Photo taken in Przemysl, Poland, Thursday, Feb. 14, 2013. Wojciech Inglot, a Polish chemist and businessman who founded and ran a cosmetics company, Inglot, which grew into an international success with nearly 400 stores in 50 countries, has died. A longtime friend of Inglot's, Mariusz Ziomecki told The Associated Press that Inglot died unexpectedly Saturday after suffering internal hemorrhaging. He was rushed to a hospital in Przemysl, the eastern Polish city where he ran a factory that produced his cosmetics, but doctors were unable to save him. Inglot cosmetics are sold in stores and malls worldwide, including Macy's in New York.(AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)
Photo taken in Przemysl, Poland, Thursday, Feb. 14, 2013. Wojciech Inglot, a Polish chemist and businessman who founded and ran a cosmetics company, Inglot, which grew into an international success with nearly 400 stores in 50 countries, has died. A longtime friend of Inglot's, Mariusz Ziomecki told The Associated Press that Inglot died unexpectedly Saturday after suffering internal hemorrhaging. He was rushed to a hospital in Przemysl, the eastern Polish city where he ran a factory that produced his cosmetics, but doctors were unable to save him. Inglot cosmetics are sold in stores and malls worldwide, including Macy's in New York.(AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)
Photo taken in Przemysl, Poland, Thursday, Feb. 14, 2013. Wojciech Inglot, a Polish chemist and businessman who founded and ran a cosmetics company, Inglot, which grew into an international success with nearly 400 stores in 50 countries, has died. He was 1957. A longtime friend of Inglot's, Mariusz Ziomecki told The Associated Press that Inglot died unexpectedly Saturday after suffering internal hemorrhaging. Inglot cosmetics are sold in stores and malls worldwide, including Macy's in New York.(AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)
WARSAW, Poland (AP) ? Wojciech Inglot, a Polish chemist and businessman who founded and ran a cosmetics company, Inglot, that grew into an international success with nearly 400 stores in 50 countries, has died. He was 57.
Inglot died unexpectedly Saturday after suffering internal hemorrhaging, a longtime friend of Inglot's and associate of the company, Mariusz Ziomecki, told The Associated Press. Inglot was rushed to a hospital in Przemysl, the eastern Polish city where his cosmetics are produced, but doctors were unable to save him.
Inglot was born in Przemysl on June 11, 1955. He studied chemistry at Krakow's prestigious Jagellonian University. After graduation he began his first chemical manufacturing operation in 1983, when Poland was still under communist rule.
After Poland began its transition to a market economy in 1989, Inglot turned to producing cosmetics, finding success first at home and then internationally with a range of nail polishes, eye shadows and other products. Today the Inglot logo can be seen large-scale at Times Square in new York City and the cosmetics are sold in nearly 400 boutiques in malls in some 50 countries, including at Macy's.
Recently Inglot found unexpected success with a breathable nail polish that became a surprise hit with Muslim women. The enamel, called O2M ? for Oxygen and Moisture ? allows air and water to pass through it, unlike traditional varnishes that completely occlude the nail.
Traditional varnishes pose a religious problem for observant Muslim women because of prayers five times a day that require a pre-prayer washing ritual. Islamic scholars have long said water must run over the hands and arms, even the finger nails, leading many women to avoid using polish.
It was developed about four years ago but started to become a hit with Muslim women after an Islamic scholar in November declared that it was permissible under Muslim law because it allowed water to reach the nail.
Inglot told the AP in an interview last week that he developed the breathable polish with health-conscious women in mind, and that he was taken by surprise by the reception it was getting with some Muslim women.
Inglot is survived by his mother, a brother and a sister. A funeral is planned for noon on Wednesday in the Salezjans Church in Przemysl, the company said in a statement.
The fierce Republican opposition to President Obama's nomination of Chuck Hagel to be defense secretary is personal and business.
The nasty fight long has been seen as a proxy for the never-ending scuffles between Obama and congressional Republicans. Barring any surprises, the drawn-out battle over the former Nebraska senator's nomination probably will end this coming week with his Senate confirmation. Still, his fellow Republicans have roughed him up. A vote is expected on Tuesday.
Senate Republicans also see Hagel as a political heretic for countering President George W. Bush on Iraq and backing a Democrat in last year's Nebraska Senate race.
The business is getting Republicans incumbents re-elected next year. Challenging Obama's nominees and policies has improved senators' standing with the conservative base as they fear tea party challenges.
After shaping DePauw's sustainability efforts as a student, Anthony Baratta chose to stick around.
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175 years, let the celebration begin! - photos by larry ligget
Republican senators complained Wednesday that U.S. taxpayer dollars could end up boosting the Chinese economy, following reports that a Chinese firm is leading the pack of companies bidding for a majority stake in government-backed Fisker Automotive.
The troubled California-based electric car maker, which was backed by U.S. taxpayers to the tune of nearly $530 million, for months has been looking for a financial partner. Reuters reported earlier this week that China?s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group is favored to take over, though Fisker is also reportedly weighing a bid from another Chinese auto maker.
The development comes after Fisker?s main battery supplier ? U.S. government-backed A123 Systems ? was recently purchased by a separate Chinese firm.
Sens. John Thune, R-S.D., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, voiced concern Wednesday that Chinese companies are benefiting from U.S. taxpayers? investment.
?Obama?s green energy investments appear to be nothing more than venture capital for eventual Chinese acquisitions,? Thune said in a statement. ?After stimulus-funded A123 was just acquired by a Chinese-based company, it?s troubling to see that yet another struggling taxpayer-backed company might be purchased under duress by a Chinese company.?
Accused Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius will ?suffer? alone if he is lying, the father of his slain girlfriend said in an interview with a South African newspaper.
Barry and June Steenkamp, mother and father of deceased 29-year-old model and law school graduate Reeva Steenkamp, told the Afrikaans-language paper Beeld that they were grief-stricken by the loss of their daughter.
?It doesn?t matter how much money he has and how good his legal team is, he will have to live with his conscience if he allows his legal team to lie for him,? Barry Steenkamp told Beeld.
?But if he is telling the truth, then perhaps I can forgive him one day,? he told the paper. ?If it didn?t happen the way he said it did, he must suffer, and he will suffer ? only he knows.?
June Steenkamp said she was sent a flower bouquet and card by Pistorius? relatives.
?Yes, but what does it mean? Nothing,? she told Beeld. She said the Pistorius family was ?not to blame? for her daughter?s death.
Pistorius? family said that they felt ?relief? to have the accused athlete home in a statement on Saturday.
