Long rumoured - and hoped for - GDC 2013 has finally provided confirmation that Apple will release its own dedicated game controller.
Of course, there's no official word yet, but Apple has been active during the conference talking to developers about its plans and ensuring plenty of games will support the joypad at launch.
It's been operating a meeting room at the show, albeit booked under a pseudonym company name to avoid media attention.
However, speaking anonymously, multiple developer sources have confirmed the news to PocketGamer.biz.
In the hand
It's expected Apple will formally announce its plans during its annual April press event; previously this has been centred around the iPad.
Many things remain unknown, though.
None of our contacts had seen or held the physical device so we don't know if the pad will take a conventional approach or employ a radical new design.
Following recent mishaps, Apple doesn't let unreleased hardware leave its closely guarded offices.
Neither are we sure when the pad will be released.
It would be logical for it to hit retail alongside a new iPad, but given the opportunities a dedicated controller would provide in the living room, we'd expect it to be part of a large announcement also revealing Apple's wide TV strategy, including a direct assault on the console businesses of Sony and Microsoft.
Everybody plays the joypad game
The news follows on from an explosion in third-party controllers from iOS and Android devices during 2012.
This has come from dedicated peripheral companies like MOGA and Nyko, as well as start ups such as Green Throttle, and even unconsole players like Ouya and GameStick, for whom a physical controller is a vital part of their plans to disrupt the console business.
Another example of the important of a game pad to big business was Samsung's surprise announcement of its Game Pad at the Galaxy S4 launch.
And to complete the picture, one developer source also told us that Google will be making its own announcement about an official game controller in the near future too.
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Apple are often criticised for not reaching out to the games development community, perhaps this time that is what they have done, and whether the rumours become reality or not, that's probably a good thing.
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Todd - nope. The news came from trusted sources while at GDC. Whether it makes it to market is another matter, but we've been assured something was happening in San Francisco.
We don't run rumours lightly on PocketGamer.biz - they're something of a rarity here.
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1
Which is it? Confirmed or not confirmed? Looks like the story is unfounded and author is using the Apple name just to bait people into reading this generating hits on nothing.
"Long rumoured - and hoped for - GDC 2013 has finally provided confirmation that Apple will release its own dedicated game controller."
"Of course, there's no official word."
Jim says "nope" and I agree.
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33
I hope this is a rare miss on Dalrymple's part...
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From Jim Dalrymple: "Nope"
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1
Jim Dalrymple says "Nope", so it's not happening. If you're not familiar with Jim, check his track record before responding. http://www.loopinsight.com/2013/03/29/the-rumored-apple-branded-gaming-joypad/
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33
Sooner than I thought - three cheers for things that make sense.
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1
Relevant tweet from a developer at GDC: https://twitter.com/PHIL_FISH/status/316736139753029633
MOMBASA, Kenya (Reuters) - A Kenyan separatist movement denied on Friday accusations by the authorities that it was behind a raid in a coastal resort that killed eight people, although it said former members may have been involved.
Armed police officers shot dead six attackers and two policemen were killed in Thursday's early morning raid on a casino popular with tourists in Malindi. Officials blamed the banned Mombasa Republican Council (MRC).
A series of attacks blamed on the movement have damaged prospects for growth and investment along Kenya's coast, a major tourist draw, and in Mombasa, an economically vital port city.
"Police should stop using the MRC as a scapegoat for failing to protect Kenyans," senior MRC member Omar Bebo told Reuters. He said that criminal gangs "have taken advantage of our sour relationship with government to cause trouble".
"Some of these gangs are formed by splinter groups of youths who decamped from the MRC because we rejected their call to engage in violence. Those are the people police should be chasing," he said by telephone.
The MRC feeds off local discontent largely based on long-held grievances over land and frustration at the perceived economic marginalisation of the coast by the central government.
Police suspected the group targeted the Italian-owned casino in order to steal cash to fund their activities. Four suspects were arrested and dozens of others fled.
"We know we have some youth who decided to ignore our call for peace, and might also be involved in these attacks, but we told them they are on their own," Omar said. "MRC is not responsible for their actions, and we have disowned them."
On Thursday night police increased security around a police station in Kilifi, west of Mombasa, another MRC stronghold, saying they received reports that MRC youths planned a raid.
Beatrice Gachago, area police chief, told Reuters that she had ordered more night patrols after receiving the intelligence reports. "We are not taking anything for granted," she said.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? U.S. consumers stepped up spending in February after their income jumped, aided by a stronger job market that offset some of the drag from higher taxes. The gains led economists to predict stronger economic growth at the start of the year.
Consumer spending rose 0.7 percent in February from January, the Commerce Department said Friday. It was the biggest gain in five months and followed a revised 0.4 percent rise in January, which was double the initial estimate.
Americans were able to spend more because their income rose 1.1 percent last month. That followed huge swings in the previous two months, which reflected a rush to pay bonuses and dividends in December before taxes increased.
After-tax income also increased 1.1 percent last month, allowing consumers to put a little more away. The saving rate increased to 2.6 percent of after-tax income, up from 2.2 percent in January.
The gains in spending and income follow other signs of an economy gathering momentum. Hiring is up, businesses are spending more, the stock market is hitting record levels and the housing recovery is strengthening.
More spending by consumers should boost economic growth in the January-March quarter after a lull at the end of last year. Consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of economic activity.
After seeing Friday's report on consumer spending, Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics, raised his growth forecast for the first quarter by a full percentage point. Ashworth now expects growth in the January-march quarter increase to an annual rate of 3 percent.
Growth at that pace would be a vast improvement from the 0.4 percent rate in the October-December quarter, which was held back by slower company stockpiling and the sharpest defense cuts in 40 years.
Ashworth called the boost in spending "impressive," noting that consumers spent more while having to adjust to the higher Social Security taxes and a spike in gasoline prices.
"We're now likely to see the fastest quarterly gain in real consumption in two years," he said.
Jennifer Lee, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets, said the increases suggest consumer spending could be growing in the first quarter at an annual rate of more than 3 percent. That would be the fastest gain in more than three years and more than double the 1.3 percent rate in the fourth quarter.
Inflation, as measured by a gauge tied to consumer spending, increased 1.3 percent in February compared with a year ago. That's well below the Federal Reserve's 2 percent target, giving the central bank room to keep stimulating the economy without having to worry about price pressures.
Consumers spent more at the start of the year even after paying higher taxes. An increase in Social Security taxes has reduced take-home pay for nearly all Americans receiving a paycheck. And income taxes have risen on the highest earners. The tax increases both took effect on Jan. 1.
