Italo Calvino: Letters, 1941-1985

This collection of Calvino's letter unveils the correspondence of a writer at the heart of modern literature's revolutions.

June 30, 2013

Italo Calvino: Letters, 1941-1985 by Italo Calvino, Princeton University Press, 632 pages

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On?any list of writers who should have won the Nobel Prize but didn't, Italo Calvino would have to figure near the top, along with Nabokov and Borges. Calvino, who was born in 1923 and died in 1985, became famous in America mainly as the author of ludid, postmodernist works like?Invisible Cities ? a reworking of Marco Polo's travels, with a buried mathematical structure ? and?If on a winter's night a traveler,?a classic work of metafiction that continually stops and restarts itself while addressing the reader.?

But in his comparatively short life, Calvino played many roles in the literature of Italy and the world. Before he was a postmodernist, associated with the experiments of the Oulipo in Paris, he was a realist whose first successes were Hemingwayesque tales drawn from his own experience as a partisan fighter in Italy during World War II. He was also, starting with his partisan period, a Communist, striving to reconcile his intensely individual genius with the imperatives of the class struggle. When that proved impossible, after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, Calvino resigned from the Party, but he always considered himself a man of the Left.?

And from the very beginning of his career to the very end, he was also a publisher, associated with the leading Italian house of Einaudi. His work brought him into contact with just about every major Italian writer and cultural figure of the postwar period; many of them were his friends and collaborators, from Cesare Pavese and Carlo Levi to Michelangelo Antonioni and Pierpaolo Pasolini.

This intense activity, this committed and versatile service to letters, is the main impression that the reader takes away from?Italo Calvino: Letters, 1941-1985. A big book at nearly 600 pages, it still represents just a fraction of the correspondence published in Italian, and there are large areas of Calvino's life that go uncovered ? this is not one of those books of letters that can double as a biography.

There are no love letters included, for instance, nor anything to his parents or relatives; indeed, just about anything "personal" is left out. At the same time, Calvino writes in such granular detail about postwar Italian literature, with references to the titles, authors, characters, and plots of hundreds of works, that anyone who is not a specialist in that literature will probably feel a little adrift. (The notes, while numerous, are not nearly full enough for the general reader's purposes ? an adequately annotated edition would probably be twice as long.)?

Yet this austerity feels only appropriate for a man whose ideal way of life, he confides in one letter, would be to spend 12 hours a day reading. Several times in the "Letters," we hear Calvino dissuading people from trying to interview him or write his biography, on the grounds that ? as Barthes was saying around the same time ? the very idea of an "author" was dead, or should be: "To be able to study a writer, he must be?dead,?that is ? if he is alive ? he must be?killed? Furthermore, already the existence of the work is a sign that the author is?dead,?happily dead if the work is worthwhile; the work is the negation of the writer as empirical living being."?

Rather than an individual genius, Calvino wanted to be thought of as a member of a culture and a collective. "Life and works?" he writes to an Englishman proposing to devote a study to him. "I'm afraid I don't think I really have a?life?on which something can be written. All I have is a series of works that form part of the general context of literary works in our time. I am more and more convinced that literature is made up of works, genres, schools, discussions, problems, collective work in order to solve certain problems? If a critic writes about a problem and makes reference to one (or more) of my works in relation to that problem, this gives me the sense that my work is not pointless. Whereas the prospect of my bust crowned with laurel appearing along with the other busts in the hall of famous writers gives me no joy at all."?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/rB5bURlTOjQ/Italo-Calvino-Letters-1941-1985

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Tens of thousands of Egyptians flood streets to demand Morsi quit

NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports from Cairo where a large crowd of people are gathered to protest Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi's handling of the country one year after he was elected.

By Daniel Arkin, Staff Writer, NBC News

Tens of thousands of opponents and supporters of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi flooded the streets of Cairo as competing protests turned lethal on Sunday.

Violent clashes left three dead, the country's minister of health said.

Suspected pro-Morsi Islamists on a motorbike opened fire on anti-government demonstrators in the southern city of Assiut, killing one and wounding seven, security officials told The Associated Press.

Protesters infuriated by that killing then marched to the office of the Freedom and Justice party, the political wing of Morsi?s Muslim Brotherhood, where they were met with a hail of bullets, leaving two people dead, according to the AP. An anti-Morsi protester was murdered earlier in the town of Beni Suef, the AP reported.

Mohamed Abd El Ghany / Reuters

Protesters opposing Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi shout slogans against him and brotherhood members during a protest at Tahrir square in Cairo June 30, 2013.

Hours after the prearranged protests began, swarms of anti-government demonstrators were still massed in Tahrir Square, crucible of the 2011 so-called ?Arab Spring? uprisings that overthrew autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak.

?The people want the fall of the regime!? they chanted. Many waved national flags ? only this time not in defiance of an aging dictator but as a form of dissent against their first-ever elected leader, who only assumed office a year ago to the day.

Meanwhile, legions of Morsi?s allies remained outside the Rabia al-Adawiya Mosque near the Ittihadiya presidential palace. Some wore military-style regalia and carried shields and clubs, purportedly as a defense against potential attacks from the opposition, according to the AP.

Not including the casualties from Sunday, at least seven people, including an American college student in Maryland, had already been killed in clashes between opposition protesters and Morsi-allied groups in the last week.

Sunday?s protests represent the peak of a year of turbulence and turmoil in which Egypt has been rocked by scores of political crises, dozens of bloody clashes and a declining economy that has set off a spate of power outages, fuel shortages, skyrocketing prices and routine lawlessness and crime.

The opposing sides of the conflict are representative of the bitter political, social, and religious divisions in contemporary Egypt.

The Muslim Brotherhood and other hard-line groups form the backbone of the pro-Morsi camp. Many of Morsi's proponents have characterized the protests as a conspiracy by Mubarak's political allies to return the former leader to power.

The anti-government movement brings together secular and liberal Egyptians, moderate Muslims and Christians, and wide swaths of the general public the opposition says has rejected the Islamists and their regime.

Liberal leaders say nearly half all Egyptian voters ? some 22 million people ? have signed a petition calling for new elections.

"We all feel we're walking on a dead-end road and that the country will collapse," said Mohamed El-Baradei, a former U.N. nuclear watchdog chief, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and now liberal party leader in his homeland.

Despite mounting pressure, Morsi did not buckle in advance of the preplanned protests, dismissing the widespread dissent as an undemocratic assault on his electoral legitimacy, Reuters reported.

Mohamed Abd El Ghany / Reuters

Protesters opposing Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi shout slogans against him and members of the Muslim Brotherhood during a demonstration in Tahrir square in Cairo June 30, 2013.

But he also proposed to make changes to the new, Islamist-inflected constitution, saying he was not personally responsible for controversial clauses on religious authority, which stirred up liberal animosity and triggered the popular revolt, according to Reuters.

