Planets Deserve Better Names

Kepler-20e aka Beyonc??

Courtesy of NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

Fed up with dull names for exoplanets, Alan Stern and his company, Uwingu, have asked the public for help. Stern is the former head of science missions at NASA. He and a group of fellow scientists and educators launched Uwingu's hunt for names last year at uwingu.com.

Stephen P. Craft: How did you come up with the idea for a list of potential names for exoplanets?
Alan Stern: The number of planets in the Milky Way was recently estimated at more than 100 billion. We realized that that's far, far too many names for astronomers to supply, that it would take the general public, too. We also realized how much fun this could be for people.

SC: How do people submit names?
AS: For 99 cents, anyone can put in a name, as long as it isn't already nominated and isn't profane or pejorative. People can also vote on which names they like best. We only have a few hundred now, but the idea is that we will have hundreds of thousands of names in the database. We will take the thousand most popular, which will correspond to the thousand or so exoplanets that we already know about, and hand those to exoplanet scientists.

SC: What kinds of names are people suggesting?
AS: It is pretty interesting. People are putting in names of friends, spouses. They are putting in lots of science-fiction names like Alderaan and Yuggoth, names of authors such as Heinlein and Asimov, and even politicians like Obama and Romney. As this gets out to the general public, we expect there to be a lot of interesting contests going on?maybe Lady Gaga versus Madonna.

SC: What's wrong with the existing names?
AS: There are none?just "license plate" designations like 2M 0746+20b or OGLE235-MOA53b!

SC: Isn't it a problem that your company, Uwingu, has no formal ties to the International Astronomical Union's naming committee?
AS: I think most people get that this is for fun and engagement. It's not meant to be official. In a sense, it's a social experiment. Naming celestial objects is usually done by astronomers and professionals. Other people who are interested in space never get the opportunity to do that kind of thing. What if they did? What would the people of Earth choose? What would their imagination do that we wouldn't do, as astronomers?

SC: What else is Uwingu trying to accomplish?
AS: The mission of the company is two-fold. Priority one is to better connect the general public with space and the sky. Two is to operate a fund for space research, exploration, and education.

SC: What is the Uwingu fund?
AS: It comes from revenues generated by people nominating and voting for their favorite exoplanet names, and it goes toward needy space projects, such as SETI's Allen Telescope Array.

SC: Why should the public trust you with their money?
AS: People in the research and education community recognize our names, so they will come to us in ways that they wouldn't otherwise. We are professional scientists and educators, and we will do the quality control. Our intent is to be worldwide, not only in our revenue, but in our expenditures. Uwingu is the only thing around like this; nobody else has thought of anything similar.

This article originally appeared in New Scientist.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=8240920308c6c2a32abadc056ddc5a27

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Former EWU football player sentenced for assault

by KREM.com

KREM.com

Posted on February 21, 2013 at 3:36 PM

Updated yesterday at 3:38 PM

CHENEY, Wash.--- The Eastern Washington University football player accused of rape plead guilty Wednesday to second degree assault.?

Dalis Burce ws sentenced to 9 months and will have a restitution hearing on September 1.

EWU announced back in August that Bruce was suspended from the athletic program pending investigation into a sexual assault arrest. Bruce faces charges of second degree rape and residential burglary.

Court documents say the incident took place in Pearce Hall, right behind Roos Field.

Saturday night, the 17-year-old victim and three friends drank a large bottle of vodka according to court documents. The victim became intoxicated, and witnesses said she started vomiting, collapsed and passed out.

Friends put her in bed according to witnesses. Bruce allegedly entered the victim's room, found her unconscious, removed her clothes from waist down, and had sex with her.
?
The victim?s friends claimed she was unconscious until after the assault took place.

Witnesses say they interrupted Bruce having sex with the unconscious girl, and told him to leave.

Officers found the victim on the bed and unresponsive. Officers shook her several times to get a response. Officers gave the victim a preliminary breath test around 7 a.m. and she registered at .080.

The victim gave police the suspect name of "Dalis" and said she did not remember what happened.

Bruce said he met the victim through friends earlier that day. Bruce originally denied seeing her asleep in her room but later admitted he found her asleep sometime after midnight. Bruce stated that he assumed she was drunk because she was asleep and admitted to fondling the victim, but claimed he did so with her assistance. Bruce also admitted to having sex with the victim and claimed they did not talk to each other the entire time.

