Eyes on Facebook mobile event as company evolves

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Thursday, March 7, 2013. Zuckerberg on Thursday unveiled a new look for the social network's News Feed, the place where its 1 billion users congregate to see what's happening with their friends, family and favorite businesses.(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Thursday, March 7, 2013. Zuckerberg on Thursday unveiled a new look for the social network's News Feed, the place where its 1 billion users congregate to see what's happening with their friends, family and favorite businesses.(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

NEW YORK (AP) ? Facebook is unveiling a new Android product Thursday, a move that comes as a fast-growing number of its 1.06 billion users access it on smartphones and tablet computers.

Advertisers are not far behind. Though mobile ads have been a big concern for Facebook's investors since before the company's initial public offering last May, some of that worry has subsided as Facebook began muscling its way into the market.

Last year, the company began showing ads to its mobile audience by splicing corporate sponsorships and content into users' news feeds, which also includes updates from friends and brands they follow. Among the challenges Facebook faces now is showing people mobile ads without annoying or alienating them.

The mobile advertisement market is growing quickly. That's thanks in large part to Facebook and Twitter, which also entered the space in 2012. Research firm eMarketer expects U.S. mobile ad spending to grow 77 percent this year to $7.29 billion, from $4.11 billion last year.

As for Thursday's event at the company's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, speculation has centered on a mobile phone, made by HTC Corp., that deeply integrates Facebook into the Android operating system. The move comes as Facebook works to evolve from its Web-based roots to a "mobile-first" company, as its mantra goes.

"What Facebook wants is to put itself at the front of the Android user experience for as many Facebook users as possible and make Facebook more elemental to their customers' experience," said Forrester analyst Charles Golvin.

EMarketer said Wednesday that it expects Facebook Inc. to reap $965 million in U.S. mobile ad revenue in 2013. That's about 2.5 times the $391 million in 2012, the first year that Facebook started showing mobile ads.

Clark Fredricksen, vice president at eMarketer, said it's "tough to speculate" how much effect Thursday's announcement would have on ad revenue.

At the same time, he says "there are some clear reasons why a deeper integration with mobile operating systems and handsets make sense for Facebook. At the end of the day, the more deeply Facebook can engage consumers, no matter what device or operating system or handset," the better.

Facebook's rival, Google Inc., makes the Android software that Facebook and HTC would be using under the widely speculated scenario. Google makes the software available on an open-source basis, meaning others including rivals are free to adapt it to their needs. Amazon.com Inc. does just that in modifying Android to run its Kindle tablet computers.

Facebook is No. 2 behind Google Inc. when it comes to mobile advertisements, and it isn't expected to surpass the online search leader any time soon. Google dominates the mobile search market with 93 percent of U.S. mobile search advertising dollars, according to eMarketer. Online music service Pandora Inc. is in third place when it comes to mobile ad dollars, followed by Twitter.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-04-04-Facebook-Mobile/id-4468b142aa13465d951d1c3f184f8c23

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Thousands protest in West Bank, rocket hits Israel

HEBRON, West Bank (AP) ? Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets in the West Bank in a show of outrage Thursday over the deaths of two Palestinian protesters killed in clashes with Israel and a third Palestinian who died of cancer in an Israeli prison. In Gaza, militants fired a rocket that landed in southern Israel, causing no casualties.

The unrest has heighted tensions between Israel and the Palestinians after days of West Bank clashes and rocket fire into southern Israel, prompting the first Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip since a cease-fire was reached last November. Israel has vowed to respond harshly to further attacks from Gaza.

In the West Bank city of Hebron, thousands of people turned out for the funeral of Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh, a 64-year-old prisoner who died earlier this week from throat cancer while in Israeli custody. The Palestinians have blamed Israel for Abu Hamdiyeh's death, saying he did not receive proper medical care. He had been serving a life sentence for his involvement in an attempted bombing of a busy Jerusalem cafe in 2002.

