LOS ANGELES (AP) ? "Iron Man 3" is the heavy-lifter at theaters with a colossal overseas debut that overshadows a sleepy pre-summer weekend at the domestic box office.
The superhero sequel starring Robert Downey Jr. got a head-start on its domestic launch next Friday with a $195.3 million opening in 42 overseas markets.
Sunday studio estimates show director Michael Bay's true-crime tale "Pain & Gain" muscled into first-place domestically with a $20 million debut.
The movie starring Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson and Anthony Mackie knocked off Tom Cruise's sci-fi adventure "Oblivion" after a week in the No. 1 spot. "Oblivion" slipped to second-place with $17.4 million, raising its domestic total to $64.7 million.
Facebook is definitely and clearly a place to speak your mind since you are allowed to say whatever you want to say. Yet, can you REALLY say what you want to say?
Personally, I use Facebook mainly for keeping in contact with friends and advertising about my educational services. ?However, recently I have decided to also use Facebook to speak my mind out to the public especially about social issues that happen in Cambodia and and that help Cambodian society to grow in a positive way. This decision of mine is pretty much influenced by George Carlin (1937-2008), a great stand-up comedian, actor, and philosopher. He was known for his stand-up comedy shows in which he criticized the US government and talked about social issues beneficial to people.
To say that talking about social issues in Cambodia on Facebook is an easy decision could be a mistake because many people particularly my family members have warned me of danger into which I will put myself because some of the stuffs about which I truthfully talk are related to high-ranking officials and big business people in Cambodia. Some even said that I would put my life at stake.
Am I scared? Personally I am not, even a bit, because there is nothing wrong about speaking the truth. If we are terrified about speaking the truth, we had better be prepared to start living in illusion full of lies, distortions and frauds. Plus, I only speak about what I believe is wrong to the Cambodian society with concrete evidence. Besides, I do not involve in any political parties whether they are for or against the government.
Today marks the end of the second week of speaking-my-mind-on-Facebook mission. ?For 14 days, I have written no fewer than 6 edu-taining statuses about Cambodia?s social issues including beer and wine advertising, regular electricity cut-outs and etc.
What have I got from speaking my mind on Facebook??
Besides the hundreds of ?Likes?, dozens of ?Comments? and dozens of ?Shares? that I got for each of my speaking-my-mind statuses on Facebook, I have got many insights from doing this.
First of all, I have learnt that there are actually many caring people in the society. Cambodian youths and citizens actually care about Cambodian society. They want and are willing to help Cambodia grow by means that they are able to do. For instance, whenever I posted good statuses about beer and wine advertising, they shared my statuses to their friends and groups in which they are. Even though some of them are not courageous enough to speak their mind, they are actually brave enough to stand behind someone or some people who do.
Secondly, I also learnt to control my mind. There are actually many things to say about Cambodian society, people, governments and etc. Yet, not all the things can be said. There are limitations by which I should abide or else I will be in trouble provided that I do not have enough evidence to back up with opinions most of which are put in my statuses. As a responsible citizen, I respect people for their action just like the way I want to be treated, thus making me realize the mark that I cannot cross. Though I am not afraid to write about what I want to write, I have to respect other people by not writing something that is groundless and untrue about them.
Thirdly, since I produced my comments about Cambodia mostly in Khmer language, I have somehow improved my Khmer language writing skills. Honestly speaking, my Khmer language writing skills suck since I have not practiced it much if compared to my English language writing. After the two-week writing, I have seen growth in my Khmer language writing in spelling and grammar. (I strongly encourage Cambodian people to start writing in Khmer language as to promote accuracy in Khmer language usage).
Children are known for how much they love to play make-believe, and StoryKid, an app introduced today during the Disrupt Hackathon in New York, takes this and gives it a new twist by offering a series of pictures as visual cues for a child to tell a story based around them. StoryKid is aimed at children aged 2 to 5 who are already talking but may either be too young or are just starting to write. Created by two comparative literature PhD students from Columbia University, the idea is that this will help bring children into the world of story telling and literature. And as co-founder Tianjiao Yu tells me, it can also be used by parents when they've run out of inspiration for their own made-up bedtime stories.
SAVAR, Bangladesh (AP) ? Rescue workers in Bangladesh have given up hopes of finding any more survivors in the rubble of a building that collapsed five days ago, and began using heavy machinery to remove the rubble and look for bodies, an official said Monday.
At least 380 people were killed when the illegally-constructed, 8-story Rana Plaza collapsed in a heap on Wednesday morning along with thousands of workers in the five garment factories in the building. About 2,500 survivors have been accounted for. The building owner, Mohammed Sohel Rana, was arrested Sunday in the western border town of Benapole while he was trying to flee to India.
The collapse was the deadliest disaster to hit the garment industry in Bangladesh that is worth $20 billion annually, supplies global retailers and is a mainstay of the economy.
Volunteers, army personnel and firemen have worked around the clock since Wednesday, mostly using hands and light equipment to pull out survivors. Around midnight Sunday, authorities deployed hydraulic cranes and heavy cutting machines to break up the massive slabs of concrete into manageable segments that could be lifted away.
"We are proceeding cautiously. If there is still a soul alive, we will try to rescue that person," said army spokesman Shahinul Islam.
"There is little hope of finding anyone alive. Our men went inside and saw some dead bodies in the ground floor. But no one was seen alive," said Brig. Gen. Ali Ahmed Khan, the chief of the fire brigade at the scene.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina visited the site and a nearby hospital to meet with survivors on Monday, the first time since the disaster.
Hasina had ordered the arrest of building owner Rana, who is a small-time political operative from her Awami League party's youth wing. He was brought back by helicopter from the border town to the capital, Dhaka, where he is expected to be charged with negligence on Monday.
He had permission to build a 5-story building but added three more illegally. He last appeared in public Tuesday in front of the Rana Plaza after huge cracks appeared in the building.
