Media mogul Rupert Murdoch came to the defence of Britain's Prince Harry on Sunday, urging critics to "give him a break" over photographs of him frolicking naked in a Las Vegas hotel suite.
Australian-born Murdoch posted a message of support on his Twitter page after The Sun, his top-selling British tabloid, printed the images of 27-year-old Harry in defiance of orders from the royal family.
"Prince Harry. Give him a break," wrote Murdoch, 81. "He may be on the public payroll one way or another, but the public loves him, even to enjoy Las Vegas."
The images of the third in line to the throne, cavorting nude with a mystery woman during a game of "strip billiards", first surfaced Wednesday on the US gossip website TMZ before going viral on the Internet.
The Sun initially respected the royal family's request that British newspapers did not print the grainy camera-phone images, but broke ranks on Friday, claiming it did so in defence of press freedom.
The newspaper said it was "ludicrous" that the British press were not allowed to print images that had already been seen by hundreds of millions of people on the Internet.
Britain's media watchdog, the Press Complaints Commission, has received more than 850 complaints about The Sun's publication of the photos.
A YouGov poll published in The Sunday Times newspaper found that some 68 percent of Britons thought Harry's behaviour was acceptable for a young single man on a private holiday.
Some 75 percent still had a positive view of Harry, an army officer who has served in Afghanistan and is now a trained Apache helicopter pilot.
And 61 percent thought The Sun was wrong to print the images, with only 25 percent supporting the tabloid's decision.
Britain's culture minister Jeremy Hunt -- who faced calls to resign in April over his closeness to Murdoch executives -- said he did not accept The Sun's justification for publishing the photos.
"Personally I cannot see what the public interest was in publishing those," Hunt told BBC television.
"But we have a free press and I don't think it is right for politicians to tell newspaper editors what they can and cannot publish."
Researchers develop method to grow artificial tissues with embedded nanoscale sensors Public release date: 26-Aug-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Keri Stedman keri.stedman@childrens.harvard.edu 617-919-2110 Boston Children's Hospital
'Cyborg' tissues could merge bioengineering with electronics for drug development, implantable therapeutics
Boston, Mass.A multi-institutional research team has developed a method for embedding networks of biocompatible nanoscale wires within engineered tissues. These networkswhich mark the first time that electronics and tissue have been truly merged in 3Dallow direct tissue sensing and potentially stimulation, a potential boon for development of engineered tissues that incorporate capabilities for monitoring and stimulation, and of devices for screening new drugs.
The researcher teamled by Daniel Kohane, MD, PhD, in the Department of Anesthesia at Boston Children's Hospital; Charles M. Lieber, PhD, at Harvard University; and Robert Langer, ScD, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologyreported their work online on August 26 in Nature Materials.
One of the major challenges in developing bioengineered tissues is creating systems to sense what is going on (e.g., chemically, electrically) within a tissue after it has been grown and/or implanted. Similarly, researchers have struggled to develop methods to directly stimulate engineered tissues and measure cellular reactions.
"In the body, the autonomic nervous system keeps track of pH, chemistry, oxygen and other factors, and triggers responses as needed," Kohane explained. "We need to be able to mimic the kind of intrinsic feedback loops the body has evolved in order to maintain fine control at the cellular and tissue level."
With the autonomic nervous system as inspiration, a postdoctoral fellow in the Kohane lab, Bozhi Tian, PhD, and his collaborators built mesh-like networks of nanoscale silicon wiresabout 80 nm in diametershaped like flat planes or in a "cotton-candy"-like reticular conformation. The networks were porous enough to allow the team to seed them with cells and encourage those cells to grow in 3D cultures.
"Previous efforts to create bioengineered sensing networks have focused on 2D layouts, where culture cells grow on top of electronic components, or on conformal layouts where probes are placed on tissue surfaces," said Tian. "It is desirable to have an accurate picture of cellular behavior within the 3D structure of a tissue, and it is also important to have nanoscale probes to avoid disruption of either cellular or tissue architecture."
"The current methods we have for monitoring or interacting with living systems are limited," said Lieber. "We can use electrodes to measure activity in cells or tissue, but that damages them. With this technology, for the first time, we can work at the same scale as the unit of biological system without interrupting it. Ultimately, this is about merging tissue with electronics in a way that it becomes difficult to determine where the tissue ends and the electronics begin."
"Thus far, this is the closest we've come to incorporating into engineered tissues electronic components near the size of structures of the extracellular matrix that surrounds cells within tissues," Kohane added.
Using heart and nerve cells as their source material and a selection of biocompatible coatings, the team successfully engineered tissues containing embedded nanoscale networks without affecting the cells' viability or activity. Via the networks, the researchers could detect electrical signals generated by cells deep within the engineered tissues, as well as measure changes in those signals in response to cardio- or neurostimulating drugs.
Lastly, the team demonstrated that they could construct bioengineered blood vessels with embedded networks and use those networks to measure pH changes within and outside the vesselsas would be seen in response to inflammation, ischemia and other biochemical or cellular environments.
"This technology could turn some basic principles of bioengineering on their head," Kohane said. "Most of the time, for instance, your goal is to create scaffolds on which to grow tissues and then have those scaffolds degrade and dissolve away. Here, the scaffold stays, and actually plays an active role."