For many Egyptians, though, all the turmoil that has followed the Arab Spring has just made life harder. Standing by his lonely barrow at an eerily quiet downtown Cairo street market, 23-year-old Zeeka was afraid more violence was coming.

"We're not for one side or the other," he told Reuters. "What's happening now in Egypt is shameful. There is no work, thugs are everywhere ... I won't go out to any protest.

"It's nothing to do with me. I'm a tomato guy."

Visiting sub-Saharan Africa, President Barack Obama has cautioned that rancor in the largest Arab country could rattle the region.

Protests in Egypt have occurred around the country in the last few days, with more expected Sunday. The demonstrations come two years after former president Hosni Mubarak was removed from power, and some are hoping the current protests will unseat Egypt's current leader Muhammed Morsi. NBC's Aymen Mohyeldin reports.

"Every party has to denounce violence," Obama said in Pretoria, South Africa, on Saturday. "We'd like to see the opposition and President Morsi engage in a more constructive conversation about how they move their country forward because nobody is benefiting from the current stalemate."

?Washington has evacuated non-essential personnel and redoubled security at its diplomatic missions in Egypt.

Reuters and The Associated Press?contributed to this report.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/663309/s/2e0043d9/l/0Lworldnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A60C30A0C1921750A80Etens0Eof0Ethousands0Eof0Eegyptians0Eflood0Estreets0Eto0Edemand0Emorsi0Equit0Dlite/story01.htm

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Popularity rating of Brazil president plummets

Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff meets with governors and mayors representing Brazil's 26 states and its federal district, to discuss the wave of protests, at the Presidential Palace, in Brasilia, Brazil, Monday, June 24, 2013. The recent protests have become the largest public demonstrations Latin America's biggest nation has seen in two decades. They began as opposition to transportation fare hikes, then became a laundry list of causes including anger at high taxes, poor services and World Cup spending, before coalescing around the issue of rampant government corruption. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff meets with governors and mayors representing Brazil's 26 states and its federal district, to discuss the wave of protests, at the Presidential Palace, in Brasilia, Brazil, Monday, June 24, 2013. The recent protests have become the largest public demonstrations Latin America's biggest nation has seen in two decades. They began as opposition to transportation fare hikes, then became a laundry list of causes including anger at high taxes, poor services and World Cup spending, before coalescing around the issue of rampant government corruption. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

A protester shouts slogans as he helps carry a Brazilian flag in the Capao Redondo neighborhood of Sao Paulo, Brazil, Tuesday, June 25, 2013. Protesters on Tuesday returned to the streets in low-income suburbs of Brazil's biggest city to demand better education, transport and health services, one day after President Dilma Rousseff proposed a wide range of actions to reform Brazil's political system and services. (AP Photo/Nelson Antoine)

SAO PAULO (AP) ? Public approval of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff's government has suffered a steep drop in the weeks since massive protests broke out across this country, according to Brazil's first nationwide poll released since the unrest began.

For the first time, polling shows she would be forced into a second-round runoff vote in next year's presidential election.

Published Saturday by Folha de S. Paulo, the country's biggest newspaper, the Datafolha survey found 30 percent of respondents rated Rousseff's government as "great/good," a sharp fall from the 57 percent who gave it that rating three weeks ago before the demonstrations began.

The government's popularity was down throughout the country, including in the northeast where the ruling Workers Party is strong. Her rating dropped there from 64 to 40 percent there.

The poll also found that 30 percent of voters say they'll cast their ballot for Rousseff in October 2014 ? that is down from 51 percent just a few weeks ago.

If no candidate wins an outright majority, a second-round vote is held between the top two vote winners.

In the Datafolha poll, that second-round candidate would be Marina Silva, a former Workers Party environment minister who split with the party in 2009 over policy differences and joined the Green Party. She ran for president in 2010 and won a surprising 20 million first-round votes, but it wasn't enough to get her to the second-round ballot.

In the most recent poll, 23 percent of respondents said they'll vote for Silva, up from 16 percent a few weeks ago.

Datafolha interviewed 4,717 people on June 27 and 28, and the poll has a margin of error of 2 percentage points.

The government's approval rating had hit 65 percent in March, according to Datafolha, but in June suffered its biggest drop since Rousseff took office 2 ? years ago. Many Brazilians have been upset about rising inflation and shrinking purchasing power.

The firm said the government's approval had suffered the biggest drop for any president since a 1990 fall for then-leader Fernando Collor de Mello who tried to control spiraling inflation by freezing all savings accounts. He was forced from office because of a corruption scandal two years later.

Beginning mid-June, the recent protests had first targeted transportation fare hikes but quickly expanded to a variety of causes including government corruption, high taxes, poor public services and the billions of dollars spent for next year's World Cup soccer tournament and the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The Datafolha poll showed that 81 percent of respondents supported the protests.

Political watchers said Rousseff's popularity drop was to be expected in the face of the biggest protests this 197 million-person nation has seen in two decades.

"The protest movement that began two weeks ago isn't necessarily a movement against the (ruling) Workers Party nor Dilma personally, it's a protest against the entire ruling class," said Pedro Arruda, a political science professor at the Catholic University of Sao Paulo. "If polled, the unpopularity would be of all politicians. The people are protesting all the parties."

For Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes, the demonstrations have underscored the "institutional crises" affecting the country's political parties.

"Which party has a good image?" he asked in an interview in Saturday's edition of Folha de S.Paulo. "Only the one not yet been born. We cannot sit back and think there is nothing more to be done because we have become a democracy, pulled 40 million people out of poverty and enjoy high employment rates.

Throughout the protests, the country has been hosting the Confederations Cup soccer tournament, which are seen as a warm-up to next year's World Cup. But the unrest has grown to such a level that Rousseff and other political leaders have reportedly decided not to attend Sunday's final match, which would be seen as a major embarrassment after they had showcased the country's hosting of such mega-events as proof that Brazil had finally arrived on the global stage. Even football legend Pele says he won't attend the match. Demonstrators are expected to turn out around the iconic Maracana stadium where the Brazilian and Spanish teams will meet.

Meanwhile, social networks were abuzz with rumors of a general strike Monday, with posts saying it would hit every state. However, representatives for Brazil's two biggest unions, the Central Workers Union and Union Force, said they knew nothing about such a strike but were planning a national work slowdown for July 11, when workers will only perform strictly what's required of them on the job.

Rousseff is expected to deliver a formal proposal to Congress early next week on a political reform plebiscite she wants held in the coming months. She hasn't yet released any details on what political reforms she will suggest nor how or exactly when a plebiscite would occur.

Earlier this week, the president announced $23 billion in transportation investments. On top of that, she said her government would prioritize improvements in fiscal responsibility, controlling inflation, political reform, health care, public transport and education.

___

Associated Press writer Bradley Brooks contributed to this report from Sao Paulo.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-06-29-LT-Brazil-President-Poll/id-3da32e8ce2dc4d2f98ed007ac58d82b3

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'Dexter' review: take out part of Your Brain and Enjoy

By Tim Molloy

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - The premiere of the final season of "Dexter" finds our favorite serial killer looking for a psychopath who surgically removes parts of his victim's brains.

