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Tuesday, April 30, 2013
A Conversation With Hugh Herr: A Blank Canvas to Create Smart Limbs
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Hugh Herr lost both of his legs below the knee in 1982. Today he designs computerized prostheses and artificial body parts as director of the biomechatronics research group at the M.I.T. Media Lab.
NY's Cuomo: Clinton no bearing on 2016 thinking
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks during a news conference announcing a $1.7 billion plan to help New York homeowners and businesses recover from a trio of destructive storms on Friday, April 26, 2013, in Albany, N.Y. Cuomo and U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan say that the spending from a federal disaster fund is intended for victims of Superstorm Sandy and tropical storms Irene and Lee. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks during a news conference announcing a $1.7 billion plan to help New York homeowners and businesses recover from a trio of destructive storms on Friday, April 26, 2013, in Albany, N.Y. Cuomo and U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan say that the spending from a federal disaster fund is intended for victims of Superstorm Sandy and tropical storms Irene and Lee. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) ? New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (KWOH'-moh) says he's not talking about running for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016 and he's not waiting to see if Hillary Clinton runs.
Cuomo said Monday on public radio's "Capitol Pressroom" there is "no truth" to speculation that he is talking about presidential politics and strategy.
Cuomo says he's focused on his 2014 run for a second term as governor. He has never ruled out a run for president.
Clinton is often touted as a potential 2016 contender.
Cuomo has a campaign fund of more than $20 million and led New York's effort in legalizing same-sex marriage in 2011. This year, he pushed through the nation's first gun-control law after the Newtown, Conn., tragedy. His poll numbers have recently fallen from record highs.
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Move over, Siri. Google Now is coming to the iPhone, iPad.
Google Now launches this week on iOS, as part of an update to the Google Search app.?
Google Now launches this week for the Apple iPad and iPhone.
Back in July of 2012, Google launched a digitized personal assistant known as Google Now. The platform, which was clearly intended to compete with Apple's Siri, was originally available only for Android tablets and smart phones. This week, it finally hits the iPhone and iPad, as an update to the already-formidable Google Search iOS app.?
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"Google Now is about giving you just the right information at just the right time," Google's Andrea Huey wrote in a blog post today. "It can show you the day?s weather as you get dressed in the morning, or alert you that there?s heavy traffic between you and your butterfly-inducing date ? so you?d better leave now! It can also share news updates on a story you?ve been following, remind you to leave for the airport so you can make your flight and?much more."
?
Google Now is organized by "cards" that show information meant only for you ? local train schedules, for instance, or a 10-day weather forecast. You can use Now to remind you of upcoming appointments, or to make sure a particularly important event gets on the calendar; as is the case with Apple's Siri, the whole orchestra of information can be managed by voice control. Handy!?
Of course, as Ryan Paul of Ars Technica noted last summer, when Google Now was first trotted out, the platform may be good for consumers, but it's also very, very good for Google.?
"Google Now clearly dovetails with Google?s business model and long-term business interests," Mr. Paul noted. "The amount of functionality that Google can offer through this service is directly tied to the amount of personal information people are willing to give the company, making Now a perfect fit for Google?s ambition of organizing the world?s information."?
Indeed, any current subscribers to the old Google is Skynet meme are unlikely to start using Now, a platform that gulps down and digests user data by the gigabyte. ("Confirmed: Google's Siri-Esque Personal Assistant Is Creepy," reads the headline of one skeptical piece on Google Now.)?
In related news, earlier this month, after?a lawyer for the?American Civil Liberties Union?raised some concerns about the service, Apple acknowledged that it keeps data collected by Siri on hand for two years (although Apple says that after six months, that data is effectively anonymized, or separated from the ID of the user who made the request). More here.?
For?more tech news, follow us on?Twitter @venturenaut.
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NEC Terrain for AT&T spied in leaked press photos, packs a QWERTY keyboard
Memory of a time where an NEC phone graced US shores escapes us, but the prolific -- and often accurate -- @evleaks has tweeted a press shot that signals a handset from the Japanese firm might soon arrive stateside. Emblazoned with AT&T's logo and reportedly dubbed the NEC Terrain, the Android-toting smartphone shares its front real estate with a screen, a camera and a QWERTY keyboard. No other details were spilled with the image, but with a name like Terrain and what looks like a rubberized border, we wouldn't be surprised if it could withstand a fair amount of rough and tumble.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, AT&T
Source: @evleaks (Twitter)
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/ijjfSX4lwEE/
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Monday, April 29, 2013
Experiment Will Determine Dinosaur's Skin Color
It's unlikely that this creature had feathers. Feathers are only known in Coelurosauria, which is a subset of theropods that, for example, includes Tyrannosaurus but not Allosaurus.
The hadrosaur under study is an ornithischian - a very, very distant relative that's more closely related to Stegosaurus and Triceratops. Psittacosaurus, a primitive horned dinosaur, did have tail bristles, but they appear to have been decorative for display and not feather-like at all.
Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/Bl_hqlwhfag/story01.htm
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Sunday, April 28, 2013
Space Junk 'Cleaning' Missions Urgently Needed
Following a conference on space debris, the European Space Agency has warned that the amount of space junk floating around in orbit is a problem that needs to be dealt with 'urgently.' They are calling for a number of test missions to examine different methods of controlling or removing the debris. "Our understanding of the growing space debris problem can be compared with our understanding of the need to address Earth?s changing climate some 20 years ago," said Heiner Klinkrad, head of the agency's Space Debris office. A couple years ago we discussed an idea for de-orbiting space junk by hitting it with a laser to change its momentum. An Australian company has now received funding from NASA and the Australian government to try just that. "We've been developing tracking systems using lasers for some years, so we can actually track very small objects with a laser rangefinder to very high accuracy. ... If you allow that velocity to change over a period of perhaps 24 hours, then you can get actually a 100-meter shift in the location of an object to deflect it from colliding with another space debris object." Other plans are in development as well, and there currently exists an international guideline saying that new hardware must de-orbit and burn up in the atmosphere after 25 years of operation ? but compliance is lagging. Meanwhile, collision events are becoming more common (PDF), and experts worry about the safety of the International Space Station and important satellites. "Their direct costs and the costs of losing them will by far exceed the cost of remedial activities."
Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/92O5Zk9B0h4/story01.htm
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Italy's Saccomanni moves from central banker to economy minister
By Gavin Jones
ROME (Reuters) - Italy's new Economy Minister Fabrizio Saccomanni is a 70-year-old central banker virtually unknown to the general public, who should reassure financial markets and the rest of Europe that the country will not stray from fiscal orthodoxy.
He has spent most of the last 46 years at the Bank of Italy, where he is deputy governor, having been passed over for the top job when Mario Draghi left in 2011 to head the European Central Bank.
Few can doubt Saccomanni's knowledge of economics and finance, but without any party affiliation he may lack the political clout to push through unpopular policies and risks being caught in the crossfire of cabinet infighting.