?This constitutes a moment of relief under these otherwise very grave circumstances,? Arnold Pistorius, Oscar?s uncle, said in a statement. ?We are extremely thankful that Oscar is now home.?
?We are acutely aware of the fact that this is only the beginning of a long road to prove that, as we know, Oscar never intended to harm Reeva, let alone cause her death,? the uncle said. ?We realize that the law must run its course, and would not have it any other way.?
The family announced on Saturday that it was canceling all social media sites for Carl and Aimee Pistorius, Oscar?s brother and sister. Janine Hills, a spokesperson for the family, said that Carl Pistorius? Twitter account had been hacked.
?It is most unfortunate that during this sensitive time, someone would choose to hack into Oscar Pistorius older brother, Carl Pistorius? Twitter handle,? Hill said in a statement. ?Carl did not tweet this afternoon, out of respect to Oscar and Reeva.?
There was no hint that the romance between Steenkamp and Pistorius would come to such a tragic end, the model?s uncle told Rock Center with Brian Williams.
?Nobody ever saw it coming,? Mike Steenkamp said. ?Never forewarned.?
Pistorius, 26, is charged with premeditated murder in the Valentine?s Day shooting death of Steenkamp. Pistorius has said that the shooting was an accident, and that he thought he was shooting at an intruder in his Pretoria home. He was freed on bail Friday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Related:
'Nobody saw it coming,' Reeva Steenkamp's uncle says
Oscar Pistorius granted bail ahead of murder trial
Pistorius' uncle: Olympian in shock, 'will bounce back'
This story was originally published on Sat Feb 23, 2013 8:35 AM EST
The platform allows Android OS users to update and submit time and expense reports for projects on their smartphones and tablet devices.
Cloud-based enterprise resource management (ERP) and financials software specialist NetSuite announced the availability of its OpenAir Mobile time tracking and expenses management platform for Google's Android operating system. OpenAir Mobile for Android includes a calendar to track and manage time, access to OpenAir time sheets and expense reports using the Android user interface and instantaneous synchronization with OpenAir accounts to use up-to-date customer, project and task data. "Services professionals increasingly rely on smartphones and tablets while on the road or anytime they need to access an OpenAir account," Ed Marshall, NetSuite Service Vertical general manager, said in a statement. "This new mobile app for Android puts the power of the cloud in the palm of their hand to perform more efficiently and speed time and expense reporting and approvals." The platform allows users to update and submit time and expense reports for projects. Along with entering receipt data, the app lets professionals in IT services, consulting, digital marketing and advertising, as well as media and publishing to take a photo of an expense receipt with their Android device, attach it to a record and synchronize the information with the organization's back-end NetSuite OpenAir PSA account. As an example, services organizations that bill clients based on specific time and expense reports could accelerate processes and cash flow when consultants are able to enter time and expense data through a smartphone or tablet. The application is free and only requires a customer's OpenAir credentials to sync with their account. Although an application that could run on Apple's iOS platform was a near-necessary development half a decade ago, application developers are increasingly turning to Android app development as the platform has skyrocketed in popularity. The analyst firm IDC estimates that Android commanded 75 percent of the worldwide smartphone market in the third quarter of 2012, about five times greater than the Apple iOS for the iPhone. In addition, Android's year-over-year growth rate of 91.5 percent for the 12 months ending on Sept. 30, 2012, was nearly double the 46.4 percent growth rate of the smartphone market at large, according to IDC. In the tablet market, the Android platform powered more than 44 percent of tablet shipments as of Q3 2012, second only to the Apple iOS on the iPad, which claimed a market share of 55 percent. Despite maintaining its lead for 10 straight quarters, competition from tablets powered by Android continued to eat away at Apple's success. Nearly 14 percent share was given up in the quarter to several benefactors, including Amazon, Google and Samsung.
The number of gadget-related thefts in major metropolitan areas has only continued to rise, and the number of resolved cases simply can't keep up. However, it would appear that Apple is now working directly with the NYPD to help return iThings into the hands of their rightful owners. The NYPD has formed an official team which will work directly with Apple to track down stolen iThings, mostly iPhones and iPads.
Who will talk you down from eating that oh-so-tempting cookie that your colleague just unveiled, when you're trying to watch your weight? The answer might be Coach Alba ($5 per month; additional texting fees may apply), a text-messaging service that helps you power through "crucial moments" when dieting.
Coach Alba works on any phone (or service) that uses text messaging?it's platform independent. Your coach is highly automated, and after swapping a few dozen messages, the pattern of your coach's replies reveals itself. Alba can be repetitive at times, but she can also swoop in at just the right moment to remind you of your goals and help you stay on track.
How Coach Alba Works When you sign up for Coach Alba?and no credit card is required for a free two week trial as of this writing?you start seeing text messages almost immediately. Your coach asks you to reply to the messages to gather some basic information about you and your dieting strategies. For example: "Does the following crucial moment (CM) apply to you? Y/N [new message] I'm hungry for an unhealthy snack." You reply, and Coach Alba asks some more questions about how you might overcome your next CM, when the CM will likely occur, and other information of that sort.
When you hit a stopping point, Coach Alba lets you know that your little texting session is over and that she'll check back in soon. You often get to decide when that next moment will be, such as just before the critical moment or after it, and when Alba follows up, she'll ask you to rate your success.
Over time, your coach learns more about you, such as the people who are around when you suffer through CMs or your location when they occur, and adds a touch of personal information. Alba might write: "I've noticed that this CM comes at 8pm. Same this time? Text 'Same' or a new time" or "Will Tim be around with it happens? Text 'Same' or a new person."
Although Coach Alba largely looks to you for ideas on what time you'll have your CMs, you can always text "#CM" to start the coaching session any time, day or night.
If you're not looking to correct bad eating habits and lose weight, you may not need Coach Alba. Instead, check out the best fitness apps for other goals, like gaining muscle, counting calories, or physical fitness training.
Putting Coach Alba to the Test I tested Coach Alba using an iPhone 5?for about a week with the goal of nixing a few bad habits, like overeating at dinner and falling prey to mid-afternoon sugar cravings. I liked Coach Alba most when she texted me right before the crucial moment?she usually asks if you would like to be reminded of your strategy before the CM. Once I realized the service worked best for me in that way, I always replied yes. A message received at 3 p.m. reminding me to drink water instead of nibbling on a piece of chocolate worked better than getting a text at 4 p.m. asking me how it went (because, duh, by then I had already eaten the chocolate and forgotten entirely about texting for help).
