While software is expected to take center stage at Apple?s WWDC keynote this year, a new report claims that we?ll still see some new hardware debut on June 10th in San Francisco. WWDC 2013 tickets sold out in under 3 minutes as excitement among developers boiled over, and all eyes are on iOS 7, which is expected to feature the first major user interface design overhaul iOS has ever seen. We?re not expecting any new iPhones or iPads to debut on stage at WWDC, however. Instead, KGI Securities analyst Ming-chi Kuo reports that Apple will unveil several new MacBook computers at WWDC alongside a new version of OS X that should also be shown off during the show.
[More from BGR: Samsung Galaxy S4 review]
In a research note picked up by MacRumors, Ming-chi mirrors an earlier report from Digitimes suggesting that Apple has some new notebooks in store of Q2 debuts, but they will be modest upgrades without any big changes.
[More from BGR: Cheaper iPad mini reportedly on the way]
According to the analyst, Apple will unveil new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops that are powered by?Intel?s latest Haswell processors. The bad news, however, is that the new MacBook Air is not expected to feature an upgraded Retina display, as had previously been reported.
?Contrary to our previous projection, we now think Apple will continue to make the MacBook Pro alongside the MacBook Air and Retina MacBook Pro because the 13? MacBook Pro remains the most popular product in the MacBook line,? Ming-chi wrote.??Also, there is still demand in emerging markets, where Internet penetration isn?t advanced, for optical disk drives.?
According to the report, the new laptops will begin shipping soon after they are unveiled at WWDC 2013.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? A civilian cargo aircraft crashed at Bagram Air Field, north of the Afghan capital, soon after takeoff on Monday, killing all seven people aboard, the U.S.-led military coalition said.
The Taliban quickly claimed responsibility for the crash, but the coalition said in a statement to The Associated Press: "Taliban's claims are false."
It said the cause of the crash was being investigated by emergency crews that rushed to the site, but there was no sign of insurgent activity in the area at the time.
Capt. Luca Carniel, a coalition spokesman, said the aircraft crashed from a low altitude right after takeoff.
The coalition did not identify the victims, the type of aircraft involved, or the company that owned it.
In another development, President Hamid Karzai accused U.S. forces of killing four civilians and wounding one in the eastern province of Nangarhar on Sunday after an American' convoy was attacked by insurgents.
In a statement issued by his office, Karzai "strongly condemned the killing of innocent civilians."
The U.S.-led military coalition said it was still investigating the weekend clash, which left four soldiers with minor injuries and damaged a patrol vehicle. In a statement issued on Monday, the coalition said the Taliban attacked the coalition patrol with small arms fire and roadside bombs as it moved through a local bazaar in the province where there were civilians.
"Coalition forces engaged the enemy, pushed through the hostile area, and traveled to a nearby Afghan National Army checkpoint," the coalition said in a statement. "An investigation is currently underway to assess whether there are any civilian casualties as a result of insurgent fire."
___
AP writers Amir Shah and Thomas Wagner in Kabul contributed.
REYKJAVIK (Reuters) - Iceland's centre-right parties took a commanding early lead in elections on Saturday, staying on course to return to power with promises of tax cuts and debt relief just five years after presiding over the country's spectacular economic collapse.
The Independence and Progressive Parties, which ruled the nation, often in coalition, for nearly 30 years before the 2008 collapse, had collected close to half the votes counted so far, putting them solidly ahead of the ruling Social Democrats and on track to form Iceland's next government.
"People seem to have a very short memory," Halldor Gudmundsson, 44, said after casting his ballot. "These are the parties that got us into the mess in the first place."
With nearly 20 percent of overall votes counted, the Independence Party, which was part of every government between 1980 and 2009, led with 24.9 percent, and the Progressive Party was close behind with 22.7 percent, while the Social Democrats were a distant third with 13.9 percent.
"We've seen what cutbacks have done for our healthcare system and social benefits ... now it's time to make new investments, create jobs and start growth," said Independence Party leader Bjarni Benediktsson, the favorite to become Iceland's next prime minister.
With a population of just 320,000, Iceland became a European financial hub 10 years ago when its banks borrowed money cheaply and lured British and Dutch savers with high returns.
Growing unchecked under a relaxed regulatory regime, the banks expanded to 10 times Iceland's GDP by 2008, then crashed in a matter of days, leaving behind a long trail of debt and bankruptcy and foreshadowing the trouble many other European nations would face.
The Social Democrats stabilized the economy with a package hailed as exemplary by the International Monetary Fund, but a series of policy blunders, tax hikes, leniency towards foreign creditors and inability to deal with soaring household debt cost them their popularity.
"This government has done very little to get things going and have moved us backwards in many ways, so it's about time it steps down," Reykjavik voter Gudrun Gunnarsdottir, 36, said.
"I think we will see more investment and lower taxes, which is what people, families and also companies in this country need," she said after voting.
Both the Progressives and Independence centered their campaign on household debt relief, arguing that households, which suffered a 20 percent fall in both real wages and property prices in 2009, could no longer shoulder the cost of recovery.