Draghi pushed for his deputy to replace him when he left the Bank of Italy but Saccomanni was opposed by Silvio Berlusconi's center-right government and compromise candidate Ignazio Visco leapfrogged him in the bank's hierarchy to become governor.
That was not the first time Saccomanni missed out. In 1998 he was expected to be Italy's first member of the ECB's six-member executive board but lost out to Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, who was more favored by Romano Prodi's center-left government.
Reserved but amiable, with a dry sense of humor, Saccomanni continues a tradition of technocrats who have made the move from the Bank of Italy to the economy ministry, the most recent examples being Padoa-Schioppa and Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.
He had to overcome the resistance of Berlusconi, a key stakeholder in Prime Minister Enrico Letta's left-right coalition, who said on Friday that Saccomanni would be an unacceptable appointment.
"We've had enough of technocrats, we have been through a government that created a disaster because of its excessive fiscal rigor," he said, in reference to Mario Monti's outgoing technocrat administration.
RECESSION
Saccomanni publicly backed Monti's austerity policies several times, abandoning his usual reserve to take on a role of convincing the press and investors of Italy's creditworthiness at the height of the euro zone debt crisis in 2011 and 2012.
However the central bank's forecasts proved far too optimistic on Italy's growth prospects as the country sank into its longest recession for 20 years.
As economy minister, Saccomanni's primary task will be to breathe life into the euro zone's third largest economy with structural reforms and growth-boosting measures without allowing public finances to go off the rails.
One thing the center-right and center-left components in the broad coalition most strongly agree on is that Italy must try to re-negotiate its fiscal targets with Brussels and win more leeway to stimulate the ailing economy.
With his economic experience, international credibility and fluent English, Saccomanni will be well placed to present Italy's case.
Despite his low public profile he has been well known to the international financial elite for decades. He sits on the board of the Bank for International Settlements in Basel and was one of the behind-the-scenes negotiators who prepared Italy for European Monetary Union in the 1990s.
A native of Rome, he studied economics at Milan's Bocconi University and later at Princeton University in the United States and joined the banking supervision department of the Bank of Italy in 1967.
He has been at the central bank ever since, excluding stints on secondment to the International Monetary Fund from 1970 to 1975 and as deputy president of the London-based European Bank for Re-construction and Development from 2003-2006.
Saccomanni is married with no children.
(Editing by Stephen Powell)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/italys-saccomanni-moves-central-banker-economy-minister-185526638.html
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'One Life to Live' divas will duke it out
By Michael Maloney, TODAY contributor
Just like a phoenix -- and Victor Lord, more than once -- "One Life to Live" is rising from the ashes. The axed ABC serial returns Monday, April 29 as a Web soap on The Online Network -- and on Hulu and iTunes, too. The show's revival came as a pleasant surprise not only to fans but also the actors on the show.
David M. Russell
Erica Slezak and Corbin Bleu on "One Life to Life."
Fan favorite Erika Slezak, who's re-creating her role as Victoria Lord Buchanan on the Internet venture, told TODAY.com, "I always kind of hoped we'd be back, but we had our doubts."
It took Prospect Park, the company that's relaunching both "OLTL" and "All My Children," a while to iron out deals with the unions and get the shows up and running, but their efforts are now paying off. "When they called again last November, I said yes without any hesitation," Slezak said.
While fans will meet new characters and see teens Matthew and Destiny grow up, "OLTL" devotees are most looking forward to their daily dose of core characters like Viki, Clint, Bo, Nora and Dorian.
"I've always said that the dynamic between Viki and (her former stepmother) Dorian is the strongest relationship on the show," Slezak affirmed.
The show's new creative team concurs, which is why the two divas will be squaring off in the premiere episode.
"Dorian's gotten herself into a whole heap of trouble in Washington, D.C.," Slezak said. "Being Dorian, she thought she could just take care of it. Unfortunately, she can't. It comes to Viki's attention at [Llanview's newspaper] The Banner. We have to take care of it and, boy is Dorian unhappy! Day one starts with Dorian yelling at Viki."
The Viki-Dorian feud is an "OLTL" staple -- as is Viki's formal diction.
"That started when I played Miss Ginny in the Old West (storyline)," Slezak explained about Viki's refusal to use contractions. "People didn't say 'can't,' 'won't,' and 'didn't' back then. They'd say 'cannot,' would not,' and 'did not.' Somehow that carried over to Viki."
Viewers will have to tune in to see whether Slezak will also revive any of Viki's alters, including trashy Nikki Smith and calculating Jean Randolph.
"Nobody ever leaves Llanview permanently," Slezak said with a laugh. "If Victor Lord can keep coming back, you learn never to say never!"
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First edition of a bookworm's genome
Friday, April 26, 2013
It has co-existed quietly with humans for centuries, slurping up the spillage in beer halls and gorging on the sour paste used to bind books. Now the tiny nematode Panagrellus redivivus (P.redivivus) has emerged from relative obscurity with the publication of its complete genetic code. Further study of this worm, which is often called the beer-mat worm or, simply, the microworm, is expected to shed new light on many aspects of animal biology, including the differences between male and female organisms and the unique adaptations of parasitic worms.
Using next-generation sequencing technologies, a research team led by Jagan Srinivasan, now an assistant professor of biology and biotechnology at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), discovered just over 24,000 putative genes encoded in the worm's DNA?nearly the same number as in the human genome. The team also measured the amount and characteristics of RNA molecules transcribed from those genes to direct cellular processes?that collection of data is called the worm's transcriptome. The genome data published by Srinivasan and colleagues marks the first time a free-living nematode outside of the widely studied C. elegans immediate family has been sequenced.
The researchers detail their findings in the paper, "The Draft Genome and Transcriptome of Panagrellus redivivus Are Shaped by the Harsh Demands of a Free-Living Lifestyle," published in the April 2013 edition of the journal Genetics.
"Humans and nematodes share a common ancestor that lived in the oceans more than 600 million years ago," Srinivasan said. "Many of the basic biological processes have been conserved over the millennia and are similar in Panagrellus and humans. So we believe there is a lot to be learned from studying this organism."
Srinivasan led the P.redivivus sequencing project while working as a postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology in the laboratory of Paul Sternberg, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and the Thomas Hunt Morgan Professor of Biology at Caltech. Adler Dillman, a graduate student at Caltech, worked closely with Srinivasan on the project and shares first-author status of the new study. Sternberg is the senior author.
Srinivasan joined the WPI faculty in the fall of 2012 and has established his own research program using the microworm and its scientifically more famous cousin, Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), as model systems to study the neurobiological basis of social communication and how organisms react to environmental cues.
In recent years C. elegans has emerged as a star in the biomedical research world. In 1998 it became the first multicellular organism to have its genome sequenced. The experience gained from that work was fundamental to the successful completion of the Human Genome Project. Nobel prizes in 2002, 2006, and 2008 were awarded to researchers who made extraordinary discoveries studying C. elegans.