For the last two seasons, "Dexter" has invited us to remove some of our minds, too. There's plenty of room for shows that don't ask us to think, but "Dexter" wasn't always one of them. Its fourth season was pulp at its best, a Swiss timepiece of a construction that put Dexter up against a brilliantly worthy enemy (John Lithgow) and more than delivered on its sense of menace.

Season 5, which paired Dexter with Julia Stiles as an assault victim seeking vengeance, wasn't as good, but what would have been? The clock didn't really fall apart until the sixth and seventh seasons. The show seemed to lose its way as ridiculous murders and silly subplots bought time until the inevitable end. It took Dexter's sister Deborah (Jennifer Carpenter, pictured) much too long to catch him in the act, and when she did, her response seemed totally out of sync with the Deb we'd come to know and like.

So killer ratings aside, plenty of critics wish Dexter had hung up his knives sooner. Just imagine if Deb had arrested him at the end of Season 5, and then we'd been treated to a season of Dexter trying to do what he does while surrounded by killers on death row. Am I resorting to fan fiction? Yes. But I'm not the first "Dexter" fan to wish it had done something different than it did.

If you've made it this far into the series, nothing I say will stop you from sticking around for this eighth season, premiering Sunday on Showtime, to see how it ends. And you should, even if "Dexter" has turned into one of those shows where some of the fun is heckling. This time around, you'll find things to gripe about, but also some good news.

"Dexter" still takes a lot of the same shortcuts it has for the past two seasons. It's still dragged down by hokey exposition, much of it provided by Dexter (Michael C. Hall) in his monotone and monotonous voiceovers. It still goes for cheap thrills, like the pandering nudity in the premiere. An explanation for Angel taking a career 180 is forced.

But the show also promises to bring Dexter's story full circle. A well-cast Charlotte Rampling joins the show as a serial killer expert whose droll performance all but screams: I know a secret.

By the second episode, written by series vet Manny Coto and directed by Hall, the show even finds its deadpan humor again. Dexter's voiceover is finally put to good use as he examines a fellow killer's house and tries to guess where he keeps his implements. Quinn and Angel have a funny moment involving a quilt. And Rampling's plotline starts to crackle.

After a full season of Deb seeming out of sorts, she finally has a cool arc. She's now working for private detective agency, and deeply resents Dexter for her decision to kill LaGuerta. She's in the midst of one of those "Dexter" spirals, like Quinn's in Season 6, that we suspect will be conveniently short. And she has an assassin pursuing her. Fun.

The second episode also introduces some intriguing ideas about the role of sociopaths in our evolution. I'll be really impressed if "Dexter" finds somewhere to go with those ideas, since lately it's been content to throw them at the wall like so much splatter.

It will take Dexter at his best to take that splatter and find his way to a conclusion. Time is running out, and we need "Dexter" back on its old clock.

The premiere of the final season of "Dexter" airs Sunday at 9/8 c on Showtime.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/dexter-review-part-brain-enjoy-004227398.html

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Student debt stalemate will hammer millions of undergrads

Your money

Sharon Epperson CNBC.com

21 hours ago

Chitose Suzuki / AP file

Boston College students walk across the college campus in Boston, March 29, 2005.

Time is running out for Congress to act. And low-income college students will pay a high price if a deal can't be reached by Monday's deadline.

Interest rates on many new subsidized Stafford loans will skyrocket?from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent?on Monday, unless the Senate reaches a compromise.

The likelihood of that happening dimmed Friday as Congress recessed for the Independence Day holiday week.

Read More: Senate Can't Save Student Loan Rates

Most in Congress agree loan rates should to stay lower than 6.8 percent, at least for the subsidized Stafford loans used by the country's lowest-income students. But they're stuck on how to get there.

Republicans want to let the rates fluctuate with the markets every year and use the proceeds for deficit reduction. Democrats say that's unreasonable and want to cap how fast rates can rise.

Existing loan rates will not change and rates on new unsubsidized Stafford and PLUS loans also will remain the same.

Congress could come to an agreement later this summer to lower rates, but that may be unlikely.

"It is possible for them to make a retroactive change, but only if the loans have not yet been disbursed," says Mark Kantrowitz, senior vice president and publisher of Edvisors.com. "So they could make a retroactive change if the US Department of Education delays the disbursement. But I doubt Congress will reach an agreement after July 1, as they are still too far apart."

More than 7 million undergraduates receive subsidized Stafford loans, for which the federal government pays the interest while the students are enrolled in school.

But the nation's student debt crisis affects so many more.

More than 38 million Americans have student loan debt, totaling nearly $1 trillion, a staggering number that has quadrupled in 10 years and keeps rising. Student loan debt now surpasses credit card and auto loan debt in this country?and it's only expected to get worse before it gets better.

"I see the debate about interest rates as a distraction from the real problem, which is the amount of debt," said Kantrowitz, who is also founder of FinAid.org, a leading website on financial aid for college and graduate students and their families.

"Each year the average cost of graduation goes up by about $1,000 or more. And having less expensive debt is going not going to make much of a difference if the total amount owed keeps on going up."

A study done this spring by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that the share of 25-year-olds with student debt has increased from just 25 percent in 2003 to 43 percent in 2012. The average student loan balance among those 25-year-olds with student debt grew by 91 percent over that time, from $10,649 in 2003 to $20,326 in 2012.

The amount of debt has risen as tuition, room, board, fees and other college expenses have soared. The cost of attending college has risen about 4 percent in the past year alone?and has far outpaced the rate of inflation in recent years.

Total charges for a full-time undergraduate at an in-state public college rose from $17,136 in 2011-2012 to $17,860 in 2012-2013, according to the College Board. Private college costs for one year totaled $39,518 in the past year, up from $37,971 the previous academic year.

"Grants are not keeping pace with the increases in college costs," Kantrowitz said. "When grants are relatively stagnant or even going down that causes students to borrow more."

But many families don't plan or try to calculate the total cost of attendance for a student's college and graduate studies?and that may be at the crux of the student debt crisis.

Sallie Mae CEO Jack Remondi said poor planning exacerbates a borrower's burden, regardless of the rate on the loan. Sallie Mae is the largest provider of private student loans.

"If you overborrow, whether the rate is 4 percent or 7 percent, you're still going to encounter difficulties," Remondi said. "A plan that takes into consideration what your income potential is going to be when you graduate and what that debt burden is going to be is critical."

Unfortunately, many students and parents have failed College Planning 101.

Less than a third of low-income parents said they knew how they would pay for their child's college education before they enrolled, according to a Sallie Mae study. Only 37 percent of middle-income families had a plan. Among high-income families, only slightly more than half said they had a plan to pay for college before their children enrolled.

Yet this critical lesson can significantly cut borrowing costs: As long as your total student debt at graduation is less than your annual income, you should be able to pay back your student loans in 10 years or less, Kantrowitz said.