Usually when someone feels the whiskey, it?s not a good thing. Perfume products company, however, are trying to change that. To start a conversation about different perfumes and colognes perfume and is looking forward to the start.
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(Reuters) - Verizon Communications Inc's chances of buying the 45-percent stake in Verizon Wireless owned by the UK's Vodafone Group Plc will hinge, at least in part, on the quality of tax advice it is getting.
Verizon, the No. 2 U.S. telecommunications company, may have found a way to structure a purchase of the stake so that Vodafone can avoid a multi-billion dollar U.S. capital gains tax bill, sources familiar with Verizon's plans said. The possibility of a huge tax bill has previously been regarded by analysts as a big hurdle to any such deal.
Reuters reported last Wednesday that Verizon was preparing a bid worth about $100 billion to take full control of Verizon Wireless - it already owns the other 55 percent - by buying the stake, according to people familiar with the matter. There are no guarantees that Vodafone will want to sell its stake or that Verizon will pursue the plan.
Vodafone declined to comment on the possibility of a Verizon bid for its stake or on the tax question.
One person familiar with the situation said Vodafone cannot consider the size of any tax payout in a possible transaction until the company has received an offer, which it has not.
A Verizon spokesman declined to comment.
Verizon hopes that if it structures a transaction to eliminate much of the tax bill, it can encourage Vodafone to come to the table for talks. Some analysts and investors say Verizon may have to pay as much as $130 billion to clinch the deal.
The tax bill on $100-billion deal, based on a simple acquisition of the stake, would be about $38 billion, according to UBS Investment Research. It could be much higher if the deal's price-tag rises above that figure, UBS noted.
That tax bill is based on the massive growth Verizon Wireless has experienced since it was established 13 years ago. The 45-percent stake that Verizon Communications wants to buy is owned by Vodafone Americas, a U.S. holding company. Given it is a U.S. entity, if Vodafone Americas were to sell that stake outright it would have to pay the full capital gains tax on the stake.
But the sources said Verizon Communications is contemplating a two-part deal that could avoid this. Instead of buying the stake outright, the sources said, Verizon Communications would buy the Delaware-based Vodafone Americas. Analysts said the seller of Vodafone Americas would not be a U.S.-based entity, so no U.S. capital gains tax would be due.
Vodafone's international structure is complicated, involving many holding companies, and the precise ownership of some assets is unclear. Vodafone Americas also owns some of Vodafone's non-US assets, the sources said, probably including some in Germany and Spain. These would be sold back to Vodafone by Verizon Communications, which would keep the Verizon Wireless stake, they said.
The two transactions could be done simultaneously or one after the other.
While the sale of the Verizon Wireless stake would not incur capital gains tax, the sale of the international assets back to Vodafone would. This is because it would involve the sale of assets by Verizon Communications, a U.S. entity.
Compared to Verizon Wireless, the smaller international assets are thought to have gained little in value. Analysts estimated their sale could hit Verizon Communications with a U.S. tax bill of about $5 billion or less.
The sources said that Verizon would seek to pass any tax hit onto Vodafone in the two-part transaction.
LONG COURTSHIP
Verizon has long coveted its partner Vodafone's stake in the Verizon Wireless joint venture, which started operations in 2000.
The last time the two came close to a deal was in 2004, when Vodafone bid for AT&T Wireless. The British company, the world's second-largest mobile operator, however, lost that bid to Cingular and has since held on to the Verizon Wireless stake for its exposure to the U.S. wireless market.
Wall Street analysts had previously seen it as unlikely that Verizon would want to do a deal involving Vodafone Americas' international assets. But those assets have underperformed in recent years when compared with the growth of Verizon Wireless, and are now a smaller part of the holding company, reducing the potential tax hit.
However, the timing of Verizon's interest in doing the deal has more to do with the gains in its stock price and low interest rates, the sources stressed.
Verizon is considering paying about half of the purchase price in cash and half in stock, Reuters reported on Wednesday. That means it may look to raise around $50 billion in debt.
UK TAX QUESTION
The kind of deal structure envisaged would still leave Vodafone with another tax question, said UK academics and analysts: Should it leave the proceeds from any sale offshore or bring them home to the UK?
Leaving the money offshore might invite scrutiny from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, which sometimes questions transactions if they seem designed solely to avoid tax and are not based in an underlying economic logic, said Prems Sikka, professor of accounting at the University of Essex in the UK.
If the transaction were shaped the way the sources have described it, Vodafone would probably repatriate the proceeds into Britain, said Charles Merriman, managing director at Merriman Capital Transactions, a consultancy in London.
Once that was done, he said, the company might be able to reduce its tax bill by taking advantage of the UK's substantial shareholdings exemption. Under certain conditions, this exempts from UK corporation taxation any gains realized when one company disposes of shares in another company.
More broadly, though, Vodafone could face a political backlash in the UK from any deal that was clearly structured to avoid taxation, said Robin Bienenstock, senior analyst at Bernstein Research.
U.S. companies such as Starbucks, Amazon and Google have come under fire from British lawmakers for using legal maneuvers to cut their tax bills in the UK.