Like C. elegans, the microworm P. redivivus is a free-living nematode found in many environments around the world. An adult microworm is about 2 millimeters long and has approximately 1,000 cells. Despite its small size, the worm is a complex organism able to do all of the things animals must do to survive. It can move, eat, reproduce, and process cues from its environment that help it forage for food, seek out mates, or react to threats. Unlike C. elegans, however, P. redivivus is a gonochoristic species, meaning it has male and female individuals who must mate to reproduce. In contrast, C. elegans has evolved to be primarily a self-fertilizing hermaphrodite, producing both eggs and sperm in the same individual. (There are some male-only C. elegans worms, but they are rare in the wild.)
"Because we see true male and female individuals, Panagrellus will be a powerful model system for studying the differences between the sexes and the processes that the organism uses to find and interact with a mate," Srinivasan said.
Both P. redivivus and C. elegans are well suited for laboratory research, Srinivasan noted. The worms are easily cultured and have a short lifecycle, growing from embryo to adult in about four days. Adults live for approximately three weeks and can produce as many as 40 offspring each day. This lifecycle makes them ideal for genetic studies. Furthermore, the worms are transparent. Under a microscope researchers can look into a worm's body and see almost every cell in the living animal. They can see the cell nuclei, tag molecules with glowing fluorescent markers, and capture images of biological processes from the moment of fertilization to maturity.
As a free-living species, the microworm is considered to be an ancestor of other small worms that have evolved into parasites and colonize specific plants or animals (including humans) to survive. Studying the differences between the microworm and parasitic species will become another important area of research, Professor Sternberg noted. "Of course we want to know more about parasitic worms, given their impact on people and the environment," Sternberg said. "To know about parasites, however, you have to know about the free-living worms to place the bizarre features of parasites into context."
The current study identified the number, location, and composition of genes and RNA transcript in the microworm, and found significant and surprising differences between the P.redivivus genome and that of C. elegans even though the worms look nearly identical to the naked eye. For example, the early analysis of the microworm genome suggests that a large collection of genes have evolved as defenses against viruses and other pathogens the worms encounter in the environment?hence the "harsh demands" of their lifestyle as referenced in the paper's title.
"Studying how the genomes differ, and what processes are driven by those differences, should prove to be insightful," Srinivasan said. "Sequencing the genome and transcriptome is an important first step in what we believe will be a rich new field of study for fundamental biological processes that control development and behavior, not only in the worms, but also in humans."
###
Worcester Polytechnic Institute: http://www.wpi.edu
Thanks to Worcester Polytechnic Institute for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127963/First_edition_of_a_bookworm_s_genome
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Saturday, April 27, 2013
'Parenthood' Renewed For Season 5 By NBC
"Parenthood has been renewed" for Season 5!
NBC has officially renewed the beloved drama starring Lauren Graham, Dax Shepard, Peter Krause, Monica Potter, Craig T. Nelson and more for a fifth season.
"Parenthood" consistently saw strong ratings during Season 4, with its premiere bringing in 5.48 million viewers in September and the finale racking 4.87 million in January. Season 5 received a 22-episode order, up seven episodes from last year.
Mae Whitman, who plays Amber on the series, tweeted about the renewal on Friday afternoon.
"Everybody at the network has been so positive about the show and I think that they are fans of the show themselves and they really, creatively, loved the direction it went this year, so that?s really good," Katims said at Paleyfest in March. "I also know that the ratings are not what anybody would dream for them to be, but they?re definitely moving in the right direction for us and for the network. We?re pretty happy there too. So I?m hopeful."
The network also renewed "Revolution," "Law & Order SVU," "Chicago Fire" and "Grimm."
Check out how the "Parenthood" cast, along with other celebs, reacted to the "Parenthood" renewal below.
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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/26/parenthood-renewed-season-5_n_3047373.html
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Friday, April 26, 2013
Syria's industrialists join exodus from country
BEIRUT (AP) ? With the Syrian civil war edging closer to Damascus, the capital's business elite long cultivated by President Bashar Assad as a support for his regime is starting to join the exodus from the country.
Popular restaurants and high-end stores in Damascus have shut down as their owners move to Beirut and reopen there. They become the latest part of the flight of the Syrian upper class, thousands of whom are believed to have moved abroad over the past year, mainly to Lebanon, Turkey and the Gulf.
Syrian merchants and factory owners have rented apartments in the Lebanese capital as well as Dubai and Cairo. Many skyscrapers dotting Lebanon's famed Mediterranean corniche are known to have been rented out to Syrians at exorbitant prices.
Most still largely back Assad and hope to return, but their flight is a sign of the deep worry over the direction the fight has taken.
"Most people in Damascus have lost hope," said Reema, a chemical engineer. She fled the capital last summer and now lives in Beirut, managing a factory in one of Damascus' industrial zones remotely, via Skype. At first, "we could hear the bombs from around Damascus but we knew that they were far away so we got on with our lives ... Now, the war is everywhere."
She said she has seen a new influx of Damascus residents into Beirut and expects more to come once schools go on summer vacation and well-off Damascene families feel freer to pack up. Reema spoke on condition she be identified only by her first name for fear of reprisals against her business or collague still in Syria.
"Some who have been coming back and forth between Beirut and Damascus are giving up and want to stay to avoid the hassles of checkpoints and ID checks and fear of being taken by groups who just pick people up from the streets," she said, adding that residents blame both regime and opposition-linked groups for disappearances.
Several other businessmen who fled more recently to Beirut spoke to The Associated Press of growing numbers of the elite choosing to leave for the time being. But they refused to give details or be quoted because of worries over their enterprises back home.
The extent of new departures was impossible to confirm. The Damascus area has seen some waves of violence previously over the past two years. But in the past few months it has intensified, with heavy fighting in towns and villages on the capital's outskirts and frequent barrages of rockets and mortars into the city itself. The industrial zones in Damascus are largely protected by government troops. But crippling security measures and a network of checkpoints slow down industry. Lack of electricity and a spike in kidnappings of wealthy residents is also prompting some to move abroad.
More than 1 million Syrians have fled the country to escape the civil war, now its third year. The bulk of them are poor, largely from the country's Sunni Muslim majority that makes up the backbone of the rebellion, leaving homes battered by fighting between rebels and regime forces around the country and crossing into Jordan, Turkey or Lebanon.
Syria's powerful and monied elite have long had a complicated history with the regime. The rich and powerful industrialists, merchants and factory owners are mostly secular Sunni Muslims, mainly from families who were largely allowed to operate in Aleppo, Syria's economic engine, and in Damascus, without government interference while the Assad family's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, kept its grip on political power.
When the uprising against his rule erupted in March 2011, most stuck by the president. That support has been strained by two years of bloodshed that has killed an estimate 70,000 people and disrupted business and life. But many deeply distrust the rebels because of the strength of Islamic hardliners and the lack of a cohesive leadership.
