Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/298851643?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Monday, April 15, 2013
Detune's Korg M01D for Nintendo 3DS sparks nostalgia, lands in May (video)
This isn't the first time a Korg synth has been re-imagined in software form, it's not even the first (or second) time on Nintendo's DS. But, when Detune releases its M01D for the handheld console, it'll spark more than a little nostalgia for synth enthusiasts. Why? Because it's heavily inspired by Korg's legendary M1 synth, complete with all its sounds (and yes, the famous piano patch included), plus some new ones thrown in for good measure. The DS version includes a step sequencer (eight tracks with up to 64 steps per sequence) that you can compile together in "scenes." Borrowing from other parts of the Korg family, the M01D app also offers a KAOSS mode, too, no doubt using one of those screens serving as the touchpad. You can preserve your creativity by saving to SD card, or the usual internet sharing options, and heck there's even a 3D viewing mode too. Lordy! How that will actually look, we don't know, or at least we won't until its May release in Japan. Let's just hope they do the right thing and bring it to the rest of the world. Pretty please.
Filed under: Misc, Gaming, Nintendo
Via: Joystiq
Source: Detune
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/uF9xvsZn4uM/
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Sunday, April 14, 2013
Kobe out for season with torn Achilles tendon
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. (AP) ? Kobe Bryant had surgery Saturday on his torn Achilles tendon, ending his season with two games left in the Los Angeles Lakers' playoff chase.
Lakers trainer Gary Vitti thinks Bryant will need at least six to nine months for recovery from the most serious injury of his 17-year NBA career. Given Bryant's history of swift recovery from countless minor injuries, Vitti and Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak both believe the 34-year-old guard could be back for their season opener in the fall.
"I think that's a realistic goal for him, based on what he was talking about this morning," Kupchak said at the Lakers' training complex after visiting Bryant at the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic.
Bryant completely tore his left Achilles tendon late in the Lakers' 118-116 win over Golden State on Friday night, falling to the hardwood after pushing off his planted foot in an ordinary move toward the hoop. Although he stayed in the game to hit two tying free throws with 3:08 to play, Bryant's season was over.
Bryant's foot will be immobilized for about a month to prevent him from stretching out the tendon, followed by a lengthy rehabilitation process. Nobody knows how the injury will affect Bryant's play, but his decision to have surgery less than 24 hours after getting hurt suggests he's determined to get back on top swiftly.
"He's already taken the challenge," Vitti said. "For us, it's going to be trying to slow him down."
And while it's far too early to predict exactly when Bryant will be back, the Lakers say they wouldn't consider parting ways with their franchise player, who will make nearly $30.5 million next year. If the Lakers used the amnesty clause on Bryant in early July, they could save possibly $80 million in luxury taxes.
"That's not even something that we've discussed," Kupchak said. "That's the furthest thing from our mind right now."
While the rest of the Lakers prepared for their final two regular-season games in a tumultuous season, Bryant's injury left many Lakers fans wondering whether the club had done enough to protect Bryant from himself.
The fourth-leading scorer in NBA history has logged heavy minutes all season on his high-mileage legs, basically dictating his own playing time while the Lakers chased a playoff spot. He has played far more minutes than any other NBA player over 30, including nearly 46 minutes per game in the seven games leading up to Friday night.
"Shame they ran him into the ground," tweeted Clippers forward Matt Barnes, Bryant's teammate with the Lakers in the previous two seasons.
Bryant simply doesn't like to sit out, even when he's hobbling ? as he was Friday night after hyperextending his left knee early in the second half. While Achilles tendon tears can occur in athletes under any level of stress, even first-year coach Mike D'Antoni acknowledged he might have forced Bryant to sit out a bit more if the Lakers weren't desperate for every victory to stay in playoff position.
"He's a warrior," D'Antoni said. "All I do is respect what he wanted to do for the franchise and the city. He's earned the right to do certain things. ... I would have probably (made Bryant rest more) if we were comfortably in the playoffs. When you're trying to win at all cost, maybe you make some decisions that you'd better not."
Kupchak said the Lakers' leadership doesn't hold D'Antoni responsible for not overriding Bryant's decisions. Bryant has played more than 38 minutes per game this season, tops among his teammates.