"The problem with tax is not just the technical ability to avoid it, but the scorched earth that trying to avoid it could leave with the UK government afterwards," said Bienenstock. "Recent tax cases in the UK ... suggest that an attempt to avoid tax on such a large and high profile deal would be very badly received."
(Reporting by Kevin Drawbaugh in Washington, D.C. and Nanette Byrnes in Chapel Hill, N.C.; Additional reporting by Kate Holton and Tom Bergin in London; So Young Kim and Paritosh Bansal in New York; Editing by Martin Howell)
The maxim, 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do' also applies to non-human primates, as scientists discover that wild monkeys have an ability to imitate the social eating behavior of other groups of monkeys. ?
By Mai Ng?c Ch?u,?Contributor / April 26, 2013
Vervet monkeys eat bread on a lawn near some tourist bungalows in Kruger National Park, South Africa.
Melanie Stetson Freeman / The Christian Science Monitor.
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The tendency to adapt to cultural behaviors in a new place is not unique to us, a new study suggests.
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A study led by psychologists of the University of St Andrews in Scotland finds that vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus aethiops) in South Africa prefer food that those around them are eating.
The researchers dyed corn pink or blue and trained groups of monkeys to eat corn of one color and avoid the other. When young males migrated from one group to a group that preferred the opposite color, most of them immediately switched to the local preference.
Leading primate experts call this research?evidence of "cultural transmission"?in wild primates, which could also help to explain the evolution of our human desire to search for "local knowledge" when traveling to a new culture.
In a press release from St Andrews, noted primatologist?Frans de Waal?called the research "ione of the few successful field experiments on cultural transmission to date.? De Waal did not participate in the study.?
Carel van Schaik, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Zurich, was also impressed. "Culture was thought to be something only humans had? he told the New York Times. "If you define culture as socially transmitted knowledge, skills and information, it turns out we see some of that in animals. Now this experiment comes along and I must say it really blew me away.?
According to the study's?authors, the discovery demonstrates that social learning and cultural conformity play an important role in the behavior of animals as well as humans.?
"As the saying goes, 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do,'" said co-author Andrew Whiten in the St Andrews press release. "Our findings suggest that a willingness to conform to what all those around you are doing when you visit a different culture is a disposition share by other primates."?
The study was published on April 25 by the journal Science.
Whiten and his colleagues conducted field experiments at the Inkawu Vervet Project in the Mawana private game reserve in South Africa. At first, they induced conformity in four groups of wild vervet monkeys with 109 animals in total.
The team fed the first two groups of monkeys with a box of corn dyed blue and another dyed pink. The blue corn was soaked in bitter aloe leaves and to be made distasteful to the monkeys, so they soon ate only pink corn. For two other groups, pink corn was made bitter, and the monkeys learned to prefer blue corn. Once the monkeys were trained, the researchers stopped adding the aloe to the corn.?
Four months later, 27 infants were born. When they were able to eat solid food, the researchers supplied baby and adult monkeys with blue and pink corn. The adult animals stuck to their favorite color, and 26 of the infants ate only the corn the adult?monkeys liked.?
During the mating season, 10 male monkeys joined other groups that ate corn with a color different from the one their native group did. What surprised the researchers was that seven migrants quickly took up the locally-preferred corn, suggesting that they conformed to the cultural norm of their new group. With no higher ranking monkey present, the other two soon followed suit.
Researchers said the single monkey who continued to choose the same color as in his original group was perhaps taking the top rank in his new group, a factor that might explain his nonconformist behavior.
?The willingness of the immigrant males to adopt the local preference of their new groups surprised us all," said co-author Erica van de Waal, in the press release. "The copying behaviour of both the new, na?ve infants and the migrating males reveals the potency and importance of social learning in these wild primates, extending even to the conformity we know so well in humans.?
She said the study was?one of the very few successful controlled experiments in the wild, which "hints at a level of conformism most of us, until now, held not possible."
The cultural learning ability discovered in vervet monkeys is reminiscent of a well-known study of Japanese macaques?in the 1950s, in which one monkey was observed washing her food, a practice that spread throughout the troop and was passed on to subsequent generations. ?
Monkeys aren't the only animals observed transmitting cultural information. Another study conducted by a different group of scientists at the University of St Andrews found that whales learned feeding techniques?from their peers. Through analysis of a 27-year database on whale behavior collected in the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, the researchers find that?lobtail feeding had spread to 37 percent of the whale's population.?
Susan Perry, an anthropologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, finds the whale study to be "a highly convincing case for a foraging tradition in a cetacean."
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Vehicles are parked at the Devens Federal Medical Center (FMC) in Devens, Mass., Friday, April 26, 2013. The U.S. Marshals Service said Friday that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, charged in the April 15, 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, had been moved from a Boston hospital to the federal medical center at Devens, about 40 miles west of the city. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
Vehicles are parked at the Devens Federal Medical Center (FMC) in Devens, Mass., Friday, April 26, 2013. The U.S. Marshals Service said Friday that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, charged in the April 15, 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, had been moved from a Boston hospital to the federal medical center at Devens, about 40 miles west of the city. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
This Friday, April 26, 2013 photo shows the entrance of the Devens Federal Medical Center (FMC) in Devens, Mass. The U.S. Marshals Service said Friday that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, charged in the April 15, 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, had been moved from a Boston hospital to the federal medical center at Devens, about 40 miles west of the city. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
BOSTON (AP) ? The surviving Boston Marathon bombings suspect has been released from a civilian hospital and transferred to a federal medical detention center in central Massachusetts.
