Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/323217406?client_source=feed&format=rss
Friday, August 2, 2013
NY apple growers: SnapDragon, RubyFrost are newest
ALBANY, N.Y. -- SnapDragon and RubyFrost are the names of two new apples that will soon hit farm stands after more than a decade of development by Cornell University, an industry group announced Thursday.
The varieties, developed by Cornell breeder Susan Brown, are the first grown under an exclusive licensing agreement with New York Apple Growers.
Cornell has released 66 apple varieties since the late 1890s, including Cortland, Macoun, Empire and Jonagold. Historically, public universities released new varieties freely to growers and nurseries. A federal law passed in 1980 gave universities the ability to retain the intellectual property rights for their research with limited plant-based royalties.
Brown said SnapDragon gets its juicy crispness from its parent Honeycrisp and is expected to be a popular snacking apple, especially for children. The apple, which has a spicy-sweet flavor, ripens in late September and has a longer storage and shelf life than the Honeycrisp, a cross of Macoun and Honeygold developed by the University of Minnesota, Brown said.
RubyFrost ripens later in the fall, stores well and has high vitamin C content. Brown said it will be popular with fans of Empire and Granny Smith.
New York, the nation's No. 2 apple producer behind Washington, averages nearly 30 million bushels of apples annually.
The names of the new apples, formerly known simply as "New York 1" and "New York 2," were chosen after extensive consumer research and taste-testing. The growers' group surveyed 1,000 consumers online to help pick names.
Under the partnership with New York Apple Growers, Cornell gets royalties on trees purchased, acreage planted and fruit produced, with the income used to market the new varieties and support Cornell's breeding program.
The first trees were planted in 2011, with 400 acres now growing. The apple growers' group said a limited crop will be available at farm stands this fall, with grocery store sales expected to start in 2015.
The apples' names were revealed during Cornell's annual fruit grower field days in Geneva.
Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/08/01/3535494/ny-apple-growers-announce-names.html
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NSA chief talks at hackers' conference in Vegas
LAS VEGAS (AP) ? The head of the U.S. National Security Agency defended the government's much-criticized surveillance program against hecklers among a crowd of computer systems analysts Wednesday, but also had a challenge for them: If you don't like it, lend your talent to build a better one.
"You're the greatest tech talent anywhere in the world. Help us," Army Gen. Keith Alexander said at the hacker conference for the buttoned-up corporate and government security analyst crowd, not the one later in the week for the more counter-culture types.
Alexander spent much of his 45-minute address explaining how government methods used to collect telephone and email data helped foil 54 terror plots since 1993. He was interrupted at times by hecklers, but also drew applause.
"Our nation takes stopping terrorism as one of the most important things," he said, standing in short sleeves with a slide on the screen behind him showing a timeline and the number of foiled plots.
"Freedom!" one man shouted from the middle of the standing-room crowd.
"Exactly. And with that, when you think about it, how do we do that? Because we stand for freedom," Alexander said.
"Bulls--t," the heckler said.
"Not that," Alexander replied before continuing his keynote speech to the annual Black Hat conference at Caesars Palace. Organizers said the conference drew 7,000 people.
Alexander didn't refer in his address specifically to leaks by former NSA systems analyst contractor Edward Snowden of classified documents that brought attention on the government's surveillance efforts.
He remained unapologetic, denying another heckler's claim that he lied to Congress about methods the NSA uses to "connect the dots" and "go after the bad actors who may want to do us harm."
"People say, 'I hear what you say, but I don't trust that,'" Alexander said.
"How do we defend this country? That is the question," he said. "The nation needs to know we're going to do the right thing."
The four-star general, who has headed the NSA for eight years, said it wasn't true the agency listens to specific phone calls and reads emails. He said "no one at NSA" has ever gone outside the legal boundaries of the Patriot Act and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act programs allowing the collection of "metadata."
Alexander emphasized oversight of his programs by Congress, courts and the administration, and posted a slide of the type of broad one-line "metadata" that he said the agency collects from communications abroad: Date, duration, phone number calling, phone number receiving, and a note about the authorizing entity.
"There are no names in the database," he said. "No addresses. No credit card numbers. The database is like a lockbox."
Alexander said the data led to the disruption of 13 terror plots in the U.S., 25 in Europe, five in Africa and 11 in Asia. He spoke of a thwarted plot to bomb the New York City subway system in September 2009, but didn't specify others.
"We get all these allegations of, 'What they could be doing,'" Alexander said. "But when you check, like the (congressional) intelligence committees, they find that hasn't happened. Zero times."
Ted Doty, a computer product security manager and blogger from Atlanta, said he wasn't convinced.
"The smart people know that what's interesting is the connection trees," Doty said, referring to the links between one caller and the next. "That's what the NSA wants."
Doty said he suspected the government submits emails and text communications to transcription software and searches it using algorithms to find key words and phrases.
Mike MacKinnon, an information technology manager for a Los Angeles law firm, said he thought Alexander handled heckling well. He noted that Alexander even drew laughter when a voice shouted that he should read the Constitution.
Alexander said he had, and the heckler should, too.
