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Best Sporting News Sites - As football season arrives, a lot of people are discussing... su.pr/32VKvo #blog #car #cnn #espn #flareIl y a environ 2 heuresvia Tweet Old Post
Tuileisu Anderson scored eight of her 17 points in a crucial third quarter, then Angelique Williams scored eight of her 18 points in the fourth quarter to secure the victory for the Titans.
Union will face Reynolds of Oregon at the Gresham tournament at 5:30 p.m. Thursday.
The two teams were tied at the half, but the Titans got defensive in the third quarter, holding Maple Ridge to six points.
Union connected on seven 3-pointers in the game.
UNION 47, MAPLE RIDGE (B.C.) 38
UNION (5-2) ? Aman Kaur 0, Jessica Chatman 2, Angelique Williams 18, Tuileisu Anderson 17, Nicole Woodside 2, Molly Petrie 4, Hannah O?Donnell 0, Mykaila Forsyth 3, Cassie Anderson 1. Totals 18 (7) 4-8 47.
MAPLE RIDGE ? Marchard 1, LaMont 3, Orum 22, Severinski 0, Antaya 3, Williams 9. Totals 12 (1) 13-21 38.
Union 10 11 14 12?47
Maple Ridge 11 10 6 11?38
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BUENOS AIRES, Argentina ? President Cristina Fernandez has thyroid cancer, but test results showed Tuesday that it remains limited to a lobe in the right side of her neck and has not spread into her lymph nodes, her spokesman said.
Fernandez, 58, will undergo surgery on Jan. 4 and then take 20 days of medical leave, during which Vice President Amado Boudou will run the country. Meanwhile, she will keep up her normal routine, spokesman Alfredo Scoccimarro suggested, noting that she will appear at several events on Wednesday as planned.
Scoccimarro said the cancer was discovered during a routine exam on Dec. 22, and that Fernandez received the results from follow-up tests hours before the announcement.
This kind of thyroid cancer is highly survivable, with more than 95 percent of patients living at least 10 years after detection, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
The usual treatment is to surgically remove as much of the cancerous material as possible, and then follow up with radioactive iodide treatments, taken orally. This substance helps to destroy any remnants of the cancerous gland and provide for clearer images showing any additional cancer, the NIH said on its Web site.
After surgery, patients usually must take medicine ? levothyroxine sodium ? for the rest of their lives to replace a hormone that the thyroid glands produce. Blood tests every six to 12 months to measure thyroid levels also are recommended.
Fernandez is only the latest South American leader to be diagnosed with cancer. Presidents Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Dilma Rousseff of Brazil all have undergone treatments recently.
Presidential doctors Luis Buonomo and Marcelo Ballesteros said the operation will be led by Dr. Pedro Saco, chief of the surgery department at Hospital Austral and chief of the Head and Neck Service of the oncology institute at the University of Buenos Aires. Saco also trained in cancer centers in Houston and New York, the hospital said.
Thyroid surgery is not without risk: the NIH says a nerve that controls the vocal cords can be damaged, and doctors sometimes accidentally remove the parathyroid gland, which helps regulate blood calcium levels.
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British troops in Afghanistan have enjoyed a festive treat, tucking into a traditional Christmas dinner: bit.ly/vz5hVLIl y a environ 4 heuresvia ITN News AlertsRetweeted by 1 person
Welcome back to the Tournament of THG, where fans vote on the most popular star of 2011! The concept is simple: Pick your favorite of the two stars in each poll. Done.
The semifinal round (final four) starts Monday, so this is your last chance to cast a virtual ballot in all four quarterfinal contests. So far, some are closer than others.
Katy Perry, Demi Lovato, Robert Pattinson and Miley Cyrus are ahead at the moment, but that could all change with a late surge. Only time - and you - will tell!
Who will advance to the next round? VOTE below (and after the jump)!
In Hebrew, the word 'mayor' means bringer of light.
So it was fitting that Kelowna's mayor was asked to light the first candle on the a public menorah in Stuart Park downtown Wednesday night.
"It's a wonderful occasion to light this, the first ever (publicly displayed community) menorah at the beginning of Chanukah," Gray told a crowd of about about 150 people braved the cold to gather for the public ceremony.
"It shows we are a diverse and tolerant community."
He said the idea of displaying a large menorah in a city park first came up seven years ago when he was last mayor. But at the time it did not happen.
"Well, better ate than never," said Gray.
After local MP Ron Cannan was asked to light the candle used to light the first of the nine candles on the three-metre high menorah, Gray climbed a small step ladder and did the honors. Because it was the second day of Chanukah, local businessman Mel Kottler, a leader in the local Jewish community, was asked to light the second candle.
The large menorah, located across the street from City Hall, only arrived here earlier in the day after being held up at customs coming in from the United States. It was then inadvertently sent to Vancouver instead of Kelowna.
But despite the delay, the lighting celebration went off without a hitch.
Both Cannan and Gray, as well as city manager Ron Mattiussi, were presented with small menorahs by Rabbi Shmuel Hecht as a token of thanks in helping make the display a reality on short notice. Hecht only contacted Mattiussi about the plan three weeks ago. Hecht also thanked city staff and work crews for getting the menorah installed in time for Wednesday night's public ceremony.
