Hornets snap Nuggets' 15-game win streak

Denver Nuggets guard Andre Miller (24) and New Orleans Hornets forward Anthony Davis (23) battle for a loose ball in the first half of an NBA basketball game in New Orleans, Monday, March 25, 2013. (AP Photo/Bill Haber)

Denver Nuggets guard Andre Miller (24) and New Orleans Hornets forward Anthony Davis (23) battle for a loose ball in the first half of an NBA basketball game in New Orleans, Monday, March 25, 2013. (AP Photo/Bill Haber)

New Orleans Hornets guard Brian Roberts (22) gets fouled by Denver Nuggets forward Kenneth Faried (35) in the first half of an NBA basketball game in New Orleans, Monday, March 25, 2013. (AP Photo/Bill Haber)

New Orleans Hornets forward Al-Farouq Aminu (0) and Denver Nuggets center Kosta Koufos (41) reach for a loose ball in the first half of an NBA basketball game in New Orleans, Monday, March 25, 2013. (AP Photo/Bill Haber)

Denver Nuggets forward Kenneth Faried (35) falls while reaching for a rebound in front of New Orleans Hornets center Robin Lopez (15) in the first half of an NBA basketball game in New Orleans, Monday, March 25, 2013. (AP Photo/Bill Haber)

NEW ORLEANS (AP) ? Even Brian Roberts couldn't believe the performance he delivered to help end Denver's 15-game winning streak.

Starting for only the second time, the rookie doubled his season high with 18 assists, Ryan Anderson scored 23 points and the short-handed New Orleans Hornets beat the Nuggets 110-86 on Monday night.

"It's crazy to fathom, having 18 assists," Roberts said. "Guys play years and don't have that many assists. Somebody pointed out I had more assists than they had as a team. For me to come out in my second start and do that is just a testament to my teammates making shots."

And to Roberts' work ethic, too. He never had 10 assists in four years at the University of Dayton, where he was more of a scorer than a facilitator. Then he spent five years trying to make an NBA roster before hooking on with the Hornets last summer, re-working his game to become a pass-first player.

Eleven of those passes turned into assists in the first half alone against the Nuggets, who finished with four fewer assists than Roberts. He became the 20th rookie to have 18 assists or more and the first since Darren Collison did it for New Orleans in 2010.

"I've had to grind and just fight to be on the team just to make an opportunity for myself," Roberts said. "It's something I know I don't take for granted. But without my teammates making shots, it's not even a discussion."

Anderson was 5 of 11 on 3-pointers, and the Hornets sank 14-of-25 3s overall. Darius Miller, starting in place of injured shooting guard Eric Gordon, was 4 of 5 behind the arc and had 16 points as seven Hornets scored in double figures.

New Orleans won its third in a row and was in control all the way. The Hornets led by nine at the end of the first quarter, by 21 at the half and by 18 entering the fourth.

Danilo Gallinari had 24 points for the Nuggets, who were without starting point guard Ty Lawson (right heel injury) for the third consecutive game. Denver lost for the first time since Feb. 22 against Washington after matching its 1969-70 ABA team's record of 15 straight victories.

"We played a bad game and they played a great game," said Nuggets point guard Andre Miller, who had nine points and six assists. "We were constantly taking the ball out of the basket and getting frustrated. Our game plan was to trap the ball, and their point guard found the open man. They outplayed us and outworked us at both ends."

The Hornets answered every Nuggets run, the last of which closed the gap to 96-84 when Kenneth Faried hit a tough bank shot and was fouled with 6:07 left. New Orleans' Anthony Davis followed with two free throws, Darius Miller drained a face-up 3-pointer and Davis leaped high to jam in a rebound follow, extending the lead to 103-84.

The closest Denver came in the second half was 67-58 after a 16-4 spurt midway through the third quarter. But the Hornets' Roger Mason Jr. immediately hit back-to-back 3-pointers, and New Orleans was up by double digits the rest of the way.

This one was never close.

The Hornets went ahead 25-11 in the first quarter, getting back-to-back, wide-open 3-pointers from Anderson to cap the early run against the sluggish Nuggets. No one picked up Anderson, who led the NBA in 3-point baskets last season, when he shot from straightaway on the first one. Denver left him unguarded again as he made another 3 the next time down the court.

The Nuggets' winning streak was well on its way to ending.

"We didn't really talk about that too much," Roberts said. "We had a lot of stuff going on in here in this locker room, so we didn't want to worry about streak busting or anything like that. We just wanted to come out and play together."

Denver missed Lawson, who had averaged 21.8 points in his last 18 games, much more than New Orleans missed starting point guard Greivis Vasquez or Gordon.

"He's important to us because he makes everyone else fit," Nuggets coach George Karl said. "These last three games we were thinking we are better than we are. It's human nature."

Wilson Chandler returned for the Nuggets after missing two games with a left shoulder injury and finished with 11 points. Faried added 13 points.

Gordon, who is tied for the team lead with 16.5 points per game, sat out with a sore left ankle. Vasquez sat out with a sprained left ankle after starting the first 70 games.

Roberts, who added 13 points for his first double-double, and Miller, who was 6 of 7 from the floor, excelled in their absence.

"A lot of times this year we've let teams come back after we got ahead of them," Darius Miller said. "We didn't want to do that tonight. They went on a great run and had us on our heels a little bit, but we bounced back."

Most of Miller's baskets came off of passes from Roberts.

"It doesn't happen if he (Roberts) doesn't work hard," Hornets coach Monty Williams said. "He works his tail off."

NOTES: Nuggets reserve guard Julyan Stone left with a hyperextended right knee injury in the first half and did not return. . The Hornets started a big week of home games. They face the Los Angeles Clippers and former New Orleans point guard Chris Paul on Wednesday, and the Miami Heat on Friday. The Heat extended their winning streak to 27, beating Orlando on Monday. . A sign of the Nuggets' lack of aggressiveness: They picked up their first foul in the second quarter at the 3:49 mark and their first foul of the third quarter with 3:08 left.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-03-26-Nuggets-Hornets/id-f6f1153058fb41f9946d0603d0f9f5b1

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No. 15 seed Florida Gulf Coast stuns No. 2 seed Georgetown

PHILADELPHIA (AP) ? Florida Gulf Coast sure made an entrance at the NCAA tournament.

A school that hasn't even celebrated its first 20-year reunion busted a load of brackets with a 78-68 victory over second-seeded Georgetown on Friday night in the second round of the South Regional.

In just their second season of eligibility for Division I postseason, the Eagles used a 21-2 second-half run to pull away from the Hoyas and then held on in the final minute to become the seventh No. 15 seed to beat a No. 2.