Bruce posted $25,000 bail and was released.

Eastern officials said in a press release they will follow the standard practices for student discipline, conducting a thorough review.?

University officials said they respond to reports of criminal incidents with student disciplinary interventions to ensure campus safety as well as the rights of the accused.

The administration is receiving regular updates about the developments in this case. The campus cannot divulge individual information about Bruce.

Source: http://www.krem.com/news/local/EWU-football-player-accused-of-raping-unconscious-teen-is-sentenced-192380991.html

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Paloma Ford - Menage A Trois [Female Unsigned Artist]

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Source: http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshhDRQj3WW9eww0MG6o

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CTA rail union chief: If riders are allowed to pack heat, arm train operators, too

By ROSALIND ROSSI Transportation Reporter February 21, 2013 7:48PM

File Photo

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Updated: February 21, 2013 9:13PM

If passengers are allowed to carry guns on CTA rail lines, train operators should pack weapons ? and be paid extra for doing so, the head of the union that represents CTA rail workers said Thursday.

Robert Kelly, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 308, said he is ?totally opposed?? to any legislation that would allow Illinois residents to carry concealed weapons.

His members don?t want to carry guns, Kelly said, but if the law passes, ?[Do] you want a train full of people to carry guns and tell the operator, ?You?re on your own??

?You have to make it fair. You?ll have to arm our people,?? Kelly said.

CTA rail workers should get special training if they have to carry guns and should be paid extra for doing so, Kelly said.

The Illinois House Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing on the concealed carry issue at 10 a.m. Friday in Room 600 of the Bilandic Building, 160 N. LaSalle.

A federal appeals court in December tossed out Illinois? prohibition on carrying concealed weapons and ordered lawmakers to draw up a law by early June on the issue.

CTA President Forrest Claypool said Thursday that allowing guns on CTA buses and trains would be ?disastrous.?? Buses can involve ?crowded conditions?? where gun-carriers could be bumped or jostled, causing a weapon to discharge, he said.

The close and enclosed quarters of a bus or train are clearly different than an open street, said Claypool.

CTA, Metra and Pace have all urged the General Assembly to ban guns on public transit but earlier this week, a National Rifle Association lobbyist told a legislative hearing that transit passengers shouldn?t be prohibited from exercising their Second Amendment rights.

Source: http://www.suntimes.com/18389929-418/cta-rail-union-chief-if-riders-are-allowed-to-pack-heat-arm-train-operators-too.html

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Scientists make older adults less forgetful in memory tests

Feb. 21, 2013 ? Scientists at Baycrest Health Sciences' Rotman Research Institute (RRI) and the University of Toronto's Psychology Department have found compelling evidence that older adults can eliminate forgetfulness and perform as well as younger adults on memory tests.

Scientists used a distraction learning strategy to help older adults overcome age-related forgetting and boost their performance to that of younger adults. Distraction learning sounds like an oxymoron, but a growing body of science is showing that older brains are adept at processing irrelevant and relevant information in the environment, without conscious effort, to aid memory performance.

"Older brains may be be doing something very adaptive with distraction to compensate for weakening memory," said Ren?e Biss, lead investigator and PhD student. "In our study we asked whether distraction can be used to foster memory-boosting rehearsal for older adults. The answer is yes!"

"To eliminate age-related forgetfulness across three consecutive memory experiments and help older adults perform like younger adults is dramatic and to our knowledge a totally unique finding," said Lynn Hasher, senior scientist on the study and a leading authority in attention and inhibitory functioning in younger and older adults. "Poor regulation of attention by older adults may actually have some benefits for memory."

The findings, published online February 21 in Psychological Science, ahead of print publication, have intriguing implications for designing learning strategies for the mature, older student and equipping senior-housing with relevant visual distraction cues throughout the living environment that would serve as rehearsal opportunities to remember things like an upcoming appointment or medications to take, even if the cues aren't consciously paid attention to.

The study

In three experiments, healthy younger adults recruited from the University of Toronto (aged 17- 27) and healthy older adults from the community (aged 60 -- 78) were asked to study and recall a list of words after a short delay and again, on a surprise test, after a 15-minute delay.