The U.S. Marshals Service said Friday that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev left Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center overnight and was taken to the Federal Medical Center Devens, about 40 miles west of Boston.
The facility, on the decommissioned Fort Devens U.S. Army base, treats federal prisoners and detainees who require specialized long-term medical or mental health care.
The 19-year-old Tsarnaev is recovering from a gunshot wound to the throat and other injuries suffered during his attempted getaway.
The Massachusetts college student was charged with setting off the shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs that killed three people and wounded more than 260 at the marathon finish line April 15.
Contact: Natasha Pinol npinol@aaas.org 202-326-6440 American Association for the Advancement of Science
Students develop sophisticated analyses of design problems behind huge disasters
A classroom approach that helps high school seniors analyze engineering disasters as though the students were professional investigators has been selected to win the Science Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction.
"When you compare what the students say and write with what the National Transportation Safety Board has in monographs about these disasters, they're comparable," says Joe Immel, who teaches the course module, called Root Cause Analysis, at Technology High School in Rohnert Park, California. "The students' products are really amazing."
The Science Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction was developed to showcase outstanding materials, usable in a wide range of schools and settings, for teaching introductory science courses at the college level. The materials must be designed to encourage students' natural curiosity about how the world works, rather than to deliver facts and principles about what scientists have already discovered. Organized as one free-standing "module," the materials should offer real understanding of the nature of science, as well as providing an experience in generating and evaluating scientific evidence. Each month, Science publishes an essay by a recipient of the award, which explains the winning project. The essay about Root Cause Analysis will be published on April 26.
"Improving science education is an important goal for all of us at Science," says editor-in-chief Bruce Alberts. "We hope to help those innovators who have developed outstanding laboratory modules promoting student inquiry to reach a wider audience. Each winning module will be featured in an article in Science that is aimed at guiding science educators from around the world to these valuable free resources."
Immel first got interested in science when he was in junior high. An eighth-grade teacher took him and his classmates through what Immel would later learn was generally taught in college-level invertebrate zoology classes. As a student, he was locked on, and as a future educator, he would look back at the experience and realize that young students are more capable than is often believed.
"When it comes to kids, you can ask them to do something and as long as no one tells them it's impossible, they can do it," Immel says.
Immel went on to earn degrees in biology at the University of California, including a PhD at the University of California in Santa Barbara. He worked as a scientist, then as an engineer. He and his wife, Barbara Kephart Immel, then started a consulting firm for the biotechnology, medical device and pharmaceutical industries.
At age 50, Immel earned a teaching credential, having discovered he really enjoyed volunteering in schools when his own children were small. He took a job at Technology High School, a public alternative school with a project-based, group-oriented curriculum.
Having seen how a kind of root cause analysis was routinely used as a part of quality control in the pharmaceutical industry, Immel says it occurred to him that the process would provide an interesting approach for students. "I said, 'I bet seniors would like to do that,'" he says.
Immel's curriculum module "Root Cause Analysis: Methodologies and Case Studies" helps students use a systematic approach to analyze engineering failures such as the Titanic disaster and the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis. As Immel predicted and has had confirmed, "Spectacular failures interest high-school students greatly."
As the students consider each disaster, they are coached to pursue root causes by persistently asking "why" at least five times, and to keep asking "who, what, when, where, how?" They are encouraged to pursue a course of thought beyond where they would normally go, keeping an open mind as they push through premature conclusions.
"People in general look for an answer, and when they get one, they stop and say, 'This is it,'" Immel says. "We teach the students that we're liable to be fooled by symptoms, we're liable to be fooled by things that are more superficial than we think they are."
The students are asked to find at least two root causes for each disaster case study, and then to explore corrective and preventive actions first in class discussions and then in the "executive summaries" they prepare.
The fifth and final case study is presented in a way that puts the students in the role of real engineers. The students are put into six groups, with each group privy only to what one real-life engineer knew at the time of a disaster, in this case the Columbia space shuttle disaster. Each group goes over the phone calls, memos and documents belonging to that real-life engineer.
One representative from each group speaks at a mission management meeting in a kind of role play. After the meeting, the setting switches to the day of the disaster, and the students as engineers must face the public and the media in a brutal mock press conference.
After the press conference, students are sent off to individually prepare their executive summaries. Unlike with usual term papers or exams, however, they are required to communicate via phone, text, email or even Facebook with their classroom peers from all of the groups, in order to prepare the best analyses. The summaries are due the very next day.
"The members of each group only initially learned one-sixth of the information, so they have to fill in the blanks," Immel says. "We have instant communication, it's the way of the world. So we need to use it."