Coach Alba always gives you the option to continue texting ("Choose one: 1. keep going! 2. subscribe now 3. txt live help"), which I suppose you might want to do if you're feeling lonely or vulnerable, but in testing the service, I often felt D-O-N-E done with Coach Alba long before she was ready to check out. Especially during the first two days of testing, the messages felt incessant and impersonal because they said the same thing over and over again. I didn't want to be at Coach Alba's beck and call.
After day two, however, Alba lightened up on the messaging and I became more accustomed to how she worked. If you don't reply to a message, she leaves you alone for a few days. And when a crucial moment strikes, you can always resume by texting #CM.
Nice Touches, Additional Features Coach Alba also has a Web dashboard at which you can log in to see your progress in resisting temptation and making good choices over time. When you get through a CM with flying colors Coach Alba asks you to record your success rate on a one to seven scale, one being utter failure and seven pointing to an easy win. Those points appear in graphs in the dashboard, and you might be able to see your willpower strengthen day after day?see the slideshow for an example.
As I noted, the automation of the text messages is obvious. For example, if you reply that you don't want to take a certain course of action, Alba might suggest it again immediately thereafter, and if you reply yes the second time, she isn't aware of your inconsistency. If you tell her a CM happened at "work" and another CM happened at "office," she doesn't ask whether these are the same place. When robot Alba fails and can't understand what you write back, a live person is supposed to jump in to help. I never encountered live help naturally, so I wrote "no" a few times when it didn't make sense to trigger the live person.
The live help replied within five minutes, which was much slower than the robot replies, but also less pressing and more natural feeling than Alba's all-too immediate feedback. I typed complete sentences that I knew a robot wouldn't understand, saying that I made a mistake and typed the wrong thing, and the live agent passed the "real person" test easily. Sam asked quick and direct questions about how to resolve my errors and got me back on track to use the automated system within four messages. All told, it took 12 minutes. He signed off with a cheery, "Good luck!"
The service is only available in the U.S. at the moment, and of course, the $5 per month subscription may not be the only associated cost if you get nickled and dimed by your phone carrier for text messages. The messages can get excessive pretty quickly, in part because Alba sometimes sends a note over two texts rather than combining them into one. My guess is that on the back end, Coach Alba is making sure to mete out texts in a way that she's never cut off my a limited character count on the receiving end. Still, she texts a lot. I wish Coach Alba did have some platform or carrier specifics included that might make me eligible for texting discount. For example, I'd love to have my profile marked as "iPhone?user" so I could skirt the additional fees via iMessage.
Whenever you're ready to stop the service, you can simply text "Stop," easy as that. She'll reply with a short message confirming you're out, and that you can text any time to re-activate the service. In my case, the live agent checked back in to make sure I didn't type "stop" accidentally, because it was only moments before that when he and I were chatting. When I told him yes, I did want to quit, he confirmed and I haven't heard from Alba since.
Dieting Success Through Texting? The most important thing Coach Alba does is raise your awareness of your bad eating habits and weaknesses, and that alone may be worth $5 a month. It also gets you to focus on coming up with strategies that are effective, and with the online dashboard, you can see over time what works time and time again versus what doesn't work. If analyzing your trends is what you're really after, you might consider getting on the activity tracker wagon and wearing a modern day version of a pedometer that will measure your activity throughout the day, and often your sleep, too.
Bear in mind that Coach Alba was designed specifically for people who are trying to lose weight, and it's easy to see how this motivational service can interrupt someone right before a CM and, in essence, distract them from the temptation and keep their focus on healthy habits instead. But it can also feel annoying at times, this texting bot who asks the same questions over and over. Still, I say try Coach Alba for a month, as the price isn't too high and you can quit anytime if the messages become too frequent.
More Mobile App Reviews: ??? Coach Alba ??? TurboTax for iPad ??? H&R Block for iPad ??? Slacker Radio (for Android) ??? Yahoo Mail 1.0.4 (for iPhone) ?? more
A study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has determined that there is increasing evidence of a connection between diet and acne, particularly from high glycemic load diets and dairy products, and that medical nutrition therapy (MNT) can play an important role in acne treatment.
More than 17 million Americans suffer from acne, mostly during their adolescent and young adult years. Acne influences quality of life, including social withdrawal, anxiety, and depression, making treatment essential. Since the late 1800s, research has linked diet to this common disease, identifying chocolate, sugar, and fat as particular culprits, but beginning in the 1960s, studies disassociated diet from the development of acne.
"This change occurred largely because of the results of two important research studies that are repeatedly cited in the literature and popular culture as evidence to refute the association between diet and acne," says Jennifer Burris, MS, RD, of the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University. "More recently, dermatologists and registered dietitians have revisited the diet-acne relationship and become increasingly interested in the role of medical nutritional therapy in acne treatment."
Burris and colleagues, William Rietkerk, Department of Dermatology, New York Medical College, and Kathleen Woolf, of New York University's Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, conducted a literature review to evaluate evidence for the diet-acne connection during three distinctive time periods: early history, the rise of the diet-acne myth, and recent research.
Culling information from studies between 1960 and 2012 that investigated diet and acne, investigators compiled data for a number of study characteristics, including reference, design, participants, intervention method, primary outcome, results and conclusions, covariate considerations, and limitations.
They concluded that a high glycemic index/glycemic load diet and frequent dairy consumption are the leading factors in establishing the link between diet and acne. They also note that although research results from studies conducted over the last 10 years do not demonstrate that diet causes acne, it may influence or aggravate it.
The study team recommends that dermatologists and registered dietitians work collaboratively to design and conduct quality research. "This research is necessary to fully elucidate preliminary results, determine the proposed underlying mechanisms linking diet and acne, and develop potential dietary interventions for acne treatment," says Burris. "The medical community should not dismiss the possibility of diet therapy as an adjunct treatment for acne. At this time, the best approach is to address each acne patient individually, carefully considering the possibility of dietary counseling."
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Elsevier Health Sciences: http://www.elsevierhealth.com
Thanks to Elsevier Health Sciences 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.
A new report from the state water board calls for the Legislature to enact new fees to pay for measures designed to clean up nitrate-contaminated groundwater, especially in major agricultural areas such as the Salinas Valley.
The report, issued Wednesday, includes 15 recommendations to address a range of water issues. Among the recommendations: providing clean drinking water, especially for small, disadvantaged communities that rely on contaminated groundwater linked to heavy fertilizer use.
An estimated 2.6 million people, many from some of the poorest communities in the state, rely on groundwater for drinking water in the Salinas and San Joaquin valleys, according to an earlier report by UC Davis.
Nitrate-contaminated drinking water has been linked to birth defects, cancer and other diseases.