"I expected a bit more yelling," MacKinnon said.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nsa-chief-talks-hackers-conference-vegas-175951147.html
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ActiveReplay's Trace Wants To Bring Quantified Self Tech To Action Sports For Players And Spectators
New Kickstarter project Trace is like a Fitbit for your extreme sports needs, allowing people who skate, surf, snowboard and ski to track a lot more than just time, distance and pace while participating in the sport they love. The Trace is the latest from ActiveReplay, a company that created AlpineReplay, an app and network for skiers to track and share their stats on the mountain.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/pWi8GAQD8M4/
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Thursday, August 1, 2013
'Busy' tanks bring out best in fish
31 July 2013
Last updated at 03:43 ET
Captive-bred fish will do better when released into the wild if they are reared in an interesting environment, according to a Norwegian study.
Salmon reared in stimulating environments, rather than bare fish tanks, showed increased brain power
The results mirror links seen between environment and brain function for birds and mammals.
The fish showed improved spatial learning and cognitive ability, the Royal Society journal study says.
Providing an environment containing pebbles and synthetic floating weed for the fish appeared to promote their intelligence.
One-year-old salmon were raised in either plain fishery tanks or tanks containing an "enriched" environment as part of the study. Those raised in the enriched environment showed significantly better abilities to navigate their way out of a maze, and their forebrains had higher levels of the genetic material associated with spatial awareness.
Previous studies of mammals bred in captivity have shown that stimulating environments aid their development and improve their life chances if they are released into the wild, but this is the first time that the same effects have been seen in fish.
School for Salar the SalmonJuvenile wild-strain Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) were used in the study, and changes were seen in the messenger RNA in their brains - which has previously been linked to increased spatial learning ability - after they had enjoyed a life of exploring pebbly tanks with floating and secured plastic fronds.
They outperformed fish raised in a non-enriched environment in subsequent cognitive tests and the differences becoming more pronounced the longer they had been kept in an enriched environment.
The researchers claim that tank enrichment leads to superior spatial learning abilities. The study reveals that fish show the same sorts of links between brain development and spatial behaviour seen in other vertebrates such as mammals.
The story of the Atlantic salmon was given a fictional treatment by Henry Williamson in his anthropomorphised novel Salar the Salmon, and maybe these results bring our understanding of the salmon closer to Williamson's.
Continue reading the main story- Atlantic salmon return to their exact place of birth to spawn
- They can live in freshwater and in saltwater oceans
- They are found in the northern Atlantic Ocean
The early-rearing environment for fish may be important in fish conservation strategies. The authors suggest that enriched fish-rearing environments lead to flexible behaviour, decreased aggression, flexible shoaling responses, social learning and the ability to recover from stress more quickly, all of which are likely to lead to increased post-release survival in the wild.
Dr Toby Carter, a behavioural biologist at Anglia Ruskin University who has written independently on the Atlantic salmon, commented: "Fish are vertebrates and a lot more complex than many people think.
"More and more evidence is emerging to show that fish have some of the same sorts of neural pathways as other vertebrates like mammals. It is challenging to demonstrate a link between environmental complexity and spatial learning in fish and the experiments reported here are significant."
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23504260#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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Next GOP Pariah? Catholics
I think it is a safe bet that if Pope Francis I lives more than a few years that Catholics will soon be kicked out of the Republican Party and resume their previous status as the semi-black race. The reason is simple. Pope Francis I is on the opposite side of the political divide from Pope John Paul II. The Polish pope was a Cold Warrior who basically took the Reagan-Thatcher line on left-leaning political movements in the Third World, including in Latin America. The Argentinian Jesuit pope isn't a communist, but he advocates for the poor without any apology.
For now, conservative American Catholics are trying to parse the distinction, but it isn't going to work. They are not going to be able to embrace The Slum Pope who wants to "make a mess" of the established order within the Church by encouraging young people to shake up the dioceses and force them to embrace the convicts, drug addicts, and the truly impoverished.
Our country is uniquely unable to appreciate this change specifically because our right wing succeeded in categorizing the left in the Third World (and, to an extent, even in Europe) as communist in sympathy. The right assumes that the Vatican is an ally in all things, but that is no longer even close to being the case. On so-called family values, the papacy is still reliably conservative, even if it can't be counted on anymore to demonize homosexuality. But on economic issues, the papacy is now a dedicated enemy of the Republican Party.
Before long, the right will have no choice but to break from the pope, and then their opposition will grow to a point that the alliance between Catholics and evangelicals will not hold.
Any questions?
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boomantribune/Svpw/~3/av6IGPLGIbs/7576
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Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Video: Family feud: GOP's Christie and Paul throw down
Public school renaissance? Behind Dunbar High's success
Alison Stewart, the daughter of a Dunbar High School graduate and author of"First Class: The Legacy of Dunbar, America's First Black Public High School," is joined by Dunbar High School principal Stephen Jackson to discuss the school's new $122 million facility in D.C. and what lessons other public schools can learn from Dunbar.
Source: http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~r/CBSNewsVideo/~3/5-TnLICfE3c/
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