The team members see multiple future applications for this technology, from hybrid bioengineered "cyborg" tissues that sense changes within the body and trigger responses (e.g., drug release, electrical stimulation) from other implanted therapeutic or diagnostic devices, to development of "lab-on-a-chip" systems that would use engineered tissues for screening of drug libraries.
###
The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH Director's Pioneer Award, grant numbers DE0113023, DE016516, GM073626), the McKnight Foundation and Boston Children's Hospital.
Boston Children's Hospital is home to the world's largest research enterprise based at a pediatric medical center, where its discoveries have benefited both children and adults since 1869. More than 1,100 scientists, including nine members of the National Academy of Sciences, 11 members of the Institute of Medicine and nine members of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute comprise Boston Children's research community. Founded as a 20-bed hospital for children, Boston Children's today is a 395 bed comprehensive center for pediatric and adolescent health care grounded in the values of excellence in patient care and sensitivity to the complex needs and diversity of children and families. Boston Children's also is the primary pediatric teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. For more information about research and clinical innovation at Boston Children's, visit: http://vectorblog.org/.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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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.
Researchers develop method to grow artificial tissues with embedded nanoscale sensors Public release date: 26-Aug-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Keri Stedman keri.stedman@childrens.harvard.edu 617-919-2110 Boston Children's Hospital
'Cyborg' tissues could merge bioengineering with electronics for drug development, implantable therapeutics
Boston, Mass.A multi-institutional research team has developed a method for embedding networks of biocompatible nanoscale wires within engineered tissues. These networkswhich mark the first time that electronics and tissue have been truly merged in 3Dallow direct tissue sensing and potentially stimulation, a potential boon for development of engineered tissues that incorporate capabilities for monitoring and stimulation, and of devices for screening new drugs.
The researcher teamled by Daniel Kohane, MD, PhD, in the Department of Anesthesia at Boston Children's Hospital; Charles M. Lieber, PhD, at Harvard University; and Robert Langer, ScD, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologyreported their work online on August 26 in Nature Materials.
One of the major challenges in developing bioengineered tissues is creating systems to sense what is going on (e.g., chemically, electrically) within a tissue after it has been grown and/or implanted. Similarly, researchers have struggled to develop methods to directly stimulate engineered tissues and measure cellular reactions.
"In the body, the autonomic nervous system keeps track of pH, chemistry, oxygen and other factors, and triggers responses as needed," Kohane explained. "We need to be able to mimic the kind of intrinsic feedback loops the body has evolved in order to maintain fine control at the cellular and tissue level."
With the autonomic nervous system as inspiration, a postdoctoral fellow in the Kohane lab, Bozhi Tian, PhD, and his collaborators built mesh-like networks of nanoscale silicon wiresabout 80 nm in diametershaped like flat planes or in a "cotton-candy"-like reticular conformation. The networks were porous enough to allow the team to seed them with cells and encourage those cells to grow in 3D cultures.
"Previous efforts to create bioengineered sensing networks have focused on 2D layouts, where culture cells grow on top of electronic components, or on conformal layouts where probes are placed on tissue surfaces," said Tian. "It is desirable to have an accurate picture of cellular behavior within the 3D structure of a tissue, and it is also important to have nanoscale probes to avoid disruption of either cellular or tissue architecture."
"The current methods we have for monitoring or interacting with living systems are limited," said Lieber. "We can use electrodes to measure activity in cells or tissue, but that damages them. With this technology, for the first time, we can work at the same scale as the unit of biological system without interrupting it. Ultimately, this is about merging tissue with electronics in a way that it becomes difficult to determine where the tissue ends and the electronics begin."
"Thus far, this is the closest we've come to incorporating into engineered tissues electronic components near the size of structures of the extracellular matrix that surrounds cells within tissues," Kohane added.
Using heart and nerve cells as their source material and a selection of biocompatible coatings, the team successfully engineered tissues containing embedded nanoscale networks without affecting the cells' viability or activity. Via the networks, the researchers could detect electrical signals generated by cells deep within the engineered tissues, as well as measure changes in those signals in response to cardio- or neurostimulating drugs.
Lastly, the team demonstrated that they could construct bioengineered blood vessels with embedded networks and use those networks to measure pH changes within and outside the vesselsas would be seen in response to inflammation, ischemia and other biochemical or cellular environments.
"This technology could turn some basic principles of bioengineering on their head," Kohane said. "Most of the time, for instance, your goal is to create scaffolds on which to grow tissues and then have those scaffolds degrade and dissolve away. Here, the scaffold stays, and actually plays an active role."
The team members see multiple future applications for this technology, from hybrid bioengineered "cyborg" tissues that sense changes within the body and trigger responses (e.g., drug release, electrical stimulation) from other implanted therapeutic or diagnostic devices, to development of "lab-on-a-chip" systems that would use engineered tissues for screening of drug libraries.
###
The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH Director's Pioneer Award, grant numbers DE0113023, DE016516, GM073626), the McKnight Foundation and Boston Children's Hospital.
Boston Children's Hospital is home to the world's largest research enterprise based at a pediatric medical center, where its discoveries have benefited both children and adults since 1869. More than 1,100 scientists, including nine members of the National Academy of Sciences, 11 members of the Institute of Medicine and nine members of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute comprise Boston Children's research community. Founded as a 20-bed hospital for children, Boston Children's today is a 395 bed comprehensive center for pediatric and adolescent health care grounded in the values of excellence in patient care and sensitivity to the complex needs and diversity of children and families. Boston Children's also is the primary pediatric teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. For more information about research and clinical innovation at Boston Children's, visit: http://vectorblog.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.
