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Friday, October 5, 2012
Google Pockets Viewdle in Brewing Facial Recognition Face-off
Google-owned Motorola Mobility is acquiring Viewdle, a Ukrainian firm that makes facial recognition technology. Motorola had been in talks with Viewdle before it was acquired by Google. The acquisition of Viewdle, a pioneer in technology that recognizes and tags people in photos, figures to be a boon for Google+, Android and other Google services.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Brain growth depends on shapely neurons
The human brain may be the most complex object in the universe, but its construction mostly depends on one thing: the shape of neurons.
Different kinds of neuron are selective about which other neurons they connect to and where they attach. Specific signalling chemicals are thought to be vital in guiding this process.
Henry Markram of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne and colleagues built 3D computer models of the rat somatosensory cortex, each containing a random mix of cell types found in rat brains, but no signalling chemicals. Nevertheless, 74 per cent of the connections ended up in the correct place, merely by allowing the cells to develop into their normal shape.
The results suggest that much of the brain could be mapped without incorporating signalling chemicals. This is good news for neuroscientists struggling to map the brain's dizzying web of connections. "It would otherwise take decades to map each synapse in the brain," says Markram.
The work could also help untangle the causes of conditions like schizophrenia that are thought to be caused by flaws in brain wiring. If Markram's work proves correct, malformed neurons that don't connect up properly could be a factor.
Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1202128109
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Monday, September 17, 2012
Attackers at British airfield in Afghanistan wore U.S. uniforms
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Coalition military authorities in Afghanistan say the insurgents who attacked a British airfield in southwestern Afghanistan on Friday, killing two U.S. Marines, wore U.S. Army uniforms and destroyed six Harrier fighter jets.
They said in a statement Saturday that about 15 insurgents carried out the attack, describing the attack as well coordinated by insurgents who were "well equipped, trained and rehearsed." Fourteen of the 15 were killed. One was captured.
They said attackers penetrated the base's perimeter and were armed with automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and suicide vests. Besides destroying six planes, they destroyed three refueling stations on the base and damaged six aircraft hangars.
Coalition authorities have not yet identified the two Marines killed. Eight military members and one civilian contractor were also injured in the assault.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/attackers-afghanistan-wore-us-uniforms-010844344.html
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Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Jurors to begin deliberations at Peterson trial
FILE - This May 7, 2009 file photo provided by the Will County, Ill., Sheriff's office shows former Bolingbrook, Ill., police officer Drew Peterson. Peterson is charged with first-degree murder in the 2004 drowning death of his former wife Kathleen Savio. He has pleaded not guilty. (AP Photo/Will County Sheriff's Office, File)
FILE - This May 7, 2009 file photo provided by the Will County, Ill., Sheriff's office shows former Bolingbrook, Ill., police officer Drew Peterson. Peterson is charged with first-degree murder in the 2004 drowning death of his former wife Kathleen Savio. He has pleaded not guilty. (AP Photo/Will County Sheriff's Office, File)
Members of Drew Peterson's defense team leave the Will County Courthouse, Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2012, in Joliet, Ill. after closing arguments in Peterson's murder trial. Peterson is charged in the 2004 death of his third wife Kathleen Savio. Jurors are expected to begin deliberating tomorrow. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)
Joel Brodsky, attorney for former Bolingbrook police officer Drew Peterson, addresses the media upon leaving the Will County Courthouse, Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2012, in Joliet, Ill., after closing arguments in Peterson's murder trial. Peterson is charged in the 2004 death of his third wife Kathleen Savio. Jurors are expected to begin deliberating tomorrow. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)
JOLIET, Ill. (AP) ? Now, it's jurors' turn.
After years of speculation, national media attention and more than a month of testimony, allegations that Drew Peterson murdered his third wife are finally expected to go to a jury Wednesday.
The 12 jurors ? seven men and five women ? are scheduled to receive instructions from the judge in the morning, then withdraw to a Joliet courthouse room to begin deliberating over five weeks of circumstantial and hearsay evidence.
Peterson, 58, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in Kathleen Savio's 2004 death. The former Bolingbrook police sergeant fell under scrutiny in Savio's death only after his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, disappeared in 2007.
Peterson's attorneys said their client has braced himself for jurors' decision.
"He's emotionally and mentally prepared for whatever happens," his lead attorney, Joel Brodsy, told reporters after closing arguments Tuesday.
His lawyers also said they have no inkling what jurors might be thinking or how they might be leaning.
"Of course, we're worried," Joe Lopez, who delivered the closing for the defense, said about the final verdict. "Nobody knows what's going to happen."