"I don't think Mike is at blame here one bit," Kupchak said. "Even if you take Kobe out of a game, there's a lot of times where he'll just get up and put himself back in the game. ... I spoke to Kobe about 10 days ago about the 48-minute thing ... and I said, 'I have concerns.' His message to me was, 'Mitch, I hear what you're saying, but we've got to get into the playoffs, and I'm playing, and there's nothing you can do about it.'"
Los Angeles (43-37), which hosts San Antonio on Sunday and Houston on Wednesday, is one game ahead of the Utah Jazz (42-38) for the final postseason spot in the Western Conference. Utah holds the tiebreaker, which means the Lakers must finish one game ahead to make the playoffs for the 16th time in Bryant's career.
Even if the Lakers hang on for a likely first-round matchup with defending conference champion Oklahoma City, the NBA playoffs will go on without Bryant for the first time since 2005.
"You always want the game's best stars in the postseason," Miami guard James Jones said. "That's when everyone is watching. That's when our audience is captivated. You want our best players out there to give fans the best product. Unfortunately, things like this happen, and you just wish him a speedy recovery."
Bryant's injury inspired an outpouring of support across the league, with everyone from LeBron James to Chris Paul tweeting words of support.
"I love the fact that he got up and made two free throws with a torn Achilles," Boston coach Doc Rivers said. "I'd have been lying on the floor crying like a baby. ... He is as tough as a competitor as we've seen ? ever. You know, he'll be missed. I would love him to be healthy, but he's not going to be, and we're going to miss him."
Bryant fought back tears in the locker room moments after learning his tendon was torn, and he wrote a lengthy Facebook post about his injury early Saturday morning, saying his "frustration is unbearable."
"Why the hell did this happen ?!?" Bryant wrote. "Makes no damn sense. Now I'm supposed to come back from this and be the same player Or better at 35?!? How in the world am I supposed to do that?? "
He added: "Maybe this is how my book ends. Maybe Father Time has defeated me...Then again maybe not!"
"One day, the beginning of a new career journey will commence. Today is NOT that day."
Bryant's spirits had improved by the time he got to the hospital, where he put photos of himself going into an MRI machine and preparing for surgery.
Bryant has been ferociously competitive while trying to keep the Lakers' playoff hopes afloat during a season featuring an awful start, an early coaching change and countless smaller setbacks along the way, many due to injuries. While most of his teammates sat out significant stretches with various ailments during the season, Bryant played through a sprained ankle and countless minor woes, missing only two games.
"We have a strong, deep team," said Gasol, who had a triple-double against Golden State. "We have high-quality players that are experienced and ready for a challenge. We're fueled by these injuries. We want to take on the challenge and prove we're a good team even without our best player."
The star-packed roster assembled by Kupchak last summer has played together for just a few games this season, thanks to a staggering stretch of serious injuries.
Gasol, Nash, Steve Blake and Jordan Hill all have missed large chunks of the season, and Howard has struggled to get back to full strength while recovering from offseason back surgery and a nagging torn labrum in his right shoulder. Antawn Jamison will need offseason surgery on his injured right wrist, and Metta World Peace recently came back a month earlier than expected from surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his left knee ? although he appears to be nowhere close to full strength.
"If you look at our season, it's been a nightmare," Vitti said. "When you try to look at the whys, it's bad luck."
Jodie Meeks, averaging 8.0 points, will start in Bryant's spot against the Spurs. The Lakers won't know until game time whether Nash will return from a right hamstring injury that has kept him out for six games.
The Lakers are likely to rely heavily on their big-man duo of Gasol and Howard, two proven veteran scorers who have worked together splendidly on occasion. During Los Angeles' win over Golden State, Gasol embraced a playmaking role and threw a series of alley-oops to Howard, who addressed the team after practice Saturday.
"We know what we have to do," said Howard, an unrestricted free agent this summer. "We know he's out, but we can't put our heads down like it's over with. We have to go out there and play. We have a lot of talented guys on this team. I think we can accomplish something great, with or without Kobe."
___
AP Sports Writers Tim Reynolds in Miami and Kyle Hightower in Orlando contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kobe-season-torn-achilles-tendon-203141950--spt.html
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Boy triplets a sensation at top Cuba ballet school
HAVANA (AP) ? Visitors to the elite feeder school for Cuba's renowned National Ballet might be forgiven for thinking they're suddenly seeing triple.
