Thursday, February 28, 2013

The Weirdest Thing on the Internet Tonight: Drifting

This quirky short follows a young boy as he susses out the relationship between life, death, and the sleepy shadow monsters that live in our mouths. Tim Divall created Drifting as his first year film project at the RCA. More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/Y0lbhglz5hg/the-weirdest-thing-on-the-internet-tonight-drifting

Psy fergie minnesota vikings looper New Years Eve new years washington redskins

Kenya's January tea output up 25 pct, exports rise

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya's tea output rose 25 percent to 45.3 million kg in January compared with the same period in the previous year, mainly due to favourable weather conditions, the tea board said on Thursday.

Tea exports from the east African country, which is the world's leading exporter of black tea, rose to 39.8 million kg compared with 37.9 million kg in January 2011.

During the month, 27.6 million kgs of tea was sold through the auction at the port of Mombasa, a drop from 28.1 million kgs in the same period in the previous year.

The average tea auction prices rose to $3.28 per kg up from $2.91 in the year-ago period.

"Higher prices were due to improved buying interests by most markets in anticipation of lower production in the first quarter due to dry and hot weather conditions," Sicily Kariuki, the managing director at the tea board said in a statement.

"In addition, demand for tea in most markets was generally higher due to winter conditions."

Pakistan was the biggest buyer of Kenyan tea, at 26 percent of total exports. The top five export destinations - Pakistan, Egypt, Britain, Afghanistan and the United Arab Emirates - accounted for 72 percent of Kenya's total export volume.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kenyas-january-tea-output-25-pct-exports-rise-090152852--finance.html

censorship wikipedia sopa and pipa bills censoring the internet blackout blackout congress

Instant cash loans no credit check required- Financial circumstances ...

Prior when we consider boosting loans from exterior options, they presume anxious. Mainly because previous they have to stay at home long queues, publish lots of paperwork with all the loan merchants and after that wait for hrs for obtaining the consent. To get rid of these troubles loan providers have designed same day loans. Through the help of these loans credit seekers might get the money quickly without standing in prolonged lines. Your money is issued for the credit seekers throughout 1 day. instant payday loans Generating at the least 1000 per 30 days is necessaryLoans Great britain are tiny way to obtain financing that may be utilized with regards to your forthcoming payday. There is absolutely no need for collateral as it is quick period mortgage for many. As a result, money you're in a position to lend rely on your monthly revenue. The pay back is accommodating and convenient which might be designed in just a month. Budget can sow in any desired purpose conference your bills just like paying down health care urgent situation, charge card costs, shopping bills, schooling price of your little one, online business bills and the like. Various awful factors such as CCJ, financial debt, non-payments foreclosures, late installments etcetera.

Uncomplicated Collateralized Personal Loan - Good way to Obtain Inexpensive Money
Payday Loans: Sensible Finances At A Events Notice
Infuse Daily life for a Challenge with Professional Business Loans The power of finance in a business is such that you could instil a whole new living to your company with proper portion of finances. It's not really the only aspect for the achievements of your business, but, certainly the most crucial just one. An organization requirements substantial finances and if you prepare such total all by yourself, you'll be able to look for money for college together with the a lot of loan merchants present out there.

In this way you may also utilize the price reduction which may go as high as 10Percent on the car price tag. So available as one way you pay less sum of money to the vehicle you're basically shopping for.
i have bad credit but need a loan Instant Loans No Appraisal Of Creditworthiness-Fast and completely ready dollars to deal increase your outstanding financial disaster Suffering from monetary worries and also have no capital in order to meet your economic uncertainness? To call quick cash to satisfy your urgency, here are instant loans no credit score assessment for yourself. These loans are comfortable and hassle-free school funding that let you have fun with the money from straightforwardness of your entrance. When you're experiencing some fiscal troubles , nor have funds to overpower your bad personal time, read through this way to obtain funding for improved help. Even so, since the name claims, Instant loans no credit check required isn't going to observe any consumer credit verifying practice.

Source: http://www.winnerscircleofnorfolk.com/instant_cash_loans_no_credit_check_required-_financial_circumstances_your_plagued_situation

Bret Bielema blake shelton sons of anarchy adriana lima victoria secret fashion show SEC Championship Rick Majerus

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Lawrence goes back to black (hair) post-Oscars

By Randee Dawn, TODAY contributor

Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence is a lady of many hair colors, but her natural is blonde -- the color she sported at the awards ceremony on Sunday night.

AKM-GSI

Jennifer Lawrence with her fresh, dark look.

But it didn't last: According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lawrence was spotted the very next day -- Monday -- exiting a hair salon in Beverly Hills after a session with "colorist-to-the-stars Lorri Goddard." She was returning to a shade she sported in the movie that won her the big prize Sunday ("Silver Linings Playbook") and one she'll continue to wear in the "Hunger Games" sequels: very dark brunette -- maybe even black.