During the delay period, half of the studied words occurred again as distraction while people were doing a very simple attention task on pictures. Although repeating words as distracters had no impact on the memory performance of young adults, it boosted older adults' memory for those words by 30% relative to words that had not repeated as distraction.

"Our findings point to exciting possibilities for using strategically-placed relevant distraction as memory aids for older adults -- whether it's in classroom, at home or in a long term care environment," said Biss.

While older adults are watching television or playing a game on a tablet, boosting memory for goals (such as remembering to make a phone call or send a holiday card) could be accomplished by something as simple as running a stream of target information across the bottom of their tablet or TV.

The study was supported by a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

---

Journal Reference:

1. R. K. Biss, K. W. J. Ngo, L. Hasher, K. L. Campbell, G. Rowe. Distraction Can Reduce Age-Related Forgetting. Psychological Science, 2013; DOI: 10.1177/0956797612457386

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/4h0AXX1deF4/130221143946.htm

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Unnecessary Medical Procedures and the Dangers of Robot Surgery

Hugh Pickens writes "The LA Times reports that in a new report aimed at improving healthcare and controlling runaway costs, a coalition of leading medical societies has identified nearly 100 medical procedures, tests and therapies that are overused and often unnecessary. The medical interventions ? including early cesarean deliveries, CT scans for head injuries in children and annual Pap tests for middle-aged women ? may be necessary in some cases, but are often not beneficial and may even cause harm. 'We are very concerned about the rapidly escalating cost of healthcare,' says Dr. Bruce Sigsbee. 'This is not healthy for the country, and something has to be done.' Each of the specialty medical societies has provided a list of five procedures that physicians and patients should question about the overuse of medical tests and procedures that provide little benefit and in some cases harm. A 2012 report from the independent Institute of Medicine estimated total waste in the system at 30%, or $750 billion a year. 'Millions of Americans are increasingly realizing that when it comes to healthcare, more is not necessarily better,' says Dr. Christine K. Cassel." According to pigrabbitbear, it's the robots we should be wary of. He writes "'We are committed to helping victims of robot surgery receive the medical care and compensation they deserve. As both a lawyer and a licensed medical doctor, Dr. Francois Blaudeau has made it his mission to fight for the victims of traumatic complications as a result of botched robot surgery.' That's the opening salvo from the medical malpractice lawyers who run the slick fear factory of a website, BadRobotSurgery.com. According to the doctor-lawyers behind it?doctor-lawyers like Francois Blaudeau, MD, JD, FACHE, FCLM?'thousands of people have suffered severe and critical complications at the hands of surgical robots. In fact, 'robotic surgery has been linked to many serious injuries and severe complications, including death.'

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/QvB-ak2hmMk/story01.htm

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Video: Possible gubernatorial candidate slams GOP for extremism

>>> not unusual to hear someone say the republican party has become to extremely and unwilling to compromise. millions of voters said that on election day . but when an elected republican off holders says it it's news. enter virginia 's lieutenant governor bow billing. he said not every government program is bad and not everyone who receives a public benefit is a free loader . it's just a challenging time for the republican party when a conservative mainstream guy like me doesn't really feel comfortable with his party. the party has moved too far and it's become too extreme and too ideological. that's from the lieutenant governor of virginia . that's comments don't seem as surprising when learn bill bolling is considering a run as an independent. right now former clinton adviser teri mcauliffe is tied with virginia attorney general ken cuccinelli at 38% even. if bolling runs as an independent, he starts out with 13% to start with and could go higher, of course, much higher. but what makes his remarks so remarks is he's saying the republican party is becoming too extreme for even conservative republicans. tom davis is a former u.s. congressman from virginia who also ran the republican congressional campaign committee, and chris cillizza is managing editor of post politics.com and an msnbc political analyst . i want to go to chris for the tight political analysis right now. this guy bolling gave a great interview to the post and just to put it in context, he slam banged his republican party as everything you hear on this show a lot of times. too far over, too intransigent, everything bad, won't negotiate, won't do anything for the country. is that to set himself up as a centrist or slightly center right candidate as a general election independent candidate or is that just what he believes and he's angry?

>> well, look, i take him at his word. i'm not going to question his motives. i think --

>> that's all we do here. go ahead.