"With the fighting ripping apart the social fabric of cities, the elite is increasingly very confused because they can't support the regime any more but also cannot embrace the rebels, who are looking to take over their properties," said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma.
Syria's urban elite has been concentrated in the northern city of Aleppo and the capital Damascus. Most of the rebels come from the underdeveloped countryside ? poor, religiously conservative and angry over years of economic marginalization they say was enforced by the old merchant families and regime-linked industrialists.
The first waves of the elite leaving came last year, from Aleppo and the central city of Homs. Now, industrial zones in those cities packed with textile, plastics, pharmaceutical and cosmetics manufacturers stand virtually deserted.
Aleppo, the country's largest city, became a battle zone last summer when the rebels launched an offensive there. Since then, it has been torn apart by months of grinding urban warfare that has devastated the city and left it carved into rebel- and regime-held zones.
Even before the fighting started in Aleppo, businessmen say rebel fighters from the countryside came to factories demanding the owners pay up.
The owner of an Aleppo plastics factory said that about a year ago, rebels came and told him, "You need to support our revolution or your factory will burn down." He negotiated with them and they walked out with a safe containing 400,000 Syrian pounds, about $5,700.
Three months later, he locked the factory doors and moved to the United States, managing his businesses from there. He spoke on condition he be identified only by his first name, George, fearing harassment of his family and his associates, who still travel to Syria from Lebanon and Turkey.
George and his father, who has moved to Turkey to set up a business, pay rent on an apartment in Beirut for George's sister, he said.
George said the "class component" of the revolution became impossible to ignore. To the rebels, "there was 100 percent correlation between the regime and the rich," he said. "Having money meant you were in bed with the regime."
Few industrialists in Damascus and Aleppo have entirely shut down their business, choosing instead to run them remotely in hopes fighting will subside and they can return.
"For us to go back, the government would have to win this decisively and put business where they were," George said.
Most of the business community is in a "wait and see mode," said Ayham Kamel, a Middle East analyst at the Eurasia Group in London.
"The Syrian business community still views its role in the rebuilding Syria as vital," Kamel said. "There is a prevalent thought among the elite that they will return and re-establish their business enterprises once the war is over."
___
Follow Barbara Surk at http://www.twitter.com/BarbaraSurkAP
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/syrias-industrialists-join-exodus-country-212122066.html
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Insight: Ageing deepens debt-laden Europe's economic woes
By Alan Wheatley, Global Economics Correspondent
RIGA/LISBON (Reuters) - Long after the debt crisis is over, Europe will be grappling with an even more serious problem - how to pay for growing numbers of old people.
The population of some countries is stagnant or already shrinking, notably Germany's. That will reduce savings and potential economic growth.
The workers who remain are getting older and so are less productive. That will hold back living standards.
And the ranks of retirees are swelling. That will threatening the financing of pensions and health care.
In the 27 countries of the European Union, each pensioner is today supported on average by four people of working age. By 2050, this old-age support ratio will have fallen to just 2:1, according to United Nations and EU projections.
Latvia, which has applied to join the euro in 2014, is but an extreme example of these trends. By 2060 there will be four Latvians of working age for every three aged 65.
Because of emigration and low fertility, the Baltic state's population shrank by 14 percent, or 340,000 people, between 2000 and 2011, prompting warnings of an existential threat to the nation.
"I don't want to make apocalyptic statements. I hope that the country can manage. But the alarm bell has rung," said Mihails Hazans, an economics professor at the University of Latvia and the county's leading demographer.
ALARM BELLS
Many European countries are raising the retirement age. And some, including Britain, have favorable population profiles.
But Martins Kazaks, chief economist with Swedbank in Riga, said governments had yet to grasp the magnitude of the policy shifts required.
"If you define the tipping point as the point of no return, then in some respects we have passed it - and not only us, but most of Europe," Kazaks said.
"With an ageing population and the burden of pensions and welfare, the growth rate is going to be lower. If you don't do anything today, the future is going to be a lot more difficult," he added.
Policymakers need look no farther than low-growth Japan to grasp the economic impact of population decline and ageing.
"Europe is the new Japan," said Douglas Roberts, an economist with Standard Life in Edinburgh.
Apart from putting pension systems on a more sustainable footing, investing in education and training so that workers are more productive should be a policy priority, economists say. So should expanding child care to allow more women to join or stay in the work force.
How to share out the cost of ageing spells potential political trouble, pitting cosseted pensioners against younger generations who are overtaxed and overworked.
George Magnus, a senior economic adviser to Swiss bank UBS in London, said it was understandable because of the euro zone crisis that the current focus was on the near-term affordability of welfare.
"But behind that is a very structural issue, which is really about the social model and the rights and obligations of citizens vis-a-vis the state. We are going to have to have that debate," said Magnus, author of "The Age of Aging".
Edward Hugh, an economist in Barcelona, agreed that the sovereign debt crisis gripping the developed world was at root about how to meet implicit liabilities for ever older populations: expectations of future levels of health care and pension provision may prove too optimistic.
As such, Hugh is critical of policymakers in Europe and at the International Monetary Fund for neglecting the impact of demographic change.
"In the absence of policies that acknowledge these issues exist and that then address them, none of the sustainability analyses - debt, financial sector, whatever - are worth the paper they have been written on," he said.
PORTUGAL'S POPULATION PAINS
Recession-hit Portugal also illustrates the vicious economic and fiscal circle that Hugh identifies in countries on the periphery of the euro zone as a result of demographics.
Portugal's fertility rate, which stood at 1.32 last year, has been below the 2.1 replacement rate - the number of children each woman needs to have to maintain current population levels - since the early 1980s.
In 2012, only 90,000 children were born, the lowest number in more than a century, as economic fears gave couples pause.
In short, ageing is pre-programmed. By 2050, Portugal is projected to have more people aged 60 or over than any other EU member - 40 percent of the population against 24 percent today.
What's more, some 100,000 to 120,000 Portuguese, or 1 percent of the population, are emigrating every year to look for better-paid work, depleting the tax base and adding to the strain of financing the welfare state.
"One of the biggest problems we have is holding on to employees," said Joao Carlos Costa, general manager of Arpial, a metal-working firm in Lisbon.
Jose Cesario, secretary of state for Portuguese communities abroad, puts a brave face on the drain of brain and brawn.
Emigrants acquire valuable skills and remitted some 2.7 billion euros in 2012. Influential members of the Portuguese diaspora of around 5 million can also act as ?ambassadors' for the country, Cesario said in an interview.
But he acknowledged that both Switzerland and Luxembourg had urged him to slow the flow of emigration.
"It's the fish that bites its own tail," Cesario said, using a Portuguese proverb. "We can get emigrants to come back only if we have economic development, but we cannot do that without them." If he had the solution, Portugal would not be in the situation it is, he added.
LATVIAN EXODUS
The same goes for Latvia.