Abu Hamidiyeh's body, wrapped in a Palestinian flag, was paraded on a stretcher in a military funeral to a Hebron mosque, where prayers were held. Thousands of people waited outside the mosque to take the body for burial.

The Israeli military reported clashes with Palestinian protesters elsewhere in Hebron, Bethlehem, and on a main road in the northern West Bank. The military said it fired tear gas to disperse the crowds, and no major injuries were reported.

In Tulkarem, also in the northern West Bank, hundreds of people participated in the funeral of two Palestinians who were shot dead by Israeli troops late Wednesday during clashes near a military checkpoint. The Israeli military said troops opened fire after firebombs were thrown at them.

Speaking to top officials of the ruling Fatah party, President Mahmoud Abbas blamed Israel for the violence, saying it is trying to divert attention away from a four-year standstill in peace efforts.

"It seems that Israel wants to spark chaos in the Palestinian territories," he said. "From the beginning, we have said we want stability and calm. Despite that, Israel on every occasion is using lethal force against peaceful young protesters, and peaceful demonstrations are being suppressed with the power of weapons. This is not acceptable at all."

Peace talks have been frozen for more than four years. Abbas has refused to negotiate while Israel continues to build settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians claim for a future state. Israel, which captured the areas in the 1967 Mideast war, has refused to halt settlement construction and says negotiations should begin without any preconditions.

The violence comes ahead of a visit to the region this weekend by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who hopes to find a formula for restarting peace negotiations in the coming months. President Barack Obama has decided to make a new attempt to revive talks after largely ignoring the Israel-Palestinian issue during his first term.

Continued violence, including rocket fire from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, will certainly complicate the new U.S. push.

Early Thursday, Gaza militants fired several rockets toward Israel, defying warnings that Israel will not tolerate the attacks. Only one of the rockets exploded in Israel, causing no injuries, the military said. It said the other projectiles exploded prematurely inside Gaza.

It was the third consecutive day of rocket fire on Israel, and late Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Israel's patience was growing thin.

"If the quiet is violated, we will respond strongly," he said. "The security of Israel's citizens is my chief concern and we will know how to defend the security of our people."

The violence in Israel's south has shattered a four-month calm and threatened a cease-fire reached last November following eight days of heavy fighting between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza.

___

Dalia Nammari contributed to this report from Ramallah, West Bank.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/thousands-protest-west-bank-rocket-hits-israel-120251905.html

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Louisville women top Tennessee to reach Final Four

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) ? Jeff Walz sees no reason to pile on with all the pressure that naturally comes with the NCAA women's tournament.

The Louisville coach wants his players to play fearless, play free and have fun. Even against two of the sport's most intimidating opponents, the formula worked to perfection.

Shoni Schimmel scored 24 points and the plucky Cardinals beat second-seeded Tennessee 86-78 Tuesday night to earn their second trip to the Final Four, continuing a captivating postseason run.

Two nights after taking down Brittney Griner and defending national champion Baylor, the fifth-seeded Cardinals (28-8) built a 20-point lead then withstood a second-half comeback by the powerhouse Lady Vols (27-8) before celebrating another big victory.

"I'm proud of every single one of them, and I know that we're getting a chance to go play in the Final Four. It's a memory these players will never forget," Walz said.

"You beat Baylor with arguably one of the best players to ever play the game, everybody thought that was a fluke. And I promise you no one thought we'd win tonight, either, except this team, and we figured out a way to pull it out."

When it was over, the Cardinals huddled at center court and shouted "Louisville!" in celebration.

The Cardinals became only the second No. 5 seed to reach the national semifinals, joining Southwest Missouri State's 2001 team that featured guard Jackie Stiles, the all-time leading scorer in NCAA history. Only seven teams outside of the top four seeds have ever made it to the Final Four since the NCAA tournament started in 1982.

No team seeded higher than fourth has ever won a game at the Final Four.

But the seemingly impossible hasn't stopped this group of Cardinals yet.

First, they took down Griner and her Baylor team that had lost just once in 75 games. Then, it was the eight-time national champion Lady Volunteers.