To follow tradition, an additional candle will be light on the menorah each night during the Jewish holiday of Chanukah, which runs this year until Dec. 28.
The menorah is the second religious icon put up by the city this year. Earlier this month, it erected its annual Christian nativity scene a short distance away in Kerry Park.
In anticipation of other religious groups asking the city to allow similar displays in future, council has asked city staff to develop a policy setting out standardized rules for such displays.
Blue Dragon's anime adaptation gets a second season released in the U.S., The Old Republic takes comics, and Mass Effect gets a fancy art book and third issue of its Dark Horse miniseries.
Mass Effect: Invasion #3 and The Art of Mass Effect Hardcover
We've got a one-two shot of releases here: the first is the current issue of the ongoing miniseries set on the Omega space station hitting shelves and digital distribution this past Wednesday, and the other is a big, glossy hardcover coming in February, both from publisher Dark Horse Comics. Invasion is written by Mac Walters and John Jackson Miller with art by Omar Francia. Walters was actually one of the writers on Mass Effect 3, so you can at least be sure the canon will be intact (Dark Horse is actually billing this as "An essential lead-in to Mass Effect 3"). Here's what they're saying about the story:
The Omega space station has fallen and Aria, Omega's pirate queen, is on the run from an enemy greater than anything she's ever faced before. Learning that the battle is merely the first skirmish in a war that will reshape the galaxy, Aria must retake Omega and lead a new charge to save her empire!
You can check out a preview or order a digital copy on the Dark Horse site.
Then, on February 8th, Dark Horse is releasing The Art of the Mass Effect Universe hardcover, showing off some of the weapons, vehicles, and character designs from the series as well as concept art for Mass Effect 3. There's no publicly-viewable preview available, but having seen some of the interior of the book, I can say it's the kind of thing that sci-fi design fetishists will really get into.
Blue Dragon: Trials of the 7 Shadows
It's strange how some things take off. While Blue Dragon didn't exactly create the next great gaming franchise for the 360, it has spawned an animated series in Japan as well as a DS spinoff. That show has actually wrapped its second season which is making its debut here in the U.S. via anime and manga distributor Viz Media. The first five episodes are available on Hulu and the Viz site, with new episodes going online every Friday.
Here's the summary from Viz:
BLUE DRAGON is a classic adventure story of magical Shadow powers, flying air fortresses, and unbounded heroism! Brought together by fate, Seven Soldiers of Light must awaken the Shadow within themselves in time to overcome a despotic power and bring peace to their land. Their ensuing journey through a rich fantasy world is also an internal journey to awaken the great power within each of them.
In the exciting Second Season, Shu and his friends fought to defeat the evil lord Nene, the ruler of the Grankingdom. Nene was defeated, but it was revealed that the true evil was none other than Zola, who was the avatar of the legendary Darkness. Shu and the other Seven Soldiers of Light managed to once again seal off the force of Darkness, but lost their Shadow Powers in the process. Two years has passed since the battle with Darkness. As Shu and Bouquet continue their battle against General Logi and his Rosekstan army, a new threat arrives. Powerful dragons calling themselves the ?Legion of Elite Species? set out to test the worthiness of mankind, selecting Shu as the candidate.
DC Universe Online Legends #20 (26)
That would be a 26-issue maxi-series right there, hitting next Wednesday, the 28th. This tie-in to DC Universe Online provides some of the story to the opening cutscene that sets up the DC/Sony Online Entertainment MMO. As such, it doesn't really have a whole lot to do with the regular DC comics continuity. Still, it's got veteran comic writer Marv Wolfman on the script and Howard Porter on art is never a bad thing.
From DC:
As Brainiac's invading force prepares for combat, Batman must make a deadly decision that may put him at odds with the entire JLA. It's a decision that could save the Earth, and the Dark Knight will stop at nothing ? even fighting his allies ? to guarantee success...but can anyone save him from himself?
Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic?War! #1
Finally, Dark Horse has another contribution to the list with KOTOR?War! #1, out January 11th. John Jackson Miller is writing this one as well with Andrea Mutti on art. Since The Old Republic MMO doesn't have a central character to focus on, per se,, Miller and co. have created focus on the warring factions that make up the game. Here's what Dark Horse had to say about it:
If you've ever heard of the Knights of the Old Republic video games and comics but didn't know where to start--this is it!
The Republic and the Mandalorians are at war! Jedi are joining the fight, despite the noninterference stance of the Council. One Jedi, however, has found himself on the front lines against his wishes-the peace-loving Zayne Carrick has been drafted!
Related posts:
'Kingdom Hearts 3D' Gets A Release Date in Japan DC Universe Online Gets Into the Christmas Spirit With Update 7
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Tags bioware, Blue Dragon, Dark Horse Comics, DC Universe Online, mass effect, star wars: the old republic
LANDOVER, Md. ? Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson tore a ligament in his left knee Saturday after taking a direct hit in a 33-26 win over the Washington Redskins.
An MRI showed the anterior cruciate ligament tear after the team returned to Minnesota.