"It's a big challenge for Latvia, both for the economy and for our society." Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis told Reuters. "What we need to concentrate on now is economic growth and job creation so that people see perspectives here in Latvia and so don't have to leave."
The government also hopes to lure back 100,000 emigrants, or a third of those who have left since the turn of the century, by 2030.
Given that Latvia is one of the poorest countries in the EU, that will not be easy. "We're not expecting people to pack their bags and be here on Monday," said Dace Akule, a public policy researcher in Riga who has worked on a proposed package of incentives.
One emigrant unlikely to be tempted back is Datsa Gaile, who has been in Britain since 2006. She left Latvia because, as a single mother, she was unable to bring up her two sons on a wage of about 150 lats ($275) a month.
After a rocky start, she learned English, got a string of ever-better jobs and now runs Anglo Baltic News (www.anglobalticnews.co.uk), a website aimed at the estimated 100,000 Latvians in Britain.
"The main problem at the moment is that there are not enough jobs in Latvia. It's a bit risky if you decide to go back," said Gaile, who lives in Northampton, a town in central England that is home to 8,000 Latvians.
"Also, I have been away for almost eight years and my lifestyle has changed. People are different here. They have more opportunities in this country," she added.
Professor Hazans of the University of Latvia said at most 20 percent of recent emigrants might return. What's more, his surveys show that the proportion of ?firm stayers', who have no thought of leaving Latvia, has fallen to a quarter from a third since 2010.
As in Portugal, a vicious economic circle becomes hard to break.
"Emigration sends a negative signal to foreign investors. It also sends a negative signal for domestic business startups," Hazans said. "You think about how many potential customers you will have."
The psychological harm of sustained emigration, which has accounted for two-thirds of Latvia's population decline since 2000, is as striking as the economic damage. Women's fertility rate has dropped to 1.1, one of the lowest in the world.
Akule, the policy researcher, spoke of the "demographic sadness" of a country where most people have a relative working abroad.
Hazans added: "The sense of bitterness is still very much there. Why? A feeling that if everyone is leaving the boat, the boat must be sinking. Or if the boat is afloat and others are leaving, why am I staying?"
The imperative, then, is for Latvia to sustain its recovery from a deep recession in 2008/09, when output slumped by 20 percent as the government opted for austerity rather than devalue its way out of the financial crisis.
Whether it be in Latvia or Portugal - or eastern European countries such as Bulgaria and Romania - only more and better-paid jobs will stop the hemorrhaging of people and perhaps improve longer-term demographic prospects.
"If you get the chance to live and work normally in our country, it's a luxury. It's a luxury to be able to stay," said Dace Beinare, an adviser with SOS Children's Villages, a non-governmental organization in Riga.
(This version of the story corrects the names in paragraphs 8, 35 and 44.)
(Additional reporting by Aleks Tapinsh in Riga and Daniel Alvarenga in Lisbon; Editing by Giles Elgood)
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Canadian dollar hits over one-week high after U.S. job data
By Andrea Hopkins
TORONTO (Reuters) - The Canadian dollar hit its strongest level in more than a week against its U.S. counterpart on Thursday after U.S. data showed a fall in new jobless benefit claims, briefly tempering broader fears about tepid U.S. economic growth.
The data fueled investor appetite for riskier assets including stocks and helped support the prices of some commodities. While the Canadian currency climbed in early trade, activity fell off when the data bounce faded.
"It's very, very light volumes, very light activity, there are no big drivers across most of the markets, whether bonds or currencies," said Mark Chandler, head of Canadian fixed income and currency strategy at Royal Bank of Canada.
"The U.S. dollar was a bit of an outlier, weaker across the board, and the Canadian dollar garnered some strength from that early on," he added.
The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell last week by a surprisingly large 16,000 to 339,000, offering reassurance the bottom is not falling out of the labor market despite signs of slower growth.
The data countered several weeks of signs that the U.S. economic activity softened in March and early April, and recent weak global economic data, including record-high jobless figures from Spain on Thursday.
The unexpected strength in the U.S. labor market helped send U.S. stock markets up and government bonds down, aided by earnings that beat lowered expectations.
The Canadian dollar ended the North American session at C$1.0208 to the U.S. dollar, or 97.96 U.S. cents, up from C$1.0256, or 97.50 U.S. cents, at Wednesday's close.
Chandler said he did not see much that might drive trading in the Canadian dollar on Friday, with the only major data being U.S. GDP for the first quarter. He expects the Canadian dollar to weaken in the weeks and months ahead, with few signs of the Canadian economic strength that buoyed it during parts of last year.
"We continue to look for the Canadian dollar to weaken somewhat, get to C$1.05 by the late summer period," he said.
Canadian markets are waiting for the Bank of Canada to announce a replacement for Governor Mark Carney, who is leaving in June to head the Bank of England. The bank's current deputy, Tiff Macklem, is widely expected to take the helm, but analysts say there is always a chance of a surprise.
The loonie, as the currency is colloquially known, has traded within a tight range since the central bank last week stuck to its oft-repeated view that its next interest rate move will be a rise.
Canadian government bond prices were mixed. The two-year bond was down half a Canadian cent to yield 0.947 percent and the benchmark 10-year bond was down 20 Canadian cents to yield 1.747 percent.
(Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson and Bob Burgdorfer)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/canadian-dollar-hits-over-one-week-high-u-205546920--finance.html
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The 20-Minute Rule
Over the years, I?ve developed what I refer to as the 20-minute rule. It basically says that a movie that hasn?t hooked me in the first 20 minutes probably isn?t going to.
I tend to apply it most forcefully when I?m watching films at festivals or when I?m sorting through DVD (or online) screeners at home. If nothing?s happening after 20 minutes, sorry, I?m out. As I?ve noted, at this particular point in our cinematic history, there simply isn?t sufficient time to watch all the movies that come my way ? so I?ll take an afternoon, say, and sit down with a stack of the screeners that have piled up.
They?ve got 20 minutes to grab me. If they do, I?ll either stick with them or come back to them later on and move to the next one.
At a film festival, it?s the same thing: so many movies, so little time. So if it?s not doing it for me in 20 minutes, I?m on to the next one.
I can hear the gasps, but be honest: In most cases, you can tell in the first 20 minutes whether a movie will or won?t be worth sitting through. In some cases, you can tell in the first 10 minutes.
Not that I bail on any movie that fails to spark my imagination in that first 20 minutes. I am, after all, doing a job here: reviewing films. And you can?t really review a movie you haven?t seen all the way through. Or you shouldn?t. So I do sit through a lot of crap because that?s what the job is ? sitting through the major movies, good and bad, and rendering a thoughtful opinion afterward.
But there are filters. While I?m mostly required to review the big studio films, the joy in this job is in finding the small film that is worth championing, to bring it to the attention of a larger audience. There are so many, however, that you need to sift through them to find the ones worth giving that kind of attention.
