Tawny Crazy Ants Invade Southern States

Tawny crazy ants are invading ecosystems and homes in states including Texas and Florida, wiping out other ant species and overwhelming homeowners. Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon talks to Texas A&M research scientist Robert Puckett, who says the ants are "ecological steamrollers" that reproduce so fast they are nearly impossible to get rid of.

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=194523225&ft=1&f=1007

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Obama Puts Presidential Push Behind Climate Change

After putting climate change on the backburner since his legislative efforts failed in Congress three years ago, President Obama appears ready to again expend political clout on the issue.

Obama announced in a web video Saturday that he will give a speech Tuesday at Georgetown University to "lay out my vision for where I believe we need to go: A national plan to reduce carbon pollution, prepare our country for the impacts of climate change and lead global efforts to fight it."

The cornerstone of the administration's plan will be regulating greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants, which account for almost 40 percent of the country's carbon emissions, according to sources familiar with the forthcoming plan.

"I think he's going to say the agency is going to pursue a regulatory program for existing sources," said one industry source aware of the administration's strategy.

The Environmental Protection Agency has already proposed draft rules to control greenhouse gas emissions from new plants, but it is existing facilities that matter most in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

For the last four years, EPA has been quietly laying the groundwork for these rules, compelled to do so by a Supreme Court ruling in 2007 and a subsequent scientific finding in 2009 that concluded greenhouse gas emissions endanger the public's health and welfare. But amid the presidential election and other political priorities, these EPA rules have not received the presidential backing necessary to get them across the finish line.

Tuesday's speech could change the political dynamics significantly. Obama is signaling that he does, indeed, want to make this a legacy issue for his administration as he had said in both his inaugural and State of the Union addresses.

"It's just a question of getting this process started," said Jody Freeman, who worked in the White House on energy and climate issues during Obama's first term and is now a professor at Harvard University. "If he's out there talking about it, he's saying we're at the starting line, let's go. That unleashes the agencies to do the work they can do. There is no reason they can't succeed if they start now."

Combating climate change via regulation is the least popular and efficient way to go, analysts say, but it may be the only tool Obama has left. The plan is already inciting political backlash on Capitol Hill. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, reacted to the anticipated plan last week, saying it was "absolutely crazy."

Obama is not expected to mention the Keystone XL pipeline in his speech, which environmentalists have seized on as a rallying cry to combat climate change. A final decision on that project won't occur until later this year or early next year.

The other parts of the plan Obama is expected to announce on Tuesday include speeding up development of renewable energy on public lands and toughening energy-efficiency standards for appliances.

?

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-puts-presidential-push-behind-climate-change-180347952.html

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James Gandolfini's last two movies

TV

Maria Elena Fernandez TODAY

11 hours ago

Jason LaVeris / FilmMagic

James Gandolfini at the premiere of "Zero Dark Thirty" in Hollywood in 2012.

Fans of James Gandolfini's work will get to spend a little more time with the Emmy-winning actor on the big screen. "The Sopranos" star, who died of a heart attack while on vacation in Italy on Wednesday, completed two movies that will probably be released next year, a spokesperson at Creative Artists Agency said.

In a 360-degree departure from the grittier types of roles Gandolfini is most known for, the 51-year-old actor played a lovable sweetheart in the Fox Searchlight dramedy, "Enough Said." Gandolfini plays Albert, who falls in love with a woman played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Catherine Keener plays Albert's ex wife. Shot last summer in Los Angeles, "Enough Said" was directed by Nicole Holofcener ("Friends with Money").

Gandolfini's last movie will be "Animal Rescue," also a Fox Searchlight production that filmed in Brooklyn. Based on a short story by Dennis Lehane, the film stars Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace. Gandolfini plays a cousin of Hardy's character, who owns the bar where he works. It was directed by Michael Roskam ("Bullhead").

Gandolfini also was due to return to the network that transformed him from character actor to superstar. The actor was set to star in a HBO seven-episode mini-series and a movie.

The miniseries, "Criminal Justice," is based on the BBC series of the same title and featured Gandolfini as an ambulance-chasing lawyer who is in over his head while defending a man accused of murdering a girl. An HBO spokesperson said the network hasn't decided on the future of the project.

Pat Healy, the screenwriter working on "Eating with the Enemy," an HBO film that would have starred Gandolfini, said that project is up in the air now but he hopes to complete it "for Jim." Based on barbecue chef Robert Egan's memoir about the 15 years he spent as a conduit between the U.S. and North Korean governments, the film was in its final rewrite stages.

Healy, who met with Gandolfini and HBO executives in Santa Monica on Friday to get their notes for his final rewrite, said "The Sopranos" star loved the script and was excited to travel to New Jersey to meet with Egan in person.