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If debt collectors at NCO Financial Systems thought they could get away with annoying Whataburger Restaurants while trying to get one of its employees to pay up on an alleged debt owned, well, they've got another think coming. The burger chain is taking the side of its employee and is suing NCO over what it's calling "harassment."
Officials at Whataburger are apparently exasperated over unrelenting calls made to the corporate headquarters in the hunt for an unnamed employee. It's taking NCO to court, saying the efforts?"amount to a campaign of harassment against Whataburger that is unreasonable ... and reckless."
What's that, you say? It's weird that a corporation would be defending its employee? Yep, it is kind of odd, says one lawyer who defends individuals in such cases.
"I guess the word I would use is refreshing," he told the Houston Chronicle. "It's good to see that an employer would step in, rather than blame the employee - which is what debt collectors want them to do."
Whataburger wouldn't comment on the details of the case, or what kind of debt or the amount supposedly owed by the employee. But in the lawsuit, the chain says the calls have been coming despite a cease-and-desist-letter issued on July 16 to NCO. Since June, there have allegedly been more than 50 calls made to Whataburger's toll-free number.
NCO's "disruptive conduct causes phone lines to ring, keeping the phone lines as well as Whataburger employees occupied and prohibiting (them) from performing their respective duties," the suit claims.
Debt collectors know where you work, so companies will go after people there in an effort to tick off employers enough that the individual will pay up to make the calls stop. But Whataburger isn't sitting for that. It's seeking unspecified actual damages to cover the toll charges for the long-distance calls, and punitive damages as well.
Whataburger claims that since at least 27 calls were made after the cease-and-desist, NCO is in violation of the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. It wants up to $1,000 for each call.
Whatanemployer, that Whataburger.
*Thanks for the tip, Kat!
Court case not the way Whataburger likes it [Houston Chronicle]
Gambian President Yahya Jammeh arrives at the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on July 15.
By Ian Johnston, NBC News
A plan by Gambia to execute every prisoner on death row next month has been condemned by the African Union and civil rights groups.
According to the Civil Society Associations Gambia, there are currently 47 people awaiting death sentences in the West African nation, including 11 political prisoners and eight suspected of having severe mental health problems. One has been on death row for more than 25 years.
?CSAG is strongly convinced that most of those who were convicted to death for treason went through unfair trials and considers their convictions politically related,? the group said in a statement.
?Given that the Gambia Government uses the death penalty and other harsh sentences as a tool to silence political dissent and opposition, CSAG believes that any execution is a further indicator of the brutality with which President [Yahya] Jammeh?s regime is bent on crushing political dissent,? it added.
Benin's President Thomas Boni Yayi, chairman of the African Union, urged Jammeh, who seized power in a 1994 coup, not to go ahead with the executions, according to BBC News.
"After having learned of the imminent execution of a number of prisoners sentenced to death, President Yayi, who is very concerned, wished that President Yahya Jammeh not carry out such a decision," Beninois Foreign Minister Nassirou Bako Arifari told BBC Afrique.
Jammeh, in an address to the nation Monday, Jammeh said that the executions would be carried out within the next few weeks.
"By the middle of next month, all the death sentences would have been carried out to the letter; there is no way my government will allow 99 percent of the population to be held to ransom by criminals," he said, according to news service AFP.
President's 'repressive nature' AFP said that eight military top brass, including the ex-deputy head of the police force, were given death sentences for treason last year. The last execution in the country happened five years ago.
CSAG said his remarks, which were made to mark the Muslim festival of Eid, a time when ?Muslims the world over seek forgiveness, extend messages of peace and love, show solidarity with one another and those in distressing conditions.?
?President Jammeh chose once again to show his brutality and repressive nature by informing Muslim leaders that he would execute prisoners,? the group said in the statement.
It added that the death row inmates included 39 Gambians with three from neighboring Senegal, two from Mali, two from Nigeria and one from Guinea Bissau. There are 46 men and one woman.
CSAG called for the international community to put pressure on Jammeh to stop the executions.
Death sentences were "known to be used as a tool against the political opposition" in Gambia, international rights group Amnesty International said in a report.?
"Furthermore, international standards on fair trials, including presumption of innocence, access to lawyers and exclusion of any evidence obtained as a result of torture, are often not respected,? it added.
More world stories from NBC News:
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Random genetic mutations in children that become more numerous with advancing paternal age may account for as many as 30 percent of autism cases, researchers reported.
BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) - California's renovated Memorial Stadium has passed its first test and now the Golden Bears are ready to see it filled up on game day.
The players practiced running onto the field for pregame introductions Tuesday night, there were test runs for the lighting, the PA system, clocks and concession stands, and even the band was on hand.
"Taking the field we had the smoke and all of that and we ran through it," coach Jeff Tedford said Wednesday. "It had a game feel to it actually. People were anxious. Even walking on the field I had butterflies a little bit walking out there. It's just a feel walking out to the stadium the way we always do it. It was exciting."
Tedford said the only glitch were some problems with the play clock but nothing that should stop the $321 million seismic retrofit and renovation from being ready for the opener against Nevada on Sept. 1.
The Bears have already had a couple of practices at the new stadium and will be in there all next week to get ready for the season opener.
It will be the first game on campus since 2010. Cal played last season at the San Francisco Giants' home, AT&T Park, across San Francisco Bay.