A producer once told me that similar methods are used to analyze scripts to decide which films to make. Except he used the figure of 15 pages: That?s how long the screenwriter has to grab the bored development person with a pile of screenplays to wade through and analyze. If it?s not happening in the first 15 pages, it?s probably not happening.
This, of course, raises the issue of the slow-cooking movie, the one that has subtler things on its mind than accumulating a large body count and blowing up lots of cool stuff. Even then, however, I would argue that the spark is there in that first 20 minutes of screen time.
There?s nothing, for example, in the last two hours of ?Tree of Life? that wasn?t foreshadowed by the first 20 minutes. OK, so you couldn?t predict that Terrence Malick was going to suddenly show us Earth from the Big Bang up to the present day in a wordless 15-minute montage ? but it was certainly of a piece with (and just as coherent as) what followed.
All of which is by way of explanation why I?m not reviewing a couple of this week?s releases that come with big names attached. Indeed, I?m not reviewing much this week, because it?s a bit of a vacation.
Timing and other assignments have meant I am missing the screenings for the week?s two biggest releases: ?The Big Wedding? and Michael Bay?s ?Pain & Gain.? But, under other circumstances, I probably would review ?At Any Cost,? which stars Dennis Quaid and Zac Efron, and ?Arthur Newman,? which stars Colin Firth and Emily Blunt (both doing flat American accents). And I?m not.
I went to see filmmaker Rahmin Bahrani?s ?At Any Price? at the Toronto Film Festival last fall ? and walked out after 20 minutes. I was one of the few who didn?t drink the Kool-Aid for Bahrani?s ?Goodbye Solo,? one of the more overrated films of the past five years. And I couldn?t swing with his take on middle-American farmers dealing with genetically modified seeds and the changing climate of agribusiness. After 20 minutes of the kind of obvious melodrama that Bahrani seemed to be dishing up ? about fathers and sons, down-home values versus shifting business ethics ? I?d had enough and walked out. You?ll undoubtedly read rapturous reviews of this film when it opens Friday; large grains of salt are encouraged.
Then I tried to watch a screener of ?Arthur Newman,? in which Firth plays a middle manager in Orlando, Fla., who loses his job, fakes his own suicide and takes on a purchased identity to start a new life as a teaching golf pro at a country club in Terre Haute, Ind. Talk about living the dream. But despite carefully setting up the premise, the film seemed to sputter along without truly lifting off, even with Firth?s sudden involvement with a troubled woman played by Blunt. Sorry ? next.
You make choices. Not reviewing is a choice which, hopefully, has meaning of its own. In this case, it means these movies weren?t worth the time required to watch them all the way through, let alone to write a review.
?Print This PostSource: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1927330/news/1927330/
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Thursday, April 25, 2013
'The Voice' Recap: Shakira Teaches Usher A Lesson During Final Battle Round
Usher learns 'never get into an argument with a Latin woman' as the battle rounds come to an end.
By Natasha Chandel
Shakira and Usher on "The Voice"
Photo: Trae Patton/ NBC
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1706230/the-voice-battle-rounds-recap.jhtml
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Psychopaths are not neurally equipped to have concern for others
Apr. 24, 2013 ? Prisoners who are psychopaths lack the basic neurophysiological "hardwiring" that enables them to care for others, according to a new study by neuroscientists at the University of Chicago and the University of New Mexico.
"A marked lack of empathy is a hallmark characteristic of individuals with psychopathy," said the lead author of the study, Jean Decety, the Irving B. Harris Professor in Psychology and Psychiatry at UChicago. Psychopathy affects approximately 1 percent of the United States general population and 20 percent to 30 percent of the male and female U.S. prison population. Relative to non-psychopathic criminals, psychopaths are responsible for a disproportionate amount of repetitive crime and violence in society.
"This is the first time that neural processes associated with empathic processing have been directly examined in individuals with psychopathy, especially in response to the perception of other people in pain or distress," he added.
The results of the study, which could help clinical psychologists design better treatment programs for psychopaths, are published in the article, "Brain Responses to Empathy-Eliciting Scenarios Involving Pain in Incarcerated Individuals with Psychopathy," which appears online April 24 in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.
Joining Decety in the study were Laurie Skelly, a graduate student at UChicago; and Kent Kiehl, professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico.
For the study, the research team tested 80 prisoners between ages 18 and 50 at a correctional facility. The men volunteered for the test and were tested for levels of psychopathy using standard measures.
They were then studied with functional MRI technology, to determine their responses to a series of scenarios depicting people being intentionally hurt. They were also tested on their responses to seeing short videos of facial expressions showing pain.
The participants in the high psychopathy group exhibited significantly less activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, lateral orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala and periaqueductal gray parts of the brain, but more activity in the striatum and the insula when compared to control participants, the study found.
The high response in the insula in psychopaths was an unexpected finding, as this region is critically involved in emotion and somatic resonance. Conversely, the diminished response in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and amygdala is consistent with the affective neuroscience literature on psychopathy. This latter region is important for monitoring ongoing behavior, estimating consequences and incorporating emotional learning into moral decision-making, and plays a fundamental role in empathic concern and valuing the well-being of others.
"The neural response to distress of others such as pain is thought to reflect an aversive response in the observer that may act as a trigger to inhibit aggression or prompt motivation to help," the authors write in the paper.
"Hence, examining the neural response of individuals with psychopathy as they view others being harmed or expressing pain is an effective probe into the neural processes underlying affective and empathy deficits in psychopathy," the authors wrote.
The study with prisoners was supported with a $1.6 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Chicago, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Jean Decety, Laurie R. Skelly, Kent A. Kiehl. Brain Response to Empathy-Eliciting Scenarios Involving Pain in Incarcerated Individuals With Psychopathy. JAMA Psychiatry, 2013 DOI: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2013.27
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/uRcT0SkoiG0/130424161108.htm
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Binge eating curbed by deep brain stimulation in animal model
Apr. 23, 2013 ? Deep brain stimulation (DBS) in a precise region of the brain appears to reduce caloric intake and prompt weight loss in obese animal models, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. The study, reported in the Journal of Neuroscience, reinforces the involvement of dopamine deficits in increasing obesity-related behaviors such as binge eating, and demonstrates that DBS can reverse this response via activation of the dopamine type-2 receptor.
"Based on this research, DBS may provide therapeutic relief to binge eating, a behavior commonly seen in obese humans, and frequently unresponsive to other approaches," said senior author Tracy L. Bale, PhD, associate professor of neuroscience in Penn's School of Veterinary Medicine's Department of Animal Biology and in the Perelman School of Medicine's Department of Psychiatry. DBS is currently used to reduce tremors in Parkinson's disease and is under investigation as a therapy for major depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Nearly 50 percent of obese people binge eat, uncontrollably consuming palatable highly calorie food within a short period of time. In this study, researchers targeted the nucleus accumbens, a small structure in the brain reward center known to be involved in addictive behaviors. Mice receiving the stimulation ate significantly less of the high fat food compared to mice not receiving DBS. Following stimulation, mice did not compensate for the loss of calories by eating more. However, on days when the device was turned off, binge eating resumed.