Keeping that formula in mind when choosing a college, graduate school and course of study can help students significantly cut borrowing costs.

?By CNBC's Sharon Epperson. Follow her on Twitter @sharon_epperson.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/663286/s/2def8c16/l/0L0Snbcnews0N0Cbusiness0Cstudent0Edebt0Estalemate0Ewill0Ehammer0Emillions0Eundergrads0E6C10A480A484/story01.htm

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Apple reportedly clinches TSMC chip manufacturing deal

Rumors of Apple switching its chip manufacturing from Samsung to TSMC have persisted for a long, long time. However, they may be more substantial this time around: the Wall Street Journal claims that Apple quietly signed a deal with TSMC earlier this month. The agreement reportedly has TSMC take over some of Apple's chip production in 2014. Technical setbacks kept the agreement from happening any sooner, according to the sources. Neither company is commenting on the accuracy of the story, although few would doubt Apple's incentives to reduce its dependency on Samsung-made silicon -- it's not keen on funding a primary competitor.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile, Apple, Samsung

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Source: Wall Street Journal

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/28/apple-reportedly-clinches-tsmc-chip-manufacturing-deal/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Njideka Akunyili and Her Elegant Scrapbook ? mnartists.blog ...

Njideka Akunyili?s five mixed media works in I Still Face You at Franklin Art Works are elusive and elegant; the sort of work that asks time and attention from the viewer. By filling up her spaces with xerox transfers and painted portraits of herself, her family, and friends, Akunyili has created an intimate and artful [...]

Njideka Akunyili?s five mixed media works in I Still Face You at Franklin Art Works are elusive and elegant; the sort of work that asks time and attention from the viewer. By filling up her spaces with xerox transfers and painted portraits of herself, her family, and friends, Akunyili has created an intimate and artful scrapbook. Many of the large works are casually presented to the viewer fixed with binder clips. Each image is layered with media: collaged photographs from her personal collection, images from magazines, transparent or thick paint, repetitive patterns of clothing and architecture, and charcoal.

Njideka Akunyili, I Refuse to be Invisible. 2010. Ink, charcoal, acrylic and xerox transfers on paper. Courtesy of the ?artist?s website.

I Refuse to be Invisible (2010) contains a xeroxed source photograph of the same painting, a little piece of the puzzle.? The larger picture, seen from a few paces back, depicts a couple dancing in a crowd. The woman?s skin is naturalistically rendered in oil paint, but her dancing partner?s is made of collaged images ? the effect is ghostly. Small, xeroxed images fill the space of his person with hints of color and pattern, only to deny the viewer any details of his features and expression. The show may be called I Still Face You, but her figures are in fact subtly rendered or even facing away. We catch fragments of their lives, many fragments, but analyzed close-up, the images are overwhelming in number and increasingly abstract. Akunyili?s work reads like a palimpsest ? a layering of various texts and signifiers of race, anatomy, and love? of her life with two colorful cultures.

Njideka Akunyili, detail of I Refuse to be Invisible. 2010. Ink, charcoal, acrylic and xerox transfers on paper. Courtesy of the artist?s website.

Originally from Nigeria and now based in the United States, Akunyili reflects her bi-national identity and interest in heritage, memory, as well as the differences in ritual and culture between them, through these images-out-of-images. The work is dense and delicate. An?online archive of her works does not do justice to the nuance evident seeing them in person. Like painterly strokes, her mixed media layerings are hard to decipher from a short distance. The viewer must take several steps away from the texture and generous swaths of paint in order to distinguish the figures engaging in intimate moments. The resulting images appear patterned with dots, plaid, squares, and circles.

Njideka Akunyili. Her Widening Gyre, 2011. Charcoal, acrylic, collage and xerox transfers on paper. Courtesy of the artist?s website.

Describing the African-American collagist,?Romare Bearden?s work, Akunyili offers, ?they verge on visual cacophony but ultimately come together in harmony.??Akunyili?s work could be described in the same way; it takes time for the eye to decipher all of the elements, signifiers, and patterns of each work. Perhaps it is not completely necessary to do so, but the effort is rewarded with richness, and an incredibly personal tale of immigration, love, and everyday interaction.

Njideka Akunyili: I Still Face You is on view at Franklin Art Works in Minneapolis from May 11 through July 27. For gallery hours and details about the show:?http://www.franklinartworks.org/

___________________________

Chloe Nelson is the program assistant for mnartists.org.

Viewfinder?posts are your opportunity to ?show & tell? about the everyday arts happenings, interesting sights and sounds made or as seen by Minnesota artists, because art is where you find it. Submit your own informal, first-person responses to the art around you to editor(at)mnartists.org, and we may well publish your piece here on the blog. (Guidelines: 300 words or less, not about your own event/work, and please include an image, media, video, or audio file, and one sentence about yourself.)

Source: http://blogs.walkerart.org/mnartists/2013/06/28/njideka-akunyili-and-her-elegant-scrapbook/

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Stocks take roller-coaster on Fed, China fears; Dow closes almost 1% lower

stocks

JeeYeon Park CNBC

June 24, 2013 at 5:12 PM ET

Richard Drew / AP

What goes up... Trader David O'Day, left, works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Friday, June 21, 2013.

Stocks took a roller-coaster ride in the red on Monday, at one point dropping to two-month lows, before recovering, but the Dow still finished the day nearly 1 percent down on concerns about Fed policy and a possible cash crunch in China.

Treasury prices rose in choppy trading following comments from some Fed policymakers that downplayed market worries over the end to the central bank's bond-buying program.

"This is a pretty amazing snap back, but what we're going to have to get used to for the rest of the summer would be volatility," said Art Hogan, managing director of Lazard Capital Markets.

Treasury prices gained in choppy trading. The benchmark 10-year note yield were just below 2.53 percent after earlier pushing around 2.66 percent.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which lost more than 2 percent last week, closed 139 points lower at 14,659.56 after being down nearly 250 points in the morning.

The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq were both more than 1 percent in the red, as investors? fears that the Federal Reserve will ease off its stimulus to the markets was compounded by concerns of a possible cash crunch in China. The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX), widely considered the best gauge of fear in the market, ended above 20.

Among key S&P sectors, defensive areas such as utilities and consumer staples erased their losses, while materials and financials remained in the red.

Stocks were sharply lower for most of the session amid worries the Federal Reserve's stimulus measures may be winding down and a possible cash crunch in China. The Shanghai Composite suffered its worst one-day selloff in nearly four years. And Goldman Sachs became the latest bank to downgrade China's growth outlook, saying tighter financial conditions are a downside risk for the world's second largest economy.

(Read More:China's Credit Squeeze Deals Fresh Blow to Stocks)

"We're currently in a risk off environment that has built up over the recent days," said Michael Sheldon, chief market strategist at RDM Financial Group. "Here in the U.S., it will be important to watch the economic data over the next few months?if the economy can be supported with higher interest rates, investors should return to equities. But if the economy is unable to stand on its own and the Fed still wants to take away the punch bowl, that could spell more difficulty for the equity markets."