Witnesses said Rana assured tenants that the building was safe. Police, however, ordered an evacuation. A bank and some first-floor shops closed, but managers of the garment factories on the upper floors told workers to continue their shifts.
Hours later, the Rana Plaza was reduced to rubble, crushing most victims under massive blocks of concrete.
Police have also arrested four owners of three factories. Also in detention for questioning are two municipal engineers who were involved in approving the building's design. Local TV stations reported that the Bangladesh High Court has frozen the bank accounts of the owners of all five garment factories.
A garment manufacturers' group said the factories in the building employed 3,122 workers, but it was not clear how many were inside when it fell. About 2,500 survivors have been accounted for.
The death toll surpassed a fire five months ago that killed 112 people and brought widespread pledges to improve worker-safety standards. But since then, very little has changed in Bangladesh.
The collapse and previous disasters in garment factories have focused attention on the poor working conditions of workers who toil for as little as $38 a month to produce clothing for top international brands.
Its garment industry was the third-largest in the world in 2011, after China and Italy, having grown rapidly in the past decade.
Among the garment makers in the building were Phantom Apparels, Phantom Tac, Ether Tex, New Wave Style and New Wave Bottoms. Altogether, they produced several million shirts, pants and other garments a year.
The New Wave companies, according to their website, make clothing for several major North American and European retailers.
Britain's Primark acknowledged it was using a factory in Rana Plaza, but many other retailers distanced themselves from the disaster, saying they were not involved with the factories at the time of the collapse or had not recently ordered garments from them.
Wal-Mart said none of its clothing had been authorized to be made in the facility, but it is investigating whether there was any unauthorized production.
__
AP writers Gillian Wong and Julhas Alam in Dhaka contributed to this report.
How we decode 'noisy' language in daily lifePublic release date: 29-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sarah McDonnell s_mcd@mit.edu 617-253-8923 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Suppose you hear someone say, "The man gave the ice cream the child." Does that sentence seem plausible? Or do you assume it is missing a word? Such as: "The man gave the ice cream to the child."
A new study by MIT researchers indicates that when we process language, we often make these kinds of mental edits. Moreover, it suggests that we seem to use specific strategies for making sense of confusing information the "noise" interfering with the signal conveyed in language, as researchers think of it.
"Even at the sentence level of language, there is a potential loss of information over a noisy channel," says Edward Gibson, a professor in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS) and Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.
Gibson and two co-authors detail the strategies at work in a new paper, "Rational integration of noisy evidence and prior semantic expectations in sentence interpretation," published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"As people are perceiving language in everyday life, they're proofreading, or proof-hearing, what they're getting," says Leon Bergen, a PhD student in BCS and a co-author of the study. "What we're getting is quantitative evidence about how exactly people are doing this proofreading. It's a well-calibrated process."
Asymmetrical strategies
The paper is based on a series of experiments the researchers conducted, using the Amazon Mechanical Turk survey system, in which subjects were presented with a series of sentences some evidently sensible, and others less so and asked to judge what those sentences meant.
A key finding is that given a sentence with only one apparent problem, people are more likely to think something is amiss than when presented with a sentence where two edits may be needed. In the latter case, people seem to assume instead that the sentence is not more thoroughly flawed, but has an alternate meaning entirely.
"The more deletions and the more insertions you make, the less likely it will be you infer that they meant something else," Gibson says. When readers have to make one such change to a sentence, as in the ice cream example above, they think the original version was correct about 50 percent of the time. But when people have to make two changes, they think the sentence is correct even more often, about 97 percent of the time.
Thus the sentence, "Onto the cat jumped a table," which might seem to make no sense, can be made plausible with two changes one deletion and one insertion so that it reads, "The cat jumped onto a table." And yet, almost all the time, people will not infer that those changes are needed, and assume the literal, surreal meaning is the one intended.
This finding interacts with another one from the study, that there is a systematic asymmetry between insertions and deletions on the part of listeners.
"People are much more likely to infer an alternative meaning based on a possible deletion than on a possible insertion," Gibson says.
Suppose you hear or read a sentence that says, "The businessman benefitted the tax law." Most people, it seems, will assume that sentence has a word missing from it "from," in this case and fix the sentence so that it now reads, "The businessman benefitted from the tax law." But people will less often think sentences containing an extra word, such as "The tax law benefitted from the businessman," are incorrect, implausible as they may seem.
Another strategy people use, the researchers found, is that when presented with an increasing proportion of seemingly nonsensical sentences, they actually infer lower amounts of "noise" in the language. That means people adapt when processing language: If every sentence in a longer sequence seems silly, people are reluctant to think all the statements must be wrong, and hunt for a meaning in those sentences. By contrast, they perceive greater amounts of noise when only the occasional sentence seems obviously wrong, because the mistakes so clearly stand out.
"People seem to be taking into account statistical information about the input that they're receiving to figure out what kinds of mistakes are most likely in different environments," Bergen says.
###
The study was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
Written by Peter Dizikes, MIT News Office
[ | 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.
How we decode 'noisy' language in daily lifePublic release date: 29-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sarah McDonnell s_mcd@mit.edu 617-253-8923 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Suppose you hear someone say, "The man gave the ice cream the child." Does that sentence seem plausible? Or do you assume it is missing a word? Such as: "The man gave the ice cream to the child."
A new study by MIT researchers indicates that when we process language, we often make these kinds of mental edits. Moreover, it suggests that we seem to use specific strategies for making sense of confusing information the "noise" interfering with the signal conveyed in language, as researchers think of it.
"Even at the sentence level of language, there is a potential loss of information over a noisy channel," says Edward Gibson, a professor in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS) and Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.
Gibson and two co-authors detail the strategies at work in a new paper, "Rational integration of noisy evidence and prior semantic expectations in sentence interpretation," published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"As people are perceiving language in everyday life, they're proofreading, or proof-hearing, what they're getting," says Leon Bergen, a PhD student in BCS and a co-author of the study. "What we're getting is quantitative evidence about how exactly people are doing this proofreading. It's a well-calibrated process."