"I heard more than once a lot of people saying, 'It's great to be home, great to be back in here,'" Tedford said.
The stadium, which was built in 1923, underwent a complete overhaul after the 2010 season. Everything but the outer facade and the seating bowl on the east side of the stadium was rebuilt from the ground up to make the stadium, which is on an earthquake fault, safer and more modern.
The stadium is attached to a new $150 million High Performance Center that has given Cal state-of-the-art facilities that were much needed.
"It feels like the same place, just a few more bells and whistles it seems like to me," Tedford said.
NOTES: Cal released its first depth chart of fall camp with two true freshmen in starting roles. Bryce Treggs is listed as a starting receiver and Cole Leininger will be the punter. ... LB Khairi Fortt, who transferred earlier this summer from Penn State, is still rehabilitating from offseason knee surgery and won't be ready to start the season. ... Freshman Cedric Dozier, who played receiver and cornerback in high school, has requested a move to defense full time and will redshirt this season.
Plus, Premium Rush is a wild ride, The Apparition wasn't screened for critics.
Also opening this week in limited release:
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August 22, 2012 Remembering Ryan By Peter McKeever
About 10 years ago, I was doing some advocacy work for an organization called Americans for Our Heritage and Recreation, or AHR. This was a national coalition of wildlife and recreation groups supporting full funding of the Land and Water Conservation Act. AHR included groups with interests as diverse as wildlife, hunting and fishing, wetland protection, sports like soccer and softball, and local park and recreation departments.
Their common interest was persuading Congress to fulfill its promise to fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). Created in 1965, LWCF was to be funded with revenues from the depletion of offshore oil and gas and was to support the conservation of another valuable resource, land and water. Every year, $900 million in royalties paid by energy companies drilling on the outer continental shelf was to be placed in the fund.
The money was to be used to provide matching grants for state and local parks and recreation projects, to create and protect national wildlife refuges and national parks, and to protect areas around rivers and lakes from development.
But every year Congress broke its promise: LWCF has never been fully funded. My job was to organize support in the Midwest for full funding and to convey that support to members of Congress.
I called U.S. Representative Paul Ryan?s office, explained my objective, and asked a time to meet with him. An appointment was scheduled in his district office, in Janesville, and on the appointed date I drove there, accompanied by a DNR employee who could help explain how important this fund was for Wisconsin communities.
We had a cordial conversation with the congressman, and in the course of that conversation the topic of wetlands naturally came up. What was surprising was how quickly Ryan asked when would wetland fill permitting in Wisconsin allow mitigation banking, the practice of spending public money to create or maintain a new wetland after an existing wetland is filled in. He made it very clear that he thought this should be a high priority, and he mentioned his family company?s experience moving earth.
Creating a new wetland requires the moving a lot of earth, and it so happens that Paul Ryan?s family owns one of the nation?s largest earth moving companies, Ryan Incorporated Central. On its website the company touts its experience and expertise in constructing wetlands.
Even assuming that a ?constructed wetland? comes close to replicating the ecological functions of a natural wetland is to raise the question, What have you been smoking? Ryan showed little interest in the legislation, and made no commitments to support it in spite of the benefits it would have for his constituents.
But putting that reality aside, the most disturbing thing about the meeting was that he so blatantly made it clear that his primary interest was changing the wetland fill permitting process so that his family?s business might be able to belly up to the trough and get profitable contracts.
Perhaps it would not have been surprising if he had known us as campaign supporters and we had been there pushing for legislation to create more earth moving opportunities. The fact that he made this leap to personal benefit so quickly with two strangers left me with a very bad taste in my mouth, and no confidence that Ryan was in office to act in the interests of the public.
China Great Wall Industry Corporation will send a Spanish rover to the moon in June 2014, according to the Galactic Suite company which heads the "Barcelona Moon Team" that is competing in the Google Lunar X Prize contest to the moon.
The rover will be launched by a Long March 2C/CTS-2 rocket from China's Xichang Satellite Launch Center.
The Barcelona Moon Team is the only team based in Spain to take part in the Google Lunar X Prize, which challenges participants to create a robot that can move over the lunar surface and send live images back to Earth before December 2015.
As federal managers adapt to rising sea levels, local officials fear changes to parking rules that could undermine local economies
By Jennifer Weeks and Daily Climate
The end of Beach Road and the damage caused to parking lots at Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge in Virginia from Hurricane Irene.Image: U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Northeast Region
CHINCOTEAGUE NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Va. ? A sign at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service visitor center here states a simple motto: "Where Wildlife Comes First." But many visitors never see the sign, or much wildlife. Cars stream past the center on hot summer days, headed for a mile-long public beach at the refuge's southern end. The prime goals are sand, surf, and a parking spot close to the water.
But sea-level rise threatens the refuge's future as a beach destination. It's on Assateague Island, a barrier island off the coasts of Virginia and Maryland. The whole island is protected as a national seashore, but different parts have diverse missions. Most of the Virginia section is a wildlife refuge except for the beach, an enclave run by the National Park Service. The refuge draws up to 1.5 million visitors every year through the adjacent town of Chincoteague. In a survey conducted by the town last year, 80 percent of visitors rated going to the beach as their top priority.