(Read More: Buy Treasurys, as Bernanke Is All Talk: Bond Pros)

The U.S. dollar rallied against a basket of currencies, trading near its highest level in almost three weeks.The dollar index extended its sharp gains from last week's 2 percent rally, its biggest weekly rally since November 2011.

"We could see a bit more downside as the market comes to grips that the end of the Fed stimulus program is in sight," said Sheldon. "Also, the key is to watch the bond market?the rates have increased rapidly and we need to see that settle down."

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) waved a red flag for central banks over the weekend, saying it was time to end ultra-lose monetary policy. BIS?known as the central bank for central banks?said in its annual report that current monetary policy in the U.S., euro zone, U.K. and Japan will not bring about much-needed labor and product market reforms, and is a recipe for failure.

Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher said he advocates a reduction of the central bank's stimulus program but stressed this should be done gradually.

"I'm not in favor of going from wild turkey to cold turkey over night," Fisher, a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee next year, said in a speech.

Meanwhile, Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota said markets are wrong to view the Fed as having become more hawkish in its views on the need to tighten monetary policy.

No major economic reports were scheduled for release Monday.

More business news:

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Senate passes sweeping immigration legislation (reuters)

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Galaxy S4, HTC One ?Google editions? now available for preorder

Melissa Etheridge is taking the freedoms affirmed for her on Wednesday when the Supreme Court found that anti-gay marriage advocates had no standing to appeal the ruling that had overturned California's Prop 8, by announcing she will marry her partner, Linda Wallem.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/galaxy-s4-htc-one-google-editions-now-available-175524527.html

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Hormone therapy in the 50s not linked to memory loss

By Andrew M. Seaman

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Hormone replacement therapy during the early stages of menopause - typically around age 50 - doesn't hurt or help brain function, according to a new study.

Researchers found that women between the ages of 50 and 55 years old who took estrogen or estrogen with progesterone performed just as well on tests that measure memory problems as women of the same age who took a placebo.

"Our findings are that we didn't see any long term impact on cognitive function," said Mark Espeland, the study's lead author, from the Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Previous studies had found that women 65 years old and older suffered lasting memory problems when they used hormone therapy to treat symptoms of menopause, such as hot flashes, vaginal dryness and trouble sleeping.

Imaging tests even found that the brains of those older women assigned to hormone therapy had become smaller, compared to those who took a placebo.

Currently, the government-backed U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends that postmenopausal women avoid hormone replacement therapy due to increased risks of heart disease, stroke, breast cancer and dementia.

Some research, however, has suggested there may be a "window of opportunity" when women first enter menopause that allows the safe use of hormones to possibly decrease their risk of conditions such as heart disease. What the effects would be on younger women's brains, however, has been unclear.

For the new study, Espeland and his colleagues used data on 1,326 women between the ages of 50 and 55 in the Women's Health Initiative Memory Study to see whether taking estrogen or estrogen and progesterone led to any problems or benefits in brain health.

The women were assigned to take estrogen, estrogen and progesterone or a placebo for about seven years at the beginning of the study between 1996 and 1999. They were then followed for about the next 14 years.

During the follow-up period, the women were asked 14 questions that measured their cognitive abilities during phone interviews.

Overall, all groups scored about a 38 on a scale from zero to 50 - with lower scores signaling more memory problems.

There was also no difference between the groups on several other scales that measured - among other things - attention and working memory.

Francine Grodstein, who wrote an editorial accompany the new study in JAMA Internal Medicine, told Reuters Health the findings are primarily reassuring.

"So for (younger) women who really need hormone therapy to treat menopause symptoms? this study didn't find hormone therapy had the amount of harm as it did for older women," said Grodstein, an associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Espeland told Reuters Health there could be a few possible explanations for the difference between older and younger women using hormone replacement therapy.

One possible explanation could be that older women already have more memory problems and hormone therapy accelerates the decline. It could also be that a woman's brain adapts to lower levels of hormones after menopause and hormone therapy disrupts that process.

The new study, however, may not have had enough participants to measure any moderate benefits from taking hormone therapy during the early stages of menopause, said Grodstein.

"One study is not going to tell us everything," she said.

But, Espeland noted, the researchers continue to follow these women for more information.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/18gabXb and http://bit.ly/19C6ARe JAMA Internal Medicine, online June 24, 2013.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hormone-therapy-50s-not-linked-memory-loss-203558958.html

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Paula Deen dropped by Wal-Mart after 'Today' tears

In this publicity image released by NBC, celebrity chef Paula Deen appears on NBC News' "Today" show, wednesday, June 26, 2013 in New York. Deen dissolved into tears during a "Today" show interview Wednesday about her admission that she used a racial slur in the past. The celebrity chef, who had backed out of a "Today" interview last Friday, said she was not a racist and was heartbroken by the controversy that began with her own deposition in a lawsuit. Deen has been dropped by the Food Network and as a celebrity endorser by Smithfield Foods. (AP Photo/NBC, Peter Kramer)

In this publicity image released by NBC, celebrity chef Paula Deen appears on NBC News' "Today" show, wednesday, June 26, 2013 in New York. Deen dissolved into tears during a "Today" show interview Wednesday about her admission that she used a racial slur in the past. The celebrity chef, who had backed out of a "Today" interview last Friday, said she was not a racist and was heartbroken by the controversy that began with her own deposition in a lawsuit. Deen has been dropped by the Food Network and as a celebrity endorser by Smithfield Foods. (AP Photo/NBC, Peter Kramer)

In this publicity image released by NBC, celebrity chef Paula Deen appears on NBC News' "Today" show, wednesday, June 26, 2013 in New York. Deen dissolved into tears during a "Today" show interview Wednesday about her admission that she used a racial slur in the past. The celebrity chef, who had backed out of a "Today" interview last Friday, said she was not a racist and was heartbroken by the controversy that began with her own deposition in a lawsuit. Deen has been dropped by the Food Network and as a celebrity endorser by Smithfield Foods. (AP Photo/NBC, Peter Kramer)

In this publicity image released by NBC, celebrity chef Paula Deen appears on NBC News' "Today" show, with host Matt Lauer, Wednesday, June 26, 2013 in New York. Deen dissolved into tears during a "Today" show interview Wednesday about her admission that she used a racial slur in the past. The celebrity chef, who had backed out of a "Today" interview last Friday, said she was not a racist and was heartbroken by the controversy that began with her own deposition in a lawsuit. Deen has been dropped by the Food Network and as a celebrity endorser by Smithfield Foods. (AP Photo/NBC, Peter Kramer)

In this publicity image released by NBC, celebrity chef Paula Deen, right, appears on NBC News' "Today" show, with host Matt Lauer, Wednesday, June 26, 2013 in New York. Deen dissolved into tears during a "Today" show interview Wednesday about her admission that she used a racial slur in the past. The celebrity chef, who had backed out of a "Today" interview last Friday, said she was not a racist and was heartbroken by the controversy that began with her own deposition in a lawsuit. Deen has been dropped by the Food Network and as a celebrity endorser by Smithfield Foods. (AP Photo/NBC, Peter Kramer)

NEW YORK (AP) ? Paula Deen was dropped by Wal-Mart and her name was stripped from four buffet restaurants on Wednesday, hours after she went on television and tearfully defended herself amid the mounting fallout over her admission of using a racial slur.

