Harbaugh brothers try again for a Super Bowl first

(Reuters) - A year after becoming the first brothers to face each other as NFL head coaches, John and Jim Harbaugh are once again one win away from taking their sibling rivalry to new heights in the Super Bowl.

John's Baltimore Ravens play the New England Patriots for the AFC title while Jim's San Francisco 49ers play Atlanta for the NFC crown and wins by each would turn the Super Bowl into a family affair.

The Ravens coach has already made his weekly phone call to the 49ers coach, this time touching on the explosiveness of the Patriots, who were beaten 41-34 by San Francisco at Gillette Stadium last month after coming back from a 28-point deficit.

"We have a little bit," John Harbaugh told reporters at a news conference on Monday when asked about discussing New England. "We probably will some more."

Details were not made available under the cloak of family secrets.

"I can't tell you," John Harbaugh said. "He has so much respect for them. In all honestly, what is there to say? There's nothing really that they have that we don't have.

"There aren't any revelations there. Tough place to play - great, great team. You get a lead, it's going to be tough to hold onto it. I think we may have mentioned that once or twice," he said with a laugh.

It is no secret that coaching is in their blood as the Harbaugh brothers grew up watching their father, Jack, operate as a football coach in a 41-year career from the high school level up through the college ranks.

John Harbaugh, the elder brother by 15 months, went straight into coaching after his days as a defensive back at Miami University (Ohio), and eventually graduated from special teams coordinator for the Philadelphia Eagles into the Ravens top job.

Jim Harbaugh went from University of Michigan quarterback to a 15-year NFL career that took him from the Chicago Bears to Indianapolis, Baltimore, San Diego and Carolina.

He moved from the head coaching position at Stanford University, where he guided 2012 top NFL draft pick Andrew Luck, into the 49ers job, following a path taken by former San Francisco coach Bill Walsh.

Jim clearly picked up his unbridled energy and optimism from his father, paying tribute to him at the 2006 news conference announcing his hiring at Stanford.

"I vow I will attack this endeavor with enthusiasm unknown to mankind," Jim Harbaugh said, echoing the parting words his father delivered to the boys each day before dropping them off at school.

Asked how his team would prepare for the Falcons and the hostile environment of the Georgia Dome, the Niners' coach said: "We are just going to plow ahead with our focus ... and then go out and compete like maniacs."

The brothers, who shared a bedroom for close to 18 years, remain close.

"It's a pretty cool thing," John said about a possible Harbaugh Bowl in New Orleans for the NFL title. I'm very proud of Jim."

Said Jim: "I'm proud of my brother and what he's accomplished and proud of our guys for being in the position they're in and ready to forge ahead."

Jack Harbaugh and his wife, Jackie, watched their sons win their respective NFL playoff games and in an embarrassment of weekend TV riches also saw son-in-law Tom Crean coach the University of Indiana basketball team to a win over Minnesota in their TV room in the basement of their Wisconsin home.

"He was excited," Jim Harbaugh said about the phone chat with his father after the games.

"My parents are in their 70s. That's a lot of excitement. That's a lot of action. That's like going back-to-back-to-back like three ‘24' episodes in a row," he said in reference to the TV series. "It's not easy."

(Reporting by Larry Fine in New York; Editing by Frank Pingue)

Read More..

Well: How to Go Vegan

When I first heard former President Bill Clinton talk about his vegan diet, I was inspired to make the switch myself. After all, if a man with a penchant for fast-food burgers and Southern cooking could go vegan, surely I could too.

At the grocery store, I stocked up on vegan foods, including almond milk (that was the presidential recommendation), and faux turkey and cheese to replicate my daughter’s favorite sandwich. But despite my good intentions, my cold-turkey attempt to give up, well, turkey (as well as other meats, dairy and eggs) didn’t go well. My daughter and I couldn’t stand the taste of almond milk, and the fake meat and cheese were unappealing.