Wednesday's report, issued in response to state legislation on nitrate contamination approved in 2008, urges lawmakers to protect groundwater sources from further contamination, monitor and manage contaminated groundwater, and track and report nitrogen fertilizing materials.
But the report said its most critical recommendation is to create a reliable, stable funding source to "ensure all Californians, including those in (disadvantaged communities), have access to safe drinking water."
New funding sources proposed in the report include a point-of-sale fee on agricultural commodities, a fee on nitrogen fertilizing materials or a water use fee.
Clean
Water Action, a national advocacy organization, praised the board's recommendations, particularly the call for a statewide fertilizer fee. The group pointed to the UC Davis report, which estimated nitrate pollution costs taxpayers as much as $36 million per year to provide drinking water to communities in the Salinas Valley and southern San Joaquin Valley affected by polluted agricultural runoff.
The organization said Monterey County's ag industry brings in more than $3 billion per year, while small rural communities are left to deal with the cost of unsafe water.
However, Monterey County Farm Bureau Executive Director Norm Groot said additional taxes or fees, and expensive regulations, would place an unwise burden on an ag industry already struggling in recent years.
Groot said he hadn't fully analyzed the report and its recommendations, but said local farmers had been "bracing" for a fertilizer fee. He said he would need more details about the size and purpose of any proposed fees, but said: "I doubt ag can afford another tax."
The report suggested the state water board and Regional Water Quality Control Board use their authority to order those responsible for nitrate contamination to provide replacement water for affected communities. It called for the Legislature to set up a regulatory framework for providing safe drinking water and to develop, operate and manage new systems for disadvantaged communities.
The water boards would be required to define and identify areas at high risk of nitrate contamination to prioritize regulatory oversight and assistance in the areas.
New and improved groundwater monitoring programs are needed, according to the report, and the Legislature should require that well owners and small unregulated water systems in high-risk areas be identified and notified.
The water boards and state Food and Agriculture officials should convene a task force to work on a nitrogen tracking system, the report recommended, and a panel of experts should be convened to assess existing ag nitrate control programs and suggest improvements as needed.
The state board relied on the UC Davis report as a foundation for its findings and recommendations, and included input from an interagency task force that included representatives from the state Departments of Public Health, Food and Agriculture and Pesticide Regulation, as well as the state's Environmental Protection Agency and local environmental health agencies.
The UC Davis report's major findings include:
? Nitrate problems will likely worsen for decades after infiltrating the Salinas Valley and Tulare Lake Basin aquifers for more than a half century.
? Ag fertilizers and animal wastes applied to cropland are by far the largest regional sources of nitrate in groundwater.
? Many small communities can't afford safe drinking water treatment.
? The most promising revenue source is a fertilizer fee.
? A statewide data collection effort is needed.
The report was released as Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Watsonville, announced he and several colleagues had introduced a package of nine bills aimed at addressing the state's "drinking water crisis." Alejo's bill, AB 1, is called the Salinas Valley Clean Water Funding Bill.
Jim Johnson can be reached at 753-6753 or jjohnson@montereyherald.
Published: Thursday, February 21, 2013 at 9:19 p.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, February 21, 2013 at 9:19 p.m.
SARASOTA - Florida Gov. Rick Scott said the state needs to build a strategy to make sure no more Major League Baseball spring training teams leave for Arizona.
Scott made his comments Thursday night after attending a private reception at the Ed Smith Stadium Complex, where the Baltimore Orioles are scheduled to begin their spring training schedule on Saturday.
Florida has 15 spring training teams.
?We need to keep them in Florida,? Scott, a Republican, said.
Sarasota is no stranger to losing Grapefruit League teams to Arizona. The Cincinnati Reds left Ed Smith Stadium in 2010 for a better stadium in Arizona, and that was a decade after the Chicago White Sox left for Arizona.
The Orioles are in no danger of leaving anytime soon. The club signed a 30-year lease in Sarasota in 2009 in exchange for Sarasota's help in renovating Ed Smith Stadium.
Florida's biggest concern now is losing the Houston Astros, which train in Kissimmee. The team's lease expires in 2016, and there has been talk of Arizona cities trying to lure the team out west.
Arizona's 15 Cactus League teams are huddled around Phoenix, making for shorter travel for spring games.
Teams on Florida's east and west coasts can spend four hours on the road to play against teams on the opposite coast.
The folks in marketing and research are getting tired of the ?Is Pandora radio? debate, it seems. But I still think the question matters. First, here is what they are saying, followed by why I disagree with their premises.
In early January Sean Ross over at Edison Research chided the broadcast industry for ?denial? about Spotify and Pandora.
?Radio?s strategy for selling itself as an industry over the past few years hinged on two dubious strategies,? he wrote. ?One was reminding investors and advertisers that radio is still widely cumed and just hoping that nobody asks about time spent listening. The other was to enthusiastically assail Pandora, Spotify and other competing forms of audio as ?not radio?.?
Furthermore:
?Had existing broadcasters claimed personalized radio as part of their industry sooner, they could have displayed a robust and expanding product line that increased the usage of programmed audio, even if it did not leave existing radio listening untouched. With a TSL [time spent listening] decrease impossible to hide anymore, the ratcheting down of the anti-Pandora rhetoric seems to acknowledge a late willingness to co-opt other forms of programmed audio.?
Then the Mark Ramsey media blog posted an interview with?Mike Agovino of Triton Digital, ?the company at the leading edge of audio?s digital transformation and monetization.?
?The notion that Spotify, Pandora or any on-demand service is the ?enemy? of ?radio? makes no sense,? Agovino explained:
?Did FM prove to be the ?enemy? or a ?friend? back in the 1960?s? The revenue that has left the broadcast radio industry since 2006 has disproportionately gone to Google and Facebook, not to Spotify and Pandora! I would actually argue that these kinds of services are helping to protect audio?s place in the advertising ecosystem as they give marketers a reason to believe audio will evolve to become more targeted and accountable ? this is a critical point.
Whether a product is or isn?t ?radio? doesn?t matter any more than whether a product is or isn?t ?newspaper? or is or isn?t ?TV.? Marketers are following the consumer and the consumer is blending their time between offline and online media with a constant uptick towards online. Ad budgets will continue to slant in the online direction as audience builds and they make better use of available data and precision targeting capability.?
Obviously, if your definition of ?radio? is something that streams audio in some agreed upon format and makes (or could make) somebody money, then Pandora and Spotify are radio and the debate is resolved. Heck, YouTube is radio. And by that standard, my emailing you or posting an .mp3 or .wav file of me singing ?Teddy Bear?s Picnic? and including a link to my Paypal account might be radio. As the man said in Citizen Kane, making money is easy if that?s all you want to do.
