FILE - In this Feb. 22, 2013 file photo, Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius arrives for a bail hearing in the shooting death of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. Pistorius' representatives on Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013 named the substance found in his bedroom after the shooting death of his girlfriend as Testis compositum, and say it is an herbal remedy used "in aid of muscle recovery." South African police say they found needles in Pistorius' bedroom along with the substance, which they initially named as testosterone. Prosecutors later withdrew that statement identifying the substance and said it had been sent for laboratory tests. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - In this Feb. 22, 2013 file photo, Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius arrives for a bail hearing in the shooting death of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. Pistorius' representatives on Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013 named the substance found in his bedroom after the shooting death of his girlfriend as Testis compositum, and say it is an herbal remedy used "in aid of muscle recovery." South African police say they found needles in Pistorius' bedroom along with the substance, which they initially named as testosterone. Prosecutors later withdrew that statement identifying the substance and said it had been sent for laboratory tests. (AP Photo, File)
NEW YORK (AP) ? The desire to produce a quick documentary on Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius (pihs-TOHR'-ee-uhs) and the shooting death of his live-in girlfriend has led to a new partnership between two television networks.
The Investigation Discovery Network on Sunday will premiere a special, "Beauty & The Blade Runner," about the South African athlete and his role in the shooting death of model Reeva Steenkamp. ID is making the special with the help of NBC News and that company's Peacock Productions.
ID even coined a new phrase to describe the quick specials, calling them instamentaries.
People close to both Pistorius and Steenkamp talk on the special, which examines evidence in the case.
Wii-playing surgeons may improve performance on laparoscopic proceduresPublic release date: 27-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jyoti Madhusoodanan onepress@plos.org 415-568-4545 Public Library of Science
Surgeons who played games on Nintendo Wii improved certain metrics of performance on laparascopies
Laparoscopic surgeons may improve certain aspects of surgical performance by regularly playing on a Nintendo Wii, according to research published February 27 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Gregorio Patrizi and colleagues from the University of Rome, Italy.
Considering the technical skills required to perform laparascopic procedures, several studies aim to evaluate and improve training for surgeons outside the operating room. Previous studies have assessed the effect of playing video games on hand-eye coordination and spatial attention. In the current research, the authors combined these two aspects by analyzing how a four-week training regimen on the Nintendo Wii impacted the laparoscopic skills of post-graduate residents in the first or second year of their surgical training. Half the surgeons were assigned to a training regimen on the Wii while the other half were not. Before and after the regimen, all the participants' performance was tested on a laparoscopic simulator.
The study found that participants in both groups improved their skills over the four week period, but those who had been trained on the Wii showed a significant improvement over the other group in their performance on several specific metrics like economy of instrument movements and efficient cautery. The study concludes, "The Nintendo Wii might be helpful, inexpensive and entertaining part of the training of young laparoscopists, in addition to a standard surgical education based on simulators and the operating room."
###
Citation: Giannotti D, Patrizi G, Di Rocco G, Vestri AR, Semproni CP, et al. (2013) Play to Become a Surgeon: Impact of Nintendo WII Training on Laparoscopic Skills. PLoS ONE 8(2): e57372. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0057372
Financial Disclosure: No current external funding sources for this study.
Competing Interest Statement: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
PLEASE LINK TO THE SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE IN ONLINE VERSIONS OF YOUR REPORT (URL goes live after the embargo ends): http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0057372
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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.
Wii-playing surgeons may improve performance on laparoscopic proceduresPublic release date: 27-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jyoti Madhusoodanan onepress@plos.org 415-568-4545 Public Library of Science
Surgeons who played games on Nintendo Wii improved certain metrics of performance on laparascopies
Laparoscopic surgeons may improve certain aspects of surgical performance by regularly playing on a Nintendo Wii, according to research published February 27 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Gregorio Patrizi and colleagues from the University of Rome, Italy.
Considering the technical skills required to perform laparascopic procedures, several studies aim to evaluate and improve training for surgeons outside the operating room. Previous studies have assessed the effect of playing video games on hand-eye coordination and spatial attention. In the current research, the authors combined these two aspects by analyzing how a four-week training regimen on the Nintendo Wii impacted the laparoscopic skills of post-graduate residents in the first or second year of their surgical training. Half the surgeons were assigned to a training regimen on the Wii while the other half were not. Before and after the regimen, all the participants' performance was tested on a laparoscopic simulator.
The study found that participants in both groups improved their skills over the four week period, but those who had been trained on the Wii showed a significant improvement over the other group in their performance on several specific metrics like economy of instrument movements and efficient cautery. The study concludes, "The Nintendo Wii might be helpful, inexpensive and entertaining part of the training of young laparoscopists, in addition to a standard surgical education based on simulators and the operating room."