Source: http://todayentertainment.today.com/_news/2013/02/26/17101730-jennifer-lawrence-dyes-hair-black-post-oscars?lite

the maldives harper lee mega millions numbers the fray seahawks new uniforms 2012 tornadoes in dallas anchorman 2

'Vulcan' and 'Cerberus' are favorite names for Pluto's moons

The online poll for naming Pluto's moons ? P4 and P5 ? is now over and the winning names are 'Vulcan' and 'Cerberus.' This result, however, doesn't guarantee that P4 and P5 will actually get these names.

By Miriam Kramer,?SPACE.com / February 26, 2013

A pair of small moons orbiting Pluto named Nix and Hydra were discovered by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 2005. The two moons are roughly 5,000 times fainter than Pluto and are about two to three times farther from Pluto than its large moon.

NASA

Enlarge

The votes are in, and it looks like 'Vulcan' could be the new name for one of Pluto's smallest moons.

Skip to next paragraph

' + google_ads[0].line2 + '
' + google_ads[0].line3 + '

'; } else if (google_ads.length > 1) { ad_unit += ''; } } document.getElementById("ad_unit").innerHTML += ad_unit; google_adnum += google_ads.length; return; } var google_adnum = 0; google_ad_client = "pub-6743622525202572"; google_ad_output = 'js'; google_max_num_ads = '1'; google_feedback = "on"; google_ad_type = "text"; google_adtest = "on"; google_image_size = '230x105'; google_skip = '0'; // -->

After weeks of online ballot casting by people around the world, the poll asking the public to name two of Pluto's moons ? currently called P4 and P5 ? ended Monday.

As of 12 p.m. (1700 GMT)?Feb. 25, the polls closed with a total of 450,324 total votes cast since Feb. 11 with 'Vulcan,' a?Pluto moon name proposed by Star Trek's William Shatner,?is the clear winner.

"174,062 votes and Vulcan came out on top of the voting for the naming of Pluto's moons. Thank you to all who voted! MBB," wrote Shatner via Twitter.

Cerberus came in a clear second with nearly 100,000 votes.

Vulcan was a late addition to the Pluto moon name contenders, and pulled into the lead after Shatner, building on his Capt. James T. Kirk persona, plugged the name on Twitter. Vulcan, the home planet of Kirk's alien-human hybrid first officer Spock, is not just a fictional world in the Star Trek universe. It is also the name of the god of fire in Roman mythology, and officials at SETI added the sci-fi favorite to the ballot for that reason.

"Vulcan is the Roman god of lava and smoke, and the nephew of Pluto. (Any connection to the Star Trek TV series is purely coincidental, although we can be sure that Gene Roddenberry read the classics.)," wrote SETI scientist Mark Showalter in a blog officially adding the name to the list on Feb. 12. "Thanks to William Shatner for the suggestion!"

These votes don't necessarily mean that P4 and P5 will end up being called Vulcan and Cerberus, however. SETI is going to recommend the winning names to the International Astronomical Union ? the organization responsible for naming the moons. The IAU will take the results into consideration, but ultimately they have final say over what the tiny moons are called.

Pluto has five moons??that astronomers currently know of. Scientists first caught sight of Pluto's largest moon Charon in 1978, but it was not until 2005 that astronomers discovered two other moons (Nix and Hydra) using the Hubble Space Telescope.

The moon P5 was discovered in 2012, also using the?Hubble telescope. The moon P4 was discovered in 2011. Both P4 and P5 are only 15 to 20 miles (20 to 30 km) in diameter.

Voting is closed, but you can still see how your favorite names did on?PlutoRocks.com.

Follow Miriam Kramer on Twitter?@mirikramer?or SPACE.com?@Spacedotcom. We're also on?Facebook?&?Google+.?

Copyright 2013?SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/U66nuXsjbYU/Vulcan-and-Cerberus-are-favorite-names-for-Pluto-s-moons

Bob Ross Hurricane Categories Hurricane Sandy new jersey atlantic city ocean city maryland Nexus 7

Lowe's 4Q net income tops expectations

NEW YORK (AP) ? Home improvement retailer Lowe's Cos. credits cleanup efforts after Superstorm Sandy and its new pricing strategy for fourth-quarter earnings that surpassed Wall Street expectations.

The results are a sign that people are beginning to feel better about spending money on their homes as the housing market slowly recovers. Analysts will be watching Lowe's larger rival Home Depot's earnings report on Tuesday to see if its results show a similar story.

Lowe's CEO Robert Niblock said the company is seeing a pickup in spending even in areas of the country hit hardest by the housing slump, like Florida, Arizona and California.