Since then, I’ve spoken with numerous vegan chefs and diners who say it can be a challenge to change a lifetime of eating habits overnight. They offer the following advice for stocking your vegan pantry and finding replacements for key foods like cheese and other dairy products.

NONDAIRY MILK Taste all of them to find your favorite. Coconut and almond milks (particularly canned coconut milk) are thicker and good to use in cooking, while rice milk is thinner and is good for people who are allergic to nuts or soy. My daughter and I both prefer the taste of soy milk and use it in regular or vanilla flavor for fruit smoothies and breakfast cereal.

NONDAIRY CHEESE Cheese substitutes are available under the brand names Daiya, Tofutti and Follow Your Heart, among others, but many vegans say there’s no fake cheese that satisfies as well as the real thing. Rather than use a packaged product, vegan chefs prefer to make homemade substitutes using cashews, tofu, miso or nutritional yeast. At Candle 79, a popular New York vegan restaurant, the filling for saffron ravioli with wild mushrooms and cashew cheese is made with cashews soaked overnight and then blended with lemon juice, olive oil, water and salt.

THINK CREAMY, NOT CHEESY Creaminess and richness can often be achieved without a cheese substitute. For instance, Chloe Coscarelli, a vegan chef and the author of “Chloe’s Kitchen,” has created a pizza with caramelized onion and butternut squash that will make you forget it doesn’t have cheese; the secret is white-bean and garlic purée. She also offers a creamy, but dairy-free, avocado pesto pasta. My daughter and I have discovered we actually prefer the rich flavor of butternut squash ravioli, which can be found frozen and fresh in supermarkets, to cheese-filled ravioli.

NUTRITIONAL YEAST The name is unappetizing, but many vegan chefs swear by it: it’s a natural food with a roasted, nutty, cheeselike flavor. Ms. Coscarelli uses nutritional yeast flakes in her “best ever” baked macaroni and cheese (found in her cookbook). “I’ve served this to die-hard cheese lovers,” she told me, “and everyone agrees it is comparable, if not better.”

Susan Voisin’s Web site, Fat Free Vegan Kitchen, offers a nice primer on nutritional yeast, noting that it’s a fungus (think mushrooms!) that is grown on molasses and then harvested and dried with heat. (Baking yeast is an entirely different product.) Nutritional yeasts can be an acquired taste, she said, so start with small amounts, sprinkling on popcorn, stirring into mashed potatoes, grinding with almonds for a Parmesan substitute or combining with tofu to make an eggless omelet. It can be found in Whole Foods, in the bulk aisle of natural-foods markets or online.

BUTTER This is an easy fix. Vegan margarines like Earth Balance are made from a blend of oils and are free of trans fats. Varieties include soy-free, whipped and olive oil.

EGGS Ms. Coscarelli, who won the Food Network’s Cupcake Wars with vegan cupcakes, says vinegar and baking soda can help baked goods bind together and rise, creating a moist and fluffy cake without eggs. Cornstarch can substitute for eggs to thicken puddings and sauces. Vegan pancakes are made with a tablespoon of baking powder instead of eggs. Frittatas and omelets can be replicated with tofu.

Finally, don’t try to replicate your favorite meaty foods right away. If you love a juicy hamburger, meatloaf or ham sandwich, you are not going to find a meat-free version that tastes the same. Ms. Voisin advises new vegans to start slow and eat a few vegan meals a week. Stock your pantry with lots of grains, lentils and beans and pile your plate with vegetables. To veganize a recipe, start with a dish that is mostly vegan already — like spaghetti — and use vegetables or a meat substitute for the sauce.

“Trying to recapture something and find an exact substitute is really hard,” she said. “A lot of people will try a vegetarian meatloaf right after they become vegetarian, and they hate it. But after you get away from eating meat for a while, you’ll find you start to develop other tastes, and the flavor of a lentil loaf with seasonings will taste great to you. It won’t taste like meat loaf, but you’ll appreciate it for itself.”