But if radio is about bringing people together, making our cities and neighborhoods more connected places, exciting us with live and local music, and challenging us with real time information, dialogue, and debate, then sorry, Spotify and Pandora mostly don?t qualify as radio.
How do I define ?radio?? Jennifer Waits and I will be attending the ?What is Radio? conference in Portland this April. Here is the tentative definition that I will bring to the gathering:
?Radio is the presentation of music, actuality, and talk over standardized streaming audio formats in a real time context.?
Music, meaning music; actuality, meaning prerecorded samples of life sounds; talk, meaning words spoken by and between human beings; streaming formats, meaning AM/FM, Internet, or other venues; and in real time, otherwise known as ?live?.
Conference starts on April 25
What do I mean by ?context?? I mean it doesn?t have to be live all the time. But it has to be real time a lot of the time?live enough, real time enough?that you associate everything streaming on your radio station as an immediate experience, as making an effort to communicate with you now.
This is what makes radio ?radio??giving us the experience of moving through time together while hearing the same sounds and sharing our individual interpretations of those sounds with each other. Radio, at its best, at its most human, de-fragments our social experience.
Some online social-networking music sites fulfill this mission, I think, most notably turntable.fm and Jelli. But?Pandora and Spotify, for all their virtues, don?t. They?re great individualized services, but I would classify them more as juke box than as radio. To be fair, a lot of what comes out of the Clear Channel automated AM/FM universe isn?t radio either, but that?s no consolation.
Feel free to disagree with my definition and analysis, but christening Pandora and Spotify as radio simply because they represent effective business models end runs bigger and more personal questions about what we want or need from the medium. The question still matters. The debate is still on.
Genomic detectives crack the case of the missing heritabilityPublic release date: 22-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Morgan Kelly mgnkelly@princeton.edu 609-258-5729 Princeton University
Despite years of research, the genetic factors behind many human diseases and characteristics remain unknown. The inability to find the complete genetic causes of family traits such as height or the risk of type 2 diabetes has been called the "missing heritability" problem.
A new study by Princeton University researchers, however, suggests that missing heritability may not be missing after all at least not in yeast cells, which the researchers used as a model for studying the problem. Published in the journal Nature, the results suggest that heritability in humans may be hidden due only to the limitations of modern research tools, but could be discovered if scientists know where (and how) to look.
[Images can be seen at http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S36/13/86G93. To obtain high-res images, contact Princeton science writer Morgan Kelly, (609) 258-5729, mgnkelly@princeton.edu]
"The message of our study is that if you look hard enough you will find the missing heritability," said the senior researcher, Leonid Kruglyak, Princeton's William R. Harman '63 and Mary-Love Harman Professor in Genomics and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Kruglyak worked with first author Joshua Bloom, a Princeton graduate student; Wesley Loo, a 2010 Princeton graduate now a graduate student at Harvard University; Thuy-Lan Lite, Class of 2012, who is working at the National Institutes of Health for a year before starting graduate school; and Ian Ehrenreich, a past Princeton postdoctoral researcher now at the University of Southern California.
"We don't think there is some fundamental limitation such as that there are things we don't understand about how genes behave that is holding us back," Kruglyak said. "Instead, we should be able to detect the heritability in humans if we use the right tools."
Passed down from parent to child, genes determine not only eye color and other physical characteristics but also the risk of diseases. Some inherited diseases are caused by a mutation in a single gene. These single-gene disorders have well-defined patterns of inheritance that can be used to predict the chances that an individual will inherit the disease.
However, many diseases and physical traits arise due to multiple genes, multiple locations within genes, and even the regions of DNA between genes. Across the genome which is an individual's total genetic content small variations in DNA code can, when added together, increase or decrease the likelihood that a person will develop a disease or characteristic.
Height, for example, results from variations in DNA at multiple locations on the genome. Researchers have detected about 180 locations in the human genome where small alterations in the DNA code can have an influence on how tall or short a person is. Nonetheless, these locations account for only 13 percent of the expected contribution genetic code has on a person's height.
Type 2 diabetes also has missing heritability: About 40 identified genome locations are associated with the risk of developing the condition, but those account for only 10 percent of the estimated genetic influence. Finding the missing heritability for diseases like type 2 diabetes, Crohn's disease and schizophrenia could help inform prevention and treatment strategies.
In the present study, the researchers scanned the genomes of yeast cells for DNA variations which can be thought of as spelling errors in the four-letter DNA code and then matched those variations with qualities or characteristics inherited from the cells' parents. This type of study, known as a genome-wide association study (GWAS), is a common tool for searching for diseases and traits associated with variations in the genome. The researchers detected numerous DNA variations that, when added together, accounted for almost all of the offsprings' inherited characteristics, indicating that there was very little missing heritability in yeast.
Although the search for heritability was successful in yeast, finding missing heritability in humans is far more complicated, Kruglyak said. For example, interactions between genes can contribute to heritable traits, but such interactions are difficult to detect with genome-wide association studies (GWAS), which are the primary means by which geneticists look for DNA variations associated with diseases or traits. In addition, environmental factors such as nutrition also can influence gene activity, and these influences can be elusive to the genome-wide study. GWAS also may be inadequate at detecting common DNA spelling errors that have only small effects, or it may fail to find DNA variations that have a large effect but are rare.
The study sheds light on the role of nature (genetic factors) versus nurture (environmental factors) in determining traits and disease risk, according to Bert Vogelstein, director of the Ludwig Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.
"The nature versus nurture argument has been brewing for decades, both among scientists and the lay public, and 'missing heritability' has been problematic for the 'nature' component," said Vogelstein, who was not involved in the Princeton study.
"This beautiful study demonstrates that the genetic basis for heritability (nature) can be precisely defined if extensive, well-controlled experiments can be performed," Vogelstein said. "Though the results were obtained in a model organism, I would be surprised if they didn't apply, at least in part, to higher organisms, including humans."
Kruglyak said that one approach to finding the missing heritability in humans might be to apply genome-wide scans to large families, rather than focusing on large populations as is currently done. Family studies take advantage of the fact that the same genetic variations will be more common in families and thus easier to detect. However, the disadvantage of family studies is that the detected genetic variations may not be widespread in the population.
For the study in yeast, the team examined the offspring of two yeast cells, one that is commonly used in laboratory studies and the other in wine making. Although yeast usually reproduce asexually, under certain conditions, such as lack of food, two yeast cells will mate and produce offspring that, like human children, receive roughly half their genetic material from each parent. "Our study involves thousands of 'kids' from a single set of parents," Kruglyak said.