One reason the tax increases haven't slowed the economy is companies have accelerated hiring and are slowly but steadily increasing wages.
Employers have added an average of 200,000 jobs a month since November. That helped lowered the unemployment rate in February to a four-year low of 7.7 percent. Economists expect similar strong job gains in March.
Businesses are also investing more in equipment and machinery, which has given factories a lift after a disappointing 2012.
And the housing recovery that began last year appears to be sustainable. In February, sales of previously occupied homes rose to the highest level in more than three years. The gains have helped lift home prices, which have made Americans feel wealthier.
Stock prices have also surged. On Thursday, the Standard & Poor's 500 index closed at a record high of 1,569. That surpassed the previous record of 1,565 set in October 2007, a year before the peak of the financial crisis.
Three weeks ago, the Dow Jones industrial average beat its 2007 record.
Markets are closed Friday for the Good Friday holiday.
NASA astronaut Christopher Cassidy gets his spacesuit checked prior to Thursday's launch to the International Space Station. Straps bind Cassidy's knees close to his chest, in the position he'll have to maintain during most of the six-hour trip.
By James Oberg, NBC News Space Analyst
The speedier ride that three spacefliers are taking into orbit on Thursday will get them aboard the roomy International Space Station a lot sooner than on previous Soyuz space missions. It will lower the demand on expensive support teams back on Earth. But there's also an uncomfortable aspect to the shorter flight plan.
That aspect has to do with the Russian-made emergency pressure suits that crew members wear for launch aboard the Soyuz spacecraft. In the past, spacefliers put on the suits several hours before launch, and wore them for about three hours in flight ? long enough to perform the early rocket maneuvers. Then they took off the suits and put them away until docking, two days later. During most of the trip, the travelers could stretch out in the orbital module, a roomier area of the Soyuz spacecraft.
The situation is different for NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Misurkin and Pavel Vinogradov, the newest crew members to head for the space station. Their trip is taking six hours rather than two days, thanks to a more exacting strategy for orbital navigation. The Soyuz launch from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan is scheduled for 4:43 p.m. ET, and arrival at the station is set for 10:31 p.m. ET.
Mike Suffredini, NASA's space station manager, said the flight plan has the benefit of reducing the "amount of time the crew has to spend in a small environment before they get to the ISS." But that six-hour trip will be more intense.?
Long stretch in the suits The trio will be wearing their Sokol pressure suits as an essential safety measure, to ensure against the kind of catastrophe that killed three unprotected cosmonauts in 1971 when their cabin suffered an air leak. But the suits are notoriously uncomfortable: They're designed?to fit snugly into the tight crew seats, where knees are shoved halfway up to the chest. Arm mobility is restricted to being able to hold a stick to poke critical controls. Oxygen is fed into the suits via short hoses from a nearby console.
It takes hours to remove the suits and clean them, and at least an hour to put them back on and verify pressurization. There's not time for all that during a six-hour trip. As a result, the crew members will have to wear the suits for a much longer period that begins before launch and doesn't end until after docking.
"They are definitely going to have to go to a very tolerant mental system to do this," one former NASA astronaut told NBC News. The spaceflier, who has experience with Soyuz hardware and the Sokol spacesuit, spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak out publicly.
"My first thought was, 'Oh my God, how will they do this!!!" the astronaut said in an email. "If they let the confined/claustrophobic feeling in, it can escalate quickly. If they do not get excellent cooling, which is hard to get, curled up in the seat, it could be very bad. At best this will be terribly uncomfortable to say the least, and I would expect worse, especially given that Cassidy is pretty tall. ... My personal thinking is that this is going too far and even if they get through it this time, I would not think it reasonable as a general technique."
Not 'a big deal' Cassidy told CollectSpace's Robert Pearlman in an interview that he could tolerate the trip.
"I'm a little bit taller than is comfortably seated in the Soyuz? Cassidy acknowledged, but he said he and his crewmates planned to ease out of their seats and straighten their legs while continuing to wear their spacesuits. "After a couple of hours strapped into that seat tightly, it is really, really nice to stretch your legs out," he explained.
Several retired astronauts seconded Cassidy's view.
"I don't really remember suit comfort being a big deal on my flight," Ed Lu, who was the first American to ride a Soyuz to the space station after the 2003 Columbia disaster, told NBC News via email. "We were out of our suits after 2 revs [revolutions], so what we are talking about here is just an additional 2 revs."
Leroy Chiao, who rode a Soyuz to orbit and back in 2004, agreed in an email: ?While the position one is required to be in for being strapped in the seat is not comfortable, I would opt for day-1 rendezvous. Once in orbit, the crew can loosen their straps a bit and move their legs a little. Shifting around helps relieve some of the discomfort."
It?s not just a matter of NASA employees loyally proclaiming their agreement. Private spaceflight participant Greg Olsen, who took his Soyuz trip in 2005, voiced a similar view in an email: ?Strictly speaking for myself, I would have been willing to keep the Sokol suit on for a 10-hour period if we docked at the station in that time. It would be more uncomfortable, but not unbearable, to do this.?
Space toiletry Cassidy told CollectSpace that the Russians found a way for crew members to relieve themselves while still inside the suits. "We wind up being in the vehicle for a very, very long time, and people just need to use the toilet eventually," he said, "so we'll open the hatch and have access to the [orbital module] and be allowed to take our suits not completely off, but enough to do any business we need to take care of."
The nature of this "relief tube" remains obscure. Although cosmonauts are often photographed posing in front of their transfer bus for a re-enactment of Soviet space pioneer Yuri Gagarin's "peeing on the tires" ceremony, it's hard to see how they are actually attaining access to allow for urination. Demonstration videos of cosmonauts donning Sokol suits in orbit show clear views of the crotch area, and no openings are visible in the appropriate anatomical regions.
Olsen described the only available method for such relief that he ever was offered. "We all wear 'Huggie' diapers and most have peed at least once shortly after launch,? he said. "The Russians give everyone enemas, so that's not an issue, even for the two-day flight, in most cases."
Perhaps the long stretch in a spacesuit will bring the full truth to light: How do you get relief in orbit?
More about the Soyuz mission:
NBC News space analyst James Oberg spent 22 years at NASA Mission Control, where he carried the title of Rendezvous Guidance and Procedures Officer?? RGPO, pronounced "Arr-Jeep-O." In that capacity he sat in the center of Mission Control's front row, down in the legendary "trench" of space maneuvering specialists.