Peterson said he knew "it was something bad" the moment he was hit and that he was in "severe pain" on he lay on the field. He was hurt when tackled by Redskins safety DeJon Gomes at the end of a 3-yard gain on the first offensive play of the second half.
"Anytime you take a blow to the knee like that, you're concerned about the ACL, MCL," Peterson said as he stood on crutches in the locker room. "I'm trying to stay as positive as I can."
The torn ACL would likely sideline Peterson for some nine months and make it difficult for him to return for the start of next season.
On the play after Peterson was hurt, Minnesota's Christian Ponder suffered a head injury when sacked by Adam Carriker and London Fletcher. Ponder remained in the game for one more play ? a third-down incomplete pass ? before heading to the locker room.
Coach Leslie Frazier said Ponder had "concussion-like symptoms." The coach said he's uncertain whether the quarterback will play in next week's season finale against the Chicago Bears.
"We'll have to weigh it when we get back," Frazier said, "and I'll follow the doctor's lead."
Peterson had 12 carries for 38 yards when he left. He also had a 1-yard touchdown run in the second quarter.
Ponder completed 8 of 13 passes for 68 yards. He was replaced by Joe Webb, who scored on a 9-yard run on the next series to give the Vikings the lead.
___
Joseph White can be reached at http://twitter.com/JGWhiteAP
WASHINGTON ? NPR's quiz show "Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me" is making the leap from radio to television.
The show debuts Friday evening on BBC America. The first show will be a year-in-review special. Host Peter Sagal, scorekeeper Carl Kasell and a panel including Paula Poundstone and Alonzo Bodden will discuss the year's events.
They promise to delve into 2011's biggest scandals, from former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner to the phone hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch's media empire and the Occupy Wall Street protests.
The show will also broadcast on NPR stations this weekend. It was taped Dec. 2 in front of an audience in Chicago.
"Wait Wait" is in its 14th season on NPR and draws a weekly audience of 3.2 million listeners on 595 public radio stations.
Twas a sad day when Mindscape was forced to shutter the online service used by its collection of Nabaztag robotic rabbits -- as the tale goes, the domain's demise left the tiny, Linux-running hares inanimate, mute and nearly useless. But just five short months later, things are starting to look up. Via email, the company has confirmed that nabaztag.com will come (back) alive on midnight of December 24th (a timezone was not specified), allowing Nabaztag users to communicate with their coney comrades. "At midnight you can turn your rabbits on without changing anything," writes the bunny builder. That's not all. The company is promising to "enrich" the devic's modules with "community contributions." If you're a Nabaztag owner, step away from that eggnog and put on a pot of coffee... Christmas is coming a full 24-hours early.
WASHINGTON ? House Republican leaders are renewing their call for the Democratic-led Senate to bargain with them and try to end the stalemate over extending a payroll tax cut and jobless benefits.
House Speaker John Boehner and other top House Republicans met Wednesday, saying Senate negotiators should join them in a search for compromise.
Minutes earlier, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid released a letter to Boehner urging him to bring the House back to Washington. Reid wants the House to approve a bipartisan Senate-approved bill extending the tax cut and jobless benefits for two months, and then bargain over a yearlong extension.
House Republicans want to extend the tax cut and jobless benefits for a year.
The payroll tax paid and jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed ends Jan. 1.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
Stuck in a stalemate, President Barack Obama and his Republican rivals are slugging it out in Washington rather than reaching for a holiday season accord to prevent payroll taxes from going up on 160 million workers.
The tax increases, as well as cuts to Medicare doctors' fees and a lapse in jobless benefits, are due Jan. 1. They are looming even though Democrats and Republicans agree that they shouldn't happen. Instead of stopping them, the factions have painted themselves into a corner.
House Republicans are demanding that the Senate join negotiations to produce an agreement within days; Senate Democrats insist no talks will take place before the House approves a stopgap measure to buy more time.
A House vote Tuesday scuttled a bipartisan Senate deal for a two-month extension of all three policies: the payroll tax cuts, jobless benefits and Medicare fees.
After the House killed the Senate measure on a 229-193 vote, Obama signaled he'll use his presidential megaphone to try to force Republicans controlling the House into submission.
"Now let's be clear," Obama said at the White House. "The bipartisan compromise that was reached on Saturday is the only viable way to prevent a tax hike on Jan. 1. The only one."
The Obama campaign promptly took to Twitter and Facebook to fight it out. With their candidate's poll numbers rising, Democratic operatives seemed almost giddy at the prospect of a prolonged battle.
Republican lawmakers relished the battle as well, though some of them are too inexperienced to know that presidents ? regardless of party ? usually win such high-profile fights, like President Bill Clinton did over a 1995-96 government shutdown or President George W. Bush did in skirmishes on anti-terror policies.
House Republicans instead rallied around a plan passed last week that would have extended the payroll tax cut for one year. But that version also contained spending cuts opposed by Democrats and tighter rules for jobless benefits.
If legislation isn't passed by New Year's Day, payroll taxes will go up by almost $20 a week for a worker making a $50,000 salary. Almost 2 million people could lose unemployment benefits as well, and doctors would bear big cuts in Medicare payments.