Students often stay up all night conferring and preparing their summaries. "They are fascinated by the case studies, and they throw themselves into it," Immel says. "That's all they want to do. We have to negotiate with other instructors at the end of the year while this is going on, because the students don't want to do anything else."
Immel says the collaborative aspect of the process is key to the success of the analyses. Melissa McCartney, associate editor at Science, lauds the approach.
"While this module is specific to engineering," McCartney says, "it employs collective intelligence and collaborative learning, both of which are important in any STEM discipline."
The process of figuring out what went wrong in a disaster can be very compelling, Immel says. "It's just immense fun," he says. "It's what piques the intellect of the people on the National Transportation Safety Board." Immel adds that the human tragedy associated with the case study disasters is not overlookedan analysis of the Deepwater Horizon blowout begins with a slide show of the 11 people who died there, for exampleand students develop a profound appreciation for the care that should go into every engineering task.
Students who have experienced the module often report back to Immel that they have continued to use Root Cause Analysis as they move on in their education and training.
Immel believes Root Cause Analysis should be a part of new science education standards, which call for more emphasis on engineering.
"I would love to see a full-semester course with many more case studies," he says. "The more you do it, the better you get."
###
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world's largest general scientific society, and publisher of the journal, Science as well as Science Translational Medicine and Science Signaling. AAAS was founded in 1848, and includes 261 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of 1 million. The non-profit AAAS is open to all and fulfills its mission to "advance science and serve society" through initiatives in science policy, international programs, science education, and more. For the latest research news, log onto EurekAlert!, www.eurekalert.org, the premier science-news Web site, a service of AAAS.
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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.
Contact: Natasha Pinol npinol@aaas.org 202-326-6440 American Association for the Advancement of Science
Students develop sophisticated analyses of design problems behind huge disasters
A classroom approach that helps high school seniors analyze engineering disasters as though the students were professional investigators has been selected to win the Science Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction.
"When you compare what the students say and write with what the National Transportation Safety Board has in monographs about these disasters, they're comparable," says Joe Immel, who teaches the course module, called Root Cause Analysis, at Technology High School in Rohnert Park, California. "The students' products are really amazing."
The Science Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction was developed to showcase outstanding materials, usable in a wide range of schools and settings, for teaching introductory science courses at the college level. The materials must be designed to encourage students' natural curiosity about how the world works, rather than to deliver facts and principles about what scientists have already discovered. Organized as one free-standing "module," the materials should offer real understanding of the nature of science, as well as providing an experience in generating and evaluating scientific evidence. Each month, Science publishes an essay by a recipient of the award, which explains the winning project. The essay about Root Cause Analysis will be published on April 26.
"Improving science education is an important goal for all of us at Science," says editor-in-chief Bruce Alberts. "We hope to help those innovators who have developed outstanding laboratory modules promoting student inquiry to reach a wider audience. Each winning module will be featured in an article in Science that is aimed at guiding science educators from around the world to these valuable free resources."
Immel first got interested in science when he was in junior high. An eighth-grade teacher took him and his classmates through what Immel would later learn was generally taught in college-level invertebrate zoology classes. As a student, he was locked on, and as a future educator, he would look back at the experience and realize that young students are more capable than is often believed.
"When it comes to kids, you can ask them to do something and as long as no one tells them it's impossible, they can do it," Immel says.
Immel went on to earn degrees in biology at the University of California, including a PhD at the University of California in Santa Barbara. He worked as a scientist, then as an engineer. He and his wife, Barbara Kephart Immel, then started a consulting firm for the biotechnology, medical device and pharmaceutical industries.
At age 50, Immel earned a teaching credential, having discovered he really enjoyed volunteering in schools when his own children were small. He took a job at Technology High School, a public alternative school with a project-based, group-oriented curriculum.
Having seen how a kind of root cause analysis was routinely used as a part of quality control in the pharmaceutical industry, Immel says it occurred to him that the process would provide an interesting approach for students. "I said, 'I bet seniors would like to do that,'" he says.
Immel's curriculum module "Root Cause Analysis: Methodologies and Case Studies" helps students use a systematic approach to analyze engineering failures such as the Titanic disaster and the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis. As Immel predicted and has had confirmed, "Spectacular failures interest high-school students greatly."
As the students consider each disaster, they are coached to pursue root causes by persistently asking "why" at least five times, and to keep asking "who, what, when, where, how?" They are encouraged to pursue a course of thought beyond where they would normally go, keeping an open mind as they push through premature conclusions.
"People in general look for an answer, and when they get one, they stop and say, 'This is it,'" Immel says. "We teach the students that we're liable to be fooled by symptoms, we're liable to be fooled by things that are more superficial than we think they are."
The students are asked to find at least two root causes for each disaster case study, and then to explore corrective and preventive actions first in class discussions and then in the "executive summaries" they prepare.
The fifth and final case study is presented in a way that puts the students in the role of real engineers. The students are put into six groups, with each group privy only to what one real-life engineer knew at the time of a disaster, in this case the Columbia space shuttle disaster. Each group goes over the phone calls, memos and documents belonging to that real-life engineer.
One representative from each group speaks at a mission management meeting in a kind of role play. After the meeting, the setting switches to the day of the disaster, and the students as engineers must face the public and the media in a brutal mock press conference.