Ms. Voisin notes that she became a vegetarian and then vegan while living in a small town in South Carolina; she now lives in Jackson, Miss.

“If I can be a vegan in these not-quite-vegan-centric places, you can do it anywhere,” she said. “I think people who try to do it all at once overnight are more apt to fail. It’s a learning process.”

---

What are your tips for vegan cooking and eating? Share your suggestions on ingredients, recipes and strategies by posting a comment below or tweeting with the hashtag #vegantips.

Read More..

The Caucus: Credit Rating Agency Warns of Downgrade if Debt Limit Is Not Raised

Fitch Ratings Ltd. warned on Tuesday that Congress’s failure to raise the federal government’s statutory borrowing limit would “very likely” prompt a downgrading of the United States Government’s credit rating, and the agency seemed to suggest that Congress should simply do away with the debt ceiling altogether.

In a pointed statement, Fitch dismissed the assurances of some Republicans that the Treasury Department would be able to use incoming tax receipts to prioritize the payment of government debt and interest, as well as vital services like military pay and Social Security. That warning echoed the Treasury’s own assessment that breaching the debt ceiling could not be managed in any way that would minimize the economic turmoil or avoid default.

“It is not assured that the Treasury would or legally could prioritize debt service over its myriad of other obligations, including Social Security payments, tax rebates and payments to contractors and employees. Arrears on such obligations would not constitute a default event from a sovereign rating perspective but very likely prompt a downgrade even as debt obligations continued to be met,” Fitch wrote.

Standard & Poor’s, a larger credit rating agency, downgraded United States debt a notch in August 2011 after the last standoff over the federal debt limit, reflecting “our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policy making and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned.”

Fitch and Moody’s Investors Service, the other major rating agency, did not follow suit, keeping the rating of United States Treasury debt at AAA. Far from serving as a unifying moment, the S.&P. downgrade divided Washington further. Republicans said the downgrade resulted from President Obama’s refusal to dramatically cut spending to get the federal deficit under control. Democrats said it was a reflection of political paralysis that stemmed from Republican intransigence.

The Fitch warning seemed to hem in Republicans further, however. Mr. Obama has repeatedly said he will not negotiate over the debt ceiling, and on Monday, he compared Republican refusal to raise it to a criminal taking a hostage. Fitch appeared to side with the president.

“In Fitch’s opinion, the debt ceiling is an ineffective and potentially dangerous mechanism for enforcing fiscal discipline. It does not prevent tax and spending decisions that will incur debt issuance in excess of the ceiling while the sanction of not raising the ceiling risks a sovereign default and renders such a threat incredible,” the agency wrote.

Read More..

Study Shows Gender Bias in Wikipedia, Linux

Today in the age of the “brogrammer,” whose frat boy tendencies are glorified and sought after by cutting-edge online startups, women in tech often find themselves objectified and excluded — especially in communities like Wikipedia and open-source software, where women make up even less of the population (around 13 percent and 1 percent, respectively) than in more mainstream technical fields.

That was one of the facts Joseph Reagle, an assistant professor at Northeastern University, drew on for his study about “Free culture and the gender gap.” He discovered that just because a community (like Wikipedia) says that it’s open doesn’t mean that it isn’t hostile to women.

Free for all?

The “Free Encyclopedia” Wikipedia’s claim to fame is that anyone can edit and contribute to it. To keep errors from cropping up, it has policies that let anyone flag part of an article for review, and allow trusted editors to decide how to present something.

The process by which those editors decide, however, is often highly combative and alienating to women, who “are socialized to not be competitive and avoid conflict” according to Reagle. Sue Gardner, the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation (the project behind Wikipedia), wrote a list of “Nine Reasons Women Don’t Edit Wikipedia,” in which she noted Wikipedia’s “fighty” and “contentious” culture, where loud and assertive people drive others out regardless of their competence.