Judge Edward Burmila sent jurors home late Tuesday after closings dragged on longer than expected. He reminded jurors not to watch or read anything about the case and told them to get a good night's sleep.
They might need it in a challenging case where there is no physical evidence and where ? for the first time in Illinois history ? a trial relies heavily on hearsay evidence.
During closing arguments Tuesday, prosecutors implored jurors to use common sense in assessing the evidence, while the defense said the state fell far short of proving Peterson killed his third wife.
Prosecutor Chris Koch began his remarks by walking up to the defense table, pointing at the 58-year-old Peterson and declaring in a booming voice, "It is clear this man killed Kathleen Savio."
Savio's body was found in her bathtub ? her hair soaked with blood and a gash on the back of her head. Prosecutors contend Peterson killed the 40-year-old aspiring nurse because he feared a pending divorce settlement would wipe him out financially. The defense contends she died in an accidental slip and fall.
As he spoke, Koch displayed a photograph of a smiling Savio, juxtaposing it with another picture of her bloated corpse jammed into her bathtub.
As he has during most of the six-week trial, Peterson looked on calmly from the defense table, occasionally taking notes or whispering something to his attorneys.
Peterson is suspected but hasn't been charged in Stacy Peterson's disappearance. Prosecutors were barred from mentioning or hinting that she is presumed dead and that her husband is the lone suspect in her disappearance. While outside observers connect Savio's death and Stacy Peterson's disappearance, jurors aren't supposed to factor that Stacy Peterson vanished into their deliberations.
Punching his fist into his palm for emphasis, Koch told jurors Thursday that Drew Peterson broke into his estranged wife's home ? just a few blocks from Drew and Stacy Peterson's house in Bolingbrook ? in the early morning hours before March 1, 2004.
"He went into that house, pushed her down, held her down until she inhaled fluid and drowned," said Koch.
Investigators botched the initial investigation into Savio's death and collected no fingerprints, blood, hair samples or any other physical evidence, leaving prosecutors with a circumstantial case.
Koch went through more than a dozen hearsay statements Savio allegedly made to others before she died and that Stacy Peterson made before she disappeared. Hearsay, or statements not based on the direct knowledge of a witness, isn't usually admissible in court, but Illinois passed a law in 2008, dubbed "Drew's Law," that allows it in rare circumstances.
Koch reminded jurors that one witness testified how Savio had described Drew Peterson saying to her, "I'm going to kill you." Another witness said Peterson told Savio he could employ his police expertise to kill her and make it look like an accident.
Defense attorney Lopez countered in his two-hour closing that the state had presented "garbage evidence" during its five-week presentation of more than 30 witnesses.
"The framers of the Constitution would barf on this evidence," he said.
He said the hearsay was no more credible than water-cooler gossip they might hear around the office.
"How many times are you at work and you hear someone say something about someone ? they're lying!" he said.
Lopez told jurors that when they deliberate, they should hear a voice whispering that Peterson is innocent. Pointing to an American flag by at the judge's bench, he said that presumption was the bedrock of the U.S. justice system.
"You have to find he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt ? not maybe, not probably," he said.
Lopez frequently doubled back to his central argument: The state hadn't even proven Savio's death was a murder. He conceded statistics indicate fatal slips in bathtubs are one in a million, but that all the evidence suggests that's just what happened to Savio.
"Are you trying to tell me no one has ever slipped in a bathtub before?" he asked. "That's why they sell rubber mats with suction cups on them."
But Koch told jurors it would be impossible for Savio to have received the wound on the back of her head and 14 bruises on the front of her body unless someone had attacked her.
"How can you get (all those wounds) in one fall?" he asked. "You can't."
If convicted, Peterson faces a maximum 60-year prison sentence.
___
Follow Michael Tarm at www.twitter.com/mtarm
Associated PressMonday, August 27, 2012
Tampa streets not filled with GOP protesters
Protest marchers move with a puppet depicting Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney during a march, Sunday, Aug. 26, 2012, in Tampa, Fla. Hundreds of protestors gathered in Gas Light Park in downtown Tampa to march in demonstration against the Republican National Convention. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)
Protest marchers move with a puppet depicting Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney during a march, Sunday, Aug. 26, 2012, in Tampa, Fla. Hundreds of protestors gathered in Gas Light Park in downtown Tampa to march in demonstration against the Republican National Convention. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)
Demonstrators march, in Tampa, Fla., Sunday, Aug. 26, 2012. Hundreds of protestors gathered in Gas Light Park in downtown Tampa to march in demonstration against the Republican National Convention. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)
Demonstrators march, in Tampa, Fla., Sunday, Aug. 26, 2012. Hundreds of protestors gathered in Gas Light Park in downtown Tampa to march in demonstration against the Republican National Convention. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)
Franz Nertte, of Miami, shouts during a protest march in Tampa, Fla., Sunday, Aug. 26, 2012. Hundreds of protestors gathered in Gas Light Park in downtown Tampa to march in demonstration against the Republican National Convention. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)
Ganzalo Valdes, of Tampa, Fla., marches with demonstrators in Tampa, Fla., Sunday, Aug. 26, 2012. Hundreds of protestors gathered in Gas Light Park in downtown Tampa to march in demonstration against the Republican National Convention. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) ? You can't see them. You can barely hear them over the din of the wind and rain swirling in the skies above from Tropical Storm Isaac. Protesters are here but it's highly unlikely they'll come close to crossing paths with Republicans for the presidential nominating convention.