Asymmetrical strategies
The paper is based on a series of experiments the researchers conducted, using the Amazon Mechanical Turk survey system, in which subjects were presented with a series of sentences some evidently sensible, and others less so and asked to judge what those sentences meant.
A key finding is that given a sentence with only one apparent problem, people are more likely to think something is amiss than when presented with a sentence where two edits may be needed. In the latter case, people seem to assume instead that the sentence is not more thoroughly flawed, but has an alternate meaning entirely.
"The more deletions and the more insertions you make, the less likely it will be you infer that they meant something else," Gibson says. When readers have to make one such change to a sentence, as in the ice cream example above, they think the original version was correct about 50 percent of the time. But when people have to make two changes, they think the sentence is correct even more often, about 97 percent of the time.
Thus the sentence, "Onto the cat jumped a table," which might seem to make no sense, can be made plausible with two changes one deletion and one insertion so that it reads, "The cat jumped onto a table." And yet, almost all the time, people will not infer that those changes are needed, and assume the literal, surreal meaning is the one intended.
This finding interacts with another one from the study, that there is a systematic asymmetry between insertions and deletions on the part of listeners.
"People are much more likely to infer an alternative meaning based on a possible deletion than on a possible insertion," Gibson says.
Suppose you hear or read a sentence that says, "The businessman benefitted the tax law." Most people, it seems, will assume that sentence has a word missing from it "from," in this case and fix the sentence so that it now reads, "The businessman benefitted from the tax law." But people will less often think sentences containing an extra word, such as "The tax law benefitted from the businessman," are incorrect, implausible as they may seem.
Another strategy people use, the researchers found, is that when presented with an increasing proportion of seemingly nonsensical sentences, they actually infer lower amounts of "noise" in the language. That means people adapt when processing language: If every sentence in a longer sequence seems silly, people are reluctant to think all the statements must be wrong, and hunt for a meaning in those sentences. By contrast, they perceive greater amounts of noise when only the occasional sentence seems obviously wrong, because the mistakes so clearly stand out.
"People seem to be taking into account statistical information about the input that they're receiving to figure out what kinds of mistakes are most likely in different environments," Bergen says.
###
The study was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
Written by Peter Dizikes, MIT News Office
[ | 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.
This article talks about how ?the more we practice having thoughts or beliefs that benefit our well-being, the more naturally those thoughts and beliefs will play themselves out in our everyday life,? as long as these affirmations you repeat to yourself are ?congruent with reality, and aligned with your core values.?
This is a very corny article on the surface, but the message about mindfulness and the list of affirmations are great. Really try to give this article a chance and see what it has to offer for your own life.
EARTH: Why US energy security is increasingPublic release date: 29-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Megan Sever msever@earthmagazine.org American Geosciences Institute
Alexandria, VA To what extent is the United States energy independent? In recent years, Americans have heard a lot about the need to be unconstrained from foreign energy sources, but what do the numbers really tell us about our current state of independence?
Historically, the United States has relied on a diverse energy mix. From our founding through the final years of World War II, the country was nearly 100 percent energy independent: relying on coal- and oil-fired power plants, as well as a series of massive hydroelectric dams. By the second half of the 20th century, our growing demand for electricity resulted in a nationwide electric grid fed not only by domestic coal and hydropower, but also nuclear energy and natural gas. By then, we were also importing petroleum to fuel our burgeoning transportation system. In 2005, 31 percent of the total energy consumed in the U.S. was from imports. However, due to recent advances in natural gas drilling and recovery technology, in 2011 U.S. dependence on imports for total energy consumption had decreased to 19 percent.
Is the United States poised to regain energy independence? What would the implications be for national security and international relations going forward?
Read the full article online at http://bit.ly/11QeZNz.
Check out all of the interesting articles in the May issue of EARTH Magazine! Learn how some metals grow on trees; travel to Moab, Utah; and dig up rare earth elements in Jamaican red mud all in this month's issue of EARTH.
###
Keep up to date with the latest happenings in Earth, energy and environment news with EARTH magazine online at http://www.earthmagazine.org/. Published by the American Geosciences Institute, EARTH is your source for the science behind the headlines.
The American Geosciences Institute is a nonprofit federation of geoscientific and professional associations that represents more than 250,000 geologists, geophysicists and other earth scientists. Founded in 1948, AGI provides information services to geoscientists, serves as a voice of shared interests in the profession, plays a major role in strengthening geoscience education, and strives to increase public awareness of the vital role the geosciences play in society's use of resources, resiliency to natural hazards, and interaction with the environment.
[ | 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.
EARTH: Why US energy security is increasingPublic release date: 29-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Megan Sever msever@earthmagazine.org American Geosciences Institute
Alexandria, VA To what extent is the United States energy independent? In recent years, Americans have heard a lot about the need to be unconstrained from foreign energy sources, but what do the numbers really tell us about our current state of independence?
Historically, the United States has relied on a diverse energy mix. From our founding through the final years of World War II, the country was nearly 100 percent energy independent: relying on coal- and oil-fired power plants, as well as a series of massive hydroelectric dams. By the second half of the 20th century, our growing demand for electricity resulted in a nationwide electric grid fed not only by domestic coal and hydropower, but also nuclear energy and natural gas. By then, we were also importing petroleum to fuel our burgeoning transportation system. In 2005, 31 percent of the total energy consumed in the U.S. was from imports. However, due to recent advances in natural gas drilling and recovery technology, in 2011 U.S. dependence on imports for total energy consumption had decreased to 19 percent.
Is the United States poised to regain energy independence? What would the implications be for national security and international relations going forward?
Read the full article online at http://bit.ly/11QeZNz.
Check out all of the interesting articles in the May issue of EARTH Magazine! Learn how some metals grow on trees; travel to Moab, Utah; and dig up rare earth elements in Jamaican red mud all in this month's issue of EARTH.