Whatever the stakes, there was little indication that Republicans would get their wish for negotiations with the Senate any time soon. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., issued a statement saying he would be happy to resume talks on a yearlong measure ? "but not before" the House ratifies the two-month bill and sends it to Obama for his signature.
Given Obama's remarks and Reid's refusal to negotiate, it was unclear what leverage Republicans had in the year-end standoff. It appeared likely the partisan disagreement could easily persist past Christmas and into the final week of the year.
A little-noticed element of the brawl was that the House-Senate parliamentary situation, which can be a critical factor, is all messed up. The Senate adjourned Saturday until Jan. 23 except for so-called pro forma sessions in which legislative business ? like responding to the House moves ? is basically impossible unless all 100 senators agree. That's never a sure thing.
The standoff was sowing confusion among business executives, who were running out of time to adapt to any new payroll tax regimen. Even the Senate's proposed two-month extension was creating headaches because it contained a two-tiered system geared to ensuring that higher-income earners paid a higher rate on some of their wages, according to a trade group.
"There's not time enough to do that in an orderly fashion," said Pete A. Isberg, president of the National Payroll Reporting Consortium trade group. "We're two weeks away from 2012." He wrote a letter to congressional leaders this week warning that the Senate bill "could create substantial problems, confusion and costs."
Meanwhile, Medicare announced Tuesday that, as it has in the past when doctors' reimbursements have been cut through congressional inaction, it would withhold physicians' payments for two weeks in January to avoid passing on a 27 percent cut in Medicare fees. The hope is that the problem gets fixed by then.
StartupBus, the hackathon/road trip combo started by?Elias Bizannes?nearly three years ago, is doubling the number of events it runs in 2012. There will be a maximum of twelve buses that run in the new year, up from six previously. But here's the fun part: the organization will determine which regions get their own Startup bus through an online competition requiring hopefuls to "vote up" their region through social media.
LIMA (Reuters) ? Lori Berenson, a New Yorker who spent 15 years in Peruvian prisons for aiding Marxist insurgents, was prevented by Peru's interior ministry from making her first trip home since her 1995 arrest, her lawyer said on Saturday.
Berenson, 42, the mother of a 2-year-old boy, was paroled last year after serving 15 years of a 20-year sentence. A judge on Friday gave the U.S. citizen permission to travel abroad, enabling her to head to Lima's airport to catch a plane to the United States.
But an official told her Peru's interior ministry had not been formally notified of the judge's ruling and blocked her from flying as a parolee, Anibal Apari, her lawyer and the father of her son, told Reuters.
RPP radio also said she arrived at the airport too late to catch the flight.
"I'm going to see what measures I can take in the coming days," Apari said when asked when he would sort out the bureaucratic red tape so that Berenson could try to head home again.
The judge said she must return to Lima by January 11 in a ruling that prosecutors criticized, saying there was little way to ensure sure she would return to Peru. The two countries share an extradition treaty and are close allies.
Berenson's father, Mark, said on Friday she would go back to Peru because she did not want to break the law.
At the time of her release from prison, Peru's government resisted calls to commute the rest of her sentence so she could relocate permanently to the United States. Prosecutors also tried to block her parole and once got it suspended temporarily before she was released again.
A student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before becoming involved in social justice issues in Latin America, Berenson was pulled off a bus in Lima 16 years ago and charged with belonging to the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, or MRTA, an urban guerrilla group.
The MRTA was active in the 1980s and 1990s when a larger insurgency, the Maoist Shining Path, also tried to topple the state.
While behind bars, she became known as an accomplished baker, participated in talent shows of inmates, and had a child with Apari, a former member of the MRTA.
She told Reuters last year that life outside prison was "much harder than I thought."
Her neighbors in Lima shouted insults at her after her release in a country where people are still traumatized by memories of a long civil war that killed 69,000 people.
Berenson was never convicted of participating in violent acts, but was found guilty of providing support to the MRTA. She says she was imprisoned for renting a house where MRTA members stayed.
"It would be nice if people didn't see me as the face of terrorism, but I can't change that. I live with it. It's not easy, especially because I don't think that I'm a terrorist," she said at the time.
A military tribunal initially sentenced her to life in prison using counterterrorism laws. She was retried later in a civilian court and her sentence was reduced after pressure from her parents, human rights groups and the U.S. government.
(Reporting By Enrique Mandujano and Terry Wade in Lima and Michelle Nichols in New York; Editing by Peter Cooney)
If there's one thing the world needs it's a service that lets you build a shirt using 3D rendering technology. Sure we could use cars that run on water and world peace, but let's get the little things out of the way, right?
Thankfully, there's BleuFlamme, a website created by a gaggle of eight engineers who have dedicated their lives to the sale of custom shirts.
If you are a "female" you apparently choose clothing in the form of "outfits," a sort of ritualized selection process that allows you to look "good" in a different set of clothes each day. While I subscribe to Thoreau's maxim - "Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and, incidentally, when your neighbors come over to your place on Walden and catch a whiff of you, you'll be even more alone" - it is my understanding that some "ladies" like to change their "clothes" daily and they often need help facilitating this process. But what is a lady to do if she cannot remember what outfits she has worn in the past month? Cry? Yell at the barista? No. She uses Cloth.