The beach is broad, clean, and unspoiled by development. It's also in one of the most-exposed zones of the island, and often floods during storms. When this happens, as it did during a 2009 nor'easter and again in 2011 during Hurricane Irene, the adjacent parking lots are washed out and have to be rebuilt. Even though they're surfaced with loose sand and shells, rebuilding is expensive ? up to $700,000 per episode. Managers have preserved the lots, big enough for 960 cars, by repeatedly moving them west, away from the ocean side of the island, after washouts. Zones that used to be parking areas in the 1990s are now underwater.
The National Park Service has advised the Fish and Wildlife Service to move the recreation zone north to a more protected area. "We understand that the town of Chincoteague's economic viability is linked to beach parking," said Trish Kicklighter, superintendent of Assateague Island National Seashore. "But you need to let the dunes act natural and move back when they want to. The current area is not wide enough to maintain a parking lot and a swimming beach."
Barrier islands are naturally unstable, constantly changing shape under the forces of waves and wind. When storms flood the east, or ocean, side of Assateague, they wash sand over to the west side of the island and build it up. But as sea levels rise, floods are becoming more frequent and severe. The Fish and Wildlife Service projects that by 2100 rising seas will flood large sections of the Chincoteague refuge's coastal marshes.
Fish and Wildlife is writing a new 15-year management plan for the refuge, igniting a battle over the fate of the beach. Instead of spending more money to maintain a vulnerable parking lot, the agency would move the beach north and build new parking, possibly supplemented by a shuttle from a new satellite lot on Chincoteague.
Local officials oppose these ideas. Before 1962, when a bridge was built connecting the town of Chincoteague to Assateague Island, Chincoteague was a sleepy fishing community. Now the town is a tourist gateway, with seashore visitors pumping $TK million into the town annually, according to a Fish and Wildlife Service estimate. Local officials want the beach preserved at all costs.
Chincoteague Mayor John Tarr and local business owners argue that moving the beach or shifting even partly to public transit will drive visitors to more convenient locations like Ocean City, Maryland to the north or Virginia Beach to the south. "I feel we are being railroaded into less or no parking at the beach, and forced to ride a trolley system in the future," Tarr told a House Natural Resources subcommittee at a hearing last February.
Instead they want federal agencies to add a new parking lot with 300 more spaces and bring in the Army Corps of Engineers to do beach restoration, such as pumping sand from offshore to rebuild the beach. Federal managers oppose engineering solutions because they conflict with laws and policies that called for letting natural shoreline processes occur without intervening.
Chincoteague's beach-inside-a-refuge situation may be unique, but rising sea levels will affect all of the 167 national wildlife refuges that are located along U.S. coastlines. "No one really knows what the solution is yet ? we're still experimenting with strategies to make refuges more resilient, and it's specific to each refuge," said Noah Matson, vice president for climate change and natural resource adaptation at Defenders of Wildlife.
While a properly drafted and executed Last Will and Testament may work to transfer assets to your heirs or beneficiaries, it probably will not resolve problems with probate avoidance, estate taxes, or ensuring your choices are respected in the event of incapacity. To fully protect your lasting legacy, a good estate planning attorney can show you how to:
Transfer assets from your estate while maintaining the control and benefit of the assets during your lifetime, and at the same time avoiding or minimizing the burden and expense of probate;
Reduce exposure to estate taxes by means of a revocable living trust;
Make sure all your assets are transferred into your revocable living trust in order to avoid probate;
Make sure that any missed assets are transferred into the living trust by means of the pour-over will upon your death (this should only be used in case of a missed or unknown asset, this should not be relied upon as a means on transferring assets into your trust because the pour-over Will must be probated in order to transfer the assets);
Provide for the guardianship of minor children to avoid the need for a formal guardianship proceeding;
Prepare a life insurance trust that can either serve as a means of transferring assets estate tax free upon death, or as a fund from which estate taxes can be paid if they cannot be avoided altogether;
Set up a durable powers of attorney to designate a trusted individual to make financial decisions on your behalf in the event of incapacity (the need for this can all but be eliminated with the use of a fully funded revocable living trust);
Create advance health care directives to cover medical decisions (health care surrogate and living will), outlining your preferences for medical treatment and life support under extreme and terminal conditions and organ donation;
Give your beneficiaries asset protection for the assets you leave to them upon death;
Provide for special-needs beneficiaries who will receive assets upon your death (this will ensure they do not forfeit their government benefits they are currently receiving);
Give you options on how to leave assets to a charity upon your death;
Allow you to provide for the care of pets you own upon your death;
Give you options on how to pass your business to others upon your death or to prevent a surviving business partner from having to work with an unwanted partner; and
Possibly most importantly, to give you peace of mind now because you know that your wishes will be fulfilled upon your passing.
To learn more about what a good Florida estate planning attorney can do for you, please contact our estate planning attorney at Wood, Atter & Wolf, P.A. located in Jacksonville and Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.
As the world of electronics is becoming part of our lives it is surprising that security locks are still using 200 year old principles.
OK, I firmly believe that if it is not broke then don?t try and fix it, but really, Linus Yale made your front door key back in the mid 1800?s and OK, we have variations these days but the principle has not really changed that much.
Simons Voss based in Germany has been building electronic cylinders now for around 15 years and this is BIG business in Europe, It seems however, us Brits have just not caught on with the idea of pushing a button to open your front door. Crazy perhaps, but we are at last seeing an upturn and more electronic cylinders are being sold in the UK.