Sherwood Brown scored 24 points and Bernard Thompson had 23 to lead Florida Gulf Coast, the champions of the Atlantic Sun Conference.

FGCU (25-10) will play the winner of the game between seventh-seeded San Diego State and No. 10 Oklahoma on Sunday.

"We didn't come here and have the attitude that we're just glad to be here," said FGCU point guard Brett Comer, who finished with 12 points,10 assists and just two turnovers. "We decided we can play with anybody and we did."

A night after America's oldest university, Harvard, pulled off a major upset over fourth-seeded New Mexico, one of its youngest ? FGCU's first student was admitted in 1997 ? got one that was even bigger.

The Eagles' monster run gave them a 52-33 lead with 12:28 to play. The Hoyas staged a furious rally to get within 72-68 with 52 seconds left but the Eagles went 6 of 10 from the free throw line to seal it.

"In the second half, we pushed the ball, we got out, we ran, we made shots, got some alley-oop dunks to energize the crowd. I'm very proud of our players," said coach Andy Enfield, whose wife ? supermodel Amanda Marcum ? was shown several times on the arena's big screen.

For those who don't know FCGU, and that was probably plenty of people as of Friday afternoon, Florida Gulf Coast is a state university in Fort Myers with an enrollment of about 12,000 students.

This is FGCU's first tournament and Georgetown's 29th, including the 1984 national championship. But the Eagles did beat Miami earlier this season.

It was another disappointing NCAA exit for the Hoyas (25-7), who have lost to a double-digit seed in their last four appearances. The last time they made it to the second weekend of the tournament was in 2007, when they reached the Final Four.

"I wish I could," Georgetown coach John Thompson III said when asked if he could figure out the losses to lower seeds. "Trust me, more than anyone on Earth, I've tried to analyze it. I don't know."

Markel Starks had 23 points for the Hoyas, a tri-champion of the Big East regular season and one of the top defensive teams in the nation.

That didn't seem to bother the Eagles much.

While Georgetown came in allowing 55.7 points per game, FGCU beat that number with 9:22 to play when it led 57-40. The Hoyas allowed opponents to shoot 37.6 percent from the field, fourth-best in the country. The Eagles shot 42.9 percent (21 of 49) and they held the Hoyas to 37.5 percent from the field (24 of 64).

The FGCU fans who made the trip to Philadelphia were loud all game. The rest of the crowd at Wells Fargo Center joined them during the big run and there's nothing to bring fans together like rooting against a heavy favorite.

"I don't think anybody on our team has ever played in front of that many people," said reserve forward Eddie Murray, who had nine points.

The Eagles charged at their fans when the game ended and ? after some of them shook hands with Hall of Famer and TV analyst Reggie Miller ? it was a celebration that could be felt all the way to back to campus.

Big East Player of the Year Otto Porter Jr. had 13 points on 5-of-17 shooting and 11 rebounds. On this night he couldn't match Brown, the A-Sun's player of the year.

"It feels really good to be in this position right now," Brown said after the game.

The Hoyas used an 8-0 run to take an 18-11 lead midway through the first half but that's where their offense went cold ? very cold.

The Eagles closed the half on a 13-4 run as Georgetown missed nine straight shots and committed five turnovers. FGCU took a 24-22 lead on two free throws by Eddie Murray with 26 seconds left. In another example of how out of synch Georgetown was offensively, the Hoyas passed the ball around as the halftime horn sounded, allowed the Eagles to keep their lead.

As the night wound down, one fan yelled at the Eagles to stick around Philly a couple of more days.

"Get a cheese steak, kid! Get a cheese steak!"

The crowd then paid Florida Gulf Coast the ultimate tribute: the E-A-G-L-E-S! Eagles! chant reserved for their favorite NFL team.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/florida-gulf-coast-stuns-georgetown-78-68-012239570--spt.html

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Hate Speech, San Francisco Style (Powerlineblog)

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Wanna Z10 phone? It might just save BlackBerry.

BlackBerry will open pre-orders for its new Z10 smart phone today.

By Matthew Shaer / March 12, 2013

The BlackBerry Z10 smartphone, pictured here, comes equipped with the BlackBerry 10 operating system.

Reuters

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Today, BlackBerry ? the company formerly known as RIM ? will begin taking pre-orders for its Z10 smart phone.?

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The stakes are extremely high. In recent years, BlackBerry has watched as its competitors, including Apple and Samsung, take bigger and bigger bites of its once-substantial smart-phone market share. Meanwhile, layoffs have been rampant, corporate restructuring has been a regular occurrence, and products that should have helped bolster BlackBerry, such as the PlayBook, have turned instead to be incredibly costly flops.?

So yes, there's a lot riding on the Z10, which will actually hit shelves on March 22. The BlackBerry-10-equipped device is powerful and sleek and while it retains a lot of the business-first amenities of its predecessors ? lots of security, dynamic email, and messaging options ? it's also a phone that is clearly targeted at a wider array of users. Indeed, early hands-on reviews have stressed the accessibility of the device.?

"BB10 is all about swiping to navigate. You swipe up to wake the devices, swipe right to check out BlackBerry Hub and view your notifications, swipe left to access your currently running apps and the home screen, and swipe down to check out both system-wide and app-specific settings," one critic wrote. "Overall, while it?s different, it?s a?surprisingly?intuitive experience, and one that exceeds the tacked-on touch experience of BB OS 7 and earlier."?

BlackBerry, of course, faces the unenviable task of convincing consumers they'd be better off with a Z10 than, say, an iPhone 5 or the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy S4.?

But early signs have not been particularly promising. According to the Financial Post, T. Michael Walkley, an analyst with?Canaccord Genuity, recently slashed his forecast of BB10 shipments in the current quarter to 300,000 units. He'd previously estimated that BlackBerry would unload 1.75 million units.?

"Our follow-up checks have indicated steady but modest sales levels," Walkley said in a report obtained by the Financial Post. "With new BB10 smartphones launching in the U.S. only in mid-March or later at subsidized prices no better than competing high-end Apple/Samsung smartphones? we are lowering our BB10 sales estimates for the February quarter and all of fiscal 2014."

For?more tech news, follow us on?Twitter @venturenaut.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/zYKSsrM-cIE/Wanna-Z10-phone-It-might-just-save-BlackBerry

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Mars rover sees key water indicator

12 March 2013 Last updated at 13:19 ET By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

The US space agency (Nasa) has reported that its Curiosity rover has made another significant discovery on Mars.