"It?s sad those guys will never meet," Healy said. "I think they would have been friends. Although I can?t possibly imagine who we will do the movie with, I have a new sense of invigoration of getting it done for Jim. I just want to do a really great job for him because he would have wanted that."

HBO paid a short tribute to the actor on YouTube on Friday.

Source: http://www.today.com/entertainment/james-gandolfinis-last-two-movies-6C10410594

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U.S. seeks Snowden's extradition, urges Hong Kong to act quickly

By Steve Holland and Phil Stewart

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States pressured Hong Kong on Saturday to act quickly on its request to extradite Edward Snowden, a former U.S. National Security Agency contractor charged with espionage for exposing secret U.S. surveillance activities.

"If Hong Kong doesn't act soon, it will complicate our bilateral relations and raise questions about Hong Kong's commitment to the rule of law," a senior Obama administration official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Sources say Snowden, who has been hiding in Hong Kong, has sought legal representation from human rights lawyers as he prepares to fight attempts to force him back to the United States to face trial.

U.S. National Security Adviser Tom Donilon told CBS News the United States had a "good case" against Snowden and expected Hong Kong to comply with its 1998 extradition treaty with the United States.

"We have gone to the Hong Kong authorities seeking extradition of Snowden back to the United States," Donilon said.

He added that U.S. law enforcement officials were in a "conversation" with Hong Kong authorities about the issue.

"Hong Kong has been a historically good partner of the United States in law enforcement matters and we expect them to comply with the treaty in this case," Donilon said.

A senior U.S. law enforcement source said extradition "can, of course, be a lengthy legal process" but expressed optimism that Snowden would be extradited.

The South China Morning Post said on Saturday that Snowden was not detained or in police protection - as reported elsewhere - and instead was in a "safe place" somewhere in Hong Kong.

The paper also quoted Snowden offering new details about U.S. spy activities, including accusations of U.S. hacking of Chinese mobile phone companies.

"The NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cellphone companies to steal all of your SMS (texting) data," Snowden was quoted by the Post as saying during a June 12 interview.

Documents previously leaked by Snowden revealed that the NSA has access to vast amounts of internet data such as emails, chat rooms and video from large companies such as Facebook and Google, under a government program known as Prism.

They also showed that the government had worked through the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to gather so-called metadata - such as the time, duration and telephone numbers called - on all calls carried by service providers such as Verizon.

On Friday, the Guardian newspaper, citing documents shared by Snowden, said Britain's spy agency GCHQ had tapped fiber-optic cables that carry international phone and internet traffic and is sharing vast quantities of personal information with the NSA.

ESPIONAGE CHARGES

The United States charged Snowden with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorized person, according to the criminal complaint made public on Friday.

The latter two offenses fall under the U.S. Espionage Act and carry penalties of up to 10 years in prison.

Scores of Americans have been sent back home from Hong Kong to face trial under the extradition treaty. But the process can take years, lawyers say, and Snowden's case could be particularly complex.

America's use of the Espionage Act against Snowden has fueled debate among legal experts about whether that could complicate his extradition, since the treaty includes an exception for political offenses and Hong Kong courts may choose to shield him from prosecution.

Snowden says he leaked the details of the classified U.S. surveillance to expose abusive and illegal programs that trampled on citizens' privacy rights.

President Barack Obama and his intelligence chiefs have vigorously defended the programs, saying they are regulated by law and that Congress was notified. They say the programs have been used to thwart militant plots and do not target Americans' personal lives.

Stephen Vladeck, a professor at American University's Washington College of Law who studies national security issues, said there is no clear definition of what constitutes a political offense under the treaty.

"My intuition says it'll be easier for Snowden to argue espionage is a political offense than (the U.S. charge of) theft of government property," Vladeck said.

The South China Morning Post reported on Saturday that Snowden said he had documents showing NSA had hacked major Chinese telecoms companies to access text messages and targeted China's top Tsinghua University.

The NSA program also hacked the Hong Kong headquarters of Pacnet, which has an extensive fiber-optic network, the paper said.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Steve Holland; Additional reporting by James Pomfret, Venus Wu and Grace Li in Hong Kong, Tabassum Zakaria and Mark Hosenball in Washington, Nate Raymond in New York; Writing by Phil Stewart; Editing by Eric Beech)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-files-espionage-charges-against-snowden-over-leaks-015108216.html

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PFT: Browns owner's legal woes continue

AP

Maybe ESPN should bring back Playmakers.? Not as a scripted show, but as a documentary.

At a time when a prominent NFL player faces apparently significant entanglement in a murder investigation, the league?s newest owner could eventually find himself facing a federal indictment.

According to Nate Rau of the Tennessean, Pilot Flying J executive Jay Stinnett stated in his plea agreement that ?senior management were aware of the rebate reduction scheme? that has resulted in five guilty pleas, with possibly more on the way.