“Otherwise commendable features”

Reagle found that Wikipedia’s values of radical freedom and openness actually led to a culture that is more closed off to women. He noted that “implicit” power structures existed, even in the absence of formal ones; and that imposing few restrictions on how people treat each other can lead to “a chaotic culture of undisciplined vandals,” which disenfranchises women from participation just as surely as if there were rules against women participating.

Similar dynamics exist in popular open-source software projects like the Linux kernel. Open-source luminaries like Eric Raymond are legendarily combative and hostile to “idiots,” even while they they tolerate abusive personalities who drive female contributors away. Reagle’s study quoted numerous female writers with experience working in Linux and open-source software, who called its community “cliquish and exclusionary” as well as “more competitive and fierce than most areas of programming.”

How to achieve equality

Wikipedia’s new Teahouse page is “a friendly place to help new editors,” which is designed especially to encourage women to participate. Meanwhile, women like Denise Paolucci are creating their own startups like Dreamwidth, which are based on existing open-source programming code. Unlike most “proprietary” code, it’s still free for women to do what they want with it — if they can overcome the obstacles in their way.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Study Shows Gender Bias in Wikipedia, Linux
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/study-shows-gender-bias-in-wikipedia-linux/
Link To Post : Study Shows Gender Bias in Wikipedia, Linux
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Leon Panetta Says U.S. Has Pledged to Help France in Mali

LISBON — In what could draw the United States into another conflict in North Africa, the Obama administration has pledged to help the French who are fighting Islamist militants in Mali, and that assistance could include air and other logistical support, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said on Monday.

Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta boards a plane bound for Portugal on Monday.

The United States was already sharing intelligence with the French when their warplanes on Sunday struck camps, depots and other militant positions deep inside extensive Islamist-held territory in northern Mali. Defense officials said no decisions had been made on whether the United States would also offer help with midflight refueling planes and air transport, but they said those options were under review.

Defense officials would not rule out the possibility that American military transport planes might land in Mali, where the United States has been conducting an ambitious counterterrorism program for years. American spy planes and surveillance drones are in the meantime trying to get a sense of the chaos on the ground. The defense officials would not discuss whether the United States has armed drone aircraft over Mali.

But Mr. Panetta, who spoke to reporters on his plane en route to Portugal for a weeklong trip Europe, said that the chaos in Mali was of deep concern to the administration and praised the French for their actions. He also said “ what we have promised them is that we would work with them, to cooperate with them, to provide whatever assistance we can to try to help them in that effort.”

Mr. Panetta said that even though Mali is far from the United States, the Obama administration was deeply worried about extremist groups there, including Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM. “We’re concerned that any time Al Qaeda establishes a base of operations, while they might not have any immediate plans for attacks in the United States and in Europe, that ultimately that still remains their objective,” he said.

For that reason, Mr. Panetta said, “we have to take steps now to make sure that AQIM does not get that kind of traction.”

The United States has spent between $520 million and $600 million over the last four years to try to combat Islamist militancy in the region, including in Mali, which was until recently considered a prime example of what could be accomplished with American military training. American Special Forces trained Malian troops in marksmanship, border patrol and ambush drills.

But the situation collapsed when heavily armed Islamist fighters returned from combat in Libya and teamed up with jihadist groups like Ansar Dine, or Defenders of the Faith, which have carried out a harsh repression in northern Mali. Elite Malian commanders defected to the enemy and took with them troops, guns and their American-taught skills. An American-trained officer then overthrew Mali’s elected government, paving the way for half of the country to fall to Islamic extremists.

A confidential internal review completed last July by the Pentagon’s Africa Command concluded that the coup had unfolded too quickly for American commanders or intelligence analysts to detect any clear warning signs, but other military officials disagreed, saying the intelligence analysts had grown complacent..