Protesters are being kept blocks away and, so far, they've gathered in groups several dozen to a few hundred. But the worries of massive protests that might bring violence and a cacophony of chanting have been elusive.
With Isaac making its way northward toward the Gulf Coast, brushing Tampa Bay, the Republican National Convention has been pushed off to a later start. Protesters might also be staying away because of the storm, whose path and intensity has been difficult to predict. Isaac's outer bands were already bringing intermittent rain and gusts of wind but no downpours, and the usual August heat and humidity was being kept relatively at bay.
Sunday's protests ran the gamut from unionized labor and Occupy Wall Street to a hearty band of 30 who criticized presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney for putting his dog Seamus in a crate atop his station wagon on a long-ago family vacation.
"If somebody is going to treat their animal inhumanely, how are they going to treat our country?" said Kim Swygert, 37, a law student from Tampa, who came with her Great Dane.
Several carried anti-Romney signs including one that read, "Don't roof rack me, bro."
Those who turned out said they were hoping for more demonstrators, but the lousy weather kept people away.
"A lot of people were afraid to come out because of the approaching rain and thunder," said Sarah Kilker, who was accompanied by a long-haired Chihuahua and a mixed chow and terrier.
The streets of Tampa didn't resemble St. Paul, Minn., in 2008, when thousands of protesters packed the city for the last Republican convention. Some smashed cars, punctured tires and threw bottles in a confrontation with pepper-spray wielding police. Hundreds were arrested over a few days, including dozens of journalists. Authorities in Tampa say they learned from that convention and Congress allocated $50 million for security.
A few hundred protesters braved the intermittent rain and wind at a park about a half-mile from the convention site of the Tampa Bay Times Forum. They were watching large blocks of ice that spelled out the words "middle class" melt, saying it represented the erosion of the middle class in America. The art installation was planned for Monday but moved up because of the weather.
Fifty-two-year-old Donald Butner says he's been sleeping at the Occupy-Tampa camp for a few months and that "we're here, baby, rain or shine. The weather is going to do what it is going to do."
Marchers chanted "we are the 99 percent" and carried homemade signs. The 99 percent refers to the group's message that most don't share in the wealth of America.
That message rang true for 52-year-old Tom Gaurapp and 54-year-old Cheryl Landecker from Freeport, Ill. Both worked for Sensata Technologies, owned by Bain Capital, in the city of some 25,000 people. They say 170 jobs there, including their own, were outsourced to China.
Gaurapp and Landecker said that just a few years ago, they never would have considered joining such a protest.
"But then again, we wouldn't have dreamed our jobs would have gone to China," Gaurapp said.
For months, protesters were gearing up for scores of people to converge on Tampa the day before the convention began to showcase their laundry list of beefs and key messages.
Neither protesters nor the GOP, however, could foresee Tropical Storm Isaac, which is expected to become a dangerous Category 2 hurricane by the time it makes land over the northern Gulf Coast sometime late Tuesday or early Wednesday. Tampa won't bear the brunt, but winds, heavy rain and perhaps flooding are expected Monday.
Though jobs and uneven distribution of wealth were strong messages, those who did show up didn't seem to have a universal theme.
Some came to oppose just Mitt Romney as a candidate. Others didn't seem to care for Romney or President Barack Obama.
A more spirited but still tame protest of 500 to 1,000 people was held for about an hour in St. Petersburg, about 15 miles away, at the Republican kickoff party at Tropicana Field. The relations between protesters and police ? who were on foot, bikes and horses ? was amicable. One protester was spotted chatting with an officer under a palm tree about the track of Isaac.
Though protesters vow to stay put, if the weather threatens their safety or that of visitors on the streets, police officers will use public address systems and go person-to-person to warn them to leave, said Tampa Police Chief Jane Castor.