###
Citation: Giannotti D, Patrizi G, Di Rocco G, Vestri AR, Semproni CP, et al. (2013) Play to Become a Surgeon: Impact of Nintendo WII Training on Laparoscopic Skills. PLoS ONE 8(2): e57372. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0057372
Financial Disclosure: No current external funding sources for this study.
Competing Interest Statement: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
PLEASE LINK TO THE SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE IN ONLINE VERSIONS OF YOUR REPORT (URL goes live after the embargo ends): http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0057372
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
GAO, Mali (Reuters) - French and Malian troops fought Islamists on the streets of Gao and a car bomb exploded in Kidal on Thursday, as fighting showed little sign of abating weeks before France plans to start withdrawing some forces.
Reuters reporters in Gao in the country's desert north said French and Malian forces fired at the mayor's office with heavy machineguns after Islamists were reported to have infiltrated the Niger River town during a night of explosions and gunfire.
French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told a news conference in Brussels that Gao was back under control after clashes earlier in the day.
"Malian troops supported by French soldiers killed five jihadists and the situation is back to normal," he said.
In Kidal, a remote far north town where the French are hunting Islamists, residents said a car bomb killed two. A French defense ministry source reported no French casualties.
French troops dispatched to root out rebels with links to al Qaeda swiftly retook northern towns last month. But they now risk being bogged down in a guerrilla conflict as they try to help Mali's weak army counter bombings and raids.
"There was an infiltration by Islamists overnight and there is shooting all over the place," Sadou Harouna Diallo, Gao's mayor, told Reuters by telephone earlier in the day, saying he was not in his office at the time.
Gao is a French hub for operations in the Kidal region, about 300 km (190 miles) northeast, where many Islamist leaders are thought to have retreated and foreign hostages may be held.
"They are black and two were disguised as women," a Malian soldier in Gao who gave his name only as Sergeant Assak told Reuters during a pause in heavy gunfire around Independence Square.
Six Malian military pickups were deployed in the square and opened fire on the mayor's office with the heavy machineguns. Two injured soldiers were taken away in an ambulance.
French troops in armored vehicles later joined the battle as it spilled out into the warren of sandy streets, where, two weeks ago, they also fought for hours against Islamists who had infiltrated the town via the nearby river.
Helicopters clattered over the mayor's office, while a nearby local government office and petrol station was on fire.
A Gao resident said he heard an explosion and then saw a Malian military vehicle on fire in a nearby street.
Paris has said it plans to start withdrawing some of its 4,000 troops from Mali next month. But rebels have fought back against Mali's weak and divided army, and African forces due to take over the French role are not yet in place.
Islamists abandoned the main towns they held but French and Malian forces have said there are pockets of Islamist resistance across the north, which is about the size of France.
CAR BOMB
Residents reported a bomb in the east of Kidal on Thursday.
"It was a car bomb that exploded in a garage," said one resident who went to the scene but asked not to be named.
"The driver and another man were killed. Two other people were injured," he added.
A French defense ministry official confirmed there had been a car bomb but said it did not appear that French troops, based at the town's airport, had been targeted.
Earlier this week, a French soldier was killed in heavy fighting north of Kidal, where French and Chadian troops are hunting Islamists in the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains, which border Algeria.
Operations there are further complicated by the presence of separatist Tuareg rebels, whose rebellion triggered the fighting in northern Mali last year but were sidelined by the better-armed Islamists.
Having dispatched its forces to prevent an Islamist advance south in January, Paris is eager not to become bogged down in a long-term conflict in Mali. But their Malian and African allies have urged French troops not to pull out too soon.
(Additional reporting by Emanuel Braun in Gao, Adama Diarra in Bamako, David Lewis and John Irish in Dakar and Adrian Croft in Brussels; Writing by David Lewis; Editing by Jason Webb and Roger Atwood)
CNN ? The eyes of the gaming world are on Sony, which on Wednesday is expected to unveil the PlayStation 4, the latest version of its popular gaming console.
It's been more than six years since the company launched its PlayStation 3. That's an eon in the warp-speed tech industry, and the company faces a drastically altered landscape as it enters a new round of battles with its top competitors: Microsoft's Xbox and Nintendo's Wii (and, now, the Wii U).
Long gone are the days when gamers had to pop into their local game shop for the latest titles. PC gaming, Web streaming and smartphone and tablet games have all sapped the popularity of the venerable living-room console. In this new era of mobile, connected gaming, experts say faster processors and flashier specs won't be enough for the next generation.