Mar. 28, 2013 ? When Charles Babbage prototyped the first computing machine in the 19th century, he imagined using mechanical gears and latches to control information. ENIAC, the first modern computer developed in the 1940s, used vacuum tubes and electricity. Today, computers use transistors made from highly engineered semiconducting materials to carry out their logical operations.
And now a team of Stanford University bioengineers has taken computing beyond mechanics and electronics into the living realm of biology. In a paper to be published March 28 in Science, the team details a biological transistor made from genetic material -- DNA and RNA -- in place of gears or electrons. The team calls its biological transistor the "transcriptor."
"Transcriptors are the key component behind amplifying genetic logic -- akin to the transistor and electronics," said Jerome Bonnet, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in bioengineering and the paper's lead author.
The creation of the transcriptor allows engineers to compute inside living cells to record, for instance, when cells have been exposed to certain external stimuli or environmental factors, or even to turn on and off cell reproduction as needed.
"Biological computers can be used to study and reprogram living systems, monitor environments and improve cellular therapeutics," said Drew Endy, PhD, assistant professor of bioengineering and the paper's senior author.
The biological computer
In electronics, a transistor controls the flow of electrons along a circuit. Similarly, in biologics, a transcriptor controls the flow of a specific protein, RNA polymerase, as it travels along a strand of DNA.
"We have repurposed a group of natural proteins, called integrases, to realize digital control over the flow of RNA polymerase along DNA, which in turn allowed us to engineer amplifying genetic logic," said Endy.
Using transcriptors, the team has created what are known in electrical engineering as logic gates that can derive true-false answers to virtually any biochemical question that might be posed within a cell.
They refer to their transcriptor-based logic gates as "Boolean Integrase Logic," or "BIL gates" for short.
Transcriptor-based gates alone do not constitute a computer, but they are the third and final component of a biological computer that could operate within individual living cells.
Despite their outward differences, all modern computers, from ENIAC to Apple, share three basic functions: storing, transmitting and performing logical operations on information.
Last year, Endy and his team made news in delivering the other two core components of a fully functional genetic computer. The first was a type of rewritable digital data storage within DNA. They also developed a mechanism for transmitting genetic information from cell to cell, a sort of biological Internet.
It all adds up to creating a computer inside a living cell.
Boole's gold
Digital logic is often referred to as "Boolean logic," after George Boole, the mathematician who proposed the system in 1854. Today, Boolean logic typically takes the form of 1s and 0s within a computer. Answer true, gate open; answer false, gate closed. Open. Closed. On. Off. 1. 0. It's that basic. But it turns out that with just these simple tools and ways of thinking you can accomplish quite a lot.
"AND" and "OR" are just two of the most basic Boolean logic gates. An "AND" gate, for instance, is "true" when both of its inputs are true -- when "a" and "b" are true. An "OR" gate, on the other hand, is true when either or both of its inputs are true.
In a biological setting, the possibilities for logic are as limitless as in electronics, Bonnet explained. "You could test whether a given cell had been exposed to any number of external stimuli -- the presence of glucose and caffeine, for instance. BIL gates would allow you to make that determination and to store that information so you could easily identify those which had been exposed and which had not," he said.
By the same token, you could tell the cell to start or stop reproducing if certain factors were present. And, by coupling BIL gates with the team's biological Internet, it is possible to communicate genetic information from cell to cell to orchestrate the behavior of a group of cells.
"The potential applications are limited only by the imagination of the researcher," said co-author Monica Ortiz, a PhD candidate in bioengineering who demonstrated autonomous cell-to-cell communication of DNA encoding various BIL gates.
Building a transcriptor
To create transcriptors and logic gates, the team used carefully calibrated combinations of enzymes -- the integrases mentioned earlier -- that control the flow of RNA polymerase along strands of DNA. If this were electronics, DNA is the wire and RNA polymerase is the electron.
"The choice of enzymes is important," Bonnet said. "We have been careful to select enzymes that function in bacteria, fungi, plants and animals, so that bio-computers can be engineered within a variety of organisms."
On the technical side, the transcriptor achieves a key similarity between the biological transistor and its semiconducting cousin: signal amplification.
With transcriptors, a very small change in the expression of an integrase can create a very large change in the expression of any two other genes.
To understand the importance of amplification, consider that the transistor was first conceived as a way to replace expensive, inefficient and unreliable vacuum tubes in the amplification of telephone signals for transcontinental phone calls. Electrical signals traveling along wires get weaker the farther they travel, but if you put an amplifier every so often along the way, you can relay the signal across a great distance. The same would hold in biological systems as signals get transmitted among a group of cells.
"It is a concept similar to transistor radios," said Pakpoom Subsoontorn, a PhD candidate in bioengineering and co-author of the study who developed theoretical models to predict the behavior of BIL gates. "Relatively weak radio waves traveling through the air can get amplified into sound."
Public-domain biotechnology
To bring the age of the biological computer to a much speedier reality, Endy and his team have contributed all of BIL gates to the public domain so that others can immediately harness and improve upon the tools.
"Most of biotechnology has not yet been imagined, let alone made true. By freely sharing important basic tools everyone can work better together," Bonnet said.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Stanford University Medical Center. The original article was written by Andrew Myers.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Jerome Bonnet, Peter Yin, Monica E. Ortiz, Pakpoom Subsoontorn, and Drew Endy. Amplifying Genetic Logic Gates. Science, 28 March 2013 DOI: 10.1126/science.1232758
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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - An Iraqi war veteran who suffered permanent brain damage in a 2008 motor vehicle accident in Florida has won a $26 million jury verdict, his lawyer said on Thursday.
"He's got a huge hole in his right frontal and temporal lobes," said Alexander Clem of the law firm Morgan & Morgan in Orlando.
Dustin Brink, 31, hit his head on the asphalt pavement in Kissimmee, Florida, after his motorcycle was clipped by a car driven by Juan Pereles, said Clem. Pereles and his father, Juan de Los Santos, who owned the car, were named in a lawsuit filed in 2010.
Brink, who was not wearing a helmet, lost all brain functions such as the ability to plan, organize and sequence activities, and filter his thoughts, Clem said.
Clem said the jury, which delivered its verdict late on Wednesday, held Pereles and Brink each 50 percent responsible for the damages.
Pereles' attorney Michael LeRoy of the Fulmer, LeRoy, Albee, Baumann firm could not be reached for comment.