When you think about it we have been using electronics to secure our cars for the last ten + years. Now even, we have locking solutions that simply operate the locks and ignition on the car as long as you have the key on your person.
This technology has been around for years and is used in access control solutions in public buildings and offices quite regular.
So why not your front door, lets look at some of the benefits;
Loose your keys, no need to change your locks, simply delete the fob and add a new one.
Need to lone a friend a key, no problem, simply ad a new fob.
Fall out with your friend, no problem, delete the fob,
Decide to do the same with the back door, no problem add your existing fob to the back door as well.
Depending on the grade of a Simons Voss Cylinder you can create time groups, so for instance, if you have a cleaner to your home, you can program that their key only works for a certain period on a certain day.
If you wanted to know who has been in your house, you can recall an event log as to who has been in your home, on what day, at what time.
Fancy coming home, messing with your shopping, trying to get the key in the door, There is none of this, simply press the button as you are on your way up the drive, spin the turn on the door and you are in your home.
Really it does not get any easier and a good safe investment in keeping your home secure.
All us Brits love tradition and Tea, but times are changing and it is nice to see some of us changing as the future develops.
Simons Voss are in the process of developing a mobile app also that will allow you to open your door with your mobile phone. Geeky perhaps, but it is starting to happen that your mobile phone is becoming your digital wallet. Soon this will become your key to your home, car and everything else that you need security.
If your thinking on investing in your home security, seriously consider Simons Voss as your partner to this, It is a true pedigree company with Swiss Precision and German Prowess for engineering.
Want to see the range ? Click Here:?
Written by:
Darrel Walters
Head of the Tech Department
TRUST Security ? TRUST LocksOnline
?
-Darrel
Filed under: Access Control, Blogs, Cylinder Locks, Door Locks, Industry News
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover unfolded its seven-foot, five-jointed robotic arm on Monday, passing a critical test before the rover embarks on its first drive on the Red Planet.
By SPACE.com Staff / August 21, 2012
At the end of Curiosity's seven-foot arm is a turret, shaped like a cross. This turret, a hand-like structure, holds various tools that can spin through a 350-degree turning range. At the tip of the arm is the turret structure on which five devices are mounted. Two of these devices are in-situ or contact instruments known as the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and the Mars Hand Lens Imager. The remaining three devices are associated with sample acquisition and sample preparation functions.
Robert Z. Pearlman/SPACE.com
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NASA's Mars rover Curiosity flexed its long robotic arm for the first time on the Red Planet Monday (Aug. 20), passing a critical health check with flying colors, mission managers say.
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NASA scientists successfully tested out Mars rover Curiosity's robotic arm. The arm could potentially drill into the Martian soil and collect samples.
The rover unfolded the robotic arm and performed an intricate series of test maneuvers to make sure the 7-foot-long (2.1-meter) appendage is in good working order.?Curiosity's robotic arm?has five joints and is tipped with sophisticated instruments to get up close and personal with Mars.
Monday's Martian workout flexed all five joints on the robotic arm to extend it out in front of Curiosity, and then fold it back into its travel position ahead of the?rover's first drive, which is also expected to occur in the next few days.
"It worked just as we planned," Louise Jandura, Curiosity's sample system chief engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. "From telemetry and from the images received this morning, we can confirm that the arm went to the positions we commanded it to go to."
Curiosity's robotic arm is one of the rover's most powerful toolkits. At the end of the arm is a bulky 66-pound (30-kilogram) turret that is nearly 2 feet wide (60 centimeters). [11 Amazing Facts About the Curiosity Rover]
The arm's turret contains a drill that can dig 1 inch (2.5 cm) into Martian rocks, a scoop and other gear for collecting samples, a camera for microscopic analyses, and a spectrometer to determine the composition of rocket and surface targets.
"We'll start using our sampling system in the weeks ahead, and we're getting ready to try our first drive later this week," said Richard Cook, NASA's deputy project manager for the Curiosity mission.
But more robotic arm tests are needed before Curiosity can begin using the appendage to study Mars.? The arm, mission managers said, must past several calibration checks to make sure it is working properly.
"We have had to sit tight for the first two weeks since landing, while other parts of the rover were checked out, so to see the arm extended in these images is a huge moment for us," said Matt Robinson NASA's lead engineer for the robotic arm testing. "The arm is how we are going to get samples into the laboratory instruments and how we place other instruments onto surface targets."
Curiosity's robotic arm is one of 10 high-tech instruments built into the car-size rover to study Mars like never before. ?
Monday's arm checkout came one day after?Curiosity shot a nearby rock with a laser?built into its mast to make sure the tool worked. That tool is part of Curiosity's Chemistry and Camera (or ChemCam) instrument that determines the composition of targets by zapping them with a laser beam and then analyzing the light from the resulting sparks. The laser system, like the robotic arm, worked as expected.
The $2.5 billion Mars rover Curiosity touched down on the Red Planet on Aug. 5 and is expected to spend at least two years exploring its Gale Crater landing site. The rover is designed to determine if the region could have ever?supported microbial life.