Researchers also tested the long-term effects of DBS on obese mice that had been given unlimited access to high-fat food. During four days of continuous stimulation, the obese mice consumed fewer calories and, importantly, their body weight dropped. These mice also showed improvement in their glucose sensitivity, suggestive of a reversal of type 2 diabetes.
"These results are our best evidence yet that targeting the nucleus accumbens with DBS may be able to modify specific feeding behaviors linked to body weight changes and obesity," Bale added.
"Once replicated in human clinical trials, DBS could rapidly become a treatment for people with obesity due to the extensive groundwork already established in other disease areas," said lead author Casey Halpern, MD, resident in the Department of Neurosurgery of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (DA022605 and HL091911). In addition to Drs. Bale and Halpern, Penn experts include Anand Tekriwal from the College of Arts and Sciences, John Wolf from Neurosurgery and Jeffrey Keating from Neurology. They were joined by colleagues in Psychology at the University of Buffalo.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/8cGeN5hOGh0/130423211714.htm
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Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Infants' sweat response predicts aggressive behavior as toddlers
Apr. 23, 2013 ? Infants who sweat less in response to scary situations at age 1 show more physical and verbal aggression at age 3, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Lower levels of sweat, as measured by skin conductance activity (SCA), have been linked with conduct disorder and aggressive behavior in children and adolescents. Researchers hypothesize that aggressive children may not experience as strong of an emotional response to fearful situations as their less aggressive peers do; because they have a weaker fear response, they are more likely to engage in antisocial behavior.
Psychological scientist Stephanie van Goozen of Cardiff University and colleagues wanted to know whether the link between low SCA and aggressive behaviors could be observed even as early as infancy.
To investigate this, the researchers attached recording electrodes to infants' feet at age 1 and measured their skin conductance at rest, in response to loud noises, and after encountering a scary remote-controlled robot. They also collected data on their aggressive behaviors at age 3, as rated by the infants' mothers.
The results revealed that 1 year-old infants with lower SCA at rest and during the robot encounter were more physically and verbally aggressive at age 3.
Interestingly, SCA was the only factor in the study that predicted later aggression. The other measures taken at infancy -- mothers' reports of their infants' temperament, for instance -- did not predict aggression two years later.
These findings suggest that while a physiological measure (SCA) taken in infancy predicts aggression, mothers' observations do not.
"This runs counter to what many developmental psychologists would expect, namely that a mother is the best source of information about her child," van Goozen notes.
At the same time, this research has important implications for intervention strategies:
"These findings show that it is possible to identify at-risk children long before problematic behavior is readily observable," van Goozen concludes. "Identifying precursors of disorder in the context of typical development can inform the implementation of effective prevention programs and ultimately reduce the psychological and economic costs of antisocial behavior to society."
Co-authors on this research include Erika Baker, Katherine Shelton, Eugenia Baibazarova, and Dale Hay of Cardiff University.
This research was supported by studentships from the School of Psychology, Cardiff University, and by a grant from the Medical Research Council.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Association for Psychological Science.
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Journal Reference:
- E. Baker, K. H. Shelton, E. Baibazarova, D. F. Hay, S. H. M. van Goozen. Low Skin Conductance Activity in Infancy Predicts Aggression in Toddlers 2 Years Later. Psychological Science, 2013; DOI: 10.1177/0956797612465198
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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/RDqcrJSHhhk/130423135714.htm
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Slight fall in UK borrowing gives relief to Osborne
By David Milliken and Christina Fincher
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's budget deficit fell slightly last year, official data showed on Tuesday, saving the country's embattled finance minister some embarrassment as criticism of his austerity program mounts.
The Office for National Statistics said public borrowing, excluding some effects of bank bailouts and a one-off Royal Mail pension transfer, was 114.2 billion pounds in the 2012-13 tax year, equivalent to 7.37 percent of national output.
This was down from 120.9 billion pounds or 7.93 percent of output in 2011/12, and in line with the forecast last month by Britain's budget watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility.
A tougher measure of borrowing - which in addition strips out cash transfers from the Bank of England allowed under European Union statistical rules - also fell marginally on the year.
Nonetheless, Britain's budget deficit is still one of the highest among major advanced economies as the country struggles to deal with the legacy of the financial crisis.
"The Chancellor just made it in under the OBR's forecast, albeit by the skin of his teeth," said Victoria Clarke, an economist at Investec.
"The bigger test will be if he can continue to meet the forecasts for the years ahead, and we think it's looking vulnerable because of the weakness of the euro area, which could decrease tax revenues and mean higher spending pressures."
The government welcomed the data as a sign that its policies were working. "Though it is taking time, the government is fixing this country's economic problems," the Treasury said in a statement, citing a one-third reduction in the budget deficit since 2010 and the creation of a million-and-a-quarter new private sector jobs.
There was little immediate market reaction to the data, with many investors more focused on first-quarter gross domestic product data due on Thursday, which will show whether the economy has slipped back into recession.
The figures follow a difficult seven days for finance minister George Osborne. His Conservative-led coalition's flagship austerity policy has come under increased scrutiny from the International Monetary Fund, and a second major ratings agency has stripped Britain of its triple-A status.
The IMF - previously a supporter of Osborne's tough approach - has said that weak growth means he may need to rethink the pace of deficit reduction, something the opposition Labour Party has been urging for a long time.
Osborne is already off track on his deficit reduction plan, compared to what he intended when he became finance minister in May 2010. He originally aimed to eliminate Britain's underlying budget deficit by 2014-15, something which now looks unlikely before 2016-17.
This slippage has been largely due to weak economic growth which has hurt tax revenues and pushed up benefits spending.
How much of this weak growth is due to the knock-on effect of turmoil in the euro zone, Britain's main export market, and how much is down to a bigger-than-expected drag from austerity is disputed.
Data for March alone showed that public borrowing excluding financial sector interventions totaled 15.142 billion pounds, down from 16.694 billion pounds a year ago and just below economists' forecasts of 15.5 billion pounds.
But the UK Debt Management Office revised up its government bond issuance plans for the coming financial year by 4.7 billion pounds to 155.7 billion pounds, after a volatile cash measure of British borrowing turned out higher than expected in March
Britain's total net public debt, excluding the direct costs of bailing out the country's banks, is still much higher than before the financial crisis at a record 1.1858 trillion pounds or 75.4 percent of GDP.