(Reporting by Barbara Liston; Editing by Kevin Gray)
Amazon just announced that it is adding its X-Ray feature to TV shows. The feature already worked with movies thanks to data from IMDb, but the company will now use this very same data for other video content. All the Kindle Fire family will receive the feature. The Amazon Instant Video app on Wii U will get is as well. As a reminder, X-Ray allows you to discover more about the content you are reading or watching. It first appeared with books, it shows you the different characters, where they appear in the book and how they are related to the story. Then Amazon added X-Ray to movies back in September 2012. In that case, watchers can instantly know the name of an actor in a scene. IMDb is an Amazon company, allowing the Kindle team to tap into a very comprehensive movie database. As IMDb provides data for TV shows as well, adding TV shows to X-Ray was just a matter of time. The idea is to make the video experience unique on Amazon’s devices, making people want to buy those tablets and stay in the Amazon ecosystem. It’s been known that Amazon doesn’t make much profit from selling hardware. Instead, it wants people to use the Kindle Fire tablets to buy content. Of course, the X-Ray feature only works with videos you buy or rent from Amazon Instant Video or videos from the Amazon Prime collection. X-Ray could be one of those little features that make you choose Amazon over Netflix or iTunes. In addition to providing the X-Ray feature to Kindle Fire users, the feature will make its way to Amazon Instant Video’s Wii U app. This little fact shows that what matters for Amazon is that people consume content from Amazon, no matter the platform. X-Ray for movies and TV shows may eventually come to Android and iOS. If the experience is not compelling enough, customers will neglect their tablets and Amazon won’t make any money from those users. That’s why Amazon cut the price of the Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ as well from $299 to $269 for the base model. Amazon now wants to get the best tablet they can make in everyone’s hand so that people can start reading and watching content — Amazon content. Developing?
Chief Operating Officer at Facebook
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General Partner at CrunchFund
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CEO at The Next Web
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Chief Listener at Dell
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Journalist Program Manager at Facebook
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Founder at LifeHacker
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You can measure how quickly public opinion on gay rights has changed by looking at poll numbers, or you can see it on the covers of national general interest magazines.?As the Supreme Court heard oral arguments over California's gay marriage-banning Prop 8, we wondered whether the justices, whose?average age is 67, would vote in a way that reflects current public opinion. They should be especially aware of how quickly our views of gay people have changed in their lifetimes.?In the 1960s ? when Anton Scalia was a young lawyer in Cleveland and John Roberts was a grade-schooler in Indiana ? gay people were primarily portrayed as weird and alien. In the 1970s and 1980s they were sad people to be pitied until ? it seems odd to say it ? Ellen DeGeneres's coming out in 1997. Suddenly the magazines started to fill up with images of gay people as happy people who want the same things from life as everyone else. Here's a visual tour:
RELATED: What Comes After Gay Marriage?
?
Life, June 26, 1964. This photo essay didn't make the cover, but the tone of the article is much like the rest of the decade's coverage of "a secret world" that "grows open and bolder."
RELATED: Scalia Reveals His Current Thinking on Gay Marriage (and Murder)
Look, January 10, 1967. In "an entire issue about... the American Man," we learn of "the sad 'gay' life of the homosexual." Irony!
RELATED: First Word from the Supreme Court on Prop 8: The Justices Are Hedging
The article says this is the fault of women (specifically overbearing mothers), of course.
Time, October 31, 1969.?This is your brain on homosexuality.
Time, September 8, 1974.?Predating Ellen by 23 years, the face of "The Gay Drive For Acceptance" is a sad, unaccepted airman.
Newsweek, June 6, 1977. "Anita Bryant vs. The Homosexuals." Bryant was a lesser Phyllis Schlafly-type figure. She led a campaign to fire public school teachers who were gay and against equal housing rights, and pushed the idea that gay people were out to "recruit" children. Notably, by 1980, she'd evolved to "live and let live."
Time, April 23, 1979. "How Gay is Gay?"
Newsweek,?August 8, 1983. The onset of the AIDS epidemic gave magazines a new reason to show sad gay people...
Newsweek,?January 6, 1986. ... Not that they really needed one since just growing up was a "dilemma" and "crisis."
The New Republic, August 28, 1989. With?Andrew Sullivan's landmark essay, we see the beginning of the much-abused wedding topper motif.?Newsweek used the same headline and image again in 2010.
Newsweek, March 12, 1990. The magazine seems to call for moderation, whatever that might be -- the cover lines warn of scary "Militants versus the Mainstream." Gays are "Testing the Limits of Tolerance," a recurring theme.
New York Daily News Magazine, June 24, 1990. We enter the somber anonymous gay cover phase. Gay has gone mainstream, but also cannot show its face.
New York Times Magazine, October 11, 1992. This politician is so mainstream, he needed to cropped out of the cover.
Newsweek, June 21, 1993. Notice that the main cover line just says, "LESBIANS." It's hard to imagine a "LESBIANS" headline now -- the LESBIANS should at least be doing something interesting in some kind of trend piece, instead of just existing. There's that phrase "limits of tolerance" again lingering as a warning.
Time, April 14, 1997. Ellen DeGeneres comes out. Her "all-pants wardrobe" had stoked speculation. After Ellen, gay people start to look a lot happier to be on the covers of general interest magazines.?
Newsweek, August 17, 1998. No one seems to be interested in this idea, neither Newsweek editors or their cover subject. The claim that homosexuality can be "cured" has been debunked.
Newsweek, March 20, 2000. The modern era: gays are friendly people with normal jobs, just like you.
Newsweek, July 7, 2003.?
Newsweek, December 2008. The magazines begin toying with the idea that gay marriage is not pushing the "limits of tolerance," but is actually a conservative idea after all. This is a not-so-subtle tweak of Sullivan's New Republic cover essay 19 years previous.
Newsweek,?January 18, 2010.?Two years later, the magazine completes the homage with an image and headline nearly identical to Sullivan's. Ted Olson, who got the cover byline, is the lawyer who argued against Prop 8 at the Supreme Court today.
Newsweek, May 21, 2012. Obama with a rainbow halo.?
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Gains in housing and manufacturing propelled the U.S. economy over the winter, according to reports released Tuesday, and analysts say they point to the resilience of consumers and businesses as government spending cuts kick in.
U.S. home prices rose 8.1 percent in January, the fastest annual rate since the peak of the housing boom in the summer of 2006. And demand for longer-lasting factory goods jumped 5.7 percent in February, the biggest increase in five months.
February new-home sales and March consumer confidence looked a little shakier. But the overall picture of an improving economy drove stocks higher on Tuesday.
The Standard & Poor's 500 gained 12 points to close at 1,563 ? a point away from its record high reached in October 2007. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 111 points, its biggest gain in three weeks.
"There is nothing in this data that says the economy is falling back," said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors.
A recovery in housing has helped lift the economy this year and is finally restoring some of the wealth lost during the Great Recession.
The year-over-year rise in home prices reported by the Standard & Poor's/Case Shiller 20-city index was the fastest since June 2006. Prices rose in all 20 cities and eight markets posted double-digit increases, including some of the hardest hit during the crisis. Prices rose 23.2 percent in Phoenix, 17.5 percent in San Francisco and 15.3 percent in Las Vegas.
The strength in home prices has far from erased all the damage from the crisis. Home prices nationwide are still 29 percent below their peak reached in August 2006.
Still, steady gains should encourage more people to buy and put their homes on the market, keeping the recovery going. And higher home prices make people feel wealthier, which leads consumers to spend more and drives more economic growth.
Sales of new homes cooled off in February to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 411,000, the Commerce Department reported. That's down from January's pace of 431,000, which was the fastest since September 2008. But February's pace was still better than every other month since April 2010, when a temporary home-buying tax credit was boosting sales. And sales are 12.3 percent higher than a year ago.
"We are still far from the healthy level of 700,000, but we're slowly making our way in that direction," said Jennifer Lee, senior economist with BMO Capital Markets. "We just have to accept the fact that the path will be interrupted once in a while and that's what happened in February."
Manufacturing is also boosting the economy this year, and factories were busier in February, according to a separate Commerce report on durable goods orders.
February's increase was driven by a surge in commercial aircraft orders, which tend to be volatile. Still, orders for motor vehicles and parts increased solidly, suggesting demand for cars and trucks remains strong.
Orders for machinery and other goods that signal business investment plans fell sharply in February. But the decline followed the biggest monthly gain in nearly three years. Economists had expected companies to ease up after January's spending spree. When looking at the two months together, business investment has accelerated from the end of last year and should contribute to economic growth.
"The picture of business spending to start the year is fairly healthy," said Dan Greenhaus, chief global strategist at BTIG
One concern is that tax increases and government spending cuts could stunt the economy's momentum. Both weighed on consumers' minds in March.
The Conference Board, a New York-based private research group, said its Consumer Confidence Index fell to 59.7 this month, down from 68 in February. The decline was mainly due to a drop in expectations for the economy over the next six months, though consumers also were more pessimistic regarding current economic conditions.
Some economists think the timing of the survey may have exacerbated the decline.
The survey was conducted from March 1 through March 14, just as $85 billion in automatic spending cuts began. Consumers were already feeling pinched by higher Social Security taxes that have reduced take-home pay for most workers this year. And gas prices rose sharply in February, before easing slightly this month.
"It was sort of a perfect storm," said Chris G. Christopher Jr., director of consumer economics at IHS Global Insight. "I do expect confidence to rebound as long as there is no government shutdown and the political bickering in Washington doesn't reach a fever pitch."
A healthier job market is also likely to make people feel a little better about their finances.
Employers have added an average of 200,000 jobs per month since November. That's nearly double the average from last spring. The job gains helped lower the unemployment rate in February to a four-year low of 7.7 percent.
Christopher expects economic growth in the January-March quarter to rise at a 2.9 percent annual rate. That would follow a meager gain of 0.1 percent in the October-December quarter, which was largely due to temporary factors, including sharp cuts in defense spending.
Naroff says the government spending cuts taking effect, known as sequestration, could reduce growth by a full percentage point this year. Still, even with the drag, he expects economic growth for 2013 to be around 2.6 percent. That would be better than the 2.2 percent growth in 2012.
__
AP Business Writers Paul Wiseman and Marcy Gordon contributed to this report.
Topics in Applied Linguistic Monday 07.00 -09.00 Ulfah Nur Farida 2201410054
Definition
There are various definitions of applied linguistics based on some linguists. The followings are some of them: a. According to Corder (1973): The application of linguistic knowledge to some object ? or applied linguistics, as its name implies ? is an activity. It is not a theoretical study. It makes use of the findings of theoretical studies. The applied linguist is a consumer or user, not a producer of theories. b. According to Cook (2003): Applied Linguistic is a study which the task is to mediate between linguistics and language use. c. According to Spolsky (2005): Applied Linguistics is a cover term for a sizeable group of semi-autonomous disciplines, each dividing its parentage and allegiances between the formal study of language and other relevant fields, and each working to develop its own methodologies and principles. d. According to Schmitt & Celce Murcia (2002) AppliedLinguistics? is using what we know about (a) language, (b) how it is learned, and (c) how it is used, in order to achieve some purpose or solve some problem in the real world? (Schmitt & Celce-Murcia, 2002, p. 1). e. According to Dawn Knight (2009) Applied linguistics is a discipline which explores the relations between theory and practice in language with particular reference to issues of language use. It embraces contexts in which people use and learn languages and is a platform for systematically addressing problems involving the use of language and communication in real-world situations. Applied linguistics draws on a range of disciplines, including linguistics. In consequence, applied linguistics has applications in several areas of language study, including language learning and teaching, the psychology of language processing, discourse analysis, stylistics, corpus analysis, literacy studies and language planning and policies. Dawn Knight.2009. What is Applied Linguistic. Retrieved from http://www.scribd.com/doc/16212220/What-is-Applied-Linguistics f. According to G. Richard Tucker The term ?applied linguistics? refers to a broad range of activities which involve solving some language-related problem or addressing some language-related concern. G. Richard Tucker.(n.d).Applied Linguistic.Retrieved from http://lsadc.org/info/ling-fields-applied.cfm g. According to Susan Hunston (2009) One answer to this question is that it is the study of language in order to address real-world concerns. Another is that it is the study of language, and language-related topics, in specified situations. The real-world concerns include language learning and teaching but also other issues such as professional communication, literacies, translation practices, language and legal or health issues, and many more. Applied linguistics is practically-oriented, but it is also theory-driven and interdisciplinary. Models of how languages are learned and stored, for example, are ?applied linguistics?, as are descriptions of individual language varieties that prioritize actual and contextualized language use. Susan Hunston.2009.What is Applied Lingustic? Retrieved fromhttp://www.scribd.com/doc/16212220/What-is-Applied-Linguistics From the definitions above, I can conclude that applied linguistic is a study of language that is used to solve many problems related to language in many cases.