"If you look at where the market is headed, it's clear that Sony needs to acknowledge that the traditional console business is dead," said Dan "Shoe" Hsu, editor-in-chief of gaming site GamesBeat. "There will still be some room for big-budget, disc-based games sold at retail stores, sure. But mobile, free-to-play and social are huge in gaming, and the next PlayStation needs to accommodate those sectors."
Still beloved among its legions of dedicated gamers, Sony has some work to do if it is to leapfrog back to the top of the gaming heap.
Its PlayStation 2, which was released in 2000, is the top-selling gaming console of all time with more than 150 million sold. The PS3 has held its own but is not believed to have come even close to that number, with estimates hovering around 77 million.
That's been enough to keep the console neck and neck with Microsoft (which is rumored to be developing its own next-generation console, the Xbox 720) but trailing Nintendo's Wii, which has parlayed its wide appeal with family and casual gamers into the top spot since hitting the market in 2006.
The success of the Wii, which let players manipulate in-game avatars by moving their bodies, spawned similar motion-controlled systems in 2010 from Microsoft (Kinect) and Sony (Move).
But in 2013, with the motion-control craze on the wane, Sony may sense a new opening. Sales of the Wii U, released in November, have stumbled out of the blocks as gamers continue processing the system's multiscreen setup.
Observers like Hsu say that will take a sales pitch that appeals to how today's gamer plays as much as, or more than, how the new system performs.
"Sony needs to show its next system is ready for the future, and this includes some crossover play with smartphones, digital distribution, cloud storage to help minimize the need for physical media and a free-to-play ecosystem that can bring in new gamers," he said. "Pure horsepower will be less important this time around."
The inevitable flood of rumors about this week's announcement suggests that may be on Sony's mind as well.
The new console will have the ability to stream online games, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. Unnamed sources say the tech will be used to let players play older PS3 games on the new console as well as new ones.
Last year, Sony bought Gakai, a cloud-based gaming company that let PC gamers stream top games via broadband.
Images of what are claimed to be prototypes of the PlayStation 4's controllers have leaked and appear to show a "Share" button, suggesting that social-sharing options will be baked into the system.
And Sony has begun slashing prices on its handheld Vita gaming system, starting in Japan, leading some to speculate that there could be mobile integration in the PS4.
Of course, like Nintendo and especially Microsoft, Sony wants to continue branding its console as an entertainment hub for the living room, not just a gaming toy. Sony is rumored to be developing its own online TV service to compete with cable, something it would feature heavily on a new PlayStation.
PlayStation already has streaming-media apps like Netflix, Amazon Instant and Hulu.
Gamers will be looking for all that and more. But, as some observers note, all of the extras will have to branch out from a very important home base.
"The PlayStation 3 has matured into a fantastic gaming system," wrote CNET's Jeff Bakalar. "Sony must maintain this luxury into the next generation. For all the extracurricular bells and whistles this system will boast, gamers still want to play great games that you can't experience anywhere else. Exclusive games sell systems first."?
Sony tonight announced its much-rumored next video game console, the PlayStation 4. Sony Computer Entertainment prez and CEO Andrew House announced the console with little more than a logo and a handful of concepts. We're sure to hear more as the night goes on, and we'll be updating this post as we learn more.
Lead system architect Mark Cerny -- legendary game dev and, to us, creator of Marble Madness -- came up next. He said that development of the PS4 started five years ago. Cerny said he's been exploring how to evolve "the PlayStation ecosystem," and he started by speaking to the limitations of PlayStation 3. Cerny said he's been aiming to make sure "nothing gets between the platform and the game." An image of an old-timey hunter shooting space invaders in the sky is used as an example -- here's hoping the PS4 doesn't mean we'll be taking plastic guns and shooting pixels in the sky.
"We were able to create in PlayStation 4 a system by game creators, for game creators," Cerny said. As far as specs, he said it runs on x86 architecture, a "highly enhanced" PC GPU (with "almost 2 teraflops of performance," he added), an unknown amount of local HDD storage, and 8GB of GDDR5 system memory. Cerny next unveiled the DualShock 4, which looks an awful lot like the leaks we saw recently -- it features a touchpad, a light bar, and what looks like rubberized grips. Otherwise, it looks an awful lot like a DualShock 3 with some new bells and whistles.
Cerny's talking software now -- the PS4 can pause and resume mid-game, allowing players to multitask at any point. There's also a second chip dedicated to managing uploads and downloads, meaning you can download games in the background or when the system's off. More importantly, however, you can start downloading a game and begin playing it as the download goes -- pretty great! As far as sharing goes, PS4 is heavy on social interactivity; Cerny said its social network will extend beyond the console to mobile and Vita. He's ambiguous about which platforms that'll mean, but it sounds like Sony's aiming to make it platform agnostic. There's also a Pinterest-esque social app for friends to share screens and video, which Cerny said applies to the PS4's "personalization" angle. "You'll see real pictures of your real friends," he said.