The story has become both a day-by-day struggle by a successful businesswoman to keep her career afloat and an object lesson on the level of tolerance and forgiveness in society for being caught making an insensitive remark.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Wednesday that it ended its relationship with Deen and will not place "any new orders beyond what's already committed."

Caesars Entertainment Corp. said it had been "mutually decided" with Deen to remove her name from its restaurants in Joliet, Ill.; Tunica, Miss.; Cherokee, N.C.; and Elizabeth, Ind.

At the same time, Deen's representatives released letters of support from nine companies that do business with the chef and promised to continue. There's evidence that a backlash is growing against the Food Network, which tersely announced last Friday that it was cutting ties with one of its stars.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson said Deen had called him and he agreed to help her, saying she shouldn't become a sacrificial lamb over the issue of racial intolerance.

"What she did was wrong, but she can change," Jackson said.

During a deposition in a discrimination lawsuit filed by an ex-employee, the chef, who specializes in Southern comfort food, admitted to using the N-word in the past. The lawsuit also accuses Deen of using the slur when planning her brother's 2007 wedding, saying she wanted black servers in white coats, shorts and bow ties for a "Southern plantation-style wedding."

Deen said she didn't recall using the word "plantation" and denied using the N-word to describe waiters. She said she quickly dismissed the idea of having all black servers.

Deen told Matt Lauer on "Today" on Wednesday that she could only recall using the N-word once. She said she remembered using it when retelling a story about when she was held at gunpoint by a robber who was black while working as a bank teller in the 1980s in Georgia.

In the deposition, she also said she may also have used the slur when recalling conversations between black employees at her restaurants. Asked in the deposition if she had used the word more than once, she said, "I'm sure I have, but it's been a very long time."

Her "Today" show appearance was a do-over from last Friday, when Deen didn't show up for a promised and promoted interview. Deen told Lauer she had been overwhelmed last week. She said she was heartbroken by the controversy and she wasn't a racist.

"I've had to hold friends in my arms while they've sobbed because they know what's been said about me is not true and I'm having to comfort them," she said.

Looking distressed and with her voice breaking, Deen said if there was someone in the audience who had never said something they wished they could take back, "please pick up that stone and throw it as hard at my head so it kills me. I want to meet you. I want to meet you." It's an apparent reference to the Biblical passage about whether a woman guilty of adultery should be stoned: "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her."

"I is what I is and I'm not changing," Deen said. "There's someone evil out there that saw what I worked for and wanted it."

An uncomfortable Lauer tried to end the interview, but Deen repeated that anyone who hasn't sinned should attack her.

Asked by Lauer whether she had any doubt that blacks consider use of the N-word offensive, Deen said: "I don't know, Matt. I have asked myself that so many times, because it is so distressing to go into my kitchen and hear" what some young people are telling each other.

Deen said she appreciated fans who have expressed anger at the Food Network for dropping her, but said she didn't support a boycott of the network. Through social media, the network has been attacked by people who said executives there acted in haste to get rid of Deen.

Save for the brief announcement late Friday that it wasn't renewing Deen's contract, Food Network executives have refused to discuss the case publicly, or say whether the network plans to address Deen's fans. There have been online reports that the Food Network removed Deen's programs from the air as early as Saturday; the network wouldn't speak about what it has or hasn't put on the air.

Starting last weekend, there has been a steady erosion of support for the network. The YouGov Brandindex, a measurement of how consumers perceive a particular company or product, said the Food Network's score ? which had been generally positive ? had dropped by 82 percent in a week. The network has a negative image in the South and West, spokesman Drew Kerr said.

Deen's case has also attracted some odd bedfellows. Conservative commentator Glenn Beck said the network has "contributed to the growing un-American atmosphere of fear and silence. Hello, Joseph McCarthy."

Meanwhile, liberal HBO host Bill Maher also said Deen shouldn't lose her show. "It's a wrong word, she's wrong to use it," he said. "But do we really have to make people go away?"

The Food Channel, a food marketing agency based in Springfield, Mo., said it has been flooded with angry messages from people mistaking the company for the Food Network. There have been so many that the agency posted a message to Deen on its website that it would be happy to work with her if possible.

Among the companies expressing support for her via her representatives was Club Marketing Services in Bentonville, Ark., which helps companies sell products at Wal-Mart, and Epicurean Butter.

___

Associated Press writer Russ Bynum in Athens, Ga.; Religion Writer Rachel Zoll in New York; Retail Writer Anne D'Innocenzio and Writer Tammy Webber in Chicago contributed to this report.

___

Online:

http://www.today.com/

___

Follow Dave Bauder on Twitter at http://twitter.com/dbauder

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-06-26-Paula%20Deen/id-04409b43c6d048f8b62944eb25528eb9

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Delightful Scorpion constellation can sink its claws into you

astronomy

Geoff Gaherty, Starry Night Education

5 hours ago

Starry Night Software

For observers in the Northern Hemisphere, the constellation Scorpius appears low in the southern sky on warm June evenings.

Most of the constellations seem pretty much random arrangements of stars to modern eyes. Scorpius is one of the few that actually resembles its namesake, the Scorpion.

As seen by observers in the Northern Hemisphere, Scorpius appears like a giant scorpion peeking over our southern horizon. With a fairly small body, marked by the red giant star Antares, the scorpion has three stars in front representing its claws, and a long curving tail behind, ending in two bright stars marking its stinger. If you live in Canada or the northern USA, part of the Scorpius' tail will be below the horizon, but more southern observers will see the whole beast of a constellation.

Antares (Alpha Scorpii) is one of the brightest stars in the sky, and one of the few with an obvious red color. This color reminded ancient observers of Mars, the Red Planet, hence its name, which means "not Mars" (Ares being the Greek for Mars). In large amateur telescopes, this red giant is seen to have a tiny companion star. Because of the primary star's vivid red color, the companion often appears greenish, which is an optical illusion, since there are no green stars. [Amazing Night Sky Photos: June 2013]

Of the stars making up the Scorpion's claws, Graffias (Beta Scorpii) and Nu Scorpii are both double stars. Both are easily split in even the smallest telescope. The stars in Graffias are relatively close, 14 arc seconds apart, while those in Nu Scorpii are much farther apart, 41 arc seconds, visible in binoculars. Both pairs are quite unequal in brightness, about 2 magnitudes difference between the two stars.