"Rising home values have given homeowners additional confidence in spending on their homes," Niblock said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Lowe's net income fell 11 percent from last year's quarter, which included an extra week of revenue. Its earnings forecast for the year was below expectations but its revenue projection beat the consensus.

Mooresville, N.C.-based Lowe's has revamped its pricing structure, offering what it says are permanent low prices on many items across the store instead of fleeting discounts. It has also focused on hiring more workers and improving its inventory. In January it said it planned to hire 45,000 seasonal workers ahead of its busy spring season and add 9,000 part time employees on a permanent basis.

In a call with analysts, Chief Customer Officer Greg Bridgeford said the pricing strategy helped spur strong sales of cabinets and countertops, tools and outdoor power equipment.

During the quarter, the number of transactions fell 6.9 percent, mainly due to the extra week in the quarter a year ago. But average ticket rose 2.1 percent to $62.37.

Lowe's net income totaled $288 million, or 26 cents per share, for the three months ended Feb. 1. That's down from $322 million, or 26 cents per share, a year ago. Analysts expected 23 cents per share, according to FactSet.

There were 11 percent fewer shares outstanding in the latest quarter than a year ago. That increases the value of each share. An extra week in the quarter last year had boosted year-ago earnings by 5 cents per share.

Revenue fell 5 percent to $11.05 billion from $11.63 billion. Analysts expected $10.85 billion. Revenue in stores open at least one year rose 1.9 percent. The measure is a key gauge of a retailer's fiscal health because it excludes stores that open or close during the year.

Morningstar analyst Peter Wahlstrom said the quarter was generally good and in line with his expectations, helped by better gross margins ? the amount of each dollar in revenue a company actually keeps ? and a lower share count.

Standard & Poor analyst Michael Souers kept his "Sell" recommendation on the stock.

"While we see a modest recovery in housing, we see rising interest rates as a threat to home refinancing, a key driver of remodeling," he said.

For the fiscal year, net income rose 7 percent to $1.96 billion, or $1.69 per share, from $1.84 billion, or $1.43 per share. Revenue edged up to $50.52 billion from $50.21 billion last year.

Lowe's, which operates 1,754 stores in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, expects fiscal 2013 net income of $2.05 per share. Analysts expect $2.10 per share.

The company expects revenue to rise 4 percent, implying revenue of $52.54 billion. Analysts expect $51.69 billion.

Shares fell $1.81, or 4.8 percent, to close at $35.86 Monday. They have traded in a 52-week range of $24.76 to $39.98.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lowes-4q-net-income-tops-expectations-112715464--finance.html

espn jeremy lin sleigh bells meek sturgis sturgis whitney houston laid to rest daytona bike week

Big Neuroscience: Billions and Billions (Maybe) to Unravel Mysteries of the Brain

The Human Brain Project intends to create a computer simulation at scales ranging from the nano to the macro.

The era of Big Neuroscience has arrived.

In late January, The Human Brain Project?an attempt to create a computer simulation of the brain at every scale from the nano nano to the macro biotic?announced that it had successfully arranged a billion Euro funding package for a 10-year run.

And then on Feb. 18, an article in The New York Times took the wraps off a plan to spend perhaps billions of dollars for an effort to record large collections of brain cells and figure out what exactly they are doing.

Is this the Large Hadron Collider vs. the Superconducting Supercollider redux?

Not yet. The billions for the Brain Activity Map, the U.S. project, are still a wish that has yet to be granted.

But, despite as-always hazy government finances, brain researchers are thinking large as they never have before, and invoking the attendant rhetoric of? moon shots, next-generation Human Genome Projects and the need for humankind to muster the requisite visionary zeal to tackle one of science?s ?last frontiers.? Oy, spare me that last part.

The challenges these projects have set for themselves, though, illustrate the challenge of? going from today?s crude profiles of? a biological machine of incomprehensible complexity to an accurate rendering of the goings-on of some 100 billion neurons woven together by a pulsating tapestry of 100 trillion electrical interconnections.

Henry Markram of ?cole Polytechnique F?d?rale de Lausanne described the goals for the Human Brain Project in Scientific American in June, saying that the project would become the ?most powerful flight simulator ever built. Rather than simulating ?thermal runaway? in a Boeing 787, it is intended to? furnish a big-screen blowup of every cell and connection inside the human skull.

The Human Brain Project continues to receive brickbats from a number of quarters. The researchers? plan to take the most current knowledge of brain anatomy and function to create an elaborate computer simulation. The? pitfall has to do with the simple fact that what we know at the molecular, cellular, circuit levels and up is often inadequate or just plain wrong. Layering faulty assumption upon faulty assumption can produce an elaborate? software fantasy world. But, as Markram hastens to emphasize, software can always be revised for a next release to fold in the latest from experiments in cells, fruit flies, roundworms, mice, monkeys and people.? The hurdles are still enormous. When we ran this article last year, it was accompanied by a Web-based excerpt from? a section of a chapter of Connectome, a book by neuroscientist Sebastian Seung, that described the difficulties involved in reducing the brain to a piece of software.? What happens, for instance, if a neurotransmitter like dopamine escapes from the immediate connection point, a synapse, and interacts with a synapse at some distance. How does this magisterial brain model take into account this possibility?