David Perry went next, and he talked about Sony's acquisition of Gaikai (he was the former head of Gaikai, but now he's working with Sony). His game streaming service is being employed to run demos on PS4, allowing people to try any game they want instantly. He also said that both Facebook and Ustream are being employed on PS4, using the DualShock 4's Share button. But how much? He didn't say. Beyond just sharing games you've already played, you can also livestream -- to the point that a friend of yours who is spectating can actually jump into your game, via streaming, and help you out.
But wait, there's more! Despite Remote Play being a function in the previous PlayStation console, Perry said it's also heading to PlayStation 4. A brief demo of Mark Cerny's PS4 game Knack was shown -- Perry said latency should be imperceptible, using Gaikai's streaming tech. Perry gave one last tease: "everything everywhere." He's hoping that PlayStation Cloud will apply to more than just PS4 and Vita, but also to mobile devices as well. The service will roll out "in phases," Perry said, without giving more detail, though he did say that Cloud will power PS1, PS2, PS3, and PlayStation Mobile games.
Check out our liveblog of Sony's event to get the latest news as it happens!
LONDON (Reuters) - The ex-wife of fallen British minister Chris Huhne will face a retrial for perverting the course of justice by helping him dodge a driving ban in 2003, after a jury failed to reach a verdict on Wednesday.
Huhne, once considered a likely successor to Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg as leader of the Liberal Democrats, pleaded guilty to the charge on February 4.
Huhne has been warned to expect a prison sentence. His sentencing has been deferred until the end of the retrial of his ex-wife, Vicky Pryce, which is expected to start on Monday.
The inconclusive end of Pryce's first trial was the latest twist in a long-running scandal that toppled Huhne from his cabinet post and has gripped the British public with salacious revelations about the private lives of a once powerful couple.
The allegation against the estranged pair is that they falsely informed police that she was driving his car when it was flashed by a speed camera in March 2003. She took penalty points on her licence which, if he had taken them, would have resulted in a six-month driving ban.
The deception, which took place at a time when the couple were happily married, remained a family secret for eight years but came back to haunt Huhne after the acrimonious break-up of his 26-year marriage to Pryce.
He abruptly left her in June 2010 when his long-term affair with bisexual former aide Carina Trimingham was about to be exposed in the press. Details of the trio's private lives were splashed all over the newspapers for days.
Months later, Pryce told two newspapers about the 2003 points incident in what the prosecution at her trial described as an act of revenge against Huhne.
"I WANT TO NAIL HIM"
The jury were shown an email from Pryce to a journalist in March 2011 in which she wrote "I definitely want to nail him".
The first news reports about the points appeared in May 2011 and police then started investigating the matter, culminating in criminal charges against Huhne and Pryce in February 2012.
Huhne, who was energy secretary in the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, resigned from that post when the charges were announced.
Pryce pleaded not guilty, arguing that Huhne had used "marital coercion" to force her to take his points.
Huhne and Pryce had been supposed to stand trial together but his 11th-hour guilty plea on the morning the trial was due to start meant that Pryce was alone in the dock.
Her trial revealed intimate and painful details of the feuding couple's past. In particular, seeking to bolster her marital coercion defence by showing that in certain circumstances she could be bullied by Huhne, Pryce said he had pressured her into have an unwanted abortion in 1990.
The court also heard colourful snippets from months of discussions in 2010-2011 between Pryce and journalists keen to publish a story with the potential to bring down a minister.
In one email read in court, a Mail on Sunday journalist asked Pryce's intermediary if there was "lift-off" for an article, in the form of Pryce confirming the points story.
"If so, I suspect he will be an ex-minister by Sunday lunchtime," the journalist wrote.
Bacteria such as Escherichia coli can acquire predictable mutations to adapt to a changing environment.Image: Flickr/Microbe World
Although mutations, the driver of evolution, occur at random, a study of the bacterium Escherichia coli reveals that nature often finds the same solution to the same problem again and again.
Over time, random mutations enable organisms to adapt and diversify, often when geographically separated groups of the same species grow better suited to their local environment and less like members of the other group.
But that's not the only way that genetic diversity can arise. Researchers have reported cases of cichlid fish, palm trees and finches adapting to different ecological niches and splitting into different species despite living in the same place. In 2008, evolutionary biologist Michael Doebeli of the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver and colleagues reported that E. coli bacteria can also diversify while sharing a test tube.