Next up is a Sunday showdown in New Orleans against Final Four newcomer California, the Spokane regional champion.

"We were going out there to win, and that's exactly what we did is we beat Baylor and we beat Tennessee," said Schimmel, the regional's most outstanding player, "and now we're going to the Final Four."

Taber Spani led the Lady Vols with 20 points, and Meighan Simmons and Kamiko Williams chipped in 12 apiece. Tennessee headed home with a third straight loss in the regional finals, failing to make the Final Four for a fifth straight year.

Louisville joins the school's men's team in the national semifinals, marking the 10th time that a program had both teams make it that far. Only Connecticut has won both titles in the same season, in 2004 ? the last time the women's champion was crowned in New Orleans.

The Cardinals' only other Final Four trip was in 2009 behind Angel McCoughtry and ended in a loss to Big East rival Connecticut in the championship game. Tennessee was trying to add to its NCAA-record 18 Final Four trips.

"Hate it or love it, the underdogs are on top," said Monique Reid, who hit the clinching free throws to beat Baylor on Sunday night. "It's crazy. Nobody believed in us, but we believed in ourselves. The world's going to know our name now. It's an amazing feeling. This is my second Final Four, but this is the best Final Four I've been to."

Walz showed his players the documentary on North Carolina State's 1983 team that made perhaps the most notable Cinderella run to the men's championship and footage of Muhammad Ali to try and inspire them. He also took them to Ali's center in Louisville.

"Because no one believed that we could win, I just kept telling them we're playing with house money, people. I mean, if we win, hey, it's one more to chalk up. If we lose, everybody's going to say, 'I told you so.' So, who cares? And that's how they approached it."

Louisville rode a hefty rebounding advantage and another solid 3-point shooting outing ? especially when compared to Tennessee's 0-for-9 start ? to take a 49-29 edge 90 seconds after halftime following back-to-back 3s from Antonita Slaughter and Shoni Schimmel. That same tandem combined for 12 of the Cardinals' 16 treys, matching the tournament record, in the epic upset of Baylor.

Spani finally broke Tennessee's 3-point drought right after that, and the Lady Vols were able to chip away at the 20-point deficit. Their full-court pressure, which wasn't tight enough to prevent over-the-top passes for layups in the first half, started to be effective.

Tennessee gave up just one basket over an 8-minute span, and Williams' short jumper at the end of an 18-6 rally got the Lady Vols as close as 68-65 with 4:28 remaining.

Spani missed a 3-pointer from the right wing that would have tied it on the next possession, and Tennessee's comeback fizzled after that.

Shoni Schimmel had a pair of driving layups and Jude Schimmel hit a 3-pointer and set up Slaughter for a reverse layup in a 9-3 burst for Louisville. Even when Simmons, who started out 1 for 22 in the two games in Oklahoma City, hit three late 3-pointers, it wasn't enough for Tennessee.

"We thought we had a good year, but we didn't have a great year. That's just the nature of our program and our expectations," said Holly Warlick, the longtime assistant in her first season replacing NCAA wins leader Pat Summitt as coach.

"Whether you're Pat Summitt or myself, it's just what we're all about. It's in our blood. It's in our makeup."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/louisville-women-top-tennessee-reach-final-four-074223040--spt.html

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Scientists build material that mimics squid beak: Promising step toward safer, more comfortable implants

Apr. 3, 2013 ? Researchers led by scientists at Case Western Reserve University have turned to an unlikely model to make medical devices safer and more comfortable -- a squid's beak.

Many medical implants require hard materials that have to connect to or pass through soft body tissue. This mechanical mismatch leads to problems such as skin breakdown at abdominal feeding tubes in stroke patients and where wires pass through the chest to power assistive heart pumps. Enter the squid.

The tip of a squid's beak is harder than human teeth, but the base is as soft as the animal's Jello-like body. In order to connect these two mechanically dissimilar parts of the squid a major part of the beak has a mechanical gradient that acts as a shock absorber so the animal can bite a fish with bone-crushing force yet suffer no wear and tear on its fleshy mouth.