Identical triplets Angel, Cesar and Marcos Ramirez wear matching black leotards and white socks as they leap, prance and twirl across the linoleum floor of the mirrored studio. They share the same wiry build, olive complexion, mussed hairstyles and coffee-colored eyes. And they speak the same fast-paced Spanish in the high-pitched voice of children.
Even their instructors have trouble telling the Ramirez boys apart, but they say the 13-year-olds have already separated themselves from their peers technically and artistically, and all three have the talent to make a big splash in the ballet world when they grow up.
If they succeed, they will join a long line of celebrated dancers trained in Cuba, where fans from every social stratum follow the careers of ballet stars like Carlos Acosta and Rolando Sarabia as closely as those of baseball players or boxers.
"I want to be a dancer. The National Ballet of Cuba turns out great male dancers," said Marcos, sweat dripping from his face after a recent workout in the steamy studio as his brothers nodded in agreement. "And go on tour in many countries and travel the world by dancing."
Toward that end, the Ramirez brothers spend 12 hours a day at the National School of Ballet, housed in a graceful, cream-porticoed building that occupies a full half-block in colonial Old Havana. Classes include not only dance, but more mundane subjects like language, math and history.
A former social club with broad hallways and a majestic marble staircase, this is where the creme de la creme of young dancers from across the country train for a shot at stardom.
The school was founded seven decades ago by famed prima ballerina assoluta Alicia Alonso, now age 92, who is probably the most recognized person in Cuba not named "Castro."
"This school means a lot to us," Angel said. "It gives us the training to graduate as ballet dancers, which is the thing we want most."
While the odds are tough, Mirlen Rodriguez, a 24-year-old teacher and former student at the school, says the brothers all have a chance of making their careers onstage.
"They are at a level that is beyond high," Rodriguez said.
The three have already beaten long odds simply by being born.
According to 2010 data compiled by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, only 0.14 percent of births that year were triplets or higher-order multiple births.
Naturally born identical triplets, involving a single egg separating into three fetuses rather than multiple eggs being fertilized, are much rarer.
Mothers of Supertwins, a U.S. nonprofit group that provides support, education and research on higher-order multiple births, says about one of every 62,500 pregnancies results in identical triplets ? or 0.0016 percent.
The Ramirezes, born into a family that lives in the gritty neighborhood of Center Havana, say they are extremely close.
In conversation they often finish each other's thoughts. They also seem to have fun with their uniqueness, introducing themselves to a reporter as if their relationship wasn't apparent.
"My name is Angel Jesus Ramirez Castellanos, and I'm 13 years old," the first said with a sly smile, followed in turn by the others:
"My name is Marcos Abraham Ramirez Castellanos, and I'm 13 years old."
"My name is Cesar Josue Ramirez Castellanos, and I'm 13 years old."
While some identical siblings find it difficult to carve out their own identities, the Ramirezes say they relish their tripleness.
"For me it's a real stroke of luck being a triplet, being able to count on my brothers," Cesar said. "The disadvantage is that sometimes they scold you or correct you for something that another one did."
Instructors rely on tricks to tell them apart.
"There's one that has a little mark above the eyebrow. Another one gets dimples when he laughs," Rodriguez said.
"Then there's another that doesn't have dimples or a mole. During exams you have to put one of them there, another one here, the other way over there, and they have to stay in that formation."
She added, however, that while the boys share the same DNA and have been trained by the same instructors, they have unique personalities that show up in their dance. One is more mischievous, another more serious, the third the most talkative.
"They have the same physical form, the same configuration of legs and arms, but in their minds, each one is unique," Rodriguez said.
The triplets say they fell in love with dance in 2007 when their mother took them to a performance of "The Nutcracker," which is put on every Christmas season and costs just pennies to attend.
All three said it never occurred to them to worry about being teased for taking up dance. Ballet is broadly popular in Cuba, and the idea of a man donning a leotard has remarkably little stigma attached to it for a society that in other ways retains some macho attitudes.
The Ramirezes enrolled in the ballet school at age 10 after passing a rigorous exam and being selected over dozens of other children with similar dreams. More than 300 boys and girls train here in eight different grades, all hoping to make it to the National Ballet.
"It's a virus that can't be cured with antibiotics," said Ramona de Saa, the school's director. "And all that passion can be felt in the school."
The grueling day runs from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mornings are devoted to traditional school subjects, while afternoons are for perfecting demi plies and barre work.
"One, two, three, four!" an instructor's voice called out during a recent rehearsal as the Ramirezes twirled around and around on tiptoe. "Again!"