The Scope of Applied Linguistics
a. According to Mouton de Gruyter, the scope of applied linguistics includes: Language Acquisition (L1 and L2), Psycho/Neuro ? linguistics, Language Teaching, Sociolinguistics, Humor Studies, Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis/Rhetorics, Text/Processing/Translation, Computational Linguistics ? Machine Translation, Corpus Linguistics, Language Control/Dialectology.
b. According to the International Association of Applied Linguistics, the scope of applied linguistics includes: Adult Language Learning, Child Language, Communication in the Professions, Contrastive Linguistics and Error Analysis, Discourse Analysis, Educational Technology and Language Learning, Foreign Language Teaching Methodology and Teacher Education, Forensic Linguistics, Immersion Education, Interpreting and Translating, Language and Ecology, Language and Education in Multilingual Settings, Language and Gender, Language and the Media, Language Contact and Language Change, Language for Special Purposes, Language Planning, Learner Autonomy in Language Learning, Lexicography and Lexicology, Literacy, Mother Tongue Education, Psycholinguistics, Rhetoric and Stylistics, Second Language Acquisition, Sign Language.
References: Davies, A. 2007. An Introduction to Applied Linguistics. From Practice to Theory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Seidlhofer, B. 2003. Controversies in Applied Linguistics. United Kingdom: OXFORD University Press. Schmitt, N. & Celce-Murcia, M. (2002) An overview of applied linguistics. In N. Schmitt (ed.), An introduction to applied linguistics (pp. 1?16). London: Arnold. Dawn Knight.2009. What is Applied Linguistic. Retrieved from http://www.scribd.com/doc/16212220/What-is-Applied-Linguistics G. Richard Tucker.(n.d). Applied Linguistic.Retrieved from http://lsadc.org/info/ling-fields-applied.cfm Susan Hunston. 2009. What is Applied Lingustic? Retrieved fromhttp://www.scribd.com/doc/16212220/What-is-Applied-Linguistics
Racing to secure bailout, Cyprus agrees to a bank levy that's different than the one its legislature defeated in the legislature. This bank levy would take 20 percent from accounts over 100,000 ? at its No. 1 lender, but the deal hasn't been finalized with European Union.
By Karolina Tagaris and Laura Noonan,?Reuters / March 23, 2013
Bank employees protest outside the ministry of finance on Saturday, March 23, 2013. Politicians in Cyprus were racing to complete an alternative plan raising funds necessary for the country to qualify for an international bailout, which could involve a bank levy on high-value accounts.
Petros Giannakouris/AP
Enlarge
Cyprus conceded on Saturday to a one-off levy on deposits over 100,000 euros in a dramatic U-turn as it raced to satisfy European partners and seal an 11th-hour bailout deal to avert financial collapse.
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The island's finance minister, Michael Sarris, reported "significant progress" in talks with international lenders, with the clock running down to and end-Monday deadline for Cyprus to clinch a bailout deal with the EU or lose emergency funding for its stricken banks and risk tumbling out of the euro zone.
His counterparts in Europe's 17-nation currency union scheduled talks in Brussels for Sunday evening to see if the numbers add up, and the EU's Economic Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said progress was being made towards a solution.
As Cypriot party leaders met, a senior Cypriot official told Reuters that Nicosia had agreed with EU/IMF lenders on a 20 percent levy over and above 100,000 euros at No. 1 lender Bank of Cyprus, and four percent on deposits over the same level at others.
Troika officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades tweeted: "We are undertaking great efforts. I hope we have a solution soon."
The conservative leader, barely a month in the job and wrestling with Cyprus's worst crisis since a 1974 invasion by Turkish forces split the island in two, was due to lead a delegation to Brussels, also on Sunday, to meet heads of the EU, the European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, in a sign a deal might be near.
"Hopefully by tomorrow in Brussels we will have the agreement of our partners," Averof Neophytou, deputy leader of the ruling Democratic Rally party, told reporters.
Government officials held talks through the day at the finance ministry with Cyprus's 'troika' of lenders - the EU, ECB and IMF. Angry demonstrators outside chanted "resign, resign!"
Its outsized banking sector crippled by exposure to crisis-hit Greece, Cyprus needs to raise 5.8 billion euros in exchange for a 10 billion euro EU lifeline to keep the country's economy afloat.
But in a stunning vote on Tuesday, Cyprus's 56-seat parliament rejected a levy on depositors, big and small, as "bank robbery", and Sarris spent three fruitless days in Moscow trying to win help from Russia, whose citizens have billions of euros at stake in Cypriot banks.
Rebuffed by the Kremlin, Sarris said on Saturday talks with the troika were centred on a possibly levy of around 25 percent on savings over and above 100,000 euros at failing Bank of Cyprus.
In a sign of how fluid the situation remains, however, a senior ruling party lawmaker said other options were on the table, including a "voluntary haircut" in exchange for equity that would not require parliamentary approval.
The EU's Rehn said the bloc recognised the progress made by the Cypriot government, and warned of tough times ahead.
"Unfortunately, the events of recent days have led to a situation where there are no longer any optimal solutions available," he said in a statement. "Today, there are only hard choices left."
It was far from certain that a majority of lawmakers would back a revised levy, or whether the government might bypass the assembly.
Ordinary Cypriots were outraged by the original proposal, and have been besieging cash machines ever since bank doors were closed last weekend on the orders of the government to avert a massive flight of capital.
RESISTANCE
Racing to placate its European partners, Cypriot lawmakers voted in late-night session on Friday to nationalise state pensions and split failing lenders into good and bad banks - a measure likely to be applied to No.2 lender Cyprus Popular Bank , also known as Laiki.
They also gave the government powers to impose capital controls, anticipating a run on banks when they reopen on Tuesday.
A plan to nationalise semi-state pension funds has met with resistance, particularly from Germany which made clear that tapping pensions could be even more painful for ordinary Cypriots than a deposit levy.
The senior official who told Reuters of the levy agreement said the pension funds would not be part of the package to seal the bailout.
The bank restructuring has also angered Cypriots. On Saturday, around 1,500 bank workers marched on the presidency, holding banners that read, "No to the bankruptcy of Cyprus" and "Hands of workers' welfare funds".
OFFSHORE HAVEN
The pace of the unfolding drama has stunned Cypriots, who in February elected Anastasiades on a mandate to secure a bailout and save banks whose capital was wiped out by investments in Greece, the epicentre of the euro zone debt crisis.
Then news of the levy on bank deposits broke, an unprecedented step in Europe's handling of a debt crisis that has spread from Greece, to Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy.
Cypriots leaders had initially tried to spread the pain between big holdings and smaller depositors, fearing the damage it would inflict on the country as an offshore financial haven for wealthy foreigners, many of them Russians and Britons.
The tottering banks hold 68 billion euros in deposits, including 38 billion in accounts of more than 100,000 euros - enormous sums for an island of 1.1 million people which could never sustain such a big financial system on its own.
But panicked by the visceral reaction of ordinary Cypriots, support from lawmakers fell away and they rejected the levy as "bank robbery".