The document, per Rau, doesn?t identify specific members of senior management.? The most senior member of management is Browns owner Jimmy Haslam, the CEO of Pilot Flying J.

Stinnett began cooperating with the federal government the same day the IRS and FBI showed up unannounced to search corporate headquarters, and other locations.? Stinnett agreed to cooperate with investigators and to testify in any court proceedings.

The investigation focuses on rebates and discounts that were not given to customers deemed too unsophisticated to realize they were being shorted.? Throughout the process, Haslam has downplayed the extent of the scam and denied any knowledge of it on his watch.

Look for the authorities to continue working their way up the Pilot Flying J ladder, prosecuting as far as the evidence will take them ? even if (or especially if) it takes them all the way to the top of the company.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/06/22/pilot-flying-j-exec-senior-management-knew-of-rebate-fraud/

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Animal study shows promising path to prevent epilepsy

June 20, 2013 ? Duke Medicine researchers have identified a receptor in the nervous system that may be key to preventing epilepsy following a prolonged period of seizures.

Their findings from studies in mice, published online in the journal Neuron on June 20, 2013, provide a molecular target for developing drugs to prevent the onset of epilepsy, not just manage the disease's symptoms.

"Unfortunately, there are no preventive therapies for any common disorder of the human nervous system -- Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, schizophrenia, epilepsy -- with the exception of blood pressure-lowering drugs to reduce the likelihood of stroke," said study author James O. McNamara, M.D., professor of neurobiology at Duke Medicine.

Epilepsy is a serious neurological disorder marked by recurring seizures. Temporal lobe epilepsy -- where seizures occur in the region of the brain where memories are stored and language, emotions and senses are processed -- is the most common form, and can be devastating. Because afflicted individuals have seizures that impair their awareness and may have associated behavioral problems, they may have difficulty with everyday activities, including holding a job or obtaining a driver's license.

Conventional therapies to treat epilepsy address the disease's symptoms by trying to reduce the likelihood of having a seizure. However, many people with temporal lobe epilepsy still have seizures despite taking these drugs.

"This study opens a promising new avenue of research into treatments that may prevent the development of epilepsy," said Vicky Whittemore, PhD, a program director at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, who oversees the grants that funded this study.

Retrospective studies of people with severe temporal lobe epilepsy reveal that many of them initially have an episode of prolonged seizures, known as status epilepticus. Status epilepticus is often followed by a period of seizure-free recovery before people start to experience recurring temporal lobe seizures.

In animal studies, inducing status epilepticus in an otherwise healthy animal can cause them to become epileptic. The prolonged seizures in status epilepticus are therefore thought to cause or importantly contribute to the development of epilepsy in humans.

"An important goal of this field has been to identify the molecular mechanism by which status epilepticus transforms a brain from normal to epileptic," said McNamara. "Understanding that mechanism in molecular terms would provide a target with which one could intervene pharmacologically, perhaps to prevent an individual from becoming epileptic."

Earlier research in epilepsy flagged a receptor in the nervous system called TrkB as a key player in transforming the brain from normal to epileptic. In the current study, McNamara and his colleagues sought to confirm if TrkB was important for status epilepticus-induced epilepsy.

Using an approach combining chemistry and genetic analyses, the researchers studied normal and genetically altered mice. The genetically altered mice were unique in that a drug, 1NMPP1, inhibited TrkB in their brains. If the drug stopped the genetically altered mice from becoming epileptic, this genetic approach would prove that inhibiting TrkB prevents the onset of epilepsy.

When the researchers caused status epilepticus in the animals, both the normal and genetically modified mice developed epilepsy. However, treatment with 1NMPP1 after the prolonged period of seizures prevented epilepsy in the genetically altered but not the normal mice.

"This demonstrated that it is possible to intervene following status epilepticus and prevent the animal from becoming epileptic," McNamara said.

Importantly, the researchers only administered treatment with 1NMPP1 for two weeks, which was sufficient to prevent epilepsy from developing in the mice when tested many weeks later. The results suggest that a preventive therapy may only need to be given for a limited period of time following the initial bout of prolonged seizures, not an individual's entire life, which could prevent unnecessary side effects that come with long-term use of drugs.

In future studies, the researchers hope to determine the exact time window in which TrkB signaling needs to be repressed to prevent the onset of epilepsy. Long term, this research provides a molecular target for developing the first drugs to prevent epilepsy.

"This study provides a strong rationale for the development of selective inhibitors of TrkB signaling," said McNamara.

In addition to McNamara, study authors include Gumei Liu, Bin Gu, Xiao-Ping He, Rasesh B. Joshi, Harold D. Wackerle, Ramona Marie Rodriguiz and William C. Wetsel. The study was supported by funding from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NS56217 and NS060728).

