled "educational" may not necessarily help your child learn.
Touch-screens are taking over and babies seem especially great at working with them. Lily, the 16-month-old, showed me how she shuffles through photos on her mom's phone.
Parents, meanwhile, keep hearing about "educational" apps. Troseth says be wary, for now.
"There's nothing wrong with a toy being fun, engaging a child for an amount of time. But to promote it as being educational we really need to do research to find out, is having it be interacting, doing anything to make it easier to learn from?" she asks.
Aim for a balanced approach — for you and your baby.
Since the research on touch-screens isn't clear yet, Brown offers some advice in the meantime.
"We still have questions. If you're planning on using interactive media with your child, use it with your child, sit down with your child and engage with them because that's going to be more valuable than anything," Brown says.
It's valuable time with her 14-month-old daughter that taught another mom — Jennifer Grover — about her own relationship with screens.
"It's just amazing how good they are at mimicking what they see. So I've definitely had to learn to kind of rein in my attention to the laptop, or my attention to my phone in front of her, because whatever I'm doing that's what she wants to be doing," Grover says.
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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 28-Oct-2013
ShareContact: Steve Graff
stephen.graff@uphs.upenn.edu
215-349-5653
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIAFor the first time, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have shown the predictive power of a group of overlooked lymph nodes--known as the posterior intercostal lymph nodes--that could serve as a better tool to stage and ultimately treat patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma.
The findings were presented October 28 at the 15th World Conference on Lung Cancer.
Physicians look to lymph nodes to stage essentially all cancers, including mesothelioma. The presence or absence of metastatic cancer cells in lymph nodes affects prognosis and also typically dictates the optimal treatment strategy. But posterior intercostal lymph nodes, which are located between the ribs near the spine, have not been previously used to stage or guide treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma or any other cancer.
In a retrospective study of 48 Penn Medicine patients undergoing radical pleurectomy for malignant pleural mesothelioma, Joseph S. Friedberg, MD, Chief of the Section of Thoracic Surgery at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center and Co-Director of the Penn Mesothelioma and Pleural Disease Program, and colleagues found that over half the patients had cancer metastatic to these lymph nodes and that, in some of these patients, those were the only lymph nodes containing metastatic cancer.
Patients who did not have cancer in the posterior intercostal lymph nodes had significantly longer overall survival rates, nearly two and half years longer, compared to those who did have cancer in the lymph nodes.
"I am unaware of any other group that is sampling these nodes. They are not currently part of the staging system for mesothelioma, or any other cancer for that matter," said Dr. Friedberg. "What we have shown here is that even though these lymph nodes are not described in relation to this cancer, they are highly significant."
The conclusion of the study was that surgeons should routinely biopsy these lymph nodes as part of any surgery-based treatment for mesothelioma and that these lymph nodes should be included in any revision of the mesothelioma staging system.
"Ultimately, it means that the presence or absence of cancer in these lymph nodes could help guide the treatment of pleural mesothelioma," said Dr. Friedberg.
This study is one of a 13 Penn Medicine studies and talks being presented at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer's 15th World Conference on Lung Cancer.
###
Co-authors from Penn Medicine Melissa Culligan, Mary Putt, Stephen M. Hahn, Evan Alley, Charles Simone, Daniel Sterman, and Keith A. Cengel.
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: 28-Oct-2013
ShareContact: Steve Graff
stephen.graff@uphs.upenn.edu
215-349-5653
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIAFor the first time, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have shown the predictive power of a group of overlooked lymph nodes--known as the posterior intercostal lymph nodes--that could serve as a better tool to stage and ultimately treat patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma.
The findings were presented October 28 at the 15th World Conference on Lung Cancer.
Physicians look to lymph nodes to stage essentially all cancers, including mesothelioma. The presence or absence of metastatic cancer cells in lymph nodes affects prognosis and also typically dictates the optimal treatment strategy. But posterior intercostal lymph nodes, which are located between the ribs near the spine, have not been previously used to stage or guide treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma or any other cancer.
In a retrospective study of 48 Penn Medicine patients undergoing radical pleurectomy for malignant pleural mesothelioma, Joseph S. Friedberg, MD, Chief of the Section of Thoracic Surgery at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center and Co-Director of the Penn Mesothelioma and Pleural Disease Program, and colleagues found that over half the patients had cancer metastatic to these lymph nodes and that, in some of these patients, those were the only lymph nodes containing metastatic cancer.
Patients who did not have cancer in the posterior intercostal lymph nodes had significantly longer overall survival rates, nearly two and half years longer, compared to those who did have cancer in the lymph nodes.
"I am unaware of any other group that is sampling these nodes. They are not currently part of the staging system for mesothelioma, or any other cancer for that matter," said Dr. Friedberg. "What we have shown here is that even though these lymph nodes are not described in relation to this cancer, they are highly significant."
The conclusion of the study was that surgeons should routinely biopsy these lymph nodes as part of any surgery-based treatment for mesothelioma and that these lymph nodes should be included in any revision of the mesothelioma staging system.
"Ultimately, it means that the presence or absence of cancer in these lymph nodes could help guide the treatment of pleural mesothelioma," said Dr. Friedberg.
This study is one of a 13 Penn Medicine studies and talks being presented at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer's 15th World Conference on Lung Cancer.
###
Co-authors from Penn Medicine Melissa Culligan, Mary Putt, Stephen M. Hahn, Evan Alley, Charles Simone, Daniel Sterman, and Keith A. Cengel.
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.
David Carrier Porcheron swims through the snows of Retallack, British Columbia and slashes waves in Costa Rica in his segment from Sherpas Cinema's feature film, "Into The Mind". This incredibly well filmed segment focuses on the elements and movements of the earth, showcasing rivers, waves, mountains, and DCP.
DCP’s Surf/Snowboard Segment (from INTO THE MIND) from Sherpas Cinema on Vimeo.
The cheapest Mac Pro you can buy, Apple informed us last week, will cost you $3,000. That's a pretty penny, sure, but not outrageous for a workstation these days. What if, though, you spec it out as far as you can go? That's when we hit new car territory.
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Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/Sfw_1dAXQdY/a-fully-loaded-mac-pro-could-cost-you-14-000-1453355531