Nature's technology could make a range of medical devices more comfortable and safer for patients, from glucose sensors for diabetics to prosthetic arms and legs that attach to amputees' bones, the researchers say. Their work is published today in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

"We're mimicking the architecture and the water-enhanced properties of the squid to generate these materials," said Stuart J. Rowan, the Kent H. Smith professor of macromolecular science and engineering at Case Western Reserve, and senior author.

Rowan worked with PhD student Justin D. Fox and assistant professor of biomedical engineering Jeffrey R. Capadona at CWRU, and Paul D. Marasco, who, like Capadona, is a principal investigator at the Advanced Platform Technology Center at the Louis Stokes Cleveland Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

Other researchers have shown the structure of the beak is a nanocomposite composed of a network of chitin fibers embedded within increasingly cross-linked structural proteins from mouth to tip. The gradient is present when the beak material is dry, but is dramatically enhanced when in water, the squid's natural environment.

Rowan and Capadona were among a team of researchers who had previously reported a material that mimics the sea cucumber's skin, which is soft and pliable when wet and stiff and hard when dry.

They thought that material, in the form of a film, could be cross-linked with nanofibers to maintain stiffness when wet. They filled the film with functionalized cellulose nanocrystals that, when exposed to light, form cross-links.

To ramp up stiffness across the film, one end was exposed to no light and subsequent sections to increasingly more light. The longer the exposure, the more cross-links that formed.

Just like the beak, the grade from soft to hard was steeper when wet. Water switches off the weaker non-covalent bonds that form when the material is dry.

The wet environment inside the body will enhance the gradient just as well, which makes this technology especially attractive for implants, the researchers say.

"There are all sorts of places in medicine where we're using hard materials but we're mostly soft," Marasco said. The contrast is a recipe for sores and infection, poor performance and implant failure.

Needles in diabetics' insulin pumps, metal stents inserted in blood vessels and electrodes inserted in muscles or brains could be safer and more effective if materials would remain hard where they need to be but buffer surrounding soft tissues.

"Prosthetic limbs are connected to the arm or leg with a socket of hard plastic that fits over the residual limb," Marasco continued. "But bone moves around under the socket and can damage the soft tissue inside, while the socket can be hard on the skin where it makes contact."

A better solution, he said, would be to run a metal insert into the bone inside the body and attach a prosthesis directly outside the body using this kind of mechanical buffer where the hard metal passes through the soft skin.

The researchers are already working on the next generation of materials and cross-linking strategies to make the buffer gradient steeper. The tip of a squid's beak is 100 times harder than it's softest portion, while this first mimic's hard tip is five times harder than its soft end.

"This is a proof of concept," Rowan said. "Now that we have shown the concept works we're now getting a wee bit more complicated and targeting materials that will allow us to move closer to applications."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Case Western Reserve University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Justin D. Fox, Jeffrey R. Capadona, Paul D. Marasco, Stuart J. Rowan. Bioinspired Water-Enhanced Mechanical Gradient Nanocomposite Films That Mimic the Architecture and Properties of the Squid Beak. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2013; 135 (13): 5167 DOI: 10.1021/ja4002713

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/j7iG4PN5Ihk/130403104224.htm

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Diversity programs give illusion of corporate fairness, psychologists find

Apr. 3, 2013 ? Diversity training programs lead people to believe that work environments are fair even when given evidence of hiring, promotion or salary inequities, according to new findings by psychologists at the University of Washington and other universities.

The study also revealed that participants, all of whom were white, were less likely to take discrimination complaints seriously against companies who had diversity programs.

Workplace diversity programs are usually developed by human resource departments to foster a more inclusive environment for employees, but aren't typically tested for their effectiveness. Nonetheless, their existence has been used in courtrooms as evidence that companies treat employees fairly.