Under the latest proposal, Russians are unlikely to be hit hardest by the mooted percent tax, given that just five percent of deposits at Bank of Cyprus come from Russia, according to the bank's latest results statement.
The board of the Central Bank of Cyprus was likely to hold its first meeting in almost a fortnight on Sunday, a source with direct knowledge of the meeting told Reuters, in another sign a deal may be close.
Asked about the new plan for a possible 25 percent levy, Finnish Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen, whose country is allied with Germany in taking a hard line on Europe's debt-laden southern flank, replied in English:
"If it was like this, I think it might be quite suitable because it means that the highest deposits will be taxed."
A paradox for young docs: New work-hour restrictions may increase, not decrease, errorsPublic release date: 25-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Kara Gavin kegavin@umich.edu 734-764-2220 University of Michigan Health System
U-M-led study of 2,300 1st-year residents questions impact of 2011 duty rules
ANN ARBOR, Mich. At hospitals around the country, young doctors fresh out of medical school help care for patients of all kinds and work intense, long hours as part of their residency training.
Traditionally, residents were allowed to work more than 24 hours without a break. In 2011, new rules cut back the number of hours they can work consecutively to 16, in the name of protecting patients from errors by sleepy physicians.
But a new study of more than 2,300 doctors in their first year of residency at over a dozen hospital systems across the country raises questions about how well the rules are protecting both patients and new doctors.
While work hours went down after new rules took effect in 2011, sleep hours didn't go up significantly and risk of depression symptoms in the doctors stayed the same, according to a new paper published online in JAMA Internal Medicine by a team led by University of Michigan Medical School researchers.
Most concerning: the percentage of residents reporting that they had committed medical errors that harmed patients went up after the new rules took effect.
The results, especially the increase in errors, surprised Srijan Sen, M.D., Ph.D., the U-M psychiatrist who is the report's first author.
"In the year before the new duty hour rules took effect, 19.9 percent of the interns reported committing an error that harmed a patient, but this percentage went up to 23.3 percent after the new rules went into effect," he says. "That's a 15 to 20 percent increase in errors -- a pretty dramatic uptick, especially when you consider that part of the reason these work-hour rules were put into place was to reduce errors."
The findings echo anecdotal reports about the impact of the 2011 duty hour rules.
Co-author Sudha Amarnath, M.D., a resident in the radiation oncology program at the University of Washington, says, "Many interns entering after the new work hour restrictions took effect felt that they were expected to do the same amount of work as in previous years, but in a more limited amount of time, leading to more harried and tiring work schedules despite working fewer hours. Overall, they felt that there was less 'down time' during the work day compared to pre-2011 work schedules, which may partially explain some of the unexpected findings."
Breck Nichols, M.D., MPH, the program director of the combined Internal Medicine and Pediatrics residency program at the University of Southern California, and another co-author on the paper, concurs.
"In 2000 a typical call day lasted 36 hours. We have very specifically reduced that for interns from 36 hours to 30 hours in 2003, and now with the latest 2011 work hours change it has been reduced even further to 16 hours," he says. "For most programs the significant reduction in work hours has not been accompanied by any increase in funding to offload the work. As a result, though many programs have made some attempts to account for this lost work in other ways, the end result is that current interns have about 20 less hours each week to complete the same or only slightly less work. If we know that timed tests result in more errors than untimed ones, we should not be surprised that giving interns less time to complete the same amount of work would increase their errors as well."
All the interns assessed in this study were working under the duty hour restrictions that went into effect in 2003 limiting residents to no more than 80 hours of work in a week, and other restrictions. Some studies have suggested that these rule changes, recommended by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, did result in better safety for patients cared for by residents. But in an effort to achieve even greater safety, the ACGME recommended further changes that were implemented in 2011.
Each year, Sen and colleagues send out surveys to students entering residency programs around the U.S. The research team then surveys these interns every three months throughout that first year, asking questions that gauge mental health, overall well-being, sleep habits, work hours and performance on the job.
By comparing the interns serving before the new ACGME rules (called the 2009 and 2010 cohorts) with the interns serving after the new rules were implemented (the 2011 cohort), the research team assessed the effects of the new duty hour rules.
In addition to the increase in self-reported medical errors, 20 percent of the residents screened positive for depression.
Sen was an intern in 2006, and in the years since has studied depression among medical students and residents, said he had been in favor of the adjusting duty hour rules in principle. "It was obvious that after working for 24 hours, we were not functioning at our best, and this was not optimal for us or the patients we were treating," he explains. But in practice, he says, the new rules may have had unintended consequences that ran counter to the goals of new guidelines.
In addition to "work compression", he says, residents now hand off responsibility for a long list of patients more frequently than in the past. Communication between the intern who is ending a shift, and the one beginning a shift, may not cover all patients in detail, he suggests, and this gap in communication may not become apparent until an urgent situation arises with one of the patients.
He also said the increase in errors may come back down with time. "The 2011 changes were a pretty radical shift," he notes. "Doctors have worked 30-hour shifts for decades, and it may just take time for all parts of the health care system to get used to the new rules and adjust."
But, he cautions, the new data don't definitively support any one of these theories as the culprit in the rise in error rates or the lack of progress in sleep hours and well-being among young doctors. Further study is needed to assess what's happening and determine how to better support young doctors in during their stressful training and keep the patients that they treat as safe as possible.
###
The Intern Health Study, from which the new results are drawn, is funded by the National Institutes of Health (grants UL1RR024986, MH095109 and AA013736) with additional support from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. In addition to Sen, Amarnath and Nichols, the paper's authors include Joseph Kolars, M.D., senior associate dean for education and global at the U-M Medical School, Gregory Dalack, M.D., chair of the U-M Department of Psychiatry, Henry R. Kranzler, M.D., from the University of Pennsylvania; Aashish K. Didwania, M.D., from Northwestern University; Ann C. Schwartz, M.D., from Emory University; and Constance Guille, M.D. from the Medical University of South Carolina. REFERENCE: JAMA Internal Medicine, March 25, 2013
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A paradox for young docs: New work-hour restrictions may increase, not decrease, errorsPublic release date: 25-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Kara Gavin kegavin@umich.edu 734-764-2220 University of Michigan Health System
U-M-led study of 2,300 1st-year residents questions impact of 2011 duty rules
ANN ARBOR, Mich. At hospitals around the country, young doctors fresh out of medical school help care for patients of all kinds and work intense, long hours as part of their residency training.
Traditionally, residents were allowed to work more than 24 hours without a break. In 2011, new rules cut back the number of hours they can work consecutively to 16, in the name of protecting patients from errors by sleepy physicians.