Mr. Panetta sought to make the case that the United States was not surprised by the recent events in Mali and said that the Obama administration had been watching militants there for a long time. “When they began offensive operations to actually take on some cities, it was clear to France and to all of us that could not be allowed to continue, and that’s the reason France has engaged and it’s the reason we’re providing cooperation to them,” he said.

Mr. Panetta also said that “the fact is, we have made a commitment that Al Qaeda is not going to find any place to hide.”

Read More..

AP source: Armstrong 'sorry' to Livestrong staff

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Lance Armstrong stopped at his Livestrong Foundation before heading to an interview with Oprah Winfrey on Monday and delivered an emotional apology to staff members, some of whom broke down in tears, a person with direct knowledge of the meeting told The Associated Press.

The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussion was private.

Stripped last year of his seven Tour de France titles because of doping charges, Armstrong addressed the staff and said, "I'm sorry." The person said the disgraced cyclist choked up and several employees cried during the session.

The person also said Armstrong apologized for letting the staff down and putting Livestrong at risk but he did not make a direct confession to the group about using banned drugs. He said he would try to restore the foundation's reputation, and urged the group to continue fighting for the charity's mission of helping cancer patients and their families.

After the meeting, Armstrong, his legal team and close advisers gathered at a downtown Austin hotel for the interview. The cyclist was to make a limited confession to Winfrey about his role as the head of a long-running scheme to dominate the Tour with the aid of performance-enhancing drugs, a person with knowledge of the situation has told the AP.

Shortly before the interview began around 1 p.m. local time, nearly a dozen of Armstrong's closest friends and advisers gathered in the hotel lobby and were escorted to the room where the taping was taking place.

The group included Armstrong attorneys Tim Herman and Sean Breen, along with Bill Stapleton, Armstrong's longtime agent, manager and business partner. All declined comment.

Winfrey and her crew had earlier said they would film the session, to be broadcast Thursday, at Armstrong's home. As a result, local and international news crews were encamped near the cyclist's Spanish-style villa before dawn.

Armstrong still managed to slip away for a run despite the crowds outside his home. He returned by cutting through a neighbor's yard and hopping a fence.

During a jog on Sunday, Armstrong talked to the AP for a few minutes saying, "I'm calm, I'm at ease and ready to speak candidly." He declined to go into specifics.

Armstrong lost all seven Tour titles following a voluminous U.S. Anti-Doping Agency report that portrayed him as a ruthless competitor, willing to go to any lengths to win the prestigious race. USADA chief executive Travis Tygart labeled the doping regimen allegedly carried out by the U.S. Postal Service team that Armstrong once led, "The most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen."

Yet Armstrong looked like just another runner getting in his roadwork when he talked to the AP, wearing a red jersey and black shorts, sunglasses and a white baseball cap pulled down to his eyes. Leaning into a reporter's car on the shoulder of a busy Austin road, he seemed unfazed by the attention and the news crews that made stops at his home. He cracked a few jokes about all the reporters vying for his attention, then added, "but now I want to finish my run," and took off down the road.

The interview with Winfrey will be Armstrong's first public response to the USADA report. Armstrong is not expected to provide a detailed account about his involvement, nor address in depth many of the specific allegations in the more than 1,000-page USADA report.

In a text to the AP on Saturday, Armstrong said: "I told her (Winfrey) to go wherever she wants and I'll answer the questions directly, honestly and candidly. That's all I can say."

After a federal investigation of the cyclist was dropped without charges being brought last year, USADA stepped in with an investigation of its own. The agency deposed 11 former teammates and accused Armstrong of masterminding a complex and brazen drug program that included steroids, blood boosters and a range of other performance-enhancers.

Once all the information was out and his reputation shattered, Armstrong defiantly tweeted a picture of himself on a couch at home with all seven of the yellow leader's jerseys on display in frames behind him. But the preponderance of evidence in the USADA report and pending legal challenges on several fronts apparently forced him to change tactics after more a decade of denials.

He still faces legal problems.