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/08MUQwLgPaU/130620132103.htm

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You don't need a beautiful weather app to know which way the wind blows

by Rob Walker | @YahooTech

Last week, Business Insider published its picks for the ?15 companies that are dominating mobile design right now.? Perusing that list, I was struck that four of the examples involved weather apps. Weather apps! Remembering too that Apple?s recent demo of its forthcoming iOS upgrade focused pretty heavily on the new version of its weather app, I got to wondering: How can it be that more than a quarter of ?dominant? design involves such a workaday category?

Upon reflection, this storm of weather apps makes sense if you think about it from the design-world point of view. Designers love creating new things, but what they really love is trying to make a better version of something that already exists. This is why, for example, pretty much every industrial designer creates a chair. It?s not as though the core problem ? something to sit on ? has never been tackled, or changed much. But a fresh take on an iconic thing is a catnip-level challenge, and a possible ticket to immortality via object.

Perhaps, then, weather is the chair of apps.

That explains the appeal to interaction designers: It?s the opportunity to place an auteur?s stamp on a familiar category. But what about the rest of us?

The fact that weather apps are popular, and likely occupy prominent spots on untold numbers of smart phone home screens, does not mean we want to spend a lot of time with them. Quite the opposite: If you want to know how cold it is outside, you want to know now. If you?re trying to decide whether to pack an umbrella for a weekend jaunt to the coast, even drool-worthy aesthetics are a problem if they delay your access to the relevant data. In this case, truth is more important than beauty: Actual weather information is pretty close to being a commodity, so the interaction designer?s challenge is to get out of the way as beautifully as possible.

As with chairs, this is harder than it sounds: A gorgeous chair that?s uncomfortable to sit in is also known as landfill.

When I looked at the overwhelming selection on the Apple and Google Play app stores, I was suddenly thankful for that mobile-dominance list narrowing things down for me; you don?t need 27 weather apps to know which way the wind blows. Let?s examine this handful of lauded takes on the weather app see how variable the conditions really are in this category.

1. Yahoo! Weather. Screamingly obvious disclosure: You are reading a Yahoo News page right now. Factor that in as you wish.

This happens to be the weather app I use, and no, that?s not out of some sort of weird corporate loyalty. The typography is clean and engaging, it offers three screens of data for every city I choose, and I have a weakness for the app?s most prominent gimmick: rotating geographic-and-weather-specific background imagery crowdsourced from a dedicated Flickr pool. (Yahoo! owns Flickr.) This actually makes it mildly fun to check the app even when I already know that it is pouring rain.

Also: This is the only app in this roundup available for Android and iOS devices. And it?s free.

2. Sun. Go from Yahoo! Weather to this and there?s no denying that approaches to solving the weather-app challenge can vary wildly. If you?re into the super-flat, ultra-minimal tiles-and-icon aesthetic, this one is for you.

Looks aside, Sun has two features I like a lot. One: You can see current-condition summaries, elegantly simplified, on a single page. If (like me) you?re a multi-city weather-tracker, this is cool. Two: The home screen icon shows the current temperature wherever you are, so you don?t have to open the app. (Why don?t all weather apps do this?)

Downsides? It?s a little light on data, and a weird wavy-line forecast tool is slightly neat to play with, but it?s not exactly intuitive, and actually adds to user effort.

This is a Web-based app for iOS devices; it?s free.

3. Haze. This app is for those who like a little more razzmatazz in the graphic representation of basic weather data. The home screen shows the current temperature, and then alludes to the forecast by way of animated, colored bars pulsing either upward or downward in the background. Tap once to get a similar presentation of precipitation chances.

Pleasurable to interact with, Haze also skimps (for my taste) on data, or at least didn?t make it easy to find what I wanted: Forecast high temperatures are plainly visible, but sometimes you want to know what the low might be two or three days from now, and I don?t see how to do that. It also makes sounds (these can be disabled), which doesn?t do anything for me.

This iOS app costs $2.99.

4. Dark Sky. The disconcertingly threatening name of this app is echoed by its look. It opens to a black-and-blue map with spooky radar-like depictions of cloud cover that you can manipulate with a slider along the bottom. When the skies over New York proved to be clear, the app suggested I check out its visualization of storms over some place called Solon Springs, WI.

Okay. Indeed, that?s pretty entertaining for a moment or two ? make the apocalyptic-looking clouds move with your finger! Cool! But you can?t get a real forecast from Dark Sky ? this is definitely a supplemental app, for true weather freaks who enjoy ?minute-to-minute predictions,? depicted in a way that makes you feel like you?re sitting in some Mission Control bunker.

Also an iOS app, this one goes for $3.99

In short: Yes, this does turn out to be an impressive array of design responses to a single notion. But I wouldn?t mind seeing some of this interaction creativity finding its way to newer categories. And after spending the day manipulating these clever bits of mobile design, I can say with confidence I?d rather have another chair than another weather app.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/best-weather-apps-design-143845000.html

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