The team first sequenced the genomes of the two parent cells and then conducted scans for DNA variations in the genomes of 1,008 offspring. Yeast do not inherit height or disease risk from their parents, but they can inherit the ability to survive in adverse conditions. The researchers tested the parents and their offspring for the ability to grow under various conditions, including different temperatures, acidity levels, food sources, antibiotics, metal compounds, and in drugs such as caffeine.
The researchers then looked for associations between the DNA variations inherited from the parents and growth ability, and determined that the DNA variations accounted for nearly all of the resilience noted in the offspring.
###
The paper, "Finding the sources of missing heritability in a yeast cross," was published in Nature on Feb. 3, 2013. This work was supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants R37 MH59520 and R01 GM102308; a James S. McDonnell Centennial Fellowship (L.K.); the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (L.K.); a National Science Foundation (NSF) fellowship (J.S.B.); an NIH postdoctoral fellowship F32 HG51762 (I.M.E.); and NIH grant P50 GM071508 to the Center for Quantitative Biology at the Lewis-Sigler Institute of Princeton University.
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Genomic detectives crack the case of the missing heritabilityPublic release date: 22-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Morgan Kelly mgnkelly@princeton.edu 609-258-5729 Princeton University
Despite years of research, the genetic factors behind many human diseases and characteristics remain unknown. The inability to find the complete genetic causes of family traits such as height or the risk of type 2 diabetes has been called the "missing heritability" problem.
A new study by Princeton University researchers, however, suggests that missing heritability may not be missing after all at least not in yeast cells, which the researchers used as a model for studying the problem. Published in the journal Nature, the results suggest that heritability in humans may be hidden due only to the limitations of modern research tools, but could be discovered if scientists know where (and how) to look.
[Images can be seen at http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S36/13/86G93. To obtain high-res images, contact Princeton science writer Morgan Kelly, (609) 258-5729, mgnkelly@princeton.edu]
"The message of our study is that if you look hard enough you will find the missing heritability," said the senior researcher, Leonid Kruglyak, Princeton's William R. Harman '63 and Mary-Love Harman Professor in Genomics and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Kruglyak worked with first author Joshua Bloom, a Princeton graduate student; Wesley Loo, a 2010 Princeton graduate now a graduate student at Harvard University; Thuy-Lan Lite, Class of 2012, who is working at the National Institutes of Health for a year before starting graduate school; and Ian Ehrenreich, a past Princeton postdoctoral researcher now at the University of Southern California.
"We don't think there is some fundamental limitation such as that there are things we don't understand about how genes behave that is holding us back," Kruglyak said. "Instead, we should be able to detect the heritability in humans if we use the right tools."
Passed down from parent to child, genes determine not only eye color and other physical characteristics but also the risk of diseases. Some inherited diseases are caused by a mutation in a single gene. These single-gene disorders have well-defined patterns of inheritance that can be used to predict the chances that an individual will inherit the disease.
However, many diseases and physical traits arise due to multiple genes, multiple locations within genes, and even the regions of DNA between genes. Across the genome which is an individual's total genetic content small variations in DNA code can, when added together, increase or decrease the likelihood that a person will develop a disease or characteristic.
Height, for example, results from variations in DNA at multiple locations on the genome. Researchers have detected about 180 locations in the human genome where small alterations in the DNA code can have an influence on how tall or short a person is. Nonetheless, these locations account for only 13 percent of the expected contribution genetic code has on a person's height.
Type 2 diabetes also has missing heritability: About 40 identified genome locations are associated with the risk of developing the condition, but those account for only 10 percent of the estimated genetic influence. Finding the missing heritability for diseases like type 2 diabetes, Crohn's disease and schizophrenia could help inform prevention and treatment strategies.
In the present study, the researchers scanned the genomes of yeast cells for DNA variations which can be thought of as spelling errors in the four-letter DNA code and then matched those variations with qualities or characteristics inherited from the cells' parents. This type of study, known as a genome-wide association study (GWAS), is a common tool for searching for diseases and traits associated with variations in the genome. The researchers detected numerous DNA variations that, when added together, accounted for almost all of the offsprings' inherited characteristics, indicating that there was very little missing heritability in yeast.
Although the search for heritability was successful in yeast, finding missing heritability in humans is far more complicated, Kruglyak said. For example, interactions between genes can contribute to heritable traits, but such interactions are difficult to detect with genome-wide association studies (GWAS), which are the primary means by which geneticists look for DNA variations associated with diseases or traits. In addition, environmental factors such as nutrition also can influence gene activity, and these influences can be elusive to the genome-wide study. GWAS also may be inadequate at detecting common DNA spelling errors that have only small effects, or it may fail to find DNA variations that have a large effect but are rare.
The study sheds light on the role of nature (genetic factors) versus nurture (environmental factors) in determining traits and disease risk, according to Bert Vogelstein, director of the Ludwig Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.
"The nature versus nurture argument has been brewing for decades, both among scientists and the lay public, and 'missing heritability' has been problematic for the 'nature' component," said Vogelstein, who was not involved in the Princeton study.
"This beautiful study demonstrates that the genetic basis for heritability (nature) can be precisely defined if extensive, well-controlled experiments can be performed," Vogelstein said. "Though the results were obtained in a model organism, I would be surprised if they didn't apply, at least in part, to higher organisms, including humans."
Kruglyak said that one approach to finding the missing heritability in humans might be to apply genome-wide scans to large families, rather than focusing on large populations as is currently done. Family studies take advantage of the fact that the same genetic variations will be more common in families and thus easier to detect. However, the disadvantage of family studies is that the detected genetic variations may not be widespread in the population.
For the study in yeast, the team examined the offspring of two yeast cells, one that is commonly used in laboratory studies and the other in wine making. Although yeast usually reproduce asexually, under certain conditions, such as lack of food, two yeast cells will mate and produce offspring that, like human children, receive roughly half their genetic material from each parent. "Our study involves thousands of 'kids' from a single set of parents," Kruglyak said.
The team first sequenced the genomes of the two parent cells and then conducted scans for DNA variations in the genomes of 1,008 offspring. Yeast do not inherit height or disease risk from their parents, but they can inherit the ability to survive in adverse conditions. The researchers tested the parents and their offspring for the ability to grow under various conditions, including different temperatures, acidity levels, food sources, antibiotics, metal compounds, and in drugs such as caffeine.
The researchers then looked for associations between the DNA variations inherited from the parents and growth ability, and determined that the DNA variations accounted for nearly all of the resilience noted in the offspring.