"It's a career that requires a lot of sacrifice. It takes away much of your childhood," Rodriguez said. "While others maybe are at home watching cartoon movies, they have to be at rehearsal."
___
Associated Press writer Peter Orsi contributed to this report.
___
Follow Andrea Rodriguez on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ARodriguezAP
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/boy-triplets-sensation-top-cuba-ballet-school-060002207.html
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Saturday, April 13, 2013
Sea mammals find U. S. safe harbor
Apr. 11, 2013 ? In 1972, a U.S. Senate committee reported, "Many of the great whales which once populated the oceans have now dwindled to the edge of extinction," due to commercial hunting. The committee also worried about how tuna fishing was accidentally killing thousands of dolphins, trapped in fishing gear. And they considered reports about seal hunting and the decline of other mammals, including sea otters and walruses.
In October of that year, Congress passed the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
Four decades later, new research shows that the law is working.
Not only has the act "successfully prevented the extirpation of any marine mammal population in the United States in the forty years since it was enacted," write University of Vermont conservation biologist Joe Roman and his colleagues in a new report, but also, "the current status of many marine mammal populations is considerably better than in 1972."
Their study, published online on March 22, in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, shows that population trends for most stocks of these animals remain unknown, but of those stocks that are known, many are increasing.
"At a very fundamental level, the MMPA has accomplished what its framers set out to do," says co-author Andrew Read, professor of marine biology at Duke University, "to protect individual marine mammals from harm as a result of human activities."
Some marine mammals, like endangered right whales, continue to be in deep trouble, but other populations "particularly seals and sea lions, have recovered to or near their carrying capacity," the scientists write.
"We have seen remarkable recoveries of some populations of marine mammals, such as gray seals in New England and sea lions and elephant seals along the Pacific coast," says Read.
"U.S. waters are pretty compromised with lots of ship traffic and ship strikes, big fisheries, pollution, boat noise, " Joe Roman says. "And yet it's safer to be a marine mammal in U.S. waters than elsewhere," he says, due to the Act's strong protections against commercial and accidental killing -- what the law calls "take" -- and its aim to maintain sustainable populations of mammals and their ecological roles in oceans.
"It's important to evaluate such broad legislation," says co-author Caitlin Campbell, a UVM student.
"A lot of people think that the hard part was getting it passed through Congress, but in reality you have to make sure that big protective measures like this actually are effective," she says. "This paper shows that this act is doing its job."
The research team -- Campbell; Joe Roman in UVM's Gund Institute for Ecological Economics; Irit Altman from Boston University; Meagan Dunphy-Daly and Andrew Read from Duke University; and Michael Jasny from the Natural Resources Defense Council -- gathered hundreds of data sets from around the world, including from NOAA, Canadian agencies, and the IUCN. Their goal was to get an accurate picture of population levels and trends of more than two hundred stocks of marine mammals from the Pantropical Spotted Dolphin to the West Indian Manatee.
The team concluded that for many of these animals there simply aren't enough data. For seventy-one percent of the stocks they identified, they couldn't say which way the population was heading, up or down. "There isn't enough research," Roman says.
But for the ones they could evaluate, they found that nineteen percent of stocks were increasing, while five percent were stable and only five percent were declining.
Another fundamental conclusion of this research: "stopping harvesting these mammals, stop fisheries bycatch, stop killing them -- and many populations bounce back," says Roman. Marine mammals are long-lived "so it's going to take decades, maybe longer for populations to rebound," he says, "but it seems the trends are increasing."
In 1934, trends were definitely not increasing for right whales, when an international treaty banned hunting these nearly extinguished creatures. But other protections lagged, and by the 1960s many whales and other marine mammals -- including some dolphins and seals -- faced plummeting populations and the risk of extinction.
Yet in the early 1970s, the U.S. Department of Defense resisted legislation to protect whales and other marine mammals: they relied on sperm whale oil for use as a lubricant in submarines and other military engines, Roman's team writes.
In one curious part of the complex negotiations at the White House, Lee Talbot, a canny scientist working for Richard Nixon, produced an affidavit from the DuPont Corporation stating that they could produce an artificial lubricant that could do the same job as the whale oil. This helped make the Pentagon more receptive toward whale-protecting legislation. In October 1972, the Marine Mammal Protection Act passed. This victory was also a key step toward the passage of the more forceful (though less ecologically oriented) Endangered Species Act that passed the next year.