In that study, they fed easy-to-digest glucose and a harder-to-stomach acetate to homogeneous populations of the bacteria, and let the bacteria chomp away. E. coli can switch between the two foods, but the team found that in each test tube two groups emerged, specialized in consuming either glucose or acetate. What they did not know was which genetic path each group took to achieve its specialization.
Mapping evolution In the new study, published online today in Public Library of Science Biology, Doebeli and colleague Matthew Herron, also at UBC, went back to the frozen samples from three of their test tubes and sequenced 17 gene samples from various stages of the experiment. The DNA showed that in some cases identical mutations appeared independently in all three test tubes: despite the random nature of mutations, the same changes in the environment favored the same genetic solutions.
Doebeli and Herron also found that some mutations occurred only in a specific order: after one group had become specialized for glucose and the other for acetate, both groups evolved to switch better between meal types. That last mutation would not have been useful until after the emergence of the first, which helped exhaust food supplies faster. That finding is novel, says systems biologist Michael Stumpf of Imperial College London. Although biologists have observed traits appearing in a particular order, until now no one had documented the genetic basis for those changes.
"It's of interest to know how often the genes that change are the same or different," says biologist Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago, Illinois. "That tells us how much constraint there is on evolution." Insects often evolve resistance to insecticides through the same common mutations, he notes.
Evolutionary constraint Coyne adds, however, that it may not be practical to extrapolate very much from an asexually reproducing species such as E. coli to organisms that reproduce sexually.
And Stumpf warns that because bacteria live in such large populations, their evolution in aggregate may be more predictable than that of larger, more dispersed species.
Environments also change faster than most species can evolve, Stumpf says, so he would be interested in future studies that examine how predictable evolution is in changing environments. Doebeli agrees: he has dozens of other frozen lines of bacteria, which evolved in environments of varying complexity, waiting for their genomic snapshots.
This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on February 19, 2013.
Baylor University and Tufts University to examine effect of innovative Boy Scout programPublic release date: 19-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Terry Goodrich terry_goodrich@baylor.edu 254-710-3321 Baylor University
A study to examine whether and how Boy Scout programs affect the character, health and academic achievement of youths as well as their contribution to community and democracy will be launched in September by Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion and Tufts University's Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development.
The three-year study, armed with major funding from the John Templeton Foundation and headed by Tufts, will evaluate an innovative Boy Scouts of America program that incorporates full-time executives to assist Scout troops by training the leaders, recruiting and retaining youths, and fund raising. Typically, local troops are staffed by volunteers.
Researchers will be Byron Johnson, Ph.D., director of the ISR and also of Baylor's Program on Prosocial Behavior, and Richard Lerner, Ph.D., Bergstrom Chair in Applied Developmental Science and director of the Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development at Tufts.
The study will be done in four waves in a geographic area in Philadelphia, Penn., that is served by the Cradle of Liberty Council Boy Scouts of America.
"It was necessary to select a jurisdiction that would generate a large and diverse number of study participants from rural as well as urban communities," said Thomas Harrington, the CEO of the Cradle of Liberty Council.
Noted Johnson: "The program could become a model for recruitment and retention of diverse youth especially boys from inner cities in Boy Scouts, especially if the study shows that involvement in the Scouts enhances the youths' character."
The study will compare all boys ages 7, 8, 9 and 10 from three groups in the selected geographic area:
36 randomly selected Cub Scout packs with full-time executives
36 randomly selected Cub Scout packs without full-time executives
Comparable samples of boys who are not in Cub Scouts
All youths surveyed (approximately 3, 880) will be from the same schools or religious organizations and will be matched on demographic characteristics other than age that are related to the likelihood of being in Cub Scouts, Johnson said.
The youths will be re-tested in May 2014, September 2014 and May 2015, and any new youth entering the sample packs will be tested as well, he said.
Said Lerner: "Large longitudinal surveys of this kind are increasingly rare within the social and behavioral sciences."
In addition to directing ISR and leads Baylor's Program on Prosocial Behavior, Johnson is Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor. He was the principal investigator in a nationwide scientific survey of the impact of Eagle Scouts on society. In that study, released in spring of 2012 and funded by a two-year research grant from the John Templeton Foundation, Baylor researchers partnered with the Gallup Organization to survey 2,512 adult males.
Findings demonstrated that Eagle Scouts went on to contribute significantly, from holding leadership positions in their workplaces and neighborhoods to voting, volunteering, protecting the environment and preparing for emergencies.
Johnson also completed a series of studies for the Department of Justice on religion's role in prosocial youth behavior. He is recognized as a leading authority on the scientific study of religion, the efficacy of faith-based organizations, domestic violence and criminal justice. His research also has been used in consultation with the Department of Defense, Department of Labor and the National Institutes of Health.