The stinger at the end of the scorpion's tail consists of two stars, Shaula and Lesath. These appear as a double star to the naked eye, sometimes called the "Cat's Eyes." They point to one of the brightest and most beautiful open star clusters in the sky, Messier 7. This was first described by Claudius Ptolemy in the 2nd century, so sometimes is known as "Ptolemy's Cluster." Just above this cluster is another one, equally bright and beautiful, known as Messier 6 or the "Butterfly Cluster." Both are visible to the naked eye, but reveal their true beauty in binoculars or a small telescope.

Just above these clusters, and just over the border in the constellation Sagittarius, is the black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. The black hole itself is of course invisible, but the area is rich in stars.

Moving back up to Antares, if you look just below it with binoculars, you will see a fuzzy patch. In a moderate sized amateur telescope this resolves into one of the finest globular clusters in the sky, known as Messier 4 or the Cat's Eye. (Yes, it's confusing to have two Cat's Eyes in the same constellation, but one is a pair of stars and the other a globular cluster.)

About half way between Antares and Graffias is another smaller globular cluster, Messier 80, also a fine sight in a telescope.

Scorpius thus offers many treats to stargazers, whether equipped with binoculars, a telescope, or nothing but their own eyes.

Editor's note: If you snap an amazing photo of the night sky and you'd like to share it for a possible story or image gallery on Space.com, please send images and comments, including equipment used, to Managing Editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.

This article was provided to Space.com by Starry Night Education, the leader in space science curriculum solutions. Follow Starry Night on Twitter @StarryNightEdu.

Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Financier Marc Rich dies in Switzerland

GENEVA (AP) ? Marc Rich, the trader known as the "King of Commodities" whose controversial 2001 pardon by President Bill Clinton just hours before he left office unleashed a political firestorm of criticism, died on Wednesday. He was 78.

Rich died of a stroke in a hospital in Lucerne, Switzerland, near to his longtime home, according to the Marc Rich Group. His Israel-based spokesman, Avner Azulay, said Rich would be buried in Israel on Thursday.

Rich fled from the United States to Switzerland in 1983 after he was indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury on more than 50 counts of fraud, racketeering, trading with Iran during the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis and evading more than $48 million in income taxes ? crimes that could have earned him more than 300 years in prison.

Rich remained on the FBI's Most Wanted List, narrowly escaping capture in Finland, Germany, Britain and Jamaica, until Clinton granted him a pardon on Jan. 20, 2001 ? the day he handed over the keys to the White House to George W. Bush.

Rich's pardon catapulted him into the headlines once again.

According to Federal Election Commission records, Rich's ex-wife, songwriter Denise Rich, gave $201,000 in political donations to the Democratic Party in 2000 as lawyers for the fugitive financier pressed the U.S. government to drop the case. Rich's attorneys turned to Clinton when the Justice Department refused to negotiate.

Federal authorities investigated but found no evidence of wrongdoing, while election officials also dismissed a complaint accusing Denise Rich of donating campaign money and furniture to Hillary Clinton in exchange for the pardon. Bill Clinton also denied any wrongdoing and said he acted on advice by prominent legal experts not connected to the trader.

Eric Holder, the current U.S. attorney general, was deputy attorney general to Clinton, and recommended Rich's pardon.

Only weeks later, however, he told the House Government Reform Committee: "Knowing everything that I know now, I would not have recommended to the president that he grant the pardon."

Despite strong diplomatic pressure Switzerland had refused to treat Rich ? a billionaire trader in oil, metals and other commodities ? as a criminal or hand him over to the United States, because it had different tax laws and no embargo against Iran

"In our business we're not political," Rich said in a rare 1992 interview with NBC. "That's just the philosophy of our company."

Rich was born in Antwerp, Belgium, on Dec. 18, 1934. His Jewish family fled from the Nazis to the United States, where Rich went to school and college in New York.

After dropping out of college, Rich went to work for the commodity traders Phillips Brothers, now called Phibro, in New York. He quickly got the knack of trading and in 1967 was sent by the company to work in Madrid, where he met Pincus "Pinky" Green, his future partner.

In 1973, Rich and Green left the company after arguing over the size of their bonuses. They set up Marc Rich and Co., based in the Swiss town of Zug, whose low taxes have made it one of the world's oil trading centers.

Business boomed. Rich specialized in acting as a middle man for purchases in global trouble spots ? such as Iran, apartheid-era South Africa or Cuba and Libya during U.S. trade embargoes.

Rich and Green were the first traders to use short-term purchases, now known as the spot market, to make big money, quickly. Buying large volumes when the price was low, they were able to control the market when prices rose.

In 1983, Rich fled to Switzerland to escape charges against him. In his absence, Rich's companies pleaded guilty to the charges, paying fines of about $130 million.

"It's an unfortunate situation," Rich told NBC. "But the question is, was there crime? And I'm saying I don't think so."

He added that as Marc Rich and Co. was a Swiss company, it was legal for the firm to do business with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's Iran.

Swiss authorities did not consider his alleged crimes grounds for extradition.

Rich worked on making himself popular by becoming a major philanthropist, giving money to the arts and charities in the hope of building good contacts and guarding against extradition. He renounced his U.S. citizenship and became a citizen both of Israel and Spain.

But he earned the hatred of U.S. labor unions during the 1990-92 Ravenswood Aluminum Corp. strike in West Virginia.

His company was a part-owner of Ravenswood Aluminum, whose workers accused Rich of locking 1,500 steelworkers out of the plant when their contract expired and hiring replacement workers without negotiating.

The union won the 20-month labor battle, but not before union members picketed outside Rich's Swiss offices.

Rich had married the former Denise Eisenberg, a New York socialite, in 1966. They divorced in 1992. After that she contributed $450,000 to Clinton's presidential library foundation and more than $100,000 to Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign.

In 1993, Rich sold his own company ? which was then renamed Glencore, now the world's largest commodity trader ? and set up a new firm, Marc Rich and Co. Holding, also based in Zug.

Although a Russian firm, Crown Resources, tried to buy its commodities unit in 2001, the buyout fell through and Rich remained active in the trading business.

After spending several years in Zug, Rich moved to "La Villa Rose" on the shores of Lake Lucerne in nearby Meggen. He also owned property in the swish ski resort of St. Moritz and in Marbella, on the south coast of Spain.

Rich married again, to German-born Gisela Rossi, in 1998. They divorced in 2005. Rich had two daughters, Ilona Schachter-Rich and Danielle Kilstock Rich.

___

Ian Deitch in Jerusalem and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/financier-marc-rich-dies-switzerland-094009342.html

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Microsoft teases a Metro-style version of Office, no word yet on availability (update)

We already knew that Windows RT tablets would be getting their very own Outlook app with Windows 8.1, but apparently Microsoft has even more plans up its sleeve. Here at Build, the company is teasing a Metro-style Office suite that will be available through the Windows Store, just like any other non-desktop Windows program. Unfortunately, this is a tease in the truest sense of the word: Redmond won't say when the app will be available, and isn't providing many official screenshots. However, a company spokesperson did tell reporters that PowerPoint will have "all of the same transitions, the same graphic power [and] file format capability" as the desktop version, so presumably the same is true of Word and Excel too. That's all we have to share for now, though you can bet we'll be back with a proper hands-on as soon as Microsoft is ready to show off a more final version of the app.

Update: ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley reports that the Metro-style Office applications (codenamed Gemini) will hit the Windows Store in 2014.

Gallery: Metro-style PowerPoint teaser

Filed under: Software, Microsoft

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/26/microsoft-teases-metro-style-version-of-office/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Medium orbit satellites for the faster backbone communication for ...

Standard Geosynchronous (GEO) satellites operate approximately 36,000km away from Earth. As a result, round-trip data transmission times significantly exceed 500 milliseconds. O3b's Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites are far closer ? approximately 8,000km away from Earth. As a result, round-trip data transmission times are reduced to approximately 130 milliseconds.

They will be fully operational by Nov, 2013 and have just started launching satellites.

This virtually eliminates the delay that plagues voice and data communications via GEO satellite systems. For example, it means that users can download a web page four times as quickly.

O3b's system employs parabolic antennas, which can handle large chunks of data. This helps O3b to deliver an ultra-low-latency trunking solution.

The first phase of the project requires eight medium-orbit satellites, though the system is designed to be modular, so more satellites can be added to increase capacity.

O3b will begin commercial service in 2013, providing telecommunications companies and ISP's with a fast, inexpensive backbone for 3G, WiMAX, and fixed-line networks, it said. If all goes according to plan, in two years this technology could advance Internet connectivity in more than 150 countries occupying all corners of the globe.

O3b Networks delivers broadband connectivity everywhere on earth within 45 degrees of latitude north and south of the equator.

Our vast coverage area includes emerging and insufficiently connected markets in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, with a collective population of over 3 billion people:

Middle East and Africa:
Today, approximately 20 per cent of trunking traffic across the Middle East and Africa is delivered via standard geostationary satellites at a price several times higher than that offered by O3b.

O3b's state-of-the-art services will therefore bring higher capacity, lower latency, lower cost broadband access to millions of African and Middle Eastern consumers, businesses and other organisations.

Asia Pacific
Much of this vast region continues to suffer from a fragmented fiber infrastructure and high connectivity costs.

O3b's fast, reliable, affordable satellite connectivity therefore offers substantial benefits across the region, especially in areas outside hubs such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo and Seoul, where broadband costs remain high, the fiber infrastructure remains poor and there is a need for 3G cellular backhaul across large distances.

Americas
Large areas across Latin America are characterised by low population densities, poor fiber infrastructure and high connectivity costs.

O3b's groundbreaking services will therefore enable millions of consumers and businesses to enjoy reliable, low-cost, low-latency broadband connectivity for the first time.

Even in the US, limited connectivity to cellular towers in areas such as parts of the Midwest renders O3b's services highly attractive to operators.

If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks

Source: http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/06/medium-orbit-satellites-for-faster.html

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Giving children non-verbal clues boosts vocabularies

June 24, 2013 ? The clues that parents give toddlers about words can make a big difference in how deep their vocabularies are when they enter school, new research at the University of Chicago shows.

By using words to reference objects in the visual environment, parents can help young children learn new words, according to the research. It also explores the difficult-to-measure quality of non-verbal clues to word meaning during interactions between parents and children learning to speak. For example, saying, "There goes the zebra" while visiting the zoo helps a child learn the word "zebra" faster than saying, "Let's go to see the zebra."

Differences in the quality of parents' non-verbal clues to toddlers (what children can see when their parents are talking) explain about a quarter (22 percent) of the differences in those same children's vocabularies when they enter kindergarten, researchers found. The results are reported in the paper, "Quality of early parent input predicts child vocabulary three years later," published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Children's vocabularies vary greatly in size by the time they enter school," said lead author Erica Cartmill, a postdoctoral scholar at UChicago. "Because preschool vocabulary is a major predictor of subsequent school success, this variability must be taken seriously and its sources understood."

Scholars have found that the number of words youngsters hear greatly influences their vocabularies. Parents with higher socioeconomic status -- those with higher income and more education -- typically talk more to their children and accordingly boost their vocabularies, research has shown.

That advantage for higher-income families doesn't show up in the quality research, however.

"What was surprising in this study was that social economic status did not have an impact on quality. Parents of lower social economic status were just as likely to provide high-quality experiences for their children as were parents of higher status," said co-author Susan Goldin-Meadow, the Beardsley Ruml Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology at UChicago.

Although scholars have amassed impressive evidence that the number of words children hear -- the quantity of their linguistic input -- has an impact on vocabulary development, measuring the quality of the verbal environment -- including non-verbal clues to word meaning -- has proved much more difficult.

To measure quality, the research team reviewed videotapes of everyday interactions between 50 primary caregivers, almost all mothers, and their children (14 to 18 months old). The mothers and children, from a range of social and economic backgrounds, were taped for 90-minute periods as they went about their days, playing and engaging in other activities.

The team then showed 40-second vignettes from these videotapes to 218 adults with the sound track muted. Based on the interaction between the child and parent, the adults were asked to guess what word the parent in each vignette used when a beep was sounded on the tape.

A beep might occur, for instance, in a parent's silenced speech for the word "book" as a child approaches a bookshelf or brings a book to the mother to start storytime. In this scenario, the word was easy to guess because the mother labeled objects as the child saw and experienced them. In other tapes, viewers were unable to guess the word that was beeped during the conversation, as there were few immediate clues to the meaning of the parent's words. Vignettes containing words that were easy to guess provided high-quality clues to word meaning.

Although there were no differences in the quality of the interactions based on parents' backgrounds, the team did find significant individual differences among the parents studied. Some parents provided non-verbal clues about words only 5 percent of the time, while others provided clues 38 percent of the time, the study found.

The study also found that the number of words parents used was not related to the quality of the verbal exchanges. "Early quantity and quality accounted for different aspects of the variance found in the later vocabulary outcome measure," the authors wrote. In other words, how much parents talk to their children (quantity), and how parents use words in relation to the non-verbal environment (quality) provided different kinds of input into early language development.

"However, parents who talk more are, by definition, offering their children more words, and the more words a child hears, the more likely it will be for that child to hear a particular word in a high-quality learning situation," they added. This suggests that higher-income families' vocabulary advantage comes from a greater quantity of input, which leads to a greater number of high-quality word-learning opportunities. DMaking effective use of non-verbal cues may be a good way for parents to get their children started on the road to language.

Joining Cartmill and Goldin-Meadow as authors were University of Pennsylvania scholars Lila Gleitman, professor emerita of psychology; John Trueswell, professor of psychology; Benjamin Armstrong, a research assistant; and Tamara Medina, assistant professor of psychology at Drexel University.

The work was supported by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/U2KmlDslfMQ/130624152529.htm

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