Castor said if "it becomes an issue of public safety, we will order people into shelters."
At least one arrest was made. A man that police said had a machete strapped to his leg was subdued after he resisted officers, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.
___
Associated Press writers Brendan Farrington, Michael Schneider and Peter Prengaman contributed to this report.
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Thursday, August 16, 2012
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Tuesday, August 7, 2012
'Chorus Line' composer Marvin Hamlisch dies
By Chris Talbott, Associated Press
Cindy Ord / Getty Images
Marvin Hamlisch, who composed or arranged the scores for dozens of movies including "The Sting" and the Broadway smash "A Chorus Line," has died in Los Angeles. He was 68.
Hamlisch collapsed and died Monday after a brief illness, his publicist Ken Sunshine said, citing the family. Other details were not released.
Hamlisch's career included composing, conducting and arranging music from Broadway to Hollywood, from symphonies to R&B hits. He won every major award in his career, including three Academy Awards, four Emmys, four Grammys, a Tony and three Golden Globes.
The one-time child prodigy's music colored some of Hollywood and Broadway's most important works.
Hamlisch composed more than 40 film scores, including "Sophie's Choice," "Ordinary People," "The Way We Were" and "Take the Money and Run." He won his third Oscar for his adaptation of Scott Joplin's music for "The Sting." His latest work came for Steven Soderbergh's "The Informant!"
On Broadway, Hamlisch received both a Tony and the Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for the long-running favorite "A Chorus Line" and wrote the music for "The Goodbye Girl" and "Sweet Smell of Success." He was scheduled to fly to Nashville, Tenn., this week to see a production of his musical "The Nutty Professor," Sunshine said.
Hamlisch even reached into the pop world, writing the No. 1 R&B hit "Break It to Me Gently" with Carole Bayer Sager for Aretha Franklin. He won the 1974 Grammys for best new artist and song of the year, "The Way We Were," performed by Barbra Streisand.
"He was classic and one of a kind," Franklin said Tuesday after learning of his death, calling him one of the "all time great" arrangers and producers. "Who will ever forget 'The Way We Were'?"
Hamlisch's interest in music started early. At the age of 7 he entered the Juilliard School of Music, stunning the admissions committee with his renditions of "Goodnight Irene" in any key they desired.
In his autobiography, "The Way I Was," Hamlisch admitted that he lived in fear of not meeting his father's expectations. "By the time Gershwin was your age, he was dead," the Viennese-born musician would tell his son. "And he'd written a concerto. Where's your concerto, Marvin?"
In his teens, he switched from piano recitals to songwriting. Show music held a special fascination for him. Hamlisch's first important job in the theater was as rehearsal pianist for the Broadway production of "Funny Girl" with Streisand in 1964. He graduated to other shows like "Fade Out-Fade In," "Golden Rainbow" and "Henry, Sweet Henry," and other jobs like arranging dance and vocal music.
"Maybe I'm old-fashioned," he told The Associated Press in 1986. "But I remember the beauty and thrill of being moved by Broadway musicals ? particularly the endings of shows. The end of 'West Side Story,' where audiences cried their eyes out. The last few chords of 'My Fair Lady.' Just great."
Although he was one of the youngest students ever at Juilliard, he never studied conducting. "I remember somebody told me, 'Earn while you learn,'" he told The AP in 1996.
"The Way We Were" exemplified Hamlisch's old-fashioned appeal ? it was a big, sentimental movie ballad that brought huge success in the rock era. He was extremely versatile, able to write for stage and screen, for soundtracks ranging from Woody Allen comedies to a somber drama like "Ordinary People."
He was perhaps even better known for his work adapting Joplin on "The Sting." In the mid-'70s, it seemed everybody with a piano had the sheet music to "The Entertainer," the movie's theme song. To this day, it's blasted by ice cream trucks.
Hamlisch's place in popular culture reached beyond his music. Known for his nerdy look, complete with thick eyeglasses, that image was sealed on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" during Gilda Radner's "Nerd" sketches. Radner, playing Lisa Loopner, would swoon over Hamlisch.
Hamlisch was principal pops conductor for symphony orchestras in Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Dallas, Pasadena, Seattle and San Diego at the time of his death. He was due to lead the New York Philharmonic during its upcoming New Year's Eve concert.
He was working on a new musical, "Gotta Dance," at the time of his death and was scheduled to write the score for a new film on Liberace, "Behind the Candelabra."
He leaves behind a legacy in film and music that transcended notes on the page. As illustrative as the scenes playing out in front of the music, his scores helped define some of Hollywood's most iconic works.
He is survived by his wife of 25 years, Terre.
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