###
The paper, "Finding the sources of missing heritability in a yeast cross," was published in Nature on Feb. 3, 2013. This work was supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants R37 MH59520 and R01 GM102308; a James S. McDonnell Centennial Fellowship (L.K.); the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (L.K.); a National Science Foundation (NSF) fellowship (J.S.B.); an NIH postdoctoral fellowship F32 HG51762 (I.M.E.); and NIH grant P50 GM071508 to the Center for Quantitative Biology at the Lewis-Sigler Institute of Princeton University.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
(CBS News) Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has been speaking out recently, claiming the automatic budget cuts set to take effect on March 1 might actually benefit what he calls a bloated federal government.
Gingrich also blasted top GOP strategists in an op-ed published by conservative magazine Human Events Wednesday and spoke to "CBS This Morning" about why GOP strategist Karl Rove is "plain wrong" on the path he is mapping out for the Republican Party.
Gingrich called Rove's plan to utilize so-called super PACs to protect the party from unpredictable candidates and broaden GOP appeal "very specifically... a terrible idea."
"We don't want to become a party in which a handful of political bosses gather up money from billionaires in order to destroy the candidates they don't like," Gingrich said, explaining his opposition to Rove's strategy. "I think this is a very dangerous model... last year we lost nine political races that we could have won. There's some very deep rethinking we need to do as a party, but it isn't gathering up more money by Washington consultants."
Gingrich insisted that campaign-finance reform is needed to "allow candidates to raise the money directly so the candidates can spend the money, and the rise of all these super PACs is very dangerous to the long-term health of our society."
Turning his attention to the Republican shortcomings in the 2012 campaign, Gingrich stressed what he calls another "very core problem of the Republican Party."
"A lot of our consultants are frankly just kidding themselves about how big the gap is. The Obama campaign today is about eight years or 10 years ahead of the Republican Party in very fundamental effort to understand the country. This is a country which is in many ways younger, more Latino, more Asian-American, more African-American than Republican strategists are capable of dealing with.
"As a result," Gingirch added, "...We're going to be non-competitive at the presidential level. We're doing great with governors. We have 30 governors with 315 electoral votes, but we're not doing well at the presidential level."
The former speaker hopes that change will come from his heavy-handed critique, saying, "I hope first of all that the major donors will think long and hard before they turn lots of money over to consultants," and that the GOP will realize "the entire party has to be capable of reaching out to America... and in providing better solutions than the Democrats provide. You can't just be an opposition party. You have to be a party that has a better alternative."
Watch Newt Gingrich's full interview with Gayle King and Charlie Rose in the player below
More than 600,000 white British Londoners have left the capital in the last ten years, according to new census data available in the United Kingdom. The numbers show that between 2001 and 2011 the number of whites departing from London reached 620,000. This number is equal to the population of the city of Glasgow, Scotland, where the ethnic makeup is almost entirely white. This white flight from London has now made whites a minority in the British capital. The census also shows some rural areas have seen an uptick in the proportion of people who describe their ethnicity as ?white British?. Some 3.7million Londoners classified themselves as white British in 2011, despite the city?s population increasing by nearly one million over the decade to 8.2million. In 2001, the number of white Britons living in London was 4.3 million.
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White Britons now make up 45 per cent of the population, compared with 58 per cent in 2001. Immigrants have boosted the population of London over the last ten years with three million foreign-born people now living there. Five London boroughs saw the proportion of white Britons fall by more than 25 percent. The largest decline was in Newham, East London, where the decrease was 37.5 per cent. In Barking and Dagenham, on the East London/Essex border, 80 per cent of residents were white British in 2001 but by 2011 the proportion was 49 per cent.
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Comments came from both politicians and those who watch population trends closely. A town councillor of Barking and Dagenham said that Britons have left London for a variety of reasons, including retirement. Councillor?Ralph Baldwin said the former residents of London thought "'We don?t know where we are living any more?.
?One day they are in a place that they think is Essex and then they are living in another place...It has never been an issue of race. It?s about the inability of people to affect change. The world was changing around them and they couldn?t do anything about it."
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The largest ethnic group now living in London consists of Asians, many of whom are of Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi parentage who come from overseas and born in the UK. They make up 18 per cent of the population. Black Londoners from Africa, the Caribbean and native-born, now make up 13 per cent.
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Elsewhere in England and Wales, the census showed the proportion of white Britons in South Derbyshire went up by 13.7 per cent over the decade.
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North Kesteven and West Lindsey in Lincolnshire, Uttlesford in Essex, East Northamptonshire, East Cambridgeshire, Mid Suffolk, South Norfolk, Mid Devon and Forest Heath in Suffolk also showed increases.
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The census recorded that the population of England and Wales grew with an influx of four million immigrants during ten years of great social change. The census noted that in 2011 there were 7.5 million people born abroad living in England and Wales, while more than half had arrived since 2001.
Matt Riddle scored a decision win over Che Mills at UFC on Fuel 7 this past weekend. It's his second straight win after a win over Chris Clements at UFC 149 was overturned because Riddle tested positive for marijuana metabolites. He was angry after the positive test because Riddle has a medical marijuana card from Nevada, where he lives.
Riddle mended fences with the UFC brass while in England for his fight, as well.
"I actually talked to [UFC VP of regulatory affairs] Marc Ratner this past weekend in London," Riddle said to MMA Junkie Radio. "I kind of apologized because you know, I can't use medical marijuana. They can use TRT, and I've kind of been like ? I've been on the phone with Marc, and he's been like, 'There's nothing we can really do about it. You can't do it. The commissions don't respect your license.' I was kind of like, 'That sucks, bro,' and I was kind of mad at him, but it's not up to him. It's up to the other athletic commissions, and the UFC is doing the best they can to make them happy and to abide by their rules when they go over to Brazil and Europe when those places don't have athletic commissions."
I don't have much sympathy for fighters testing positive for a substance they know is banned, no matter what it is. Though Riddle's medical marijuana card allowed him to use it in Nevada, he should have asked well in advance what it meant for his fight in Canada. Marijuana shouldn't be banned, but it is. Fighters don't have to like the rules, but they do have to follow them.
But this is an issue the state commissions will need to address soon. Marijuana was recently legalized for recreational use in Washington and Colorado. 18 other states, including California and Nevada, allow medical marijuana or have decriminalized the drug. Cities are moving towards changing laws, as well. Chicago now gives tickets for pot possession instead of arrests.
Riddle says he will continue to push for changes in the rules. With marijuana becoming increasingly legal, and little proof that marijuana is a performance enhancer, there's no good reason for commissions to test for it.