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Copyright 2012?SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Meet the Siegels, the subjects of a Sundance-winning documentary, The Queen of Versailles. David is a real estate magnate in his 60s. Jackie is his 40-something wife, a former model, and together they have eight children. It would be an understatement to call the Siegels rich. These people are stupid rich. These are people that have so much money they don't know what to do with it, which is why David and Jackie set out to build the biggest home in the nation. After the subprime mortgage flameout of 2008, the Siegels took a major hit in their resources. But not everyone sees worldwide economic disaster as a wake-up call. Some just keep on shopping. The Queen of Versailles is one captivating clinical study in overreaching. In the wake of the financial collapse, politicians were eager to lambaste the poor who bought mortgages they couldn't afford (the better to shield blame from their friends in the banking cabal). Let this film show you that even the super rich can have trouble living within their (enormous) means. I won't lie; part of the appeal of this documentary is the continual shock of the wasteful extravagance the Siegel clan called normal. How opulent was their lifestyle? Well their 26,000-square foot home only had 17 bathrooms, so you can see why the Siegels would feel the need to build the biggest home in the nation. This 90,000-square foot fortress was modeled after the actual French palace in Versailles, so you know, it's going to be modest. It was designed to have 30 bathrooms, 10 kitchens, a bowling alley, an ice-skating rink, and two movie theaters (for counter programming?). The large stain glass window itself cost $250,000. The total cost of the project: more or less $100 million. I repeatedly laughed to myself in disbelief at the untamed lavishness on display. I confess it's hard for me to put myself into this vapid mindset. I just see all hat money and think of all the better things it could have been spent on. How many children could be vaccinated with $100 million? How many people could have been bought out of slavery with that money? How many low-income students could have afforded college? The kicker, what really gets my ire, is that is was all unnecessary. The Siegel family already lived in a giant mansion. Did they have to live in a giant-er mansion? When is enough just enough?By the end of the movie you won't know whether to scorn the Siegels or feel sorry for them. I'm at a loss myself. There's a certain level of schadenfreude watching a riches-to-rags story, watching the wealthiest among us find their world of easy money come crumbling down. But then you start thinking what these people are going to do now without the luxury of wealth. The Siegel children are horrified when at one point dad declares they will likely have to go to college and, gasp, earn their own living. And if these kids have to fend for themselves, it doesn't take a genius to get a sense of what the future holds. At one point, the adopted niece discovers her pet lizard is dead. Jackie harangues her about not taking care of it. "No one takes me to the pet store!" the niece declares. "But why didn't you at least give him water?" Jackie reasonably asks. The niece responds dead-serious: "That wouldn't have made a difference." And these people are going to have to fend for themselves! The horror that waits. The entire family has been wrapped up in a cocoon of wealth, insulated from the real world, and now has no real sense of how to navigate this new, blunt reality. Adding to the sadness is the dawning realization that David Siegel cannot stand his wife. Jackie is wife number three, and a former pageant winner/model, so we all know what stood out to the older businessman. Even his kids know. Late in the film, when the weight of creditors bears down on him, David sequesters himself in his private room, shows no interest in his wife or his children, and confides to his dog that the two of them could just run away together. With the comforts of wealth stripped away, and Jackie reaching, gasp, middle age, it becomes readily apparent that David's waning affection is not going to reverse. But the movie belongs to Jackie, the titular queen, and she is easily the most fascinating figure in the film. It's easy to dismiss the bleach-blonde woman with huge fake breasts and a shiny, fake life of glamor. Is she a ditz? She got a degree in computer engineering. Impressive. Is she a gold digger? She cannot help herself when it comes to buying, whether it's at Southerby's or Wal-Mart. Is she even a good mother? She does admit that she would not have had nearly as many children if it weren't for the ever-present nannies. What I saw was a woman who knew she could taste the good life and then became afraid of being kicked to the curb. David is happy to fund her personal projects and let her splurge on posh buys, but for how long? Her body, impressive though top-heavy, is aging, and her model looks are naturally fading into a comfortable middle age. Such is life. However, you can tell that Jackie is terrified. Mountains of money acted like a buffer between her and her husband. That's gone now. He keeps joking that when Jackie gets old he's going to dump her for two twenty-year-olds. Even when the family is downsizing, Jackie makes sure to fit in her beauty stops (botox, tanning, etc.). Some might charge the woman with being toxicly narcissistic, but I think that's too simple. Her looks are her meal ticket and now they are betraying her. She knows the type of man she married, and they both seem to be failing to live up to expectations. Now that the shiny distractions are removed, they have to live with one another as-is, and as-is doesn't really work for men of wealth and ego.Director Lauren Greenfield (Thin) spent three years documenting the Siegel clan. She must have done something right with her finished product since David Siegel filed a lawsuit against the movie and Greenfield. The suit argues the film damages David Siegel's credibility by positing that his company is on the verge of financial ruin. His company, Westgate Resorts, sold timeshares in the same kind of high-pressure sales tactics that lead to people buying things they cannot afford. After the 2008 meltdown, guess what? People couldn't afford their own homes let alone a vacation timeshare. When the bankers freeze the easy money, Siegel and his company cannot pay their bills and have to downsize, sell offices, and foreclose major properties, including their signature Vegas resort. It's hard to imagine that Greenfield went out of her way to portray a gloomy outlook on Siegel's company when the facts are pretty black and white. He lost his access to money and lost assets he couldn't afford any longer. The litigation just seems like desperate spin against the obvious and insurmountable. From a