Under these two laws, "countless tens of thousands of individual whales, seals, and manatees have been protected from harm since 1972," the scientists write, "exactly as intended by those who crafted the legislation."
In 1994, major amendments to the MMPA established a new framework for dealing with interactions between marine mammals and commercial fisheries, "which remains perhaps the most important conservation issue facing these iconic animals," says Andrew Read.
This new framework, relies on "a negotiated rule-making process," Read says, looking for solutions to the incidental death of mammals in commercial fisheries. One of the strengths of the new process is that it "requires the direct involvement of fishermen, conservationists and scientists in the management process," Read says.
Still, some deeply depleted species, like right whales, may never recover, and additional threats beyond direct killing remain. The Marine Mammal Protection Act has generally been ineffective in dealing with problems like increasing underwater noise from naval operations and other ships, new diseases, and depleted prey species in fraying food webs. "Existing conservation measures have not protected large whales from fisheries interactions or ship strikes in the northwestern Atlantic," the team writes.
And this points to a new generation of challenges such as moving shipping lanes in whale feeding territory, slowing speed boats in manatee habitat, changing lobster fishing technologies and other fishing gear modifications, and continuing to improve ecosystem-based fisheries management. "That's going to be hard and require real political will," Joe Roman says.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Vermont, via Newswise.
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/DenfQ8c2ZeU/130411194644.htm
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Electronic Arts cuts staff at Montreal studio
By Malathi Nayak
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Videogame publisher Electronic Arts has begun laying off staff at its Montreal game studio in its latest round of jobs cuts, less than a month after former Chief Executive John Riccitiello abruptly resigned.
The company, known for its "FIFA" and "Sims" games, declined to divulge the number of jobs affected, or how many employees it has in Montreal, where it has developed console games like "Army of Two".
"EA is sharpening its focus to provide games for new platforms and mobile. In some cases, this involves reducing team sizes as we evolve into a more efficient organization," the Redwood City, California-based company said in a statement.
The Montreal studio, which includes a team that makes mobile games, is not closing, a spokesman said. He declined to say which teams within the studio had been affected by the job cuts.
The layoffs come shortly after John Riccitiello stepped down as CEO on March 30, after taking responsibility for missed operational targets.
Former CEO and Chairman Larry Probst has been appointed executive chairman as the company begins its search for the next CEO.
EA and rivals like Activision Blizzard Inc have seen growth fall off sharply as more gamers flock to free games on social networks or on mobile devices. The biggest traditional games publishers have tried to buy startups, reorganize existing studios and invest in mobile platforms but face intense competition from entrenched players like Rovio or Zynga Inc.
EA has been reorganizing studios to embrace new game platforms and adapt to consumer behavior. Last year, EA's PopCap unit, which makes social and mobile games, laid off 50 of about 380 staff members in its Seattle and Vancouver studios to focus on free-to-play social and mobile games.
The game publisher is also preparing to adopt the next-generation video game console technology in its games. Consumers are holding back from buying hardware and software as they wait for next-generation versions of Sony Corp's PlayStation and Microsoft Corp's Xbox, expected later this year.
Shares of EA edged higher in extended trading after closing at $17.63 on Nasdaq.
(Reporting by Malathi Nayak; Editing by Richard Chang)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/electronic-arts-cuts-staff-montreal-studio-000657293--sector.html
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Philips TLED lamp prototype combines efficiency, brightness and warmth
We know what you're thinking: "light bulbs? Yawwwwn." But we'll say this, Philips has done something pretty impressive and interesting with its TLED prototype lamp. Generally LED bulbs use either a combination red, green and blue LEDs to create white light, or they use a phosphor coating (more common) in combination with a blue LED. The problem with the latter is that it tends to generate a very cool light with a blue tinge, while the former is less energy efficient because of their reliance on green LEDs. Philips' solution is to combine two blue and one red element, but use a green phosphor filter to convert one of the blue LEDs to green. The result is a relatively warm light, between 3,000 and 4,000 kelvin, that generates more than twice as many lumens per-watt as Philips' current LED bulbs. In theory, a 7.5-watt TLED could generate as much light as a 100-watt incandescent bulb. With any luck the tech should hit the market sometime during 2015, but it'll be primarily for office and industrial application at first -- so don't start tossing your CFLs just yet.
Filed under: Household
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/11/philips-tled-lamp/
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