>> i think it is what he probably believes. 's more establishment guy but context matters. look, this is a guy who in 2009 got pushed out of the race for governor by bob mcdonnell because bob mcdonnell was more conservative and better positioned to win the race. he stepped aside with the expectation from everyone in the republican party that in 2013 he'd be the guy. well, among comes ken cuccinelli and the reality is it's a convention there, a very small group of people, activists, conservatives by and large that pick the nominee. even in a primary i'm not sure bill bolling beats ken cuccinelli . so i think some of it is that he's kind of angry at the way in which his political fortunes have played themselves out but i think part of it, too, is an expression of the kind of establishment for lack of a better word within the republican party who looks at some of the folks in a more conservative wing and says these folks are pushing us to a place that is going to get us losing elections, never getting the hispanic vote, and going to relegate us to minority party status nationally for the future and we got to speak out. so i think it's a little bit of what he plefs and a little bit of his own circumstances that have made him more willing to speak ut 37.

>> i always see you as more of a middle of the road republican. the question is what happened to your state and you may lose an easy one. you could beat terry mcauliffe . he's a democrat.

>> should beat him. nine straight times our governor has come from the opposite party of the president. right now it's a close race but if history is any judge, republicans should win it.

>> they tend to reverse.

>> these are nationalized elections for governor. and mcdonnell has problems with his thesis. it just didn't take. voters were more interested in taking a message to washington. that's been the repeated theme in virginia gubernatorial races. ?

>> i keep thinking it'squestion of politic s. to go to your intensive hardline base risking losing some of the softer republicans in the middle and independents but knowing your crowd will show up or you bring on a guy that's considered too watery a republican or democrat and risking the fact your base won't show up.

>> i think the calculation this time is the fact that this is an off-year election and you want to intensify your base and bring it out in virginia .

>> because it's not the general electorate.

>> if everybody shows up, we know there are more democrats than republicans. obama has proven that twice. but if you look at the off-year turnout models, it's been much more republican.

>> so work your base hard makes sense. so kuch nellie makes more sense. for you that's an odd thing to say. i'm just talking about the raw political calculation. you still need to holgd your party together. the last poll only showed 3% of republicans defecting. there will be so much money going back and forth.

>> how does this vaginal thing, that crazy thing about requiring things to have abortion how is that working in this state?

>> i'm sure it's going to be in a lot of tv ads but kuch nellie didn't vote on that. he was the attorney general but a lot of legislators will have to defend that.

>> bill bolling also told the post, the lieutenant governor of virginia who says he's not going to run in the primary, it seems these day that is caroms is a four-letter word in many people's eyes. they view it as a signs of weakness but in real it's the essence of a workable democracy. chris , you and i cover this all the time. he's talking the way the most middle of the road journalists call it, not knocking the right but saying you have to be able to negotiate. if you don't compromise on a lot of middle of the road things how are you going to get anything done? obviously there's some things you will never compromise on.

>> and, chris , i would say -- i actually think take immigration and marco rubio . marco rubio is not a guy i think most people would describe as a centrist moderate but this is a guy who on immigration is saying, look, i understand that there's a part of the party that's never going to be happy with any kind of path to citizenship, but we have to come together at some point on some of these big issues if we're going to move forward as a country. so i actually think it's beyond just kind of the jon huntsmans and michael bloombergs of the world. i think haley barbour the former mississippi grve and republican national chairman has said, look e we're going to have to find some common ground . may not like obama and where we stand on the issue but we have to find some common ground just to move the country forward and keep us sort of viable in the world of economy.

>> chris , i think you're more hopeful than me. i think the hard right being hard right, i watch that scened in ast the other day, i think those people standing up to a guy like john mccain showed the republican party is definitely ruled almost by its hardest right, the hardest right seems to scare everybody else out. i have yet to hear an elected office official take on rush limbaugh ever on any issue. it's still the hard right that makes the noise. thank you. not thom davis, not a member of the hard right.

>>> up next, republicans have been trying to to make it harder for minorities to vote and now the supreme court of the united states is considering whether a key part of the 1965 voting rights act should be struck down. that's section five. that's the one that makes every state check out any changes in its election law with the justice department . this is "hardball," the place for politics. i'd

Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/hardball/50896437/

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