(Editing by Catherine Evans)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/slight-fall-uk-borrowing-gives-relief-osborne-092951265--business.html
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Flight delays pile up amid FAA budget cuts
Travelers stand in line at Los Angeles International airport in Los Angeles Monday, April 22, 2013. It was a tough start to the week for many air travelers. Flight delays piled up Monday as thousands of air traffic controllers were forced to take an unpaid day off because of federal budget cuts. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Travelers stand in line at Los Angeles International airport in Los Angeles Monday, April 22, 2013. It was a tough start to the week for many air travelers. Flight delays piled up Monday as thousands of air traffic controllers were forced to take an unpaid day off because of federal budget cuts. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
A China Southern Cargo jet takes off at LAX International airport in Los Angeles Monday, April 22, 2013. Some fliers headed to Los Angeles International Airport were met with delays yesterday on the first day of staffing cuts for air traffic controllers because of government spending reductions. Budget cuts that kicked in last month forced the FAA to give controllers extra days off. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
An American Airlines plane takes off at LAX International airport in Los Angeles Monday, April 22, 2013. Some fliers headed to Los Angeles International Airport were met with delays yesterday on the first day of staffing cuts for air traffic controllers because of government spending reductions. Budget cuts that kicked in last month forced the FAA to give controllers extra days off. Commercial airline flights moved smoothly throughout most of the country on Sunday, April 21, 2013, the first day air traffic controllers were subject to furloughs resulting from government spending cuts, though some delays appeared in the late evening in and around New York. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
NEW YORK (AP) ? Flight delays piled up across the country Monday as thousands of air traffic controllers began taking unpaid days off because of federal budget cuts, providing the most visible impact yet of Congress and the White House's failure to agree on a long-term deficit-reduction plan.
The Federal Aviation Administration kept planes on the ground because there weren't enough controllers to monitor busy air corridors. Cascading delays held up flights at some of nation's busiest airports, including New York, Baltimore and Washington. Many operations were more than two hours behind schedule.
At one point, the delays were so bad that passengers on several Washington-New York shuttle flights could have reached their destination faster by taking the train.
Nearly a third of flights at New York's LaGuardia airport scheduled to take off before 3 p.m. were delayed 15 minutes or more, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware. Last Monday, just 6 percent of LaGuardia's flights were delayed.
The situation was similar at Washington's Reagan National Airport, in Newark, N.J., and in Philadelphia, with roughly 20 percent of flights delayed.
At airports, Monday is typically one of the busiest days, when many high-paying business travelers depart for a week on the road. The FAA's controller cuts ? a 10 percent reduction of its staff ? went into effect Sunday. The full force was not felt until Monday morning.
Travel writer Tim Leffel had just boarded a US Airways plane from Charlotte, N.C., to Tampa, when the flight crew had an announcement.
"They said: 'The weather's fine, but there aren't enough air traffic controllers,'" Leffel said. Passengers were asked to head back into the terminal. "People were just kind of rolling their eyes."
His flight landed one hour and 13 minutes late.
One thing working in fliers' favor Monday was relatively good weather at most major airports. A few wind gusts in New York, snow in Denver and thunderstorms in Miami added to some delays, but generally there were clear skies and no major storms.
However, the furloughs will continue for months, raising the risk of a turbulent summer travel season. And the lack of controllers could exacerbate weather problems, especially spring and summer thunderstorms.
There's no way for passengers to tell in advance which airport or flights will experience delays.
FAA officials have said they have no choice but to furlough all 47,000 agency employees ? including nearly 15,000 controllers ? because the agency's budget is dominated by salaries. Each employee will lose one day of work every other week. The FAA has said that planes will have to take off and land less frequently, so as not to overload the remaining controllers on duty.
Critics have said the FAA could reduce its budget in other spots that wouldn't delay travelers.
"There's a lot finger-pointing going on, but the simple truth is that it is Congress's job to fix this," said Rep. Rick Larsen, a Washington Democrat and member of the House aviation panel. "Flight delays are just the latest example of how the sequester is damaging the economy and hurting families across the country."
Some travel groups have warned that the disruptions could hurt the economy.
"If these disruptions unfold as predicted, business travelers will stay home, severely impacting not only the travel industry but the economy overall," the Global Business Travel Association warned the head of the FAA in a letter Friday.
Deborah Seymour was one of the first fliers to face the headaches. She was supposed to fly Sunday night from Los Angles to Tucson, Ariz. First her 9:55 p.m. flight was delayed for four hours. Then at 2 a.m., Southwest Airlines canceled it.
"It's pretty discouraging that Congress can't get it together, and now it's reached the point that we can't get on an airplane and fly," Seymour said.
On some routes Monday, it was actually faster to take ground transportation. The 8 a.m. US Airways shuttle from Washington to New York pushed back from the gate six minutes early but didn't take off until almost 10 a.m.
The plane landed at 10:48 a.m. ? more than two and a half hours late. If travelers instead took Amtrak's 8 a.m. Acela Express train from Washington, they arrived in New York at 10:42 a.m. ? four minutes early.
Normally, there are 10 air traffic controllers at a regional facility handling arrivals for Los Angeles International Airport. On Sunday night, there were just seven, according to Mike Foote, a local union president with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. A low layer of clouds late compounded the situation.
In such weather, two controllers do nothing but watch planes as they descend below 15,000 feet to ensure they don't veer off course. That allows 68 to 70 planes to land each hour. Because of the furloughs, there were no controllers to do that Sunday, dropping the arrival rate to 42 planes an hour, Foote said.
United Airlines said there were "alarming pockets" of delays and warned that if a solution isn't found, the problem could "affect air travel reliability for our customers."
Delta Air Lines cautioned travelers to expect delays in New York, Philadelphia, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.
Many flights heading to Florida were seeing delays of up to an hour. By late Monday, delays into Los Angeles were expected to average three hours.
Having just one fewer controller to handle arrivals to Newark Liberty International Airport can result in the airport being unable to use a relief runway to handle peak traffic, reducing arrivals by about 15 percent, said Dean Iacopelli, a union official at an FAA regional facility for New York's airports.
"It is not just telling one out of 10 people to stay home and so one out of 10 planes get delayed. It's much more complicated that," Iacopelli said.
Prior to the furloughs, if a controller called in sick, there were enough people to take on the extra work, Iacopelli said, or somebody could be asked to work overtime. Now that isn't possible.
The FAA has also furloughed other critical employees, including airline and airport safety inspectors.
In a letter to the FAA Friday, Delta general counsel Ben Hirst asked the agency to reconsider the furloughs, saying it could make the cuts elsewhere and transfer funds from "non-safety activities" to support the FAA's "core mission of efficiently managing the nation's airspace."
Two airline trade associations and the nation's largest pilots union filed a lawsuit Friday asking the U.S. Court of Appeals to halt the furloughs. No hearing date has been set.
The two airline associations ? Airlines for America, which represents major carriers, and the Regional Airline Association ? are asking the court to place a moratorium on enforcement of the Department of Transportation's three-hour limit on the length of time airlines can keep passengers waiting inside planes on the tarmac without giving them the opportunity to return to a terminal.
Airlines can be fined as much as $27,500 per passenger for violating the limit. The Transportation Department said it is reviewing the industry's request.
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Associated Press writers Joan Lowy in Washington and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
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Scott Mayerowitz can be reached at http://twitter.com/GlobeTrotScott .
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