documentary standpoint, not all of the storylines and messages stick together. You can tell Greenfield wants to use the Siegel clan as an allegory for the American consumerist culture. See, the movie says, even the rich overreached too. But beyond the audience feeling superior to such careless individuals, I don't think this works. The movie never fails to be fascinating but almost in a car-crash sort of manner, as we vicariously lavish in the pornography of riches. Certainly Greenfield never condones the lifestyles of her subjects, not like the insipid, soul-deadening, vain Real Housewives reality franchise on Bravo (in a surprise to nobody, Bravo has snapped up the broadcast TV rights to Versailles). There's plenty of derisive laughter to be had throughout, but you do wish that Greenfield had pushed further. Comparing the Siegel's lives to their live-in nannies seems to be given superficial significance. These immigrant women bust their asses raising the Siegel brood and one of them literally lives in one of the kid's super sized dollhouses. She literally lives in a former dollhouse. Choke on that metaphor. Then there's a limo driver who's had to cut back to make ends meet, but really the stars of the film are Jackie and David. Too often the film seems caught up in the "look how disgustingly rich they are" direction. This is a compelling documentary, to be sure, but it can lapse into an extended Lifestyles of the Super Rich and Famous. David Siegel makes a very resonant observation in the film. "Everyone wants to be rich," he says. "If they can't be rich, they want to feel rich." Of course David Siegel's company made a hefty profit from making people feel rich at their resorts. Everyone wanted to partake in the same illusion, the same false belief that the good times were never going to end. The Queen of Versailles is alarming, fascinating, and beyond belief at several points (why do these people keep getting more pets they won't care for?). You'll feel a general sense of moral superiority but that's the movie's weakness as well. The super rich are characterized as extravagantly wasteful, and while this is a notion that will not break any headlines, the movie too often dips into schadenfreude that doesn't elevate the material. We're left with the sinking impression that this clan is stuck in their ways and ultimately doomed. Since the film's release, David Siegel has reclaimed his foreclosed super mansion, and now he's brought the asking price down to a more reasonable $65 million. It seems that you can lose millions and still not gain a lick of sense and perspective. Nate's Grade: B
BENIN, Nigeria (Reuters) - Nigerian police said on Tuesday they killed four kidnappers in southern Edo state following a car chase where the hostage escaped, in the latest abduction in a region home to Africa's biggest oil industry.
Criminal gangs kidnapping for ransom have blighted Africa's second largest economy for years, with the vast majority of people abducted Nigerians, although foreign oil workers have also been targets.
Violence and crime in the oil-producing Niger Delta pushes up the cost of doing business. Shell spent almost 40 percent of its global security budget in Nigeria between 2007-2009, according to an oil industry watchdog.
Senior civil servant Benson Ojoto was kidnapped earlier this month in Delta, one of the three states that make up the bulk of the Niger Delta. He was freed on Sunday, police said.
"Luckily, the man escaped while the gang headed to Edo with his car. We trailed them to Benin city where we engaged and gunned down four of them. One escaped with gunshot wounds," Delta state police spokesmanCharles Muka said.
Muka said they strongly suspected the gang was behind the kidnapping this month of Delta State Judge Marcel Okoh, who has since been released.
Although the majority of kidnappings in Nigeria are for financial gain, this year there have been a handful of abductions of foreigners by Islamists in the largely-Muslim north, far from the oil region.
A Briton and an Italian were killed during a raid in northeast Sokoto in March and a German died during another rescue attempt in Nigeria's second-largest city Kano in May.
The Finance Ministry of South Africa along with the country's FIC has alerted citizens of fake e-mails/letters which are presently circulating online masquerading as FIC, published allafrica.com dated August 12, 2012.
FIC, which works for making sure the system of finance in SA is credible and stable, is reportedly among the total of 7 institutions which are accountable to the finance ministry.
Apparently according to the ongoing online fraud, the fake electronic mail claims that its writer has the authority to dispatch an enormous sum-of-money that the reader is entitled to get and those who authorized him are Pravin Gordhan, Finance Minister and the IMF's (International Monetary Fund) Secretary General.
Moreover, for making the scam e-mail appear authentic, it provides the reader one reference number for the payment, a release-code of an ATM Visa Card, a confidential telex-code and PIN number.
However, for all that, the recipient must give his cell-phone number and address amongst other personal information, the e-mail states. There's also an admonition that the reply must be immediate so the payment doesn't go to someone who isn't the right beneficiary.
The Ministry disclosed that the scam e-mails had been utilizing various state agencies' as well as the FIC's logos.
It also said that these, which were a form of the 419 scam, were known to FIC that had been warning people through its www.fic.gov.za government site about fake campaigns, which posed as having the FIC's permission along with that of the Finance Ministry and additional public officials.
But according to FIC, it not only doesn't need anybody to pay for anything it does for them; it doesn't even disburse funds to any member of the same.
Jabulani Sikhakhane, Spokesperson for the Ministry-of-Finance reported the condemnation Pravin Gordhan made for his and the FIC's names getting used for defrauding South Africans into giving away their hard-earned cash. Mr. Gordhan had thus urged netizens for informing their local police about all alleged frauds, Sikhakhane added. Fin24.com published this dated August 12, 2012.
According to the Spokesperson, the fake electronic mails are recognizable by their incorrect logos, spelling mistakes and the exaggerated reimbursement stated.
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Public release date: 26-Aug-2012
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While a properly drafted and executed Last Will and Testament may work to transfer assets to your heirs or beneficiaries, it probably will not resolve problems with probate avoidance, estate taxes, or ensuring your choices are respected in the event of incapacity. To fully protect your lasting legacy, a good estate planning attorney can show you how to:
