Preacher Billy Graham admitted to NC hospital

FILE- In this Dec. 20, 2010 file photo, evangelist Billy Graham, 92, is interviewed at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association headquarters in Charlotte, N.C. The Rev. Billy Graham was admitted to a hospital Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2011 near his home in western North Carolina to be tested for pneumonia after suffering from congestion, a cough and a slight fever, his spokesman said. (AP Photo/Nell Redmond, File)

FILE- In this Dec. 20, 2010 file photo, evangelist Billy Graham, 92, is interviewed at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association headquarters in Charlotte, N.C. The Rev. Billy Graham was admitted to a hospital Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2011 near his home in western North Carolina to be tested for pneumonia after suffering from congestion, a cough and a slight fever, his spokesman said. (AP Photo/Nell Redmond, File)

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) ? The Rev. Billy Graham was admitted to a hospital Wednesday near his home in western North Carolina to be tested for pneumonia after suffering from congestion, a cough and a slight fever, his spokesman said.

The 93-year-old evangelist was taken to Mission Hospital in Asheville, spokesman A. Larry Ross said. His personal physician, Dr. Lucian Rice, said he was in stable condition.

A news release issued by the hospital said Graham was alert, smiling and waving to staff as he entered the hospital. Ross said Graham was admitted for observation and treatment and likely would spend the night there.

Ross said Graham was in good spirits after undergoing a full afternoon of medical tests. His daughter, Gigi, visited him after dinner for prayer and Bible reading, Ross said. As the two watched television in the hospital room, Ross said they found a replay of Graham's 1973 crusade in St. Louis.

For six decades, Graham led a worldwide crusade-based ministry that packed stadiums with believers and allowed him to counsel every U.S. president since Harry Truman. His most recent book, "Nearing Home," was published last month.

In recent years, age-related conditions such as macular degeneration and hearing loss have kept Graham at his home in Montreat, about 20 miles east of Asheville.

He was last hospitalized in May, when he spent five days at the same hospital for pneumonia. In October 2008, Graham was hospitalized after he tripped and fell over one of his dogs. Earlier that same year, he had elective surgery on a shunt that controls excess fluid on his brain. The shunt was first installed in 2000 and drains fluid through a small tube, relieving excess pressure that can cause symptoms similar to Parkinson's disease.

Graham has also suffered from prostate cancer and was hospitalized in 2007 for nearly two weeks after experiencing intestinal bleeding. His wife, Ruth Bell Graham, died in June 2007.

Graham rarely appears in public now. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association is run by Graham's son, Franklin.

___

Online:

Billy Graham Evangelistic Association: http://www.billygraham.org/

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-11-30-US-REL-Billy-Graham-Hospitalized/id-9f1b2bd869ef4603b2df954d79e5b216

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Herman Cain 'Hannity' Interview: GOP Presidential Candidate Says 'I Am Going To Reestablish My Character' (VIDEO)

GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain appeared Thursday night on Fox News' "Hannity" to discuss allegations made by Georgia businesswoman Ginger White that she and Cain engaged in an affair that lasted for 13 years. Cain also discussed the future of his campaign and told host Sean Hannity, "I am going to reestablish my character."

Cain told his staff on Tuesday that he is reassessing his candidacy. Hannity began Thursday night's interview by asking Cain, "What do you mean by your campaign is reassessing?" Cain said that his family is the "number one priority" in this reassessment. He explained that the "media frenzy" he's been engulfed by "has taken an emotional toll." He reiterated, "I've got to consider family considerations first."

The former Godfather's Pizza CEO also stated that he has to consider "what happens to contributions." Cain went on to explain, "like a businessman, Sean, when you have a bump in the road you reconsider and reevaluate. And it's as if some people in the media don't want to give me that opportunity, but I am gonna take that opportunity to reassess and reevaluate so we can decide: where do we go from here?"

Hannity also brought up text messages that are reported to have been exchanged between White and Cain. When asked by Hannity if there was anything inappropriate in the messages, Cain said, "Absolutely not." The Republican contender stated that White initiated 47 text messages, all of which were "asking for financial help." He continued:

"Sean, unfortunately, I'm a softy, and I feel sorry for people when they get in deep financial trouble, especially given this economy and people being out of work. This isn't the only person I have helped. There are members of my church, members of my family, you know other friends that I have helped all the time in terms of trying to help them during these tough economic times."

Expressing dismay about White's decision to speak to the press, Cain said, "I thought it was a friend that I was trying to help. And so when you get blindsided like that, and you can imagine what it felt like, when in fact, didn't turn out to be a friend at all. And so, that's another aspect of this that was not only hurtful to me, but also hurtful to my wife."

When Hannity brought up the fact that Cain had not previously discussed White with his wife, Cain replied, "That is correct, and she was hurt that she didn't know about this friend that I was helping financially. She was aware of many of the other friends that I have helped."

Cain stated earlier this week that a decision would be made in "several days" about whether or not he would stay in the race. He clarified during the "Hannity" interview, "before Monday we will make a decision."

Perhaps the strangest part of the segment came near the end of the interview. Cain suggested to Hannity that someone was paying off the candidate's accusers:

Cain: "We don't have the source yet, but I and many of my associates and many of my people are convinced that in every case it was financially motivated that somebody somewhere is paying them off to try and smear my character in order to slow me down."

Hannity: "Who do you think might be responsible for that?"

Cain: "Sean, I have no idea. I'm just saying if you look at the circumstance, especially of the lady that Gloria Allred represented, and if you look at this situation, both have very similar situations that suggest dire financial straits. And so, we don't have any evidence yet, but I assure you, we are gonna get to the bottom of it, I've already started that process, and when we come back, it's not gonna be based upon rumors, it's not gonna be based upon he-said-she-said, it's gonna be based upon factual information that we are gonna be able to present in order to show that I had not done many of the things that I have been accused of."

Cain concluded the interview by stating he would fight the allegations against him "no matter what."

Shortly after the interview aired on Fox News, Cain's official Twitter account sent out the following message:

WATCH THE INTERVIEW AT THE TOP OF THIS ARTICLE (via Fox News)

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/02/herman-cain-hannity-interview_n_1124797.html

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Government Space Capsules Compared (Historical Apollo vs. New MPCV) (ContributorNetwork)

Currently, the United States does not have a vehicle that would allow us to put people into space, but there are several efforts, says Space News from Nov. 13, to develop that capability. There is a lot of excitement about commercial efforts to get people into space, but so far the government effort has not attracted as much attention.

The government capsule is called the MPCV, and was formerly known as the Orion. Let's compare the MPCV to the earlier Apollo capsule to see if we are making progress. First, why does the capsule in development have such a dull name? NASA had a competition for a development contract for the crew capsule; a Lockheed proposal won the competition, and was named the Orion -- as a part of the Constellation program. When a new president was elected a lot of things had to change; the Constellation was canceled, but the Orion was quickly brought back in a series of un-cancellations. First it was brought back as an unneeded crew rescue vehicle and then as an exploration vehicle. Now it apparently duplicates the role of the commercial vehicles. Still, the Orion name was associated with the old Administration and had to go, and it was renamed the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle -- while someone figures out why it is being built.

* The MPCV should carry up to four people, with cargo replacing some of the people as needed. The earlier design of the vehicle had been downsized to four (allowing the other three positions possibly restored later?) so we will see if the MPCV will possibly carry more at some point. The MPCV should have 8.95 cubic meters (316 cubic feet) of usable volume with 19.56 cubic meters (691 cubic feet) of pressurized volume. Each person will have 2.24 cubic meters with this design.

* The Apollo Command Module carried three people in 6.2 cubic meters (207 cubic feet) of usable volume but pressurized a total of 10.3 cubic meters (343 cubic feet) the larger size accounts for volume containing avionics and stowage. So it is smaller than the MPCV, and it carried one fewer person (as currently planned). Each person will have 2.07 cubic meters to move around in.

* The Apollo Command Module weight and dimensions are given in the previous story. The weight of the MPCV is planned to be approximately 8913 kilograms (19650 pounds mass) so the MPCV will be about 3353 kilograms heavier.

* The Apollo Command Module was always flown with the Service Module attached; it contained a boost engine, additional consumables, etc. The MPCV will also be flown with a Service Module but that is not yet designed. The MPCV Service Module announced mass is 12,337 kg (27,198 lb) which would make it about twice the mass of the Apollo Service Module.

* One area where the MPCV capsule will eclipse the Apollo capsule is in electronics -- the MPCV electronics will certainly do far more than the earlier capsule's systems. Since the MPCV will carry far more boxes it will be interesting to see which one uses more total mass of avionics.

* The MPCV is being designed so it could do several missions; for instance, the re-entry heat shield is designed for a return from a higher speed lunar return trajectory.

* The Apollo Command Module was designed for a flight to the Moon, so it had more supplies. However, its avionics were based on the older vacuum tube era technology and they were far heavier while doing far less than current systems.

Charles Phillips has had a long career in the space field: he has worked in space operations since 1978, as an Air Force officer from 1978 until he retired in 2005 (working in space, communications, and maintenance), or as a NASA contractor, and he has been a writer all of that time. Now he finds the stories that people are interested in but might have been missed by other reporters.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/space/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20111130/us_ac/10555125_government_space_capsules_compared_historical_apollo_vs_new_mpcv

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Kobo Vox

The Kobo Vox ($199 direct) aims to douse the Amazon Kindle Fire?($199, 4 stars) as an inexpensive tablet and ebook reader. But despite sharing a similar look and feel to the Editors? Choice Kindle Fire, the Kobo Vox lacks the power and polish to compete. It does a decent job as a color ereader, but beyond that it feels dated even next to the year-old Barnes and Noble Nook Color?($199, 4 stars). Its sluggish performance, unrefined software, and subpar reading experience make the Kobo Vox a hard sell, even at just $199.

Design
The Kobo Vox is a black slab, looking a lot like a Kindle Fire or BlackBerry PlayBook?($499, 2.5 stars). At 7.6 by 5.1 by .53 inches (HWD) and 14.2 ounces, it is slightly wider and lighter than the Kindle Fire?s 7.5 by 4.7 by .45 inches and 14.6 ounces. The rubberized black plastic back has the same texture as the Kindle Fire and BlackBerry PlayBook, but Kobo adds a raised diamond quilt design. The build quality is comparable to the Kindle Fire, but there's a little more flex in the case, making the Kindle Fire seem more solid in your hand.? The Vox has a physical Power button and volume rocker, which I found more useful than the Kindle Fire?s single, awkwardly-placed power button. The bezel is slightly larger than the Kindle Fire?s and houses capacitive Back, Menu and Home buttons.? Some people will appreciate these dedicated, off-screen buttons, but I found they caused trouble when using the tablet in landscape mode. The Kobo Vox has standard headphone and MicroUSB jacks, a microSD slot, and a single speaker grille. Like the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet ($249, 4 stars), the Kobo Vox lacks front and rear cameras. The Vox connects to the Internet using 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, and I had no trouble connecting to our Lab networks. There's no cellular radio or Bluetooth connectivity.

The 7-inch fringe field switching (FFS+) LCD screen is bright and the 1,024-by-600-pixel resolution makes text look clear and crisp. Kobo went with an FFS+ display over in-plane switching (IPS), claiming the former performs better in bright-light settings. The Kobo's screen is brighter than the Kindle Fire?s IPS screen, but I found the outdoor reading experience to be about the same on both. The FFS+ display also has a narrower viewing angle than the Kindle Fire's screen does. Colors are more saturated and vivid on the Fire. For reading ebooks, contrast is greater on the Vox?the black text really pops against an almost-alarming white background.