Googler Daniel Russell knows how to find the answers to questions you can't get to with a simple Google query. In his weekly Search Research column, Russell issues a search challenge, then follows up later in the week with his solution?using whatever search technology and methodology fits the bill. This week's challenge: Find that trail!
Quick answer: One end of the trail is here, near 13456 S Fork Ln, Los Altos, CA 94022 (or, lat/long: 37.376390, -122.16103). And after reading through some of your comments, I was able to find the other end of the trail on Edgerton Rd.
Here's what I did to find it.
I kept thinking it was a "trail" so I kept searching for a trail map that had "Wallace Stegner trail" on it.
That turned out to be a bit of a dead end. It's partly because Los Altos Hills calls their system of trails "pathways" rather than trails. I picked up that useful factoid by reading about Los Altos Hills trails and stumbling across an article that mentioned their "system of pathways."
Once I did a search for [ "Wallace Stegner pathway"] and it returned only 5 hits (and one of which is broken with a 404 error). Luckily, the link to SF Gate article about Wallace Stegner's house being demolished was good enough.
The key piece of data to take away from this is this sentence:
"It [the trail] starts on Three Forks Lane where the narrow path alongside Matadero Creek near the Stegner property. "
Elsewhere in that article it gives the Stegner home address at 13456 South Fork Lane, Los Altos Hills, CA. (Note: Wallace passed away a few years ago and the residence has changed hands.)
If you look at the Google map for that street address, you can see that the obvious nearby watershed is named "Matadero Creek." And if you use Google Streetview to "walk" down the street to the place where the creek crosses the road, you'll quickly find that location, here.
Now, to tell the truth, even though I was THERE, because of the complications of the hills where I'd been running, I really didn't know where the official start of the trail was. So this result surprised me.
Now, my next task... to find the other end.
Since I know that the trail is part of the official city "pathway system," I just did [site:losaltoshills.ca.gov wallace stegner pathway] to limit my search to the official city publications and that gave me the city newletter, "Our Town" from 2009. In that newletter it says:
"...Wallace Stegner Path from Three Forks Lane to Edgerton Road, named for the world famous author who lived for many years just uphill from that path."
It wasn't hard to use StreetView to find the other end on Edgerton Rd.
Note that the first part of the sign was blurred-out by the algorithm that blurs out license plate numbers. For some reason, it thinks part of this sign is a license plate.
To be sure, I tried following the trail on the Maps view, and I even tried Google Earth, hoping to get better resolution. But the trail is obscured by heavy trees, and I couldn't follow it reliably. Luckily, the city put up those handy markers to let me find it!
Now... I have to point out that many readers found the Wallace Stegner Memorial Bench located up in the Long Ridge Open Space Preserve at lat/long: 37.278778, -122.160767 It turns out that I've gone running up there too, and it's NOT on the Wallace Stegner trail (or pathway), and it's definitely NOT in Los Altos Hills (as I said in the original challenge). It's actually on Long Ridge Road (a fire road / trail).
It's a beautiful place too... and for some very nice photos of the Stegner Bench, see SmugMug photos.
But I congratulate you on finding a truly wonderful place to go for a hike that perfectly captures the sense of Stegner's writing. If you're in the area, I highly recommend a visit?both to the bench and to the trail.
Search lesson: (1) Check your work. (It wasn't in Los Altos Hills!) And (2) when you're reading through related texts, be sure to stay alert to the possibility that what you're searching for might be called something else. That is, your terminology might not quite be the right one. Stay open to other ways of saying things.
Search on!
Wednesday Search Challenge (December 14, 2011) Answer: Where is that Trail? | SearchReSearch
Daniel M. Russell studies the way people search and research?an anthropologist of search, if you will. You can read more from Russell on his SearchReSearch blog, and stay tuned for his weekly challenges (and answers) here on Lifehacker.
New York ? National Geographic's explorer-in-residence recommends works by Robert Graves, Vera Brittain, and T.E. Lawrence
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain (Penguin, $18). Brittain lost her fianc?, her two best friends, and her beloved brother to World War I. By the end of the fighting, she wrote, there was no one left to dance with. This heartrending memoir traces a journey from innocence to horror, from agony to revelation.
Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence (Wilder, $13). Lawrence was deeply conflicted about his public image as the hero of a war that had crushed the very notion of heroism. He began his first chapter: "Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances." He goes on to describe how his men lay naked together, shamed, beneath "the innumerable silences of stars." If he had to be a war hero, British society would have to deal with the truth of his desires and compulsions.
SEE ALSO: Dagoberto Gilb's 6 favorite books
?
Good-Bye to All That by Robert Graves (Anchor, $16). At the Somme, in 1916, a severely wounded Graves was left among the dead, and lay delirious beneath the searing sun for days. In this stirring memoir, he also recalls the night the war ended: "The news sent me out walking...cursing and sobbing and thinking of the dead."
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks (Vintage, $16). Throughout the war, 25,000 British coal miners lived underground, tunneling beneath enemy lines to lay charges of TNT. The Germans were doing the same. The climactic scene of Birdsong, in which both sides engage in combat in the darkness far underground, is the most harrowing in the vast literature on the war.