Co-researcher Lerner has more than 500 scholarly publications, including 70 authored or edited books, among them The Good Teen. In that book, he supports a new conception of adolescence based on strengths rather than weaknesses, presenting five personality characteristics competence, confidence, connection, character, and caring that lead to long-term contributions to society.
He and colleagues at Tufts have published more 100 studies on the impact of the 4-H program on youths. He was the founding editor of the Journal of Research on Adolescence and of Applied Developmental Science and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Association, and the Association for Psychological Science.
###
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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.
Baylor University and Tufts University to examine effect of innovative Boy Scout programPublic release date: 19-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Terry Goodrich terry_goodrich@baylor.edu 254-710-3321 Baylor University
A study to examine whether and how Boy Scout programs affect the character, health and academic achievement of youths as well as their contribution to community and democracy will be launched in September by Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion and Tufts University's Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development.
The three-year study, armed with major funding from the John Templeton Foundation and headed by Tufts, will evaluate an innovative Boy Scouts of America program that incorporates full-time executives to assist Scout troops by training the leaders, recruiting and retaining youths, and fund raising. Typically, local troops are staffed by volunteers.
Researchers will be Byron Johnson, Ph.D., director of the ISR and also of Baylor's Program on Prosocial Behavior, and Richard Lerner, Ph.D., Bergstrom Chair in Applied Developmental Science and director of the Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development at Tufts.
The study will be done in four waves in a geographic area in Philadelphia, Penn., that is served by the Cradle of Liberty Council Boy Scouts of America.
"It was necessary to select a jurisdiction that would generate a large and diverse number of study participants from rural as well as urban communities," said Thomas Harrington, the CEO of the Cradle of Liberty Council.
Noted Johnson: "The program could become a model for recruitment and retention of diverse youth especially boys from inner cities in Boy Scouts, especially if the study shows that involvement in the Scouts enhances the youths' character."
The study will compare all boys ages 7, 8, 9 and 10 from three groups in the selected geographic area:
36 randomly selected Cub Scout packs with full-time executives
36 randomly selected Cub Scout packs without full-time executives
Comparable samples of boys who are not in Cub Scouts
All youths surveyed (approximately 3, 880) will be from the same schools or religious organizations and will be matched on demographic characteristics other than age that are related to the likelihood of being in Cub Scouts, Johnson said.
The youths will be re-tested in May 2014, September 2014 and May 2015, and any new youth entering the sample packs will be tested as well, he said.
Said Lerner: "Large longitudinal surveys of this kind are increasingly rare within the social and behavioral sciences."
In addition to directing ISR and leads Baylor's Program on Prosocial Behavior, Johnson is Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor. He was the principal investigator in a nationwide scientific survey of the impact of Eagle Scouts on society. In that study, released in spring of 2012 and funded by a two-year research grant from the John Templeton Foundation, Baylor researchers partnered with the Gallup Organization to survey 2,512 adult males.
Findings demonstrated that Eagle Scouts went on to contribute significantly, from holding leadership positions in their workplaces and neighborhoods to voting, volunteering, protecting the environment and preparing for emergencies.
Johnson also completed a series of studies for the Department of Justice on religion's role in prosocial youth behavior. He is recognized as a leading authority on the scientific study of religion, the efficacy of faith-based organizations, domestic violence and criminal justice. His research also has been used in consultation with the Department of Defense, Department of Labor and the National Institutes of Health.
Co-researcher Lerner has more than 500 scholarly publications, including 70 authored or edited books, among them The Good Teen. In that book, he supports a new conception of adolescence based on strengths rather than weaknesses, presenting five personality characteristics competence, confidence, connection, character, and caring that lead to long-term contributions to society.
He and colleagues at Tufts have published more 100 studies on the impact of the 4-H program on youths. He was the founding editor of the Journal of Research on Adolescence and of Applied Developmental Science and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Association, and the Association for Psychological Science.
###
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18/02/2013
The British Library has announced its intention to join the UK?s Mooc platform FutureLearn Ltd, offering participants of its online courses access to the Library?s unique digitised resources. The Library will be the first non-university research institution to join the initiative, and is among five university partners announced today during a major business and skills mission to India with the Prime Minister.
The launch of the FutureLearn Mooc (or ?Massive open on-line course?) stems from the growth of online degree-style courses in the USA, where companies such as edX and Coursera offer around 230 Moocs to more than 3 million students. The first ever UK Mooc, FutureLearn Ltd, was launched by the Open University last December and includes partnerships with eighteen UK universities. Existing Library digital resources will be made available on FutureLearn, complementing plans for large-scale participation in online lectures and courses which are due to start later this year. The Library?s freely available digital collections include over 800 medieval manuscripts, 40,000 nineteenth-century books and 50,000 sound recordings, and continue to grow each year.