OS, Apps, Book Store
The Kobo Vox, Nook Tablet, and Kindle Fire all share the same underlying Google Android 2.3 software. Where Barnes and Noble and Amazon heavily modified their user interfaces, the Kobo sticks relatively close to stock Android. The lock screen is changed, and mimics the side-swiping unlock motion on both the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet. The five home screens are populated with pre-loaded apps like The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Press Reader and Zinio for newspaper and magazine reading, which are useful enough, but are ?also easy to remove. Unlike the Nook Tablet or Kindle Fire, Kobo stuck with home-screen widgets, including an appealing collage of links to recently read books.

There are four reading-related icons on the bottom of the home screen, along with an All Apps button.? The first three are fairly self explanatory: Read Now, Library, and Shop Kobo. The last is Reading Life, which is unique to the Kobo Vox. ?It takes you to a very neat page that displays your reading progress and statistics, ?including things like total reading time, pages turned, and pages per hour. While not extremely useful, it adds a little more fun to the reading experience.

There are also awards and accomplishments you can earn through continued reading.? Kobo is really pushing a more social edge to the reading experience, with heavy Facebook integration and sharing options. This is similar to Barnes and Noble?s Nook Friends app, but instead of a separate app, the sharing and social functions are integrated with your reading. You can comment on pages and read what other people have to say about the books you?re reading. It?s like a virtual book club, but it would have been even nicer to have a book lending option like in Nook Friends. There's also a notification bar on the top of the screen, displaying battery life, the time, Wi-Fi connectivity status, and alerts.

Gmail is preloaded, but not Google Maps or Google Talk. Instead of the Android Market, the Vox comes with a link to GetJar's Web-based app store. Most of the apps there are optimized for phones, but they look good on the 7-inch screen. Alternatively, you can install the Amazon App Store or sideload your own Android apps from APK files via the microSD slot.

Kobo's store offers a selection of more than 2.2 million ebooks, more than the million or so Amazon claims to offer. But finding books was difficult; for instance, there is no dedicated section for browsing, say, childrens' books or comics. When I did finally find some childrens' books, they looked nice, but as you'll see below, the tablet is sluggish enough that kids would likely become easily frustrated with it.

Performance and Reading Experience
Frustratingly slow performance and an unresponsive touch screen make the Kobo Vox a pain to use and downright cumbersome when compared with the Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet. The tablet is built around an 800MHz Freescale i.MX51 Cortex-A8 processor, and you get 512MB of RAM, and 8GB of internal storage (with unlimited cloud storage for Kobo content). The aging, single-core processor really holds the tablet back. The Kobo Vox scored a paltry 1,777 on our Antutu benchmark, which measures how fast components like the processor and memory run. It was significantly lower than the Kindle Fire?s 5052 score. Movements and animations were consistently slow, choppy, and generally unresponsive in my tests. Be prepared for long load times and multiple presses to get your commands registered.

The Kobo Vox also turned in a disappointing Browsermark Web browsing score of 25,051, less than a third of the Kindle Fire?s 76,739. The closest comparison is the Samsung DoubleTime?($49, 2 stars), which is a pretty poor smartphone.

The Vox's poor performance makes reading a drag. Though page turns are reasonably quick, books take too long to load. And I really missed the Kindle and Nook's page-turn animations that help bridge the tactile gap between ereaders and physical books. The Kobo Vox also had a hard time switching from portrait to landscape mode smoothly while I was reading. It takes entirely too long, hanging on a blank screen with a rotating circle icon.

Kobo claims that the Vox should deliver 7 hours of battery life with Wi-Fi turned off. In our battery test, which loops a video with the screen pumped up to max brightness, and Wi-Fi on, the Kobo Vox lasted just 3 hours, 47 minutes. That's considerably shorter than the Kindle Fire, which lasted close to 5 hours on the same test.