By contrast, the Brain Activity Map, in its still nascent conception, has plans for something less ambitious than a brain in a box. It intends, from what can be gleaned, to provide a record of everything that happens along a neural circuit. It would function not? just as a static model of the connections between, say,? the frontal lobe of the brain to? the emotion-processing amygdala. Rather it would be a dynamic rendition of what goes on along that pathway, a record of even the most minute voltage fluctuations along the intricate links of this circuit.

John Donoghue of Brown University, a researcher in brain-machine interfaces, and one of the scientists involved in planning the Brain Activity Map, noted that probes exist today to capture what happens at the cellular and molecular level and that brain imaging machines can take in what happens over gross areas of neural anatomy. Missing, however, is the technology to monitor in real time what happens when hundreds to millions of neurons coordinate their firing patterns, a circuit-level view of brain activity from which aspects of conscious function emerge?seeing a dog, hearing a song, feeling happy or sad. ?We don?t have the tools to study large numbers of neurons at high temporal resolution over large areas of the brain,? Donoghue says. ?We need tools to do that. Once we have the tools, we can do the experiments and that can drive theory about what goes wrong in schizophrenia or depression.?

Even if the Brain Activity Map doesn?t meet its most ambitious goals, it might still be deemed a success because it could produce? tools that could sense and stimulate individual neurons at the scale of nanometers?one speculative proposal would even use an artificial DNA sensor that would detect electrical activity in a brain circuit?a sort of DNA ticker tape

The tangled complexity of the brain?s wiring may make any Big Neuroscience effort a bigger hurdle to overcome than decoding the sequence of nucleotides, the A, C, G, Ts that make up the human genome. A documentary released recently?The Singularity?explores the idea that computing and other technology is advancing so rapidly?that machines will soon be smarter than humans and humans will be achieve immortality by making a copy of their neural circuits and transferring them to a robot or computer. The documentary interviews a number of prominent neuroscientists about the prospects for The Singularity becoming a reality. In it, neuroscientist Christof Koch mentions that the? wiring diagram of the nervous systems of the roundworm, Caenorhabditis elegans, has been known for decades and neuroscientists are still attempting to unravel its basic functioning.

Michael Gazzaniga, another prominent brain researcher, endorsed the idea of proceeding with the Brain Activity Map as long as other critical brain research does not suffer. But he added that a realistic perspective is required on how long it will take to achieve the ambitious goals that were widely discussed in the popular press in recent days. ?I say go with a new approach while keeping the best of the old,? he says. ?It will take dozens of years to figure this all out.?

Illustration: Emily Cooper.

?

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=b90e9fa7129bb3ee72d168b2c65d97d7

helicopter crash matt jones whitney houston in casket photo resolute national enquirer whitney houston casket photo jk rowling qnexa

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

The State of the Austin Music Industry - CultureMap Austin

On Monday, February 25, AMP (Austin Music People) will present its first biennial white paper on the State of the Austin Music Industry.

AMP's first biennial white paper on the State of the Austin Music Industry will be presented on Monday, February 25 at KLRU's Studio 6A. Expert panelists include Councilmember Mike Martinez, economist Jon Hockenyos, APD Chief Art Acevedo, Austin Music Commissioner Heather Wagner Reed, music and marketing entrepreneur James Moody, Austin musicians Alex Vallejo and Tee Double, and AMP executive director Jennifer Houlihan.

The event, which takes place at KLRU's Studio 6A from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. is free and open to the public. For those who cannot attend, the presentation will be livestreamed on CultureMap.

Stay tuned to CultureMap for a recap of the event, as well as more information on the white paper, which will be available for download on Tuesday, February 26.

Source: http://austin.culturemap.com/newsdetail/02-25-13-livestreaming-of-the-state-of-austin-music-industry-presentation-from-amp/

colbert super pac colbert super pac sloth birth control pill recall ground hog day florida primary results black history

Salazar: Thousands of Interior workers imperiled (The Arizona Republic)

Share With Friends: Share on FacebookTweet ThisPost to Google-BuzzSend on GmailPost to Linked-InSubscribe to This Feed | Rss To Twitter | Politics - Top Stories Stories, RSS and RSS Feed via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/287369798?client_source=feed&format=rss

cotton bowl Fiscal cliff deal kathy griffin jadeveon clowney orange bowl Rose Parade 2013 rex ryan