But a new study of more than 2,300 doctors in their first year of residency at over a dozen hospital systems across the country raises questions about how well the rules are protecting both patients and new doctors.
While work hours went down after new rules took effect in 2011, sleep hours didn't go up significantly and risk of depression symptoms in the doctors stayed the same, according to a new paper published online in JAMA Internal Medicine by a team led by University of Michigan Medical School researchers.
Most concerning: the percentage of residents reporting that they had committed medical errors that harmed patients went up after the new rules took effect.
The results, especially the increase in errors, surprised Srijan Sen, M.D., Ph.D., the U-M psychiatrist who is the report's first author.
"In the year before the new duty hour rules took effect, 19.9 percent of the interns reported committing an error that harmed a patient, but this percentage went up to 23.3 percent after the new rules went into effect," he says. "That's a 15 to 20 percent increase in errors -- a pretty dramatic uptick, especially when you consider that part of the reason these work-hour rules were put into place was to reduce errors."
The findings echo anecdotal reports about the impact of the 2011 duty hour rules.
Co-author Sudha Amarnath, M.D., a resident in the radiation oncology program at the University of Washington, says, "Many interns entering after the new work hour restrictions took effect felt that they were expected to do the same amount of work as in previous years, but in a more limited amount of time, leading to more harried and tiring work schedules despite working fewer hours. Overall, they felt that there was less 'down time' during the work day compared to pre-2011 work schedules, which may partially explain some of the unexpected findings."
Breck Nichols, M.D., MPH, the program director of the combined Internal Medicine and Pediatrics residency program at the University of Southern California, and another co-author on the paper, concurs.
"In 2000 a typical call day lasted 36 hours. We have very specifically reduced that for interns from 36 hours to 30 hours in 2003, and now with the latest 2011 work hours change it has been reduced even further to 16 hours," he says. "For most programs the significant reduction in work hours has not been accompanied by any increase in funding to offload the work. As a result, though many programs have made some attempts to account for this lost work in other ways, the end result is that current interns have about 20 less hours each week to complete the same or only slightly less work. If we know that timed tests result in more errors than untimed ones, we should not be surprised that giving interns less time to complete the same amount of work would increase their errors as well."
All the interns assessed in this study were working under the duty hour restrictions that went into effect in 2003 limiting residents to no more than 80 hours of work in a week, and other restrictions. Some studies have suggested that these rule changes, recommended by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, did result in better safety for patients cared for by residents. But in an effort to achieve even greater safety, the ACGME recommended further changes that were implemented in 2011.
Each year, Sen and colleagues send out surveys to students entering residency programs around the U.S. The research team then surveys these interns every three months throughout that first year, asking questions that gauge mental health, overall well-being, sleep habits, work hours and performance on the job.
By comparing the interns serving before the new ACGME rules (called the 2009 and 2010 cohorts) with the interns serving after the new rules were implemented (the 2011 cohort), the research team assessed the effects of the new duty hour rules.
In addition to the increase in self-reported medical errors, 20 percent of the residents screened positive for depression.
Sen was an intern in 2006, and in the years since has studied depression among medical students and residents, said he had been in favor of the adjusting duty hour rules in principle. "It was obvious that after working for 24 hours, we were not functioning at our best, and this was not optimal for us or the patients we were treating," he explains. But in practice, he says, the new rules may have had unintended consequences that ran counter to the goals of new guidelines.
In addition to "work compression", he says, residents now hand off responsibility for a long list of patients more frequently than in the past. Communication between the intern who is ending a shift, and the one beginning a shift, may not cover all patients in detail, he suggests, and this gap in communication may not become apparent until an urgent situation arises with one of the patients.
He also said the increase in errors may come back down with time. "The 2011 changes were a pretty radical shift," he notes. "Doctors have worked 30-hour shifts for decades, and it may just take time for all parts of the health care system to get used to the new rules and adjust."
But, he cautions, the new data don't definitively support any one of these theories as the culprit in the rise in error rates or the lack of progress in sleep hours and well-being among young doctors. Further study is needed to assess what's happening and determine how to better support young doctors in during their stressful training and keep the patients that they treat as safe as possible.
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The Intern Health Study, from which the new results are drawn, is funded by the National Institutes of Health (grants UL1RR024986, MH095109 and AA013736) with additional support from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. In addition to Sen, Amarnath and Nichols, the paper's authors include Joseph Kolars, M.D., senior associate dean for education and global at the U-M Medical School, Gregory Dalack, M.D., chair of the U-M Department of Psychiatry, Henry R. Kranzler, M.D., from the University of Pennsylvania; Aashish K. Didwania, M.D., from Northwestern University; Ann C. Schwartz, M.D., from Emory University; and Constance Guille, M.D. from the Medical University of South Carolina. REFERENCE: JAMA Internal Medicine, March 25, 2013
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Amazon just announced that it is adding its X-Ray feature to TV shows. The feature already worked with movies thanks to data from IMDb, but the company will now use this very same data for other video content. All the Kindle Fire family will receive the feature. The Amazon Instant Video app on Wii U will get is as well. As a reminder, X-Ray allows you to discover more about the content you are reading or watching. It first appeared with books, it shows you the different characters, where they appear in the book and how they are related to the story. Then Amazon added X-Ray to movies back in September 2012. In that case, watchers can instantly know the name of an actor in a scene. IMDb is an Amazon company, allowing the Kindle team to tap into a very comprehensive movie database. As IMDb provides data for TV shows as well, adding TV shows to X-Ray was just a matter of time. The idea is to make the video experience unique on Amazon’s devices, making people want to buy those tablets and stay in the Amazon ecosystem. It’s been known that Amazon doesn’t make much profit from selling hardware. Instead, it wants people to use the Kindle Fire tablets to buy content. Of course, the X-Ray feature only works with videos you buy or rent from Amazon Instant Video or videos from the Amazon Prime collection. X-Ray could be one of those little features that make you choose Amazon over Netflix or iTunes. In addition to providing the X-Ray feature to Kindle Fire users, the feature will make its way to Amazon Instant Video’s Wii U app. This little fact shows that what matters for Amazon is that people consume content from Amazon, no matter the platform. X-Ray for movies and TV shows may eventually come to Android and iOS. If the experience is not compelling enough, customers will neglect their tablets and Amazon won’t make any money from those users. That’s why Amazon cut the price of the Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ as well from $299 to $269 for the base model. Amazon now wants to get the best tablet they can make in everyone’s hand so that people can start reading and watching content — Amazon content. Developing?
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Public release date: 25-Mar-2013
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