SEE ALSO: Jack Jacobs' 6 favorite books about war
?
Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden (Penguin, $15). Boyden's novel follows two Cree men recruited as snipers by the Canadian army. Spare in style, it reads as one long, haunted hallucination ? the Western Front as seen through the eyes of the shaman.
The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell (Oxford, $20). If the war shattered the last vestiges of the old order, peace heralded the birth of modern times. This is the seminal book for understanding what the war implied for a "lost generation," and for the world to come.
SEE ALSO: Ann Beattie's 6 favorite books
?
? Wade Davis' new book,?Into the Silence,?investigates how the trauma of war shaped George Mallory's 1920s expeditions to Mount Everest.
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A newly identified primitive mammal-like animal was agile, sleek and had a voracious appetite for meat.
The animal, identified as a varanopid pelycosaur and part of the genus Aerosaurus, looked like today's Komodo dragons, but was actually more closely related to mammals, according to a study published in the journal Naturwissenschaften (The Science of Nature).
"Our varanopid was probably about the size of an adult Nile monitor found in Africa," co-author Sean Modesto told Discovery News.
"It would have looked superficially like one too. The curvature of the teeth (the tips curve back towards the throat) and the serrations on the cutting edges of these teeth suggest that the animal was equipped to rip flesh from vertebrate prey."
PHOTOS: Living Fossils: Animals From Another Time
One of the world's most successful fossil hunters, Roger Smith, found and collected the specimen, which consists of a partial skull and jaw. Smith, another co-author, discovered the remains in rocks from the Pristerognathus Assemblage Zone of the Beaufort Group, South Africa.
The carnivore is the youngest known primitive mammal-like mammal. It lived about 260 million years ago during the Permian Period and was part of "the first wave of creatures on the evolutionary line to mammals," said Modesto, an associate professor of biology at Cape Breton University.
WATCH VIDEO: From a tiny, tough guy T. rex to a mummified duck-billed dino, take a look at these stories and more in our dinosaurs playlist.
Modesto and his team studied the fossils. The remains, along with prior finds, indicate the mammal-like predators survived for more than 35 million years and, toward the end of their time on Earth, co-existed with more advanced animals.
"Advanced" in this case refers to mammal-like characteristics that evolved to varying degrees in species of the period.
Christian Sidor, curator of vertebrate paleontology and an associate professor of biology at the University of Washington, agrees that the fossils belonged to a varanopid.
Sidor told Discovery News that the newly discovered protomammal "represents an upward extension for varanopids." He wishes more fossils for the predator existed.
SCIENCE CHANNEL QUIZ: Fossils, How Much Do You Know?
As it stands, Modesto and his team can still tell that the new Aerosaurus had a more primitive body design. It's a design that proved to be successful.
"These animals were the most agile predators of their time, sleek-looking when compared to their contemporaries," co-author Robert Reisz from the University of Toronto Mississauga said. "They seem to have survived a major change in the terrestrial fauna that occurred during the Middle Permian, a poorly understood extinction event in the history of life on land."
Aerosaurus's razor sharp teeth, with their finely serrated cutting edges, are typical of hypercarnivores. These are animals with a diet consisting of more than 70 percent meat. It's doubtful then that the new mammal-like predator sunk its specialized choppers into plants very often.
The body plan survives to this day to some extent in Komodo lizards. Aerosaurus wasn't even related to these monitor lizards, according to the researchers.
"The resemblances are superficial because of convergent evolution: animals that have adapted to similar life styles often converge on the same body plans," explained Modesto.
Aerosaurus eventually died out. Another protomammal group, called the cynodonts, gave rise to mammals. The cynodonts appeared some 1-3 million years after the lifetime of the newly identified varanopid. It then took another 35 million years of evolution before the first actual mammals emerged.
ScienceDaily (Dec. 13, 2011) ? NASA's Cassini spacecraft successfully completed its closest-ever pass over Saturn's moon Dione on Dec. 12, slaloming its way through the Saturn system on its way to a close flyby of Titan. Cassini is expected to glide about 2,200 miles (3,600 kilometers) over the Titan surface on Dec. 13.
In the selection of the raw images obtained during the Cassini Dione flyby, Dione is sometimes joined by other moons. Mimas appears just beyond the dark side of Dione in one view. In another view, Epimetheus and Pandora appear together, along with Saturn's rings.
This Dione encounter was intended primarily for Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer and radio science subsystem. However, the imaging team did capture views of the distinctive, wispy fractures on the side of Dione that always trails in its orbit around Saturn. It also obtained images of a ridge called Janiculum Dorsa on the hemisphere of Dione that always leads in its orbit around Saturn. While other flybys produced more detailed views of the surface, the best resolved images from this flyby have scales ranging from about 1,100 feet (350 meters) to about 1,600 feet (500 meters) per pixel. Janiculum Dorsa will be imaged by Cassini at higher resolution in May 2012.
All of Cassini's raw images can be seen at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/raw/ .
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena manages the mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations team is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. JPL is a division of Caltech.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini .
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Old recipe making a come backPublic release date: 5-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Piotr Pogorzelski piotr.pogorzelski@eurekanetwork.org 32-277-70979 EUREKA
Humans ate sourdough bread in ancient times and it's remained a traditional part of the diets in some countries and regions. Now Baltic scientists have reinvented this centuries-old technique for the needs of the food industry during a three-year long EUREKA project.
Many European supermarkets offer loaves from around the continent - from the French baguette through to the Italian ciabatta and Germany's dark pumpernickel. But ironically, despite the variety, many consumers are turning back to local bakeries or even rolling up their sleeves to make their own bread at home like some of their grandparents. This new trend doesn't surprise food scientist Professor Grazina Juodeikiene who thinks we are searching for the kind of flavour and texture often sacrificed during industrial bread-making. She headed a three-year EUREKA project, which found a way to deliver taste while maintaining a long shelf life.
The Lithuanian scientist first began thinking about bread when a foreign company arrived in her country to teach local bakers how to bake bread types such as the popular baguette. "It was excellent but the next day you could play baseball with it," she jokes. "My idea was to develop bread with what I now call the big 5: longer shelf life, better flavour, better texture, with more dietary fibre and fewer additives."
Perhaps the most surprising thing about the project FERMFOOD is that Juodeikiene's team has found ways to meet the needs of modern consumers by drawing on an ancient bread-making technique. As in the other Baltic countries, Lithuanians still eat sourdough bread - a tangy tasting bread that uses a natural leavening method, which some trace back to the ancient Egyptians.
Ancient art
The leavening technique was replaced in many countries by industrially processed yeast and food additives, but sourdough bread has continued to be the main staple in the Baltics and some other regions of the world. In sourdough, the secret ingredient is a "starter" or "mother" of flour and water that ferments when a lactobacillus bacteria culture is added. That starter gives the lightness to the dough. This living culture is fed and preserved for use in successive loaves and often passed down through the generations.
In Lithuania, however, for many years, bakers relied on starters developed abroad. Juodeikiene felt it was time for Lithuania to have its own mother dough, produced through carefully developed know-how. During the project FERMFOOD, food scientists and technologists at the Kaunas University of Technology in Lithuania, the largest technical university in the Baltic States, gathered samples of the lactobacillus cultures from bakeries in the country. Given the importance of sourdough rye bread to the Baltic States, the researchers joined up with others in their field from Latvia and Estonia.
Winning approval to run a EUREKA project was a coup for researchers from a region with less experience of European research schemes. "It's often very difficult for new joiner countries like Lithuania to secure funding for research and application procedures need to be simplified for small companies from villages," says Juodeikiene.
Mould-resistant
Her three-country team analysed the different forms of cultures and explored which factors affected the sourdough bread and when it would go mouldy. Juodeikiene used cutting-edge equipment, which allowed her to test the texture of bread. Through using acoustic waves, the researchers were able to repeat their tests on the same slice of bread, since the equipment kept the slices intact. As they learnt more about the different lactic acid bacteria strains they were able to develop better effective cultures to produce more long-lasting bread they were able to test out their findings in the working bakeries.
The quest for the perfect loaf was full of painstaking research and sometimes unexpected results in the bakeries. Starters are affected by high temperatures in bakeries and the equipment used by different bakeries also affected the results. Nevertheless, some of the FERMFOOD loaves turned out to have shelf lives of three weeks and were mould-free.
Since the project finished, scientists from Kaunas University have been advising bakeries and businesses on fermentation products. The results are clear. The bakery UAB Alytaus Duona won two gold medals in 2008 and 2009 for its bread. Project partner UAB Ustukiu Malunas is now selling fermentation products commercially that were developed during FERMFOOD. In an age where people are trying to eat more healthily, sourdough bread-making is attractive. The method is ideally suitable for making rye bread - which has lower calories than many other types, as well as containing more dietary fibre since baker's yeast does not work well as a leavening agent with rye flour.
Feeding the world
FERMFOOD results have even attracted interest from outside Europe, with Lithuania's Japanese embassy paying a visit to Juodeikiene's laboratory to learn more about it. Juodeikiene is not just sitting back and savouring the success of the project, however. Having improved the quality of sour dough bread, she thinks it is time to improve the grain that produces it. "The next big challenge is how we feed a growing world population," she says. "We have no option but to intensify crop production."
She thinks that the discoveries made in FERMFOOD can be applied to produce grain that is resistant to rotting, which would allow for intensified crop production without harming the environment. "What was so nice about FERMFOOD is how practical it was and that I see such a future in this research," she says.
###
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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.
Old recipe making a come backPublic release date: 5-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Piotr Pogorzelski piotr.pogorzelski@eurekanetwork.org 32-277-70979 EUREKA
Humans ate sourdough bread in ancient times and it's remained a traditional part of the diets in some countries and regions. Now Baltic scientists have reinvented this centuries-old technique for the needs of the food industry during a three-year long EUREKA project.
Many European supermarkets offer loaves from around the continent - from the French baguette through to the Italian ciabatta and Germany's dark pumpernickel. But ironically, despite the variety, many consumers are turning back to local bakeries or even rolling up their sleeves to make their own bread at home like some of their grandparents. This new trend doesn't surprise food scientist Professor Grazina Juodeikiene who thinks we are searching for the kind of flavour and texture often sacrificed during industrial bread-making. She headed a three-year EUREKA project, which found a way to deliver taste while maintaining a long shelf life.