###
Keep up to date with the latest happenings in Earth, energy and environment news with EARTH magazine online at http://www.earthmagazine.org/. Published by the American Geosciences Institute, EARTH is your source for the science behind the headlines.
The American Geosciences Institute is a nonprofit federation of geoscientific and professional associations that represents more than 250,000 geologists, geophysicists and other earth scientists. Founded in 1948, AGI provides information services to geoscientists, serves as a voice of shared interests in the profession, plays a major role in strengthening geoscience education, and strives to increase public awareness of the vital role the geosciences play in society's use of resources, resiliency to natural hazards, and interaction with the environment.
[ | 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.
South Korean soldiers clear barricade on Unification Bridge near the border village of Panmunjom, that has separates the two Koreas, in Paju, north of Seoul, South Korea, Monday, April 29, 2013. South Korea is preparing to pull out its last remaining nationals from a shuttered factory park in North Korea and empty out the complex for the first time since its 2004 opening. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
South Korean soldiers clear barricade on Unification Bridge near the border village of Panmunjom, that has separates the two Koreas, in Paju, north of Seoul, South Korea, Monday, April 29, 2013. South Korea is preparing to pull out its last remaining nationals from a shuttered factory park in North Korea and empty out the complex for the first time since its 2004 opening. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Members of the media wait for South Koreans returning home from North Korea's Kaesong at the customs, immigration and quarantine office near the border village of Panmunjom, that separates the two Koreas, in Paju, north of Seoul, South Korea, Monday, April 29, 2013. South Korea is preparing to pull out its last remaining nationals from a shuttered factory park in North Korea and empty out the complex for the first time since its 2004 opening. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
FILE - In this April 27, 2013 file photo, South Korean vehicles, overloaded with finished products, arrive back from North Korea's Kaesong industrial complex at the customs, immigration and quarantine office near the border village of Panmunjom in Paju, South Korea. Pyongyang has also taken an economic hit for its stance. Operations at the Kaesong factory park - a joint endeavor with South Korea just north of the Demilitarized Zone - have been suspended since early April, when the North barred South Korean factory managers and supply trucks from entering and withdrew all its 53,000 workers. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File)
PAJU, South Korea (AP) ? North Korea delayed the departure of the last South Korean personnel from a joint industrial complex on Monday by not immediately giving them permission to return home across the two countries' border, South Korean officials said.
Officials from South Korea's Unification Ministry said North Korean officials had been meeting with the personnel for nearly four hours, but that the ministry still hoped that all 50 remaining South Koreans could be withdrawn on Monday.
Their departure would empty out the complex, located on the North Korean side of the border, for the first time since it opened in 2004 and possibly lead to the permanent closure of the last symbol of inter-Korean cooperation.
Two ministry officials refused to disclose what issues were being discussed at the meeting and said it was unclear when the South Koreans would be able to leave. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
Amid high tensions, North Korea suspended operations at Kaesong in early April, withdrawing all of its 53,000 workers and barring South Korean factory managers and trucks with supplies from entering the complex. It was the most significant action taken by North Korea to protest South Korean-U.S. military drills and U.N. sanctions imposed over a February nuclear test.
North Korea also issued a flurry of warlike rhetoric, including threats to launch nuclear strikes on the U.S., although it has recently shown some tentative signs of willingness to talk.
South Korea began withdrawing its remaining nationals from Kaesong on Saturday, citing a shortage of food and medicine for them, after North Korea rejected an offer to hold talks on the complex.
Kaesong, which combines South Korean knowhow and technology with cheap North Korean labor, is the last remaining cooperation project between the Koreas. The Korean Peninsula officially remains at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
Other joint programs, including tours to a scenic North Korean mountain, have been stalled in recent years because of confrontation between the rival Koreas.
Golden State Warriors' Andrew Bogut reacts after scoring against the Denver Nuggets during the first half of Game 4 in a first-round NBA basketball playoff series, Sunday, April 28, 2013, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
Golden State Warriors' Andrew Bogut reacts after scoring against the Denver Nuggets during the first half of Game 4 in a first-round NBA basketball playoff series, Sunday, April 28, 2013, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green reacts after scoring against the Denver Nuggets during the first half of Game 4 in a first-round NBA basketball playoff series, Sunday, April 28, 2013, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
Denver Nuggets guard Andre Iguodala (9) reacts after scoring against the Golden State Warriors during the first half of Game 4 in a first-round NBA basketball playoff series, Sunday, April 28, 2013, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
Denver Nuggets' Ty Lawson dunks against the Golden State Warriors during the first half of Game 4 in a first-round NBA basketball playoff series, Sunday, April 28, 2013, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
Denver Nuggets' Ty Lawson, right, drives the ball past Golden State Warriors' Stephen Curry (30) during the first half of Game 4 in a first-round NBA basketball playoff series on Sunday, April 28, 2013, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) ? Stephen Curry shook off a sore left ankle to score 22 of his 31 points in the third quarter, leading the Golden State Warriors past the Denver Nuggets 115-101 on Sunday night for a commanding 3-1 series lead.
Curry shot 10 of 16 from the floor and added seven assists in a dominant and dazzling display that rivaled his days in the NCAA tournament for tiny Davidson. His five 3-pointers in the third quarter lifted Golden State to a 20-point lead and its third straight victory in this frenetic and flashy series.
Jarrett Jack added 21 points and nine assists and Andrew Bogut broke out in the first half with 12 points and five rebounds for the sixth-seeded Warriors, who can close out the Nuggets in Game 5 on Tuesday night in Denver.
Ty Lawson scored 26 points and Andre Iguodala had 19 for the third-seeded Nuggets.
The Warriors lost All-Star forward David Lee to a season-ending hip injury in Game 1, and Curry sprained his left ankle late in Game 2. With Curry carrying the load anyway, none of it has seemed to matter.