After the press conference, students are sent off to individually prepare their executive summaries. Unlike with usual term papers or exams, however, they are required to communicate via phone, text, email or even Facebook with their classroom peers from all of the groups, in order to prepare the best analyses. The summaries are due the very next day.
"The members of each group only initially learned one-sixth of the information, so they have to fill in the blanks," Immel says. "We have instant communication, it's the way of the world. So we need to use it."
Students often stay up all night conferring and preparing their summaries. "They are fascinated by the case studies, and they throw themselves into it," Immel says. "That's all they want to do. We have to negotiate with other instructors at the end of the year while this is going on, because the students don't want to do anything else."
Immel says the collaborative aspect of the process is key to the success of the analyses. Melissa McCartney, associate editor at Science, lauds the approach.
"While this module is specific to engineering," McCartney says, "it employs collective intelligence and collaborative learning, both of which are important in any STEM discipline."
The process of figuring out what went wrong in a disaster can be very compelling, Immel says. "It's just immense fun," he says. "It's what piques the intellect of the people on the National Transportation Safety Board." Immel adds that the human tragedy associated with the case study disasters is not overlookedan analysis of the Deepwater Horizon blowout begins with a slide show of the 11 people who died there, for exampleand students develop a profound appreciation for the care that should go into every engineering task.
Students who have experienced the module often report back to Immel that they have continued to use Root Cause Analysis as they move on in their education and training.
Immel believes Root Cause Analysis should be a part of new science education standards, which call for more emphasis on engineering.
"I would love to see a full-semester course with many more case studies," he says. "The more you do it, the better you get."
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? Two U.S. officials say the surviving suspect in the Boston bombings acknowledged his role in the attacks to FBI investigators. But the officials say this occurred before authorities advised him of his constitutional rights, including the right to consult with an attorney and not to incriminate himself.
It was not clear whether the admission by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (joh-KHAHR' tsahr-NEYE'-ehv) would be admissible in a criminal trial, since it came before he was read his Miranda rights. It's also unclear whether prosecutors would need the admission to secure a conviction since physical evidence has already been uncovered in the investigation.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing case.
Tsarnaev's two lead defense lawyers did not immediately return phone and email messages.
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain skirted a "triple dip" recession by growing faster than expected in the first three months of the year, providing some cover for a government under fire over its austerity drive.
The Office for National Statistics said on Thursday that Britain's gross domestic product rose 0.3 percent in the first quarter, above forecasts for a 0.1 percent rise.
It shrank 0.3 percent quarter-on-quarter in late 2012, and another quarterly contraction would have put Britain into its third recession in less than five years.
The data will have come as relief to Prime Minister David Cameron's coalition government. It is banking on an economic upturn before the next general election but has been accused by critics of stifling growth with too much budget cutting.
The International Monetary Fund - previously supportive of Britain's approach to deficit reduction - has also suggested some cuts may need to be deferred given the weakness in demand.
Thursday's data was also released just days after ratings agency Fitch stripped Britain of its top-notch credit status.
Chancellor George Osborne said the GDP data was encouraging and showed his strategy was working. He promised to stay the course on fixing Britain's budget problems.
"We all know there are no easy answers to problems built up over many years, and I can't promise the road ahead will always be smooth, but by continuing to confront our problems head on, Britain is recovering and we are building an economy fit for the future," he said in a statement.
The opposition Labour Party said the figures were "lacklustre" and showed the economy had only got back to where it was six months ago.
"David Cameron and George Osborne have now given us the slowest recovery for over 100 years," Ed Balls, Labour's economics spokesman, said in a statement, a complaint amplified in a new party political poster.
Sterling hit its highest level in two months against the dollar after the data and British government bond prices fell.
Britain's preliminary GDP figures are one of the first for a major advanced economy, and based mostly on estimated data. But it would be rare for a reading this high to be revised down into negative territory.
Year-on-year, the latest GDP reading was 0.6 percent higher, very low, but still the strongest rise since the end of 2011.
PITFALLS AHEAD
Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister in the coalition government, said it was too early to declare an end to the country's economic crisis.
"I don't want anyone to think somehow we're out of the woods yet," he told a London radio station.
Osborne is sticking to his commitment to eliminate Britain's underlying budget deficit in five years. The stronger-than-expected GDP reading may help him when he tries to convince visiting economists from the IMF next month that Britain's economy is on track for recovery.
Analysts, however, warn of a broader problem of stagnation that has led some to warn that Britain risks a Japanese-style 'lost decade of near-zero growth.
Britain's GDP remains 2.6 percent below its peak in the first quarter of 2008 and even with Thursday's data, has stagnated for the past 18 months.
Rob Wood, an economist at Berenberg Bank, said a recovery appeared to be on the horizon but pitfalls lay ahead.
"The economy seems to have done a little better than the main surveys suggested but it is hardly a picture of rude health right now," he said. "We suspect there will be another couple of disappointing quarters to get through before the UK can see a return to sustainable growth."
The first-quarter rise in output was driven by a broad-based increase in services output, building on a strong January, with the motor trade particularly strong.