Former teammate Floyd Landis, who was stripped of the 2006 Tour de France title for doping, has filed a federal whistle-blower lawsuit that accused Armstrong of defrauding the U.S. Postal Service. The Justice Department has yet to decide whether it will join the suit as a plaintiff.

The London-based Sunday Times also is suing Armstrong to recover about $500,000 it paid him to settle a libel lawsuit. On Sunday, the newspaper took out a full-page ad in the Chicago Tribune, offering Winfrey suggestions for what questions to ask Armstrong. Dallas-based SCA Promotions, which tried to deny Armstrong a promised bonus for a Tour de France win, has threatened to bring yet another lawsuit seeking to recover more than $7.5 million an arbitration panel awarded the cyclist in that dispute.

The lawsuit most likely to be influenced by a confession might be the Sunday Times case. Potential perjury charges stemming from Armstrong's sworn testimony in the 2005 arbitration fight would not apply because of the statute of limitations. Armstrong was not deposed during the federal investigation that was closed last year.

Many of his sponsors dropped Armstrong after the damning USADA report — at the cost of tens of millions of dollars — and soon after, he left the board of Livestrong, which he founded in 1997. Armstrong is still said to be worth about $100 million.

Livestrong might be one reason Armstrong has decided to come forward with an apology and limited confession. The charity supports cancer patients and still faces an image problem because of its association with Armstrong. He also may be hoping a confession would allow him to return to competition in the elite triathlon or running events he participated in after his cycling career.

World Anti-Doping Code rules state his lifetime ban cannot be reduced to less than eight years. WADA and U.S. Anti-Doping officials could agree to reduce the ban further depending on what information Armstrong provides and his level of cooperation.

___

AP Sports Columnist Jim Litke contributed to this report.

Read More..

Personal Best: Training Insights From Star Athletes

Of course elite athletes are naturally gifted. And of course they train hard and may have a phalanx of support staff — coaches, nutritionists, psychologists.

But they often have something else that gives them an edge: an insight, or even an epiphany, that vaults them from the middle of the pack to the podium.

I asked several star athletes about the single realization that made the difference for them. While every athlete’s tale is intensely personal, it turns out there are some common themes.

Stay Focused

Like many distance swimmers who spend endless hours in the pool, Natalie Coughlin, 30, used to daydream as she swam laps. She’d been a competitive swimmer for almost her entire life, and this was the way she — and many others — managed the boredom of practice.

But when she was in college, she realized that daydreaming was only a way to get in the miles; it was not allowing her to reach her potential. So she started to concentrate every moment of practice on what she was doing, staying focused and thinking about her technique.

“That’s when I really started improving,” she said. “The more I did it, the more success I had.”

In addition to her many victories, Ms. Coughlin won five medals in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, including a gold medal in the 100-meter backstroke.

Manage Your ‘Energy Pie’

In 1988, Steve Spence, then a 25-year-old self-coached distance runner, was admitted into the United States Long Distance Runner Olympic Development Program. It meant visiting David Martin, a physiologist at Georgia State University, several times a year for a battery of tests to measure Mr. Spence’s progress and to assess his diet.

During dinner at Dr. Martin’s favorite Chinese restaurant, he gave Mr. Spence some advice.

“There are always going to be runners who are faster than you,” he said. “There will always be runners more talented than you and runners who seem to be training harder than you. The key to beating them is to train harder and to learn how to most efficiently manage your energy pie.”

Energy pie? All the things that take time and energy — a job, hobbies, family, friends, and of course athletic training. “There is only so much room in the pie,” said Mr. Spence.

Dr. Martin’s advice was “a lecture on limiting distractions,” he added. “If I wanted to get to the next level, to be competitive on the world scene, I had to make running a priority.” So he quit graduate school and made running his profession. “I realized this is what I am doing for my job.”