The robot has drilled into a rock that contains clay minerals - an indication of formation in, or substantial alteration by, neutral water.

Scientists say the find is one more step towards showing conditions on the Red Planet in the distant past could have supported life.

Many rocks studied previously were probably deposited in acidic water.

While this would not have precluded the possibility of micro-organisms taking hold on Mars, it would have been more challenging, scientists believe.

Identifying clays shows there were at least some locations on the planet billions of years ago where environments would have been much more favourable.

"We have found a habitable environment that is so benign and supportive of life that probably if this water was around and you had been there, you would have been able to drink it," said John Grotzinger, Curiosity's project scientist.

Michael Myer, Nasa's Mars exploration programme: "Right off the bat, we find evidence of water"

Ancient lake

The rover drilled a powdered sample from a mudstone at its exploration site in Gale Crater, a deep impact bowl on Mars' equator.

This was delivered to the two big onboard laboratories, Sam and Chemin, for analysis.

The rock sample was found to contain 20-30% smectite - a particular group of clay minerals.

Their high abundance and the relative lack of salt are strongly suggestive of a fresh-water environment for the mudstone's formation.

The presence of calcium sulphates, rather than the magnesium or iron sulphates seen in previous rock analyses at other locations on the planet, adds to the evidence that the sampled rock in Gale was deposited in a neutral to mildly alkaline pH environment.

Scientists think Curiosity probably drilled into an ancient lakebed.

Aqueous catalogue

The analysis also identified sulphur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon - some of the key chemical elements for life.

Additionally, it found compounds in a range of oxidised states, meaning there were electrons moving through the environment. Those could have been co-opted as an energy source by simple life-forms, if they ever existed in Gale.

"What we've learned in the last 20 years of modern microbiology is that very primitive organisms - they can derive energy just by feeding on rocks," explained Prof Grotzinger.

"Just like on [a] battery - you hook up the wires and it goes to a lightbulb and the lightbulb turns on. That's kind of what a micro-organism would have done in this environment, if life had ever evolved on Mars and it was present here."

The rover is assembling quite a catalogue of water evidence in the crater.

Already, it has seen the remains of an ancient riverbed system, where water once flowed perhaps a metre deep and quite vigorously.

The picture that seems to be emerging is one where sediments were transported downhill from the eroding crater rim into a network of streams that then flowed into the lake environment represented by the mudstone.

Quiet April

Curiosity is currently working in a small depression known as Yellowknife Bay, about half a kilometre from the location where it touched down last August.

Nasa's original mission plan was to head towards the big mountain that dominates the centre of Gale Crater, but the fascinating science at Yellowknife Bay has delayed this journey somewhat.

In recent days, operations have been slowed by a software glitch, requiring the vehicle to be run off its reserve computer.

There is also the imminent issue of solar conjunction, which will see Mars move behind the Sun as viewed from Earth, blocking communications.

All this means that Curiosity will be at Yellowknife Bay for a while yet.

"Basically, we can't talk to the rover and the rover [can't] talk to us for most of the month of April," said Michael Meyer, the lead scientist on Nasa's Mars exploration programme.

"We'll do some more science activities though the end of this month, [provided] the engineers confirm it's safe for us to do those operations. But we will not do a second drill hole until after solar conjunction."

When the rover does finally get to the mountain, known as Mount Sharp, the expectation, based on satellite imagery, is that it will again find clay minerals.

This will enable the robot to compare and contrast past environments.

The US space agency's Opportunity rover, which continues to work nine years on from its landing, is also believed to be sitting on top of clay-bearing rocks at its exploration site far to the west of Gale. Opportunity, however, does not have Curiosity's capability to assess those rocks.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21755976#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

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Sheryl Sandberg: On a mission to elevate women

Sheryl Sandberg is not backing down.

The Facebook chief operating officer's book "Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead" goes on sale Monday amid criticism that she's too successful and rich to lead a movement. But Sandberg says her focus remains on spurring action and progress among women.

"The conversation, the debate is all good, because where we were before was stagnation ? and stagnation is bad," she said in an interview with The Associated Press. "And sometimes it takes real heated debate to wake people up and find a solution."

With "Lean In," Sandberg aims to arm women with the tools and guidance they need to keep moving forward in the workforce. The book's release is coupled with the launch of Sandberg's LeanIn.org a nonprofit that will receive all of the book's proceeds.

The book isn't just for women. It calls on men to lend support, both at home and in the office.

"This is about who we are as people," Sandberg says. "Who we can be as individuals and as a society."

In the book, Sandberg illuminates facts about the dearth of women in positions of power and offers real-world solutions. Women, Sandberg writes, make up only 14 percent of executive officers, 18 percent of elected congressional officials and 22 of 197 heads of state. What's worse, Sandberg says, is that women have not made true progress in corporate America over the past decade. Boardrooms are still as overwhelmingly male as they were 10 years ago.

"While women continue to outpace men in educational achievement, we have ceased making real progress at the top of any industry," she writes in "Lean In." ''This means that when it comes to making the decisions that most affect our world, the voices of women are not heard equally."

Sandberg, 43, has worked at Facebook as its No. 2 executive since 2008. CEO Mark Zuckerberg lured her away from Google to help run what has since become a social networking powerhouse and formidable Google rival. Sandberg says it's only been in the last few years that she's started thinking seriously about the issues affecting working women. As recently as three years ago, Sandberg says, she would not have spoken the words "women in the workforce."

"You never say the word 'woman' as a working woman because if you do, the person on the other side of the table is going to say you are asking for special treatment," she says.

But seeing women stall in their quest for corporate success bothered her more and more. In 2010, she was asked to speak at the newly minted TEDWomen, an arm of the annual TED conference which showcases "ideas worth spreading."

Her speech was titled "Why we have too few women leaders." The video became wildly popular. It has been viewed more than 2 million times on TED's website. Yet before she gave speech, Sandberg says "a whole bunch of people told me not to." And although she'd given hundreds of talks on Facebook and social media and exactly one on women, after her speech people would ask her "is this your thing now?'"

"That was really the first time I spoke up," she says. Since then, Sandberg has come to call herself "a proud feminist."

Sandberg says it was the flood of responses that she received following the speech that got her thinking about writing a book. Some women wrote to her and said the speech encouraged them to ask for a raise. Others said it motivated them to ask for more family-friendly work hours.