Welcoming the news, David Cameron said: "Britain boasts some of the best universities in the world. This innovative new offer led by The Open University will mean that Indian students can access some of the best teaching and learning online from their home in Mumbai or Delhi. I'm delighted that Futurelearn is expanding to include more British universities and the British Library. I hope it will encourage many more Indian students to take the next step and study with a UK university."
Roly Keating, Chief Executive of the British Library, said: ?FutureLearn is an exciting development in higher education, with the potential to enable mass access to valuable resources and teaching anywhere in the world, for free. As the home of a growing set of unique and valuable digital resources, the British Library is looking forward to partnering with The Open University and widening access to our collections for even more researchers online worldwide as the initiative develops.?
Welcoming the new partners to Futurelearn, Open University Vice-Chancellor, Martin Bean said: ?We?re in the middle of an exciting time for higher education in which anything is possible. I am delighted that these iconic institutions - the British Library and five top universities - have joined us on our journey to make Futurelearn the world?s best source of free, open, online courses. I?m convinced that Futurelearn will quickly become a great, innovative British export. We?re building on the country?s 800-year history of higher education to deliver a best in class teaching and learning experience that will benefit students all over the world?.
The HE sector has seen a lot of change in the past couple of years, but we?re coming out stronger and Futurelearn is evidence of that. I?m convinced that Futurelearn will quickly become a great British export. We?re building on the country?s 800-year history of higher education to deliver a very high quality product that will benefit students all over the world?.
Simon Nelson, CEO of Futurelearn, said: ?I am thrilled that more of the UK?s top institutions have joined Futurelearn, which will bring the best of UK teaching to students worldwide. Until now, this market has been dominated by companies based in the US, but with 18 UK partners, we are determined to provide the smartest and most engaging online learning experiences and revolutionise conventional models of education.?
For more information contact:
BoilerPlate
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and one of the world's greatest research libraries. It provides world class information services to the academic, business, research and scientific communities and offers unparalleled access to the world's largest and most comprehensive research collection. The Library's collection has developed over 250 years and exceeds 150 million separate items representing every age of written civilisation and includes books, journals, manuscripts, maps, stamps, music, patents, photographs, newspapers and sound recordings in all written and spoken languages. Up to 10 million people visit the British Library website - www.bl.uk - every year where they can view up to 4 million digitised collection items and over 40 million pages.??
Futurelearn is the first UK-led, multi-university platform for free, open, online courses. We will increase access to higher education for students in the UK and around the world by offering a diverse range of high quality courses through a single website. We are partnering with 12 of the UK?s top universities and will launch our first courses later this year.
Futurelearn is a private company majority owned by the Open University. This enables us to build on the OU?s unparalleled expertise in delivering distance learning and in pioneering open education.
At Futurelearn we believe there is great potential to change the way people access high quality higher education. With our partners, we are seizing the opportunity to create amazing new learning experiences, twinned with a clear pathway to qualifications for those that want them.
The Open University (OU) is the largest academic institution in the UK and a world leader in flexible distance learning. Since it began in 1969, the OU has taught more than 1.8 million students and has almost 250,000 current students, including over 15,000 overseas. The OU is rated the top university for student satisfaction in the National Student Survey, and has been in the top three universities every year since the survey began in 2005.? In 2011/12 it had a 93 per cent satisfaction rating. Over 70% of students are in full-time or part-time employment, and four out of five FTSE 100 companies have sponsored staff to take OU courses. In the UK?s latest Research Assessment Exercise (RAE 2008) The Open University was ranked in the top third of UK higher education institutions. More than 50% of OU research was assessed in the RAE as internationally excellent, with 14% as world leading.
LG finally showed off the XL 5.5-inch version of its upcoming Optimus G Pro at the end of a Facebook promo last week, and now it's revealed a launch date in Korea, more specs and a window for arrival in North America. Also of note? Its CPU is the just-announced quad-core Snapdragon 600 running at 1.7Ghz. Announced at CES, the 600 is supposed to be a milder upgrade (compared to the potentially 2.3GHz Snapdragon 800) to its predecessor, the powerful S4 Pro. New software tweaks include a dual record that uses both cameras simultaneously and VR Panorama that appears to be similar to Google's Photo Sphere stitching.
Besides the expanded 1080p screen and updated internals, the larger version also sports a slightly larger battery than the Japanese version announced previously by NTT Docomo with 3,140mAh compared to 3,000, but keeps the 2GB of RAM, 13MP rear camera, microSDXC slot and LTE. The phone will be released on local carriers SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus on Wednesday for 968,000 won ($897), while a North American launch is mentioned for Q2 along with the Japanese release. We'll find out more about this phone -- and likely a few others -- at MWC 2013 later this week, for now check out the press release after the break for more specs.