The quick-shooting point guard hit 5 of 8 from beyond the arc in a spectacular third quarter, when nearly every gold-shirt wearing fan in the sellout crowd of 19,596 stood and cheered. Curry scored all 22 points in the final 6:22 of the quarter, showing the kind of range that helped him make 272 3-pointers in the regular season ? three more than Ray Allen's record set in 2005-06 with Seattle.
Curry capped his remarkable run with two of his most highlight-reel plays.
He stole the ball from Lawson, stopped in heavy traffic and dropped in a 27-footer before sprinting all the way to the bench high-fiving and chest-bumping teammates. Following a timeout, Curry sprung free near Denver's bench for a corner 3 that gave Golden State a 91-72 lead entering the fourth.
Curry's five 3s in the quarter were a Warriors record for a half.
Curry, wearing heavy tape around his nagging ankle, gave fans a scare when Corey Brewer poked Curry in the eye going for a rebound early in the fourth. Curry returned about 4? minutes later, receiving another standing ovation from the home fans.
While Curry scored only seven points in the first half, Bogut broke out in a big way to provide the one-two punch Golden State had long envisioned.
The 7-footer from Australia sliced down a wide open lane off a pick-and-roll with Curry in the first quarter, took one dribble and dunked over JaVale McGee with a thunderous right-handed slam. Bogut, who received a technical foul in Game 3 for daring Denver's big man to punch him on the chin during a face-to-face altercation, stared back at McGee while backpedalling down court.
In the second quarter, Bogut backed down Kosta Koufos before hammering home another dunk. He also soared high for a backdoor alley-oop from Curry to help the Warriors go ahead 45-37, and chants of "Bogut! Bogut!" echoed around the arena while the video board kept replaying his dunks.
Bogut sat out the final 4:37 of the first half with three fouls, and Andre Miller almost single-handily brought Denver back within a point. Then Curry hit his first 3-pointer of the game ? officially a 27-footer that seemed closer to the scorer's table than the arc ? as Golden State scored the last 11 points before the break to go ahead 56-44.
After falling behind by 15 early in the third quarter, the Nuggets started to rally behind their point guard.
Lawson, who scored a career-playoff high 35 points in the Game 3 loss, shook off a slow start to highlight a 14-4 run that sliced Golden State's lead to 62-58 midway through the third quarter. Just when it seemed they might crawl back, Curry countered with a devastating blow to Denver's playoff hopes.
NOTES: For the third straight game, Warriors coach Mark Jackson listed Carl Landry at power forward in his starting lineup submitted before the game, even though Harrison Barnes started at power forward and Landry came off the bench. Jackson said beforehand that he'd do it again because "it worked." Nuggets coach George Karl said it's not what coaches typically do but joked that Jackson is "consistent" and maybe "superstitious." ... Jackson's wife, Desiree Coleman Jackson, sang the national anthem.
Using ultraviolet light, a machine disinfects a hospital room at the Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, N.Y., Wednesday, March 20, 2013. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Using ultraviolet light, a machine disinfects a hospital room at the Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, N.Y., Wednesday, March 20, 2013. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Using ultraviolet light, a machine disinfects a hospital room at the Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, N.Y., Wednesday, March 20, 2013. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Using ultraviolet light, a machine disinfects a hospital room at the Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, N.Y., Wednesday, March 20, 2013. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
NEW YORK (AP) ? Hospitals sweep, swap and sterilize, but they can't seem to stop the spread of germs.
Health officials say 1 in 20 patients get a hospital-spread infection, and some of those are from hard-to-treat superbugs. The growing threat of these dangerous germs is driving hospitals to try new approaches, like costly new robot-like machines to wipe them out.
But there is no good national evidence that these products reduce deaths or infection rates. Some health officials say rigorous cleaning with bleach and other standard cleaning products should do the job.
Meanwhile, the government is cutting back Medicare payments to hospitals who can't keep infections under control.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) ? Police say a man stabbed four people at a Catholic church in Albuquerque as a Sunday mass was nearing its end.
Police spokesman Robert Gibbs says a man in his 20s jumped over several pews at St. Jude Thaddeus Catholic Church around noon Sunday and walked up to the choir area where he began his attack.
The injuries to the four church-goers weren't life-threatening. All four were being treated at hospitals.
Numerous parishioners subdued the attacker and held him down until police arrived.
Gibbs says the attacker is in custody but that police don't yet know his identity, the motive for the stabbings, whether he had any ties to the victims or whether he regularly attended the church.
The stabbings occurred as the choir had just begun its closing hymns.
Within the set of current legal parameters, advertisers still do a cool job of getting a message out. We asked our readers to imagine a world where those rules and regulations don't exist. The winner is below, but first the runners-up ...
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) ? After struggling to sway both state and federal lawmakers, proponents of expanding background checks for gun sales are now exploring whether they will have more success by taking the issue directly to voters.
While advocates generally prefer that new gun laws be passed through the legislative process, especially at the national level, they are also concerned about how much sway the National Rifle Association has with lawmakers. Washington Rep. Jamie Pedersen, a Democrat who had sponsored unsuccessful legislation on background checks at the state level, said a winning ballot initiative would make a statement with broad implications.
"It's more powerful if the voters do it ? as opposed to our doing it," Pedersen said. "And it would make it easier for the Legislature to do even more."
On Monday, proponents of universal background checks in Washington will announce their plan to launch a statewide initiative campaign that would require the collection of some 300,000 signatures, according to a person involved in the initiative planning who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to pre-empt the official announcement. The Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility has scheduled a fundraiser in Seattle at the end of next month and hopes to have a campaign budget in the millions of dollars.
Ballot measures may be an option elsewhere, too. Hildy Saizow, president of Arizonans for Gun Safety, said an initiative is one of the things the group will be considering as it reconsiders strategies. An organizer in Oregon was focused on the Legislature for now but wouldn't rule out a ballot measure in the future if lawmakers fail to pass a proposed bill there.