"Our fear is that companies may prematurely stop thinking about diversity among their workers because they've credentialed themselves with these programs," said Cheryl Kaiser, lead author and a UW associate professor of psychology. "Our findings suggest that diversity programs can be window dressing -- even those that do very little to increase diversity may still be perceived as effective."

Many diversity programs seem rational, she said. "By their design and goals, we're inclined to assume they would be successful. The catch is that since very few are tested for efficacy, these rational assumptions may not actually map onto the reality."

In their study, published in the March issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Kaiser and her coauthors point to a report that examined 1,000 federal civil rights legal decisions and found that "judges increasingly showed deference to organizations' diversity management structures" as "evidence of an organization's compliance with civil rights law."

"Some judges assume that diversity programs effectively address employees' complaints, without questioning whether those programs work," Kaiser said.

She and Brenda Major, a psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and their coauthors studied whether diversity programs can simply serve as a cosmetic short-cut that convinces others that companies value diversity and treat employees equally. The researchers used surveys to measure participants' perceptions of companies' fairness toward their minority employees.

The researchers found that a hypothetical company that had a "diversity statement" rather than a "mission statement" led participants to believe the company had treated women and minorities fairly, even when they saw evidence that the company's actual hiring, promotion and salary practices disadvantaged these groups.

For instance, after seeing that women who were identically qualified as men were disproportionately passed over for interviews at a company, participants were less willing to support litigation against the company when they saw that it offered diversity training.

In another part of the study, researchers told participants with corporate management experience to list what their companies do to increase either diversity or environmental sustainability. Participants who thought about their companies' diversity practices took minorities' racism allegations against the company less seriously than did managers who thought about the environment.

"Diversity structures often increase minorities' and women's sense of belonging within organizations," Major said. "Nonetheless, we think that diversity structures also can create an illusion of fairness in that they impede the ability to detect discrimination and generate a harsher response against members of minority groups who claim to experience discrimination."

The researchers recommend that companies look at their records to see if diversity and mentoring programs have led to changes in the hiring, promotion and retention of women and minorities.

"They can learn more by mining their own data rather than assuming that because a program is there that it works," Kaiser said. "If companies examine diversity-related outcomes, they will be in a better position to recognize diversity approaches that are successful and those that are not."

The research was funded with a National Science Foundation grant to Kaiser and Major. Additional funding came from a UW Mary Gates Research Scholarship to coauthor Ines Jurcevic, now at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Other coauthors are Tessa Dover, at UCSB; Jenessa Shapiro, at UCLA; and Laura Brady, a graduate student at UW.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Washington, via Newswise.

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Journal Reference:

1. Cheryl R. Kaiser, Brenda Major, Ines Jurcevic, Tessa L. Dover, Laura M. Brady, Jenessa R. Shapiro. Presumed fair: Ironic effects of organizational diversity structures.. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2013; 104 (3): 504 DOI: 10.1037/a0030838

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/living_well/~3/NkZ6R1NIB_Q/130403121940.htm

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Mark Sanford wins Republican runoff in South Carolina (Washington Post)

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Robot dragonfly mimics four-winged flight manoeuvres

Sandrine Ceurstemont, editor, New Scientist TV

Robotic dragonflies could be the next explorers on Mars, and a new design is already buzzing around on Earth. Developed by Festo, the mechanical insect exploits the unique mechanics of four-winged flight, allowing it to fly in all directions, hover in mid-air and glide without beating its wings (see video above).

Each wing's motion can be fine-tuned by controlling its amplitude, flapping frequency and thrust - which is achieved by adjusting its tilt and twist. The team says a smartphone can act as a remote control to put the dragonfly almost anywhere in a given space.

Although it appears to be considerably larger than a real dragonfly, the robot is light thanks to a carbon-fibre frame and flexible polymer shell. That structure holds a microcontroller, mechanical components, sensors and wireless modules, showing how different functions can be integrated and miniaturised

.

If you enjoyed this video, watch robot penguins take to the water and the skies or check out a shape-shifting robotic bird.

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