Conclusions
With the Vox, Kobo tries to mimic the Amazon Kindle Fire, and fails in pretty much every way. Kobo was able to hit that magic $199 price point, but at the cost of performance and polish. The Kindle Fire is a great product at a budget price. The Kobo Vox, on the other hand, is a budget product with a price to match. There is simply no reason to choose the Kobo Vox over the Kindle Fire, the Nook Tablet, or the Nook Color.?

More Tablet Reviews:
??? Kobo Vox
??? Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime
??? Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus
??? ViewSonic ViewPad 10pro
??? T-Mobile Springboard 4G
?? more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/Ho8sWpDq4FU/0,2817,2397127,00.asp

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Harvard-designed 'soft robot' shows you how low it can go (video)

It's the stuff of slow-moving robopocalyptic nightmares: a 'soft robot' designed by a team of Harvard scientists that draws inspiration from invertebrates like worms and starfish. The wired 'bot is made from a flexible elastomer material that allows it to squeeze into spaces that are inaccessible for more traditional robots. Inside are chambers that inflate and deflate, allowing the thing to undulate forward. Definitely check out the robot in action after the break.

Continue reading Harvard-designed 'soft robot' shows you how low it can go (video)

Harvard-designed 'soft robot' shows you how low it can go (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/fmrl7Yznu2U/

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Stocks slip in early trade, a day after huge rally

In this Nov. 30, 2011 photo, trader Luigi Muccitelli, left, works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. A rally on global markets stalled Thursday, Dec. 1, 2011, as euphoria over major central banks' coordinated cut to borrowing costs wore off and investors sought confirmation that European leaders will next week deliver a long-term solution to the debt crisis. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

In this Nov. 30, 2011 photo, trader Luigi Muccitelli, left, works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. A rally on global markets stalled Thursday, Dec. 1, 2011, as euphoria over major central banks' coordinated cut to borrowing costs wore off and investors sought confirmation that European leaders will next week deliver a long-term solution to the debt crisis. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

NEW YORK (AP) ? Stocks are opening slightly lower, a day after the market had its best day in two and a half years.

Another rise in applications for unemployment benefits last week set a negative tone on Wall Street. The increase is a sign of weakness in the labor market because people are still being laid off.

Minutes after the opening bell Thursday, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 29 points, or 0.2 percent, at 12,016.

The Dow had soared 490 the day before, its biggest gain since March 2009, after central banks around the world slashed borrowing costs to shore up the global financial system.

The S&P 500 was down 4, or 0.3 percent, at 1,243. The Nasdaq fell 7, or 0.3 percent, to 2,613.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2011-12-01-Wall%20Street/id-e38615a9bd9d4f2298babb8926abba1d

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Researchers unlock bacteria's beneficial side

Monday, November 28, 2011

Researchers now understand how bacteria can break down phosphonic acids, persistent and potentially hazardous environmental pollutants found in many common medicinal products, detergents and herbicides.

"We've achieved a critical step that has evaded other research groups for nearly 50 years," says David Zechel, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and an expert in enzyme catalysis. "Having successfully identified the proteins that are needed to break down these molecules, we can finally examine how this reaction actually works and engineer specialized bacteria in the lab to render these compounds harmless."

The stability of phosphonic acids means that these compounds do not easily break down in nature. However, certain bacteria manage to break down these bonds in related molecules with surprising ease. The team successfully identified a complex of proteins that is believed to perform the key bond-breaking step.

It is estimated that more than 20,000 tonnes of phosphonic acids are released annually into the environment in the Western Hemisphere. Many of these end up as contaminants in groundwater, leading to concern over their impact on human health and aquatic life.

This research was conducted by Queen's Chemistry graduate student Fern R. McSorley in collaboration with Bjarne Jochimsen (Department of Molecular Biology, Aarhus University) and Bjarne Hove-Jensen (Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen).

The findings were recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

###

Queen's University: http://www.queensu.ca

Thanks to Queen's University for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/115488/Researchers_unlock_bacteria_s_beneficial_side

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