BOSTON (AP) -- The average cost of a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline in Massachusetts is up four cents in the past week, but it's still a penny below the national average.
AAA Southern New England reports this week that self-serve, regular is up to an average of $3.72 per gallon.
That's one cent below the national average of $3.73. The price in Massachusetts this time last year was $3.60.
AAA found self-serve, regular selling as low as $3.59 per gallon and as high as $3.87.
"Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome" may live on as a TV series. (NBC Universal)The new "Battlestar Galactica" (BSG) prequel film ?Blood & Chrome? is out on DVD and Blu-ray today. So far, the feature-length film has earned positive reviews, but its road to success has been bumpy to say the least, transitioning from potential series, to Web series, to TV movie and now going full circle to a potentially ongoing series.
?The metrics are invisible to me. I don?t know where the measuring stick is,? said "Blood & Chrome" Executive Producer David Eick to Yahoo News in a phone interview. ?We have to see what the parameters are.?
I also had a chance to ask Eick about some of BSG?s seemingly endless, and endlessly fascinating, trivia. But first, a look at what might be happening next in the beloved saga.
Lest he be misunderstood, Eick wants to keep telling stories set in the world of the first Cylon War, which follow a young William Adama (Luke Pasqualino) in the role first made famous by Edward James Olmos. But creating the pilot was such a strange and arduous process that Eick isn?t sure all the pieces will come together, even if the Blu-ray sales match the impressive viewership of the Web series.
Along with the strange programming shuffle that Eick and the other creative powers behind "Blood & Chrome" have endured, they also produced the film under considerable duress, having to make due with some serious budget constraints. For example, scenes that take place aboard the Galactica were all filmed using captured CGI footage taken before the original BSG set was dismantled in 2009.
Nonetheless, acting in front of computer generated sets has created problems on other past productions. Even so, the show looks and sounds fantastic on Blu-ray. In fact, it has a sharper and more engaging visual style than nearly anything that has come before it in the BSG universe.
?They did groundbreaking work,? Eick said of the "Blood & Chrome" effects team. ?Still, it was a tremendous struggle. I certainly wouldn?t want to go backwards on a technical scale, even if the show had the chance to move forward story wise.?
But even with those budgetary limitations, "Blood & Chrome" works as a story.
Actor Ben Cotton, who plays Coker Fasjovik, the film?s foil to Adama?s optimistic character, told Yahoo News that the show?s creators did a masterful job of setting the stage for a unique story that could tie into the larger BSG ethos.
?I would draw a lot of parallels between my character and Colonel Tigh,? Cotton said. ?I thought that was clever in the sense that a character would help Adama learn to deal with Tigh later on.?
Eick was also a driving force behind ?Caprica,? the first attempt at a "Battlestar Galactica" spinoff series. That show has its fans but was largely considered a disappoint due to its more dramatic themes that many people felt drifted away from what made the reimagined 2004-2009 series such a success.
Unlike the often benevolent, sentient creatures in BSG, the Cylons in "Blood & Chrome" have no interest in understanding the spiritual makeup of their human adversaries. It is, simply put, a war.
?I think it?s important that we say that the Cylons are at a place where they are angry,? Eick said. ?Otherwise, there?s no transformation to where we find them at later on.?
"Blood & Chrome" is more rooted in the forward-moving action stories from the BSG series, though Eick says that a long-term show would have plenty of drama and intellectual storylines to consider as well.
?It definitely would have gotten darker as we moved forward,? Eick said. ?We?d be exploring all kinds of aspects of religion and psychology. But for this initial story, we were harkening back to the more strategic and war game aspects of the series.?
For his part, Cotton was also excited about the prospect of digging deeper into the darker themes that defined BSG.
?I imagine there would be a lot of drinking and some destruction involved,? he said of how Coker and Adama might interact in future storylines. ?I think Coker was so jaded and so weary by the whole thing. I think he?s seen it all.?
And, of course, we?d find out exactly how Adama goes from a brash young pilot into the jaded and often ethically compromised, but always passionate, leader we see in his later years.
?It must have been a pretty profound journey,? Eick said when asked if he is still excited to tell that story.
Once we finished discussing the still uncertain future of "Blood & Chrome," I asked Eick a few random questions that have always intrigued me as an unrepentant BSG fun.
For example, despite his serious gravitas, many BSG fans have wondered how the show would explain Edward James Olmos? prominent facial scaring. Well, rest assured, that question is addressed in "Blood & Chrome."
During a battle with the more primitive Cylons that we see on display in the film, the fresh-faced Adama (Pasqualino) is hit with a splash of what appears to be battery acid.
?It started as realism,? Eick said with a laugh, acknowledging that the ?mystery? of Adama?s skin quality had come up in creative discussions. ?It was just in my head. I thought, this could be an explanation for how some of that facial scarring started.?
I also had a chance to ask Eick about one curious incident involving the show?s neologism ?frak.?
Throughout the BSG saga, there are literally hundreds of times where a character says the word "frak? in place of dropping an actual f-bomb. It was a playful wink at the show?s science fiction roots while simultaneously staying within basic cable?s PG-13 language requirements. But there was one moment when frak was replaced by the real thing?and it apparently got by the watchful eyes of broadcast censors.
In Part 1 (?Daybreak?) of the "Battlestar Galactica" series finale, Gaius Baltar (James Callis) is having an argument with his father, during which the actor lets forth with the four-letter word.
?Well, I was on the set, so it certainly was noticed,? Eick said. ?Maybe that one just made it past the censors and most of the viewers.?
Finally, I asked Eick if "Blood & Chrome" would follow the path of other prequel attempts by showing any other established characters like Saul Tigh, Number 6, or Tom Zerek in their earlier years?
?You never say never, but you don?t want to get too cute with the referencing of ?Battlestar? characters,? he said.
One of the rougher, meaner Cylon models in "Blood & Chrome" (NBC Universal)
The number of gadget-related thefts in major metropolitan areas has only continued to rise, and the number of resolved cases simply can't keep up. However, it would appear that Apple is now working directly with the NYPD to help return iThings into the hands of their rightful owners. The 
In early January Sean Ross over at Edison Research chided the broadcast industry for ?denial? about Spotify and Pandora.
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Public release date: 22-Feb-2013
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Matt Riddle scored a decision win over Che Mills at UFC on Fuel 7 this past weekend. It's his second straight win after a win over Chris Clements at UFC 149 was overturned because Riddle tested positive for marijuana metabolites. He was angry after the positive test because Riddle has a medical marijuana card from Nevada, where he lives.