While advocates have had recent success on background checks in places like Connecticut and Colorado, they've been thwarted in some other states and in Congress. The U.S. Senate rejected a plan to expand background checks earlier this month, although lawmakers in the chamber are still working to gather additional votes.
Brian Malte, director of mobilization at the national nonprofit lobbying group Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said passage through Congress is the ideal in order to have a national solution and so that states with strong gun laws aren't undermined by nearby states with weaker standards. He noted that initiative campaigns are costly endeavors that can drain important, limited resources.
Still, Malte said, the ballot measures are an option to consider.
"At some point, certainly decisions need to be made about what the right time is to say we take it to the people," Malte said.
Brian Judy, a lobbyist who represents the NRA in Washington state, did not return calls seeking comment about the new initiative. He has previously said the NRA would likely oppose such an effort, arguing that the recently proposed laws on background checks would largely impact law-abiding citizens instead of the intended targets such as criminals and the mentally ill.
Gun measures have had mixed results at the ballot. More than 70 percent of Washington state voters rejected a 1997 initiative campaign that would have required handgun owners to pass a safety course. After the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, voters in Colorado and Oregon approved ballot measures the next year to require background checks for buying weapons at gun shows.
Following another massacre in Colorado earlier this year, state lawmakers approved a bill to expand background checks to private transactions and online purchases. A similar expansion plan in Oregon is stalled in the state Senate.
Some states don't see initiatives as a viable option right now. In Missouri, state Rep. Stacey Newman has been pushing for background checks with little success. While she spoke positively about the idea of a ballot initiative, she said there's no serious consideration of it because of the cost and coordination required just to get it on the ballot. Instead, the supporters of background checks in the state are simply working to prevent NRA-supported legislation from passing the state's General Assembly.
"We're continually on defense," she said.
Gun buyers currently must undergo a background check when they purchase a weapon from a federally licensed firearms dealer but can avoid checks through private purchases or at some gun shows.
Washington state advocates believe polls show the public is sufficiently on the side of expanding background checks further. An independent Elway Poll conducted two months ago found that 79 percent of registered voters in Washington state supported background checks on all gun sales, including private transactions.
That wasn't enough to shepherd the bill through the Legislature. Even in the state House, which is controlled by Democrats, supporters fell short after an NRA campaign put pressure on some lawmakers. Pedersen had offered concessions through the process, including the option of sending the measure out for a public vote and exemptions for people who already have concealed pistol licenses or law enforcement credentials.
Pedersen said he was working with the initiative organizers on language for the proposal, and he said the Legislature would first have another chance to adopt the measure early next year. If it fails among lawmakers again, the proposal would then automatically go to the ballot, where Pedersen said he welcomed a campaign competing against groups like the NRA.
"I'm not afraid of it at all," Pedersen said. "The public is really with us. It's the right policy. I think it can be useful for further progress."
___
AP Writer Mike Baker can be reached on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/HiPpEV
Jane Fonda is honored with hand and foot prints in cement next to Henry Fonda's outside the Chinese Theater. Jane Fonda will also be present at a special screening of 'On Golden Pond.'
By Sandy Cohen,?Associated Press / April 27, 2013
Actress Jane Fonda arrives at the Oscars at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. The 75-year-old Oscar winner will place her hand and footprints next to her father's in the concrete shrine to celebrity outside Hollywood's TCL Chinese Theatre on Saturday, April 27, 2013.
(Photo by Todd Williamson/Invision/AP, File)
Enlarge
Jane Fonda is planning to shed a few tears on Saturday.
Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition
That's when the 75-year-old Oscar winner will place her hand and footprints next to her father's in the concrete shrine to celebrity outside Hollywood's Chinese Theatre. Then she'll present a special screening of the film she made with her dad, 1981's "On Golden Pond." The cement and cinematic tribute is part of the 2013 TCM Classic Film Festival, which is honoring Jane Fonda.
"I am very, very excited," Fonda said in an interview this week. "I thought probably I would die and this would never happen. I'm just really thrilled that it actually is happening and not only that, but I get to put my hand and footprints right next to my father. ... I'm just so happy I'll probably cry."
The honor inspired Fonda to reflect on her career, which hasn't slowed since she returned to acting in 2005 after a 15-year hiatus.
"I've made some really good films. There's also a lot of films I wish I could do over again," she said. "But I've been lucky: I've worked with some great directors, and I feel like I'm still a work in progress as an actor. I feel like I'm still learning."
After her guest-starring stint on "The Newsroom," she's more interested than ever in television.
"I'd love to have a television series of my own," Fonda said. "I'm hoping that might happen."
A fitness pioneer, Fonda continues to focus on health and wellness with a series of videos aimed at older exercisers. She also inspired countless Oscar watchers earlier this year with her fitted, bright yellow gown, and she serves as L'Oreal's oldest spokeswoman.
"When you're younger, you don't have to put so much time into it, but also I didn't care that much. I was an activist and I didn't think so much about how I appeared," she said. "As I've gotten older, I've paid more attention to how I dress, how I look, what makeup I use, what skincare products I use... I guess one reason that I put more effort into looking good now is because I think it gives hope to other women. It takes the edge off the fear that young people have of getting older."
The wisdom and openness that come with aging are easy to wear well, and Fonda said she's happier now than ever.
"This event that's coming up where I get to put my hand and shoeprints next to my dad in front of the Chinese Theatre, it's coming at a very happy time in my life," Fonda said, "and making it even happier."
___
Follow AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen on Twitter: www.twitter.com/APSandy.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva may stay out of American custody because the US and Russia do not have a bilateral extradition treaty, despite efforts by Moscow to negotiate one.
By Fred Weir,?Correspondent / April 28, 2013
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva at a news conference in Dagestan, Russia, on Thursday. Her sister Maryam, right, is with her.