Industrial output was lifted by the biggest rise in the mining and quarrying sector since 2002, as some North Sea oil and gas fields came back on line after lengthy maintenance that depressed output in 2012.
(Additional reporting by Li-mei Hoang and Andrew Osborn; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)
NEW YORK (AP) ? Washington state's chief prosecutor says there's a catch to T-Mobile's new cellphone plans, which replace the traditional two-year service contract with an installment plan for phone buyers.
One of the benefits of the new plan is that buyers can cancel their service at any time. But Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson says the company hasn't told customers that they have to pay the full remaining cost of the phone if they cancel service; they can't remain on the installment plan.
Ferguson says T-Mobile has agreed to make that clearer. He says customers nationwide who bought T-Mobile phones from March 26, when the plan was introduced, to Thursday can get a full refund.
T-Mobile says it believes its advertising was "truthful and appropriate."
Gut bacteria may play a role in the development of heart disease, a new study suggests.
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The results show, when gut bacteria feed on certain foods, such as eggs and beef, they produce a compound that may in turn increase heart disease risk, the researchers said.
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Participants in the study with high levels of the compound, called trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO), in their blood were 2.5 times more likely to have a heart attack, stroke or to die over a three-year period compared with those with low levels of the compound. Even among people with no traditional risk factors for heart disease, high levels of TMAO were linked with an increased risk of these cardiovascular events.
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The findings suggest that blood levels of TMAO could serve as a marker for predicting heart disease risk, although future studies are needed to confirm this, said study researcher Dr. Stanley Hazen, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic.
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If, in the future, researchers could develop a drug that blocks the production of TMAO, this could be a "whole new pathway" to tackle heart disease, Hazen said.
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Previous studies had found a link between high levels of TMAO and a history of heart disease. It's thought that bacteria convert the nutrient lecithin to TMAO.
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In the new study, the researchers took blood samples from 40 adults before and after they ate two hard- boiled eggs, a common source of lecithin. After eating the eggs, their blood levels of TMAO were elevated. But if participants took antibiotics before eating the eggs, their TMAO levels were suppressed, the researchers said.
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In a second study, the researchers followed about 4,000 people who were being evaluated for a heart condition. (For instance, about three-quarters had high blood pressure, and 42 percent had had a prior heart attack.)
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Participants who had a heart attack, stroke or died during the study period had higher average TMAO levels than those who didn't experience a cardiovascular event. People with high TMAO levels and no cardiovascular risk factors were 1.8 times more likely to experience a cardiovascular event than those with low levels.
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"This is going to be a landmark observation," said Dr. Scott Wright, a cardiologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who was not involved in the study. If the findings are confirmed by future studies, it may result in a shift in dietary recommendations away from foods that may cause gut bacteria to produce TMAO.
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The findings also provide an explanation for why some people are particularly susceptible to heart disease while others are not, said Dr. Sanjay Rajagopalan, a cardiologist at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. In additional to genetic and environmental factors, components of our "internal environment," such as gut microbes, may play a role in this risk, he said.
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However, the new study cannot prove that high TMAO levels cause cardiovascular disease, and future studies are needed to examine the effect of lowering TMAO levels, Rajagopalan said.
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Wright recommended people eat mainly lean meat, such as chicken and turkey, and limit consumption of beef to one or two times a week.
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Earlier this month, the same group of researchers published a study that found a link between consumption of carnitine, which is found in red meat, and a risk of heart disease. Carnitine is also converted by bacteria to TMAO.
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The new study is published in the April 25 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
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Pass it on: When gut bacteria feed on certain foods, they produce a compound that may increase the risk of heart disease.
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Related on MyHealthNewsDaily and MNN:
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This story was originally written for MyHealthNewsDaily and is republished with permission here. Copyright 2013 MyHealthNewsDaily, a TechMediaNetwork company.
Canadian singer Justin Bieber performs on stage during the "I Believe Tour " in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, March 31, 2013. (AP Photo/Gero Breloer)
Canadian singer Justin Bieber performs on stage during the "I Believe Tour " in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, March 31, 2013. (AP Photo/Gero Breloer)
Canadian singer Justin Bieber performs on stage during the "I Believe Tour " in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, March 31, 2013. (AP Photo/Gero Breloer)
Canadian singer Justin Bieber performs on stage during the "I Believe Tour " in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, March 31, 2013. (AP Photo/Gero Breloer)
STOCKHOLM (AP) ? Swedish police say they have found drugs on board a tour bus used by pop singer Justin Bieber.
Police spokesman Lars Bystrom says a small amount of drugs and a stun gun were found when officers raided the empty bus parked under the Globen concert venue in Stockholm, where Bieber was performing Wednesday.
Bystrom said Thursday they have no suspects and no one has been arrested. He declined to identify the drug, saying it had been sent to a laboratory for an analysis.
He says police acted after smelling marijuana coming from inside the bus when it was parked outside the hotel where Bieber was staying. The drug squad was alerted and searched the bus during the concert.
The Canadian singer is in Stockholm as part of a world tour.