LeanIn.org grew out of the book with the help of co-founder Gina Bianchini, who was inspired by a course she took at Stanford University's Clayman Institute for Gender Research called "Voice & Influence." Its mission ? "to empower women and men to be as effective as possible and to create organizations where all people can thrive" ? is at the core of LeanIn.org. LEanIn.org hopes to reach as many people as possible by offering materials and easy-to-replicate guidelines online, for free. Sandberg calls it a platform, which, in the technology world means something that others can take, change and make their own.

"We are a startup," Sandberg says. "We are going to see what happens, and what companies do with our platform."

___

Online:

www.leanin.org

Associated Press

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FCC approves T-Mobile-MetroPCS deal

NEW YORK (AP) ? The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday approved the merger of T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS Communications Inc., the No. 4 and No. 5 cellphone carriers in the country.

The Justice Department cleared the merger last week, meaning that the last hurdle will be a vote by MetroPCS shareholders, who convene in a month. Regulatory approval of the deal was expected. The FCC applied no significant conditions to its approval.

Under the deal, T-Mobile USA's parent company, Deutsche Telekom AG of Germany, will hold a 74 percent stake in the combined company, while shareholders of Dallas-based MetroPCS will own the remainder. MetroPCS shareholders will also receive a special dividend totaling about $1.5 billion.

MetroPCS' largest shareholder, billionaire John Paulson, opposes the deal. He believes it would saddle the company with too much debt, and has said that Deutsche Telekom is getting a better deal than MetroPCS's shareholders.

On Tuesday, MetroPCS mailed a letter to shareholders defending the deal, saying it's the best strategic alternative for shareholders and the stake in the combined company is worth substantially more than the standalone company.

Last year, regulators blocked the proposed acquisition of T-Mobile USA by AT&T Inc., the No. 2 wireless company, because it would have reduced competition in the industry. Regulators likely reasoned that the merger of two smaller players was less of a threat, particularly since both companies are losing subscribers. Together, they may be able to compete more effectively with larger companies.

Associated Press

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America's new love: Water

In this Tuesday, March 5, 2013 photo, a selection of bottled waters stands on a kitchen counter in East Derry, N.H. Soda's reign as America's most popular drink could be entering its twilight years, with plain old bottled water making a run for the top spot. Already, bottled water has surged past juice, milk and beer in terms of per capita consumption. The result is that bottled water is slowly closing the gap for the No. 1 spot. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

In this Tuesday, March 5, 2013 photo, a selection of bottled waters stands on a kitchen counter in East Derry, N.H. Soda's reign as America's most popular drink could be entering its twilight years, with plain old bottled water making a run for the top spot. Already, bottled water has surged past juice, milk and beer in terms of per capita consumption. The result is that bottled water is slowly closing the gap for the No. 1 spot. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

In this Tuesday, March 5, 2013 photo, Walter Pugh, 83, of Belzoni, Miss., loads a case of his bottled water into his shopping cart in Jackson, Miss. As sugary drinks come under fire for fueling obesity rates, people are increasingly reaching for bottled water as a healthier, relatively affordable alternative. Already, bottled water has surged past juice, milk and beer in terms of per capita consumption. The result is that bottled water is slowly closing the gap for the No. 1 spot. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

In this Tuesday, March 5, 2013 photo, a customer takes a bottle of water off a store shelf in Jackson, Miss. As sugary drinks come under fire for fueling obesity rates, people are increasingly reaching for bottled water as a healthier, relatively affordable alternative. Already, bottled water has surged past juice, milk and beer in terms of per capita consumption. The result is that bottled water is slowly closing the gap for the No. 1 spot. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

NEW YORK (AP) ? It wasn't too long ago that America had a love affair with soda. Now, an old flame has the country's heart.

As New York City grapples with the legality of a ban on the sale of large cups of soda and other sugary drinks at some businesses, one thing is clear: soda's run as the nation's beverage of choice has fizzled.

In its place? A favorite for much of history: Plain old H2O.

For more than two decades, soda was the No. 1 drink in the U.S. with per capita consumption peaking in 1998 at 54 gallons a year, according industry tracker Beverage Digest. Americans drank just 42 gallons a year of water at the time.

But over the years, as soda increasingly came under fire for fueling the nation's rising obesity rates, water quietly rose to knock it off the top spot.

Americans now drink an average of 44 gallons of soda a year, a 17 percent drop from the peak in 1998. Over the same time, the average amount of water people drink has increased 38 percent to about 58 gallons a year. Bottled water has led that growth, with consumption nearly doubling to 21 gallons a year.

Stephen Ngo, a civil defense attorney, quit drinking soda a year ago when he started running triathlons, and wanted a healthier way to quench his thirst.

Ngo, 34, has a Brita filter for tap water and also keeps his pantry stocked with cases of bottled water.

"It might just be the placebo effect or marketing, but it tastes crisper," said Ngo, who lives in Miami.

The trend reflects Americans' ever-changing tastes; it wasn't too far back in history that tap water was the top drink.

But in the 1980s, carbonated soft drinks overtook tap as the most popular drink, with Coca-Cola and PepsiCo putting their marketing muscle behind their colas with celebrity endorsements from the likes of pop star Michael Jackson and comedian Bill Cosby.

Americans kept drinking more of the carbonated, sugary drink for about a decade. Then, soda's magic started to fade: Everyone from doctors to health advocates to government officials were blaming soft drinks for making people fat. Consumption started declining after hitting a high in the late 1990s.

At the same time, people started turning to bottled water as an alternative. Its popularity was helped by the emergence of single-serve bottles that were easy to carry around.

Until then, bottled water had mainly been sold in "big jugs and coolers" for people who didn't trust their water supply, said John Sicher, publisher of Beverage Digest.

The new soft drink-like packaging helped fast-track bottled water's growth past milk and beer. In fact, the amount of bottled water Americans drink has risen nearly every year for more than two decades, while the estimates of how much tap water people drink has fluctuated up and down during that time. When taken together, water finally overtook soda in 2008, according to Beverage Digest. (It's difficult to track how much tap water people drink and how much is used for other things like washing dishes, so experts estimate consumption.)

Analysts expect water to hold onto to its top spot for years to come. But whether people will drink from the tap or a bottle is uncertain.

Based on current trajectories, Michael Bellas, the CEO of the industry tracker Beverage Marketing Corp., predicts that bottled water alone could overtake soda within the next decade. That's not counting enhanced and flavored waters, which are growing quickly but remain a small part of the bottled water industry.

Currently, people drink 21 gallons of bottled water a year. That compares with 37 gallons of other water, which includes tap, sparkling, flavored and enhanced waters such as Coca-Cola's vitaminwater.

But there are numerous factors that could tilt the scales in favor of tap water.

Because of concerns that plastic bottles create too much waste, experts say bottled water could be hit by a public backlash similar to the one that has whipsawed the soda industry with pushes for bans and taxes.

New York City was preparing for a ban on cups of sugary drinks that are larger than 16 ounces starting on Tuesday. But on Monday ? a day before the ban was to begin ? a judge invalidated the regulation. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who originally proposed the ban, vowed to appeal the judge's ruling.

Bottled water already is starting to face similar opposition. The town of Concord, Mass. earlier this year banned the sale of water bottles that are less than a liter. And the University of Vermont became the first public university to ban the sale of bottled water last year.

Meanwhile, other cities are waging campaigns to promote tap water. New York City, which touts the high quality of its tap water, offers portable fountains at events around the city.

"Good old marketing has convinced people that they should spend a lot of money on bottled water," says Salome Freud, chief of New York City's distribution water quality operations.

Although companies such as Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc. would rather have people buy bottled waters, they're even more invested in getting people to drink more soda again.

That's because soda and other drinks that the companies make, such as sports drinks and juices, are more profitable than bottled water. With bottled water, people tend to buy whatever is cheapest. That's a habit that forces companies to keep prices relatively low, which eats into profits.

It's why companies are investing so heavily in developing nations such as China and India, where the appetite for soda continues to grow.

In the U.S., annual soda sales are more than five times as big as bottled water at $75.7 billion a year, according to Beverage Digest. In terms of volume, soda is only twice as big as bottled water.

At Coca-Cola, the No. 1 soda maker, three-quarters of its volume in gallons comes from soft drinks, compared with 8 percent for its bottled waters including Dasani. PepsiCo, the No. 2 soda maker, gets 64 percent of its volume from soft drinks and only 7 percent from its Aquafina bottled water.

It's why Coca-Cola, which holds 13 percent of the bottled water market compared with PepsiCo's 10 percent, doesn't seem to think bottled water will ever overtake soda. In an emailed statement, the Atlanta-based company noted that soft drinks remain a far larger category than bottled water and that it sees "upside" for sodas over the next several years.

However, the company added that it saw "great potential" for bottled water. Like its competitors, Coca-Cola said it's focusing on growing its portfolio of bottled waters profitably by offering brands such as Smartwater and its flavored vitaminwater, which fetch higher prices.

In the meantime, the chairman and former CEO of Nestle Waters North America, Kim Jeffery, is waiting for bottled water's moment in the spotlight. Nestle, the Swiss company that makes Poland Spring, Nestle Pure Life, Deer Park and other brands, has nearly half of the share of the bottled water market.

At a beverage industry conference late last year, Jeffery noted that bottled water is "the elephant in the room."

And given the growing warnings over drinking too many calories ? including from juice, milk and other sugary drinks ? Jeffery said he's confident that water will continue to grow in popularity.

"For thousands of years, water was beverage of choice for human beings," he said. "Now we're reverting back to that."

__

Follow Candice Choi at www.twitter.com/candicechoi

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-03-11-Rise%20of%20Water/id-c0ba97732d3042089f74801b5f49b1a8

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Perseverance: The Contagion

Welcome to the fight!

Some of you may know myself, Echo_Rose and WinterWhisperz from The Black City. Some of you may be complete strangers, but hell, you're all welcome here.

Feel free to ask questions and voice concerns here, this is used for OOC communication and clarification on anything and anything you see fit. We hope to have plenty of character submissions soon and will be sending out ads and PMs.

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Five Best Laptop Stands

Working on a laptop for long hours can be killer on your back, neck, and overall posture. An easy and affordable way to upgrade the ergonomics of your workspace is to grab a simple laptop stand, and whether you build one of your own on the cheap or buy one with a fancy design or added features, it's a great idea to get one if you spend long hours hunched over a tiny screen. Here's a look at five of the best laptop stands, nominated by you, our readers.

Earlier this week we asked you which laptop stands you thought were the best. You weighed in with a number of great options, models, and suggestions for the perfect laptop stand setup, many of which were specific to your particular workspace. Still, a few options rose above the rest. Let's take a look at them.

Rain Design mStand

The mStand Laptop Stand by Rain Design was built for Macbook laptops, but it works just fine for any laptop model. It's a simple, solid piece of aluminum that's angled perfectly to keep your laptop elevated, cool, and screen opened to just the right angle so you can see it while you're working. The new mStand 360 has an adjustable base so you can swivel your laptop from side to side while you work to change the view. It's meant more for use with a external keyboard and monitor, but presumably could be used with a standing desk setup. If you are in to Apple systems, it'll fit right in on your desk. If you're not, it'll still look sharp. The mStand retails for $60 (but is available for as little as $45 at Amazon) and the mStand 360 goes for closer to $60.

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IKEA BRADA

The IKEA BRADA is an inexpensive laptop support that comes in a couple of different designs, but both are affordable. The fold-out desk style stand with spaces in the sides for cable management are about $10, and the angled model shown here is only $4. Both models aren't exactly adjustable or offer any special features (although cable management slots are a nice bonus) but they get the job done, can be hacked easily, and can also be added to a DIY setup for just the right fit.

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Griffin Elevator Laptop Stand

The Griffin Elevator laptop stand is an elegant, space-saving setup that offers plenty of space in the center and around the sides for other devices, keyboard storage, and cable management. The brushed aluminum design and rubberized feet keep your laptop in place while elevating it, and while its not height adjustable, it does bring your laptop up to a workable height whether you choose to use it there (perhaps with a standing desk setup) or connect an external keyboard to it. It also has an open design to keep your laptop cool, and while it's another laptop stand that was designed for Macbooks, but it works just as well with any model of laptop. The Elevator stand will set you back $40, either direct from Griffin or over at Amazon.

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Cooler Master NotePal U2

If you're looking for a laptop stand that's also designed to keep a hot laptop cool, the Cooler Master NotePal U2 can do the job. It comes in a number of models, and can accommodate multiple adjustable cooling fans designed to keep your system cool while in use. Even without the fans, the mesh material and elevated design elevates your laptop for easier use and cooling, and when you're not using it you can disassemble the stand to use as a protective carrying case for your laptop to keep it safe while you travel. It's available in a number of flavors and sizes depending on how many fans you want with it and the size of the laptop you're using, but expect to spend around $20 at Amazon for most models.

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Do It Yourself

Of course, to get the most truly custom and functional option for your workspace, you have to build your own laptop stand. Whether it's just some books under your laptop or a fancy DIY option like some of the options we've shown you before, making your own is the best way to really get the height you want and to get it to fit into the spacey ou have to work with. Plus, many of you noted that it's just simpler to use something you have lying around than trying to shoehorn something potentiall expensive into your available space. Plus, you can go from a simple stand to charging ports and height adjustability pretty quickly depending on the level of effort you want to put into it. Photo by Craig Lloyd.

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Now that you've seen the top five, it's time to vote for the best option of the top five.

Honorable mentions this week go out to the $28 3M Vertical Notebook Riser, which many of you praised for being height adjustable, affordable, ergonomically correct, and perfect for using your laptop with an externally connected keyboard. Many of you also praised The Crane Laptop Stand, an incredibly adjustable, customizable laptop stand and workstation that can be tweaked so you can use your laptop while elevating it or set to the perfect working height for equipment underneath or your specific needs. You'll pay for the ultimate in customizability though, the Crane Stand retails for $170, and the Pro version retails for $200.

Have something to say about one of the contenders? Want to make the case for your personal favorite, even if it wasn't included in the list? Remember, the top five are based on your most popular nominations from the call for contenders thread from earlier in the week. Don't just complain about the top five, let us know what your preferred alternative is?and make your case for it?in the discussions below.

The Hive Five is based on reader nominations. As with most Hive Five posts, if your favorite was left out, it's not because we hate it?it's because it didn't get the nominations required in the call for contenders post to make the top five. We understand it's a bit of a popularity contest, but if you have a favorite, we want to hear about it. Have a suggestion for the Hive Five? Send us an email at tips+hivefive@lifehacker.com!

Title photo by Mike Sisk.

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/CvR8QyEtbK4/five-best-laptop-stands

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Astronomers conduct first remote reconnaissance of another planetary system

Mar. 11, 2013 ? Researchers have conducted a remote reconnaissance of a distant planetary system with a new telescope imaging system that sifts through the blinding light of stars. Using a suite of high-tech instrumentation and software called Project 1640, the scientists collected the first chemical fingerprints, or spectra, of this system's four red exoplanets, which orbit a star 128 light years away from Earth.

A detailed description of the planets -- showing how drastically different they are from the known worlds in the universe -- was accepted Friday for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.

"An image is worth a thousand words, but a spectrum is worth a million," said lead author Ben R. Oppenheimer, associate curator and chair of the Astrophysics Department at the American Museum of Natural History.

Oppenheimer is the principal investigator for Project 1640, which uses the Hale telescope at the Palomar Observatory in California. The project involves researchers from the California Institute of Technology, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Cambridge University, New York University, and the Space Telescope Science Institute, in addition to Oppenheimer's team at the Museum.

The planets surrounding the star of this study, HR 8799, have been imaged in the past. But except for a partial measurement of the outermost planet in the system, the star's bright light overwhelmed previous attempts to study the planets with spectroscopy, a technique that splits the light from an object into its component colors -- as a prism spreads sunlight into a rainbow. Because every chemical, such as carbon dioxide, methane, or water, has a unique light signature in the spectrum, this technique is able to reveal the chemical composition of a planet's atmosphere.

"In the 19th century it was thought impossible to know the composition of stars, but the invention of astronomical spectroscopy has revealed detailed information about nearby stars and distant galaxies," said Charles Beichman, executive director of the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at the California Institute of Technology. "Now, with Project 1640, we are beginning to turn this tool to the investigation of neighboring exoplanets to learn about the composition, temperature, and other characteristics of their atmospheres."

With this system, the researchers are the first to determine the spectra of all four planets surrounding HR 8799. "It's fantastic to nab the spectra of four planets in a single observation," said co-author Gautam Vasisht, an astronomer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The results are "quite strange," Oppenheimer said. "These warm, red planets are unlike any other known object in our universe. All four planets have different spectra, and all four are peculiar. The theorists have a lot of work to do now."

One of the most striking abnormalities is an apparent chemical imbalance. Basic chemistry predicts that ammonia and methane should naturally coexist in varying quantities unless they are in extremely cold or hot environments. Yet the spectra of the HR 8799 planets, all of which have "lukewarm" temperatures of about 1000 Kelvin (1340 degrees Fahrenheit), either have methane or ammonia, with little or no signs of their chemical partners. Other chemicals such as acetylene, previously undiscovered on any exoplanet, and carbon dioxide may be present as well.

The planets also are "redder," meaning that they emit longer wavelengths of light, than celestial objects with similar temperatures. This could be explained by significant but patchy cloud cover on the planets, the authors say.

With 1.6 times the mass and five times the brightness, HR 8799 itself is very different from our Sun. The brightness of the star can vary by as much as 8 percent over a period of two days and produces about 1,000 times more ultraviolet light than the Sun. All of these factors could impact the spectral fingerprints of the planets, possibly inducing complex weather and sooty hazes that could be revealed by periodic changes in the spectra. More data is needed to further explore this planetary system's unusual characteristics.

"The spectra of these four worlds clearly show that they are far too toxic and hot to sustain life as we know it," said co-author Ian Parry, a senior lecturer at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge University. "But the really exciting thing is that one day, the techniques we've developed will give us our first secure evidence of the existence of life on a planet outside our solar system."

In addition to revealing unique planets, the research debuts a new capability to observe and rapidly characterize exosolar systems in a routine manner, something that has eluded astronomers until now because the light that stars emit is tens of millions to billions of times brighter than the light given off by planets. This makes directly imaging and analyzing exoplanets extremely difficult: as Oppenheimer says, "It's like taking a single picture of the Empire State Building from an airplane that reveals the height of the building as well as taking a picture of a bump on the sidewalk next to it that is as high as a couple of bacteria."

Project 1640 helps scientists clear this hurdle by sharpening and darkening a star's light. This technical advance involves the coordinated operation of four major instruments: the world's most advanced adaptive optics system, which can make millions of tiny adjustments to the device's two 6-inch mirrors every second; a coronagraph that optically dims the star but not other celestial objects in the field of view; an imaging spectrograph that records 30 images in a rainbow of colors simultaneously; and a specialized wave front sensor that distinguishes between residual starlight that sneaks through the coronagraph and the light from planets, allowing scientists to filter out background starlight more effectively.

Altogether, the project has produced images of celestial objects 1 million to 10 million times fainter than the star at the center of the image, with only an hour of observations. It is also capable of measuring orbital motion of objects.

"Astronomers are now able to monitor cloudy skies on extrasolar planets, and for the first time, they have made such observations for four planets at once," said Maria Womack, program director for the Division of Astronomical Sciences at the National Science Foundation. "This new ability enables astronomers to now make comparisons as they track the atmospheres, and maybe even weather patterns, on the planets."

Researchers are already collecting more data on this system to look for changes in the planets over time, as well as surveying other young stars. During its three-year survey at Palomar, which started in June 2012, Project 1640 aims to survey 200 stars within about 150 light years of our solar system.

"The variation in the spectra of the four planets is really intriguing," said Didier Saumon, an astronomer at Los Alamos National Laboratory who was not involved in this study. "Perhaps this shouldn't be too surprising, given that the four gaseous planets of the solar system are all different. The hundreds of known exoplanets have forced us to broaden our thinking, and this new data keeps pushing that envelope."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Museum of Natural History.

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

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Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/space_time/astronomy/~3/KTHAn9Mumes/130311173756.htm

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UN sanctions may play into North Korean propaganda

A Mercedes car passes through a strip of sunlight on a street in central Pyongyang, North Korea on Friday, March 8, 2013. The U.N. Security Council responded swiftly to North Korea's latest nuclear test by punishing the reclusive regime Thursday with tough, new sanctions targeting its economy and leadership, despite Pyongyang's threat of a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the United States. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)

A Mercedes car passes through a strip of sunlight on a street in central Pyongyang, North Korea on Friday, March 8, 2013. The U.N. Security Council responded swiftly to North Korea's latest nuclear test by punishing the reclusive regime Thursday with tough, new sanctions targeting its economy and leadership, despite Pyongyang's threat of a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the United States. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)

In this March 7, 2013 photo released by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) and distributed March 8, 2013 by the Korea News Service, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, uses binoculars to look at the South's territory from an observation post at the military unit on Jangjae islet, located in the southernmost part of the southwestern sector of North Korea's border with South Korea. Seven years of U.N. sanctions against North Korea have done nothing to derail Pyongyang?s drive for a nuclear weapon capable of hitting the United States. They may have even bolstered the Kim family by giving their propaganda maestros ammunition to whip up anti-U.S. sentiment and direct attention away from government failures. (AP Photo/KCNA via KNS) JAPAN OUT UNTIL 14 DAYS AFTER THE DAY OF TRANSMISSION

In this March 7, 2013 photo released by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) and distributed March 8, 2013 by the Korea News Service, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, walks with military personnel as he arrives for a military unit on Mu Islet, located in the southernmost part of the southwestern sector of North Korea's border with South Korea. Seven years of U.N. sanctions against North Korea have done nothing to derail Pyongyang?s drive for a nuclear weapon capable of hitting the United States. They may have even bolstered the Kim family by giving their propaganda maestros ammunition to whip up anti-U.S. sentiment and direct attention away from government failures. (AP Photo/KCNA via KNS) JAPAN OUT UNTIL 14 DAYS AFTER THE DAY OF TRANSMISSION

In this March 7, 2013 photo released by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) and distributed March 8, 2013 by the Korea News Service, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, with military officials, gets a ride on a boat on his way to a military unit on Jangjae Islet, located in the southernmost part of the southwestern sector of North Korea's border with South Korea. Seven years of U.N. sanctions against North Korea have done nothing to derail Pyongyang?s drive for a nuclear weapon capable of hitting the United States. They may have even bolstered the Kim family by giving their propaganda maestros ammunition to whip up anti-U.S. sentiment and direct attention away from government failures. (AP Photo/KCNA via KNS) JAPAN OUT UNTIL 14 DAYS AFTER THE DAY OF TRANSMISSION

In this March 7, 2013 photo released by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) and distributed March 8, 2013 by the Korea News Service, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, is welcomed by military personnel at a military unit on Jangjae islet, located in the southernmost part of the southwestern sector of North Korea's border with South Korea. Seven years of U.N. sanctions against North Korea have done nothing to derail Pyongyang?s drive for a nuclear weapon capable of hitting the United States. They may have even bolstered the Kim family by giving their propaganda maestros ammunition to whip up anti-U.S. sentiment and direct attention away from government failures. (AP Photo/KCNA via KNS) JAPAN OUT UNTIL 14 DAYS AFTER THE DAY OF TRANSMISSION

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) ? Seven years of U.N. sanctions against North Korea have done nothing to derail Pyongyang's drive for a nuclear weapon capable of hitting the United States. They may have even bolstered the Kim family by giving their propaganda maestros ammunition to whip up anti-U.S. sentiment and direct attention away from government failures.

In the wake of fresh U.N. sanctions leveled at North Korea on Thursday for its latest nuclear test, the question is: Will this time be different?

Since 2006, North Korea has launched long-range rockets, tested a variety of missiles and conducted three underground nuclear explosions, the most recent on Feb. 12. Through it all, Pyongyang was undeterred by a raft of sanctions ? both multilateral penalties from the United Nations and national sanctions from Washington, Tokyo and others ? meant to punish the government and sidetrack its nuclear ambitions.

A problem with the approach, analysts said, is that outsiders routinely underestimate North Korea's knack for survival. The sanctions are intended to make life more difficult for a country that has crushing poverty, once suffered through a devastating famine and lost its Soviet backers long ago, but Pyongyang often manages to find some advantage.

North Korean citizens are both defiant and dismissive about the sanctions.

"The sanctions are a trigger, a confrontation," said Kim Myong Sim, a 36-year-old who works at Pyongyang Shoe Factory. "History has shown that Korea has never even thrown a stone at America, but the U.S. still continues to have a hostile policy toward my country."

If North Koreans have "the respected general's order, we will wipe Washington from the Earth," she said, referring to leader Kim Jong Un. She said North Koreans have "already suffered sanctions in the past, but we have found our own way and have become self-reliant."

Sanctions "may be doing more to strengthen the regime than hasten its demise," according to a 2011 essay by John Delury and Chung-in Moon, North Korea specialists at Yonsei University.

"They have generally been counterproductive by playing into Pyongyang hardliners' argument that U.S. hostility is the root cause of North Korea's predicament, providing an external enemy to blame for all woes and undercutting initiatives by more moderate forces in the North Korean elite who want to shift the focus more toward economic development," Delury said in an interview Friday.

The U.N. resolution approved Thursday targets North Korea's ruling class by banning nations from exporting expensive jewelry, yachts, luxury automobiles and race cars to the North. It also imposes new travel sanctions that would require countries to expel agents working for certain North Korean companies.

Diplomats at the U.N. boasted that the sanctions resolution sends a powerful message to North Korea's young leader. "These sanctions will bite, and bite hard," U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said.

But they may also play into Kim Jong Un's hands.

With the outside world clamoring to punish North Korea, Kim can build the same image his late father, Kim Jong Il, looked to create ? that of a strong leader developing nuclear weapons despite outrage from the U.S. superpower, said Ahn Chan-il, a political scientist who heads the World Institute for North Korea Studies in Seoul.

"We have been living with sanctions for a long time, so we're used it," Jang Jun Sang, a department director at the Ministry of Public Health, told The Associated Press in an interview in Pyongyang late last month.

He acknowledged that sanctions have cut imports of medical equipment and supplies. But he said North Korea would find ways to cope. "If we receive medical aid, that's good," he said. "But if we don't, that's fine, too. We're not worried."

The U.N. Security Council issued the latest sanctions because Pyongyang violated earlier resolutions barring it from conducting nuclear or missile tests. The council passed those measures because it considers North Korea's nuclear testing a threat to international peace and stability.

North Korea dismisses that as a double standard, and claims the right to build nuclear weapons as a defense against the United States, which it blames for leading the push for sanctions.

Pyongyang said before the U.N. vote that it would scrap the armistice that ended the Korean War, and after the vote issued a statement saying it was canceling a hotline and a nonaggression pact with rival South Korea.

The U.N. tries to tailor its sanctions to punish the leadership, not average North Koreans. But it's an imperfect exercise.

The latest sanctions will squeeze North Korea's already meager exports and imports, which will in turn cause pain for citizens, said Cho Bong-hyun, a research fellow at the IBK Economic Research Institute in Seoul.

"North Korea's economy faces so many difficulties already, and it can get even worse (because of the sanctions)," Cho said.

A glimpse of North Korean thinking on sanctions can be seen in a wave of recent warlike threats from North Korea. Fierce language associated with the specter of yet more sanctions leveled at the North by Washington and its allies feeds into an us-against-the-world mentality.

It is meant to "solidify Kim Jong Un's leadership by creating a state of quasi-war and tension," said Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University.

Immediately before the Security Council vote, a spokesman for Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry said the North will exercise its right for "a pre-emptive nuclear attack to destroy the strongholds of the aggressors" because of the U.S.-led push for sanctions and U.S.-South Korean joint military drills.

The primary intended audience for such rhetoric is often not outsiders but North Koreans.

When a crisis looms, soldiers, officials and propaganda writers vie with each other to show their extreme loyalty to, and to win promotion and praise from, the ruling Kim family.

Analyst Baek Seung-joo, of the South Korean state-run Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, said it's "like a loyalty competition."

One caveat to the sanctions dilemma is China, which is North Korea's economic lifeline, providing almost all the country's oil and generous amounts of food aid.

Pyongyang's dependency on Beijing has grown as sanctions have piled up. Chinese products made up only about 43 percent of North Korean imports in 2006, compared to more than 95 percent in 2012, according to data from the International Trade Centre. The group, a joint agency of the U.N. and the World Trade Organization, said more than $3.5 billion in Chinese exports reached North Korea last year.

Beijing's backing for the new measures signals its growing frustration with its neighbor and ally.

"In the past, we opened our eyes and closed our eyes as need be. Now we're not closing our eyes anymore," said Cui Yingjiu, a retired professor from Peking University in China and a former classmate of Kim Jong Il.

But Chinese leaders have been wary of putting too much pressure on Pyongyang for fear that the Kim government would collapse, sending North Koreans streaming across the border and potentially leading to the loss of a buffer against a U.S.-allied South Korea.

If China changes course and rigorously enforces the U.N. resolution, "it could seriously disrupt, if not end, North Korea's proliferation activities. Unfortunately, if past behavior is any guide, this is unlikely to happen," Marcus Noland, a North Korean watcher at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said in an institute blog post.

___

Guttenfelder reported from Pyongyang, North Korea. AP writers Hyung-jin Kim, Sam Kim and Youkyung Lee in Seoul, Jean H. Lee in Pyongyang and Charles Hutzler in Beijing contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-03-08-UN-NKorea/id-3db443ca11e04a6fa57eb7722215690a

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Flip of a single molecular switch makes an old mouse brain young

Mar. 6, 2013 ? The flip of a single molecular switch helps create the mature neuronal connections that allow the brain to bridge the gap between adolescent impressionability and adult stability. Now Yale School of Medicine researchers have reversed the process, recreating a youthful brain that facilitated both learning and healing in the adult mouse.

Scientists have long known that the young and old brains are very different. Adolescent brains are more malleable or plastic, which allows them to learn languages more quickly than adults and speeds recovery from brain injuries. The comparative rigidity of the adult brain results in part from the function of a single gene that slows the rapid change in synaptic connections between neurons.

By monitoring the synapses in living mice over weeks and months, Yale researchers have identified the key genetic switch for brain maturation a study released March 6 in the journal Neuron. The Nogo Receptor 1 gene is required to suppress high levels of plasticity in the adolescent brain and create the relatively quiescent levels of plasticity in adulthood. In mice without this gene, juvenile levels of brain plasticity persist throughout adulthood. When researchers blocked the function of this gene in old mice, they reset the old brain to adolescent levels of plasticity.

"These are the molecules the brain needs for the transition from adolescence to adulthood," said Dr. Stephen Strittmatter. Vincent Coates Professor of Neurology, Professor of Neurobiology and senior author of the paper. "It suggests we can turn back the clock in the adult brain and recover from trauma the way kids recover."

Rehabilitation after brain injuries like strokes requires that patients re-learn tasks such as moving a hand. Researchers found that adult mice lacking Nogo Receptor recovered from injury as quickly as adolescent mice and mastered new, complex motor tasks more quickly than adults with the receptor.

"This raises the potential that manipulating Nogo Receptor in humans might accelerate and magnify rehabilitation after brain injuries like strokes," said Feras Akbik, Yale doctoral student who is first author of the study.

Researchers also showed that Nogo Receptor slows loss of memories. Mice without Nogo receptor lost stressful memories more quickly, suggesting that manipulating the receptor could help treat post-traumatic stress disorder.

"We know a lot about the early development of the brain," Strittmatter said, "But we know amazingly little about what happens in the brain during late adolescence."

Other Yale authors are: Sarah M. Bhagat, Pujan R. Patel and William B.J. Cafferty.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health. Strittmatter is scientific founder of Axerion Therapeutics, which is investigating applications of Nogo research to repair spinal cord damage.

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Journal Reference:

1. Feras V. Akbik, Sarah M. Bhagat, Pujan R. Patel, William B.j. Cafferty, Stephen M. Strittmatter. Anatomical Plasticity of Adult Brain Is Titrated by Nogo Receptor 1. Neuron, 2013 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2012.12.027

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/Plnc39mLyHk/130306134226.htm

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