Musa Sadulayev/AP
Enlarge
The mother of the two Boston bombing suspects, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, has become a focus of interest after it emerged that her name had been added to a key terrorist watchlist in 2011 and fresh materials, including wiretaps, handed over to the US by the Russians showed her "vaguely discussing" jihad with her elder son two years ago.?
Skip to next paragraph Fred Weir
Correspondent
Fred Weir has been the Monitor's Moscow correspondent, covering Russia and the former Soviet Union, since 1998.?
Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition
Ms. Tsarnaeva, a naturalized US citizen who moved back to Russia a few years ago, has best been known until now as the most passionate defender of her two sons, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar, up to the point of insisting that they were "framed" because they were Muslims. Now investigators may want to look into what role she may have played, if any, in the radicalization process that may have led her two sons to carry out the Boston Marathon bombing almost two weeks ago.
Tsarnaeva was reportedly added to the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE)?database in 2011 at the request of US intelligence agencies. That list, which held about 750,000 names at the time, is used to compile the consolidated Terrorist Watchlist?used as the main reference tool by airlines and law enforcement agencies. It is believed her name, and that of her son Tamerlan, were appended to the list after the Russian FSB security service appealed for more information about the pair to the FBI and the CIA and warned of their growing radicalization.?
In recent days the Russians have also turned over wiretaps of conversations between Tsarnaeva, who was by that time back living in her native Dagestan, and her son Tamerlan in Boston. In one they reportedly discuss "jihad" in a general way. In another, Tsarnaeva is recorded talking with someone who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case.
In his annual town hall meeting with the Russian public last Thursday, President Vladimir Putin called for stepped up security cooperation?between the US and Russia in the wake of the Boston tragedy. He downplayed any links between Russia and the Boston bombers, and added "to our great regret" Russian security forces lacked any "operative information" that they might have shared with US law enforcement in the run up to the attack.
Tsarnaeva is an ethnic Avar, one of the largest groups in Russia's multi-national, but solidly Muslim, mountain republic of Dagestan?which abuts the Caspian Sea. Dagestan has been wracked for over a decade by a growing Islamist insurgency that has made parts of the republic a no-go zone even for law enforcement.
SAVAR, Bangladesh (AP) ? The fugitive owner of an illegally-constructed building that collapsed in Bangladesh in a deadly heap last week was captured Sunday at a border crossing with India by members of a commando force.
Mohammed Sohel Rana was arrested near the land border in Benapole in western Bangladesh, just as he was about to flee into India's West Bengal state, said Jahangir Kabir Nanak, junior minister for local government. Rana was brought back by helicopter to the capital Dhaka where he faced charges of negligence.
Rana's capture by the Rapid Action Battalion was announced on a loudspeaker at the site of the collapsed building in the Dhaka suburb of Savar, where people greeted it with cheers and claps.
At least 377 people are confirmed to have died in the collapse of the 8-story building on Wednesday. Three of its floors were built illegally. The death toll is expected to rise but it is already the deadliest tragedy to hit Bangladesh's garment industry, which is worth $20 billion annually and is a mainstay of the economy. The collapse and previous disasters in garment factories have focused attention on the poor working conditions of workers who toil for as little as $38 a month to produce clothing for top international brands.
Rana was presented before the media briefly at the commando force's headquarters in Dhaka. Wearing a printed shirt, an exhausted and disheveled Rana was sweating as two security officers held him by his arms. A security official helped him to drink water after he gestured he was thirsty. He did not speak to the media during the 10-minute appearance after which he was taken away. He is likely to be handed over to local police who will have to charge him and produce him in court within 24 hours.
A small-time politician from the ruling party, Rana had been on the run since Wednesday. He last appeared in public in front of his Rana Plaza on Tuesday after huge cracks appeared in the building. However, he assured tenants, including five garment factories, that the building was safe.
A bank and some shops on the first floor shut their premises on Wednesday after police ordered an evacuation, but managers of the garment factories on the upper floor told workers to continue their shifts.
Hours later, Rana Plaza was reduced to rubble, crushing most victims under massive blocks of concrete and mortar. A garment manufacturers' group said the factories in the building employed 3,122 workers, but it was not clear how many were inside it when it collapsed. About 2,500 survivors have been accounted for.
On Sunday, rescuers located nine people alive inside the rubble on Sunday, as authorities announced they will now use heavy equipment to drill a central hole from the top to look for survivors and dead bodies.
Army Maj. Gen. Chowdhury Hasan Suhrawardy, the coordinator of the rescue operations, said they will try to save the nine people first by manually shifting concrete blocks with the help of light equipment such as pickaxes and shovels.
"But if we fail we will start our next phase within hours," which would involve manual efforts as well as heavy equipment, including hydraulic cranes and cutters to bore a hole from the top of the collapsed building, he told reporters.
The purpose is to "continue the operation to recover both survivors and dead bodies. In this stage, we have no other choice but to use some heavy equipment. We will start it within a few hours. Manual operation and use of small equipment is not enough," he said.
The work will be carried out carefully so as not to mutilate bodies, he said. All the equipment is in place, "from a small blade to everything. We have engaged many private sector companies which supplied us equipment, even some heavy ones."
In rare good news, a female worker was pulled out alive on Sunday. Hasan Akbari, a rescuer, said when he tried to extricate a man next to the woman, "he said his body was being torn apart. So I had to let go. But God willing, we will be able to rescue him with more help very soon."
On Saturday, police arrested three owners of two factories. Also under detention are Rana's wife and two government engineers who were involved in giving approval for the building design. Local television stations reported that the Bangladesh High Court has frozen the bank accounts of the owners of all five garment factories in the collapsed building.
Rana was a local leader of ruling Awami League's youth front. His arrest, and that of the factory owners, was ordered by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who is also the Awami League leader.
The disaster is the worst ever for the country's booming and powerful garment industry, surpassing a fire five months ago that killed 112 people and brought widespread pledges to improve worker-safety standards. But since then very little has changed in Bangladesh, where low wages have made it a magnet for numerous global brands.