It paid off. He came in third in the 1991 marathon world championships in Tokyo. He made the 2004 Olympic marathon team, coming in 12th in the race. Now he is head cross-country coach and assistant track coach at Shippensburg College in Pennsylvania. And he tells his teams to manage their energy pies.

Structure Your Training

Meredith Kessler was a natural athlete. In high school, she played field hockey and lacrosse. She was on the track team and the swimming team. She went to Syracuse University on a field hockey scholarship.

Then she began racing in Ironman triathlons, which require athletes to swim 2.4 miles, cycle 112 miles and then run a marathon (26.2 miles). Ms. Kessler loved it, but she was not winning any races. The former sports star was now in the middle of the pack.

But she also was working 60 hours a week at a San Francisco investment bank and trying to spend time with her husband and friends. Finally, six years ago, she asked Matt Dixon, a coach, if he could make her a better triathlete.

One thing that turned out to be crucial was to understand the principles of training. When she was coaching herself, Ms. Kessler did whatever she felt like, with no particular plan in mind. Mr. Dixon taught her that every workout has a purpose. One might focus on endurance, another on speed. And others, just as important, are for recovery.

“I had not won an Ironman until he put me on that structure,” said Ms. Kessler, 34. “That’s when I started winning.”

Another crucial change was to quit her job so she could devote herself to training. It took several years — she left banking only in April 2011 — but it made a huge difference. Now a professional athlete, with sponsors, she has won four Ironman championships and three 70.3 kilometer championships.

Ms. Kessler’s parents were mystified when she quit her job. She reminded them that they had always told her that it did not matter if she won. What mattered was that she did her best. She left the bank, she said, “to do my best.”

Take Risks

Helen Goodroad began competing as a figure skater when she was in fourth grade. Her dream was to be in the Olympics. She was athletic and graceful, but she did not really look like a figure skater. Ms. Goodroad grew to be 5 feet 11 inches.

“I was probably twice the size of any competitor,” she said. “I had to have custom-made skates starting when I was 10 years old.”

One day, when Helen was 17, a coach asked her to try a workout on an ergometer, a rowing machine. She was a natural — her power was phenomenal.

“He told me, ‘You could get a rowing scholarship to any school. You could go to the Olympics,’ ” said Ms. Goodroad. But that would mean giving up her dream, abandoning the sport she had devoted her life to and plunging into the unknown.

She decided to take the chance.

It was hard and she was terrified, but she got a rowing scholarship to Brown. In 1993, Ms. Goodroad was invited to train with the junior national team. Three years later, she made the under-23 national team, which won a world championship. (She rowed under her maiden name, Betancourt.)

It is so easy to stay in your comfort zone, Ms. Goodroad said. “But then you can get stale. You don’t go anywhere.” Leaving skating, leaving what she knew and loved, “helped me see that, ‘Wow, I could do a whole lot more than I ever thought I could.’ ”

Until this academic year, when she had a baby, Ms. Goodroad, who is 37, was a rowing coach at Princeton. She still runs to stay fit and plans to return to coaching.

The Other Guy Is Hurting Too

In 2006, when Brian Sell was racing in the United States Half Marathon Championships in Houston, he had a realization.

“I was neck-and-neck with two or three other guys with two miles to go,” he said. He started to doubt himself. What was he doing, struggling to keep up with men whose race times were better than his?

Suddenly, it came to him: Those other guys must be hurting as much as he was, or else they would not be staying with him — they would be pulling away.

“I made up my mind then to hang on, no matter what happened or how I was feeling,” said Mr. Sell. “Sure enough, in about half a mile, one guy dropped out and then another. I went on to win by 15 seconds or so, and every race since then, if a withering surge was thrown in, I made every effort to hang on to the guy surging.”

Mr. Sell made the 2008 Olympic marathon team and competed in the Beijing Olympics, where he came in 22nd. Now 33 years old, he is working as a scientist at Lancaster Laboratories in Pennsylvania.

Read More..

DealBook: Swatch to Buy