BAUCHI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Gunmen kidnapped seven foreigners and killed a security guard when they stormed the compound of Lebanese construction company Setraco in northern Nigeria's Bauchi state early on Sunday, police said.
Those abducted were a Briton, an Italian, a Greek and four Lebanese workers, including two women, police and local government officials said.
This was the worst case of foreigners being kidnapped in the mostly-Muslim north of Africa's most populous country since an insurgency by Islamist militants intensified nearly two years ago.
No one took responsibility for the raid but northern Nigeria is plagued by attacks and kidnappings by Islamist groups. Al Qaeda-aligned group Ansaru, which rose to prominence only in recent months, claimed the kidnap in December of a French national who is still missing.
Bauchi Police Chief Mohammed Ladan said the gunmen attacked a police station and a prison overnight before storming the construction firm's compound in the town of Jama'are.
"We repelled the attack on the police station and the security men at the prison yard also repelled the attack, but they burnt two vehicles in Jama'are police station," Ladan said.
"They then attacked Setraco construction, killed a local security guard and they succeeded in kidnapping people."
Police said they were intensifying efforts to track down the kidnappers in the areas around Jama'are, a remote town around 300 miles northeast of the capital Abuja. Setraco did not respond to requests for comment.
The Italian and Greek foreign ministries confirmed that one of their nationals was taken in the raid. Britain said it was investigating.
Islamist group Ansaru's full name is Jama'atu Ansarul Musilimina Fi Biladis Sudan, which roughly translates as "Vanguards for the Protection of Muslims in Black Africa".
It claimed responsibility for a dawn raid on a major police station in the Nigerian capital last year, where it said hundreds of prisoners were released. Last month, it attacked a convoy of Nigerian troops en route to deployment in Mali.
ISLAMISTS
The group said the abduction of the Frenchman last year was motivated by France's ban of the full-face veil and its support for military action against Islamist insurgents in Mali.
Kidnapping of foreigners for ransom has been common in Nigeria's southern oil region for years but abductions by radical Islamists in the north began only last year.
Britain in November put Ansaru on its official "terrorist group" list, saying it was aligned with al Qaeda and was behind the kidnap of a British and a Italian killed last year during a failed rescue attempt.
Ansaru is thought to have loose ties to Boko Haram, which has killed hundreds during a three-year-long insurgency focused mostly on Nigerian security forces, religious targets and politicians, rather than foreigners.
Boko Haram wants to carve out an Islamic state in a country of 160 million split roughly equally between Christians and Muslims. It poses the biggest threat to stability in Africa's top oil-producing state.
Attackers slit the throats of three North Korean doctors, killing them in their apartment in Boko Haram's northeast stronghold town of Maiduguri last week.
Gunmen on motorbikes shot dead nine health workers who were administering polio vaccinations in two separate attacks in the biggest northern city Kano this month. No group has taken responsibility for the attack.
President Goodluck Jonathan has repeatedly said that the military are winning the battle against what he calls "terrorism" in northern Nigeria.
But Western governments are increasingly concerned about Islamists in Nigeria linking up with groups outside the region, including al Qaeda's North African wing AQIM, especially given the insecurity in nearby Mali.
France intervened in Mali last month as Islamist forces, which hijacked a rebellion by ethnic Touareg MNLA separatists to seize control of the north in the confusion following a military coup in March 2012, pushed south towards the capital Bamako.
Around 4,000 French troops, backed by the Malian army and several thousand troops from other African states, including hundreds from Nigeria, have driven the Islamist alliance into the remote northeast mountains.
(Reporting by Bello Buhari; Additional reporting by Chukwuemeka Madu, Issac Abrak and Garba Muhammed; Writing by Joe Brock; Editing by Jason Webb)
RDA Holding Co., publisher of the 91-year-old Reader's Digest magazine, filed for bankruptcy to cut $465 million in debt and focus on North American operations as consumers shift from print to electronic media.
Reader's Digest operates the former Reiman Publications business in Greendale, which it acquired in 2002. The Reiman division publishes Taste of Home magazine, Birds & Blooms and other titles.
Reader's Digest, founded by DeWitt and Lila Wallace, went public in 1990. An investor group bought it in 2007 for $1.6 billion and the assumption of about $800 million in debt. The company previously filed for bankruptcy protection in August 2009, citing a drop in advertising spending and the debt load incurred in its acquisition. The company listed both assets and debt of more than $1 billion in Chapter 11 documents filed Sunday in White Plains, N.Y.
? 2013, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved.
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Public release date: 27-Feb-2013
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