BEIJING (AP) ? An American business group appealed to China on Wednesday to improve online security and ease restrictions on Web use by companies, warning that deteriorating access speeds might discourage foreign investment.
The American Chamber of Commerce suggested the Chinese government could speed up Internet access by permitting some companies to circumvent its extensive system of Web filters.
"When we compare the Internet in China to the Internet as it exists in other countries such as South Korea or the European Union or the United States, what we see is that it is significantly slower. It is also less reliable and less secure," said the chamber's president, Christian Murck.
Beijing's Internet controls and attitude toward data security have become politically sensitive after Mandiant, an American security firm, released a report in February on a wave of hacking attacks against U.S. companies it said were traced to a Chinese military cyberwarfare unit.
The American chamber warned that while two-thirds of its member companies use cloud computing, the number willing to base those operations in China has declined to below 50 percent due to security concerns.
In an annual "white paper" on policy recommendations, the chamber appealed to Chinese authorities to repeal restrictions imposed in 1999 on use of foreign encryption and security technology for sensitive data.
China has the world's biggest population of Internet users, with 564 million people online at the end of last year.
The government encourages Web use for business and education but tries to block access to material deemed subversive using filters that slow access and prompt widespread complaints.
The American chamber said its member companies have "noted deterioration in access speeds" to websites outside China and warned that will "eventually discourage investment in China."
It suggested Chinese authorities might certify companies that would be allowed high-speed international access that circumvents the filters. It said those companies might promise to use such networks only for business-related correspondence.
The chamber also appealed to Beijing to increase the size of stakes foreign investors are allowed to own in Chinese Internet and data storage companies.
It warned that security policies that "diverge from global practices" might hamper China's development and appealed to the government to embrace international standards.
U.S. officials are pressing Beijing to help combat Internet-based industrial spying. Pressure increased following the Mandiant report, which said a wave of attacks were traced to a building in Shanghai that is occupied by a Chinese military cyberwarfare unit. The attacks have prompted threats of commercial sanctions by Washington.
An American undersecretary of state, Robert Hormats, warned during a visit to Beijing this month that hacking from China was undermining its relations with Washington.
Anti-smoking ads with strong arguments, not flashy editing, trigger part of brain involving behavior change
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have shown that an area of the brain that initiates behavioral changes had greater activation in smokers who watched anti-smoking ads with strong arguments versus those with weaker ones, and irrespective of flashy elements, like bright and rapidly changing scenes, loud sounds and unexpected scenario twists. Those smokers also had significantly less nicotine metabolites in their urine when tested a month after viewing those ads, the team reports in a new study published online April 23 in the Journal of Neuroscience.
This is the first time research has shown an association between cognition and brain activity in response to content and format in televised ads and behavior.
In a study of 71 non-treatment-seeking smokers recruited from the Philadelphia area, the team, led by Daniel D. Langleben, M.D., a psychiatrist in the Center for Studies of Addiction at Penn Medicine, identified key brain regions engaged in the processing of persuasive communications using fMRI, or functional magnetic resonance imaging. They found that a part of the brain involved in future behavioral changes?known as the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dMPFC)?had greater activation when smokers watched an anti-smoking ad with a strong argument versus a weak one.
One month after subjects watched the ads, the researchers sampled smokers' urine cotinine levels (metabolite of nicotine) and found that those who watched the strong ads had significantly less cotinine in their urine compared to their baseline versus those who watched weaker ads.
Even ads riddled with attention-grabbing tactics, the research suggests, are not effective at reducing tobacco intake unless their arguments are strong. However, ads with flashy editing and strong arguments, for example, produced better recognition.
"We investigated the two major dimensions of any piece of media, content and format, which are both important here," said Dr. Langleben, who is also an associate professor in the department of Psychiatry. "If you give someone an unconvincing ad, it doesn't matter what format you do on top of that. You can make it sensational. But in terms of effectiveness, content is more important. You're better off adding in more sophisticated editing and other special effects only if it is persuasive."
The paper may enable improved methods of design and evaluation of public health advertising, according to the authors, including first author An-Li Wang, PhD, of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. And it could ultimately influence how producers shape the way ads are constructed, and how ad production budgets are allocated, considering special effects are expensive endeavors versus hiring screenwriters.
A 2009 study by Dr. Langleben and colleagues that looked solely at format found people were more likely to remember low-key, anti-smoking messages versus attention-grabbing messages. This was the first research to show that low-key versus attention-grabbing ads stimulated different patterns of activity, particularly in the frontal cortex and temporal cortex. But it did not address content strength or behavioral changes.
This new study is the first longitudinal investigation of the cognitive, behavioral, and neurophysical response to the content and format of televised anti-smoking ads, according to the authors.
"This sets the stage for science-based evaluation and design of persuasive public health advertising," said Dr. Langleben. "An ad is only as strong as its central argument, which matters more than its audiovisual presentation. Future work should consider supplementing focus groups with more technology-heavy assessments, such as brain responses to these ads, in advance of even putting the ad together in its entirety."
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University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine: http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/
Thanks to University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine for this article.
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Public release date: 25-Apr-2013
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