Bangladesh's garment industry was the third largest in the world in 2011, after China and Italy, having grown rapidly in the past decade. The country's minimum wage is the equivalent of about $38 a month.
Among the garment makers in the building were Phantom Apparels, Phantom Tac, Ether Tex, New Wave Style and New Wave Bottoms. Altogether, they produced several million shirts, pants and other garments a year.
The New Wave companies, according to their website, make clothing for several major North American and European retailers.
Britain's Primark acknowledged it was using a factory in Rana Plaza, but many other retailers distanced themselves from the disaster, saying they were not involved with the factories at the time of the collapse or had not recently ordered garments from them.
Wal-Mart said none of its clothing had been authorized to be made in the facility, but it is investigating whether there was any unauthorized production.
__
AP writers Farid Hossain and Gillian Wong in Dhaka contributed to this report.
>>>the news because they did something -- anything really. the
duke and duchess
of cambridge along with
prince harry
toured the new
harry potter
exhibit at the
warner brotherstheme park
near london, getting their own wands and a few lessons in how to use them. other reportable things they did was take a walk and then they had lunch. just wanted to pass that along. it was a busy day for them.
>>they were breathing too.
>>i read somewhere, she is wearing a
polka dot
dress there and wherever she bought it from they sold out immediately.
>>it's amazing how that happens.
>>not stuff i normally read.
>>sure he doesn't. right?
>>you digest it. you process. now you told america.
>>i didn't know the name of the store. you have to google it.
Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, have shown in a mouse model that infection with nematodes (also known as roundworms) can not only combat obesity but ameliorate related metabolic disorders. Their research is published ahead of print online in the journal Infection and Immunity.
Gastrointestinal nematodes infect approximately 2 billion people worldwide, and some researchers believe up until the 20th century almost everyone had worms. In developed countries there is a decreasing incidence of nematode infection but a rising prevalence of certain types of autoimmunity, suggesting a relationship between the two. Nematode infection has been purported to have therapeutic effects and currently clinical trials are underway to examine worms as a treatment for diseases associated with the relevant cytokines, including inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, and allergies.
In the study researchers tested the effect of nematode infection on mice fed a high-fat diet. Infected mice of normal girth gained 15 percent less weight than those that were not infected. Mice that were already obese when infected lost roughly 13 percent of their body weight within 10 days. Infection also drastically lowered fasting blood glucose, a risk factor for diabetes, and reduced fatty liver disease, decreasing liver fat by ~25 percent, and the weight of the liver by 30 percent.
The levels of insulin and leptin also dropped, "indicating that the mice restored their sensitivities to both hormones," says corresponding author Aiping Zhao of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore. Leptin moderates appetite. As with too much insulin, too high a level of leptin results in insensitivity, thus contributing to obesity and metabolic syndrome, Zhao explains.
The mechanism of the moderation of these hormones "was associated with a parasite-induced reduction in glucose absorption in the intestine, reduced liver triglycerides, and an increase in the population of cells called "alternatively activated macrophages," which regulate glucose metabolism and inflammation," says coauthor Joe Urban of the United States Department of Agriculture. Some of these changes involved "a protein called interleukin-13 and related intracellular signaling mechanisms," he says. "This suggests that there are immune related shifts in metabolism that can alter expression of obesity and related metabolic syndrome."
The incidence of obesity has been climbing dramatically, worldwide. It is a key risk factor for many metabolic diseases, including diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. Recent studies indicate that it is accompanied by chronic low-grade inflammation in adipose tissues, causing the release of proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines that contribute to the development of cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome.
Parasitic nematode infection induces a marked elevation in host immune Th2-cells and related type 2 cytokines which, besides combating the infection, also have potent anti-inflammatory activity, according to the report.
###
Z. Yang, V. Grinchuk, A. Smith, B. qin, J.A. Bohl, R. Sun, L. Notari, Z. Zhang, H. Sesaki, J.F. Urban, Jr., T. Shea-Donohue, A. Zhao, 2013. Parasitic nematode-induced modulation of body weight and associated metabolic dysfunction in mouse models of obesity. Infect. Immun. Published ahead of print 18 March 2013, doi:10.1128/IAI.00053-13.
American Society for Microbiology: http://www.asm.org
Thanks to American Society for Microbiology for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
On the very day Homeland actress Claire Danes and her actor/model husband Hugh Dancy found a buyer for their digs in downtown Manhattan, which they sold for $5.85M, the pair laid down $6.876M for a four-story, 19th-century townhouse in the city's West Village neighborhood. According to The Real Estalker, the home was previously owned by psychiatrist David Shaffer, best known for his 15-year marriage to the "famously autocratic Vogue head honcho Anna Wintour." Shaffer tried to sell the place for as much as $8.3M in 2009?a great year for real estate, as we all know?and though ultimately he didn't rake in quite as much as he hoped for, considering he bought the 3,166-square-foot Greek Revival for just $1.7M in 1999, he's still making a tidy profit.
So what was Danes drawn to? Well, the four-bedroom house has a comfortable, homey feel, with blond wood floors, loads of bookshelves, a garden out back, an open kitchen, and a master bedroom that takes over an entire floor. Take a tour above, and find floor plans over at Curbed NY.
? Claire Danes Snags NYC Townhouse [The Real Estalker via Curbed NY]
Children are known for how much they love to play make-believe, and StoryKid, an app introduced today during the Disrupt Hackathon in New York, takes this and gives it a new twist by offering a series of pictures as visual cues for a child to tell a story based around them. StoryKid is aimed at children aged 2 to 5 who are already talking but may either be too young or are just starting to write. Created by two comparative literature PhD students from Columbia University, the idea is that this will help bring children into the world of story telling and literature. And as co-founder Tianjiao Yu tells me, it can also be used by parents when they've run out of inspiration for their own made-up bedtime stories.![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 29-Apr-2013
Share ]