The Lithuanian scientist first began thinking about bread when a foreign company arrived in her country to teach local bakers how to bake bread types such as the popular baguette. "It was excellent but the next day you could play baseball with it," she jokes. "My idea was to develop bread with what I now call the big 5: longer shelf life, better flavour, better texture, with more dietary fibre and fewer additives."
Perhaps the most surprising thing about the project FERMFOOD is that Juodeikiene's team has found ways to meet the needs of modern consumers by drawing on an ancient bread-making technique. As in the other Baltic countries, Lithuanians still eat sourdough bread - a tangy tasting bread that uses a natural leavening method, which some trace back to the ancient Egyptians.
Ancient art
The leavening technique was replaced in many countries by industrially processed yeast and food additives, but sourdough bread has continued to be the main staple in the Baltics and some other regions of the world. In sourdough, the secret ingredient is a "starter" or "mother" of flour and water that ferments when a lactobacillus bacteria culture is added. That starter gives the lightness to the dough. This living culture is fed and preserved for use in successive loaves and often passed down through the generations.
In Lithuania, however, for many years, bakers relied on starters developed abroad. Juodeikiene felt it was time for Lithuania to have its own mother dough, produced through carefully developed know-how. During the project FERMFOOD, food scientists and technologists at the Kaunas University of Technology in Lithuania, the largest technical university in the Baltic States, gathered samples of the lactobacillus cultures from bakeries in the country. Given the importance of sourdough rye bread to the Baltic States, the researchers joined up with others in their field from Latvia and Estonia.
Winning approval to run a EUREKA project was a coup for researchers from a region with less experience of European research schemes. "It's often very difficult for new joiner countries like Lithuania to secure funding for research and application procedures need to be simplified for small companies from villages," says Juodeikiene.
Mould-resistant
Her three-country team analysed the different forms of cultures and explored which factors affected the sourdough bread and when it would go mouldy. Juodeikiene used cutting-edge equipment, which allowed her to test the texture of bread. Through using acoustic waves, the researchers were able to repeat their tests on the same slice of bread, since the equipment kept the slices intact. As they learnt more about the different lactic acid bacteria strains they were able to develop better effective cultures to produce more long-lasting bread they were able to test out their findings in the working bakeries.
The quest for the perfect loaf was full of painstaking research and sometimes unexpected results in the bakeries. Starters are affected by high temperatures in bakeries and the equipment used by different bakeries also affected the results. Nevertheless, some of the FERMFOOD loaves turned out to have shelf lives of three weeks and were mould-free.
Since the project finished, scientists from Kaunas University have been advising bakeries and businesses on fermentation products. The results are clear. The bakery UAB Alytaus Duona won two gold medals in 2008 and 2009 for its bread. Project partner UAB Ustukiu Malunas is now selling fermentation products commercially that were developed during FERMFOOD. In an age where people are trying to eat more healthily, sourdough bread-making is attractive. The method is ideally suitable for making rye bread - which has lower calories than many other types, as well as containing more dietary fibre since baker's yeast does not work well as a leavening agent with rye flour.
Feeding the world
FERMFOOD results have even attracted interest from outside Europe, with Lithuania's Japanese embassy paying a visit to Juodeikiene's laboratory to learn more about it. Juodeikiene is not just sitting back and savouring the success of the project, however. Having improved the quality of sour dough bread, she thinks it is time to improve the grain that produces it. "The next big challenge is how we feed a growing world population," she says. "We have no option but to intensify crop production."
She thinks that the discoveries made in FERMFOOD can be applied to produce grain that is resistant to rotting, which would allow for intensified crop production without harming the environment. "What was so nice about FERMFOOD is how practical it was and that I see such a future in this research," she says.
###
[ | 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.
Best Sporting News Sites - As football season arrives, a lot of people are discussing... su.pr/32VKvo #blog #car #cnn #espn #flare 
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If you are a "female" you apparently choose clothing in the form of "outfits," a sort of ritualized selection process that allows you to look "good" in a different set of clothes each day. While I subscribe to Thoreau's maxim - "Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and, incidentally, when your neighbors come over to your place on Walden and catch a whiff of you, you'll be even more alone" - it is my understanding that some "ladies" like to change their "clothes" daily and they often need help facilitating this process. But what is a lady to do if she cannot remember what outfits she has worn in the past month? Cry? Yell at the barista? No. She uses 
Googler Daniel Russell knows how to find the answers to questions you can't get to with a simple Google query. In his weekly Search Research column, Russell issues a search challenge, then follows up later in the week with his solution?using whatever search technology and methodology fits the bill. This week's challenge: Find that trail! ![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sNuYxEj7T9SOWi6tQ1o5n35WjEAFBRy1eIbagN97vrO1yQw_9TtzyGCIObqwtoisxqCmEfpV1ODpL9CnvYeamDnMiGms6xTM3_xTvzfhc=s0-d){kind=small}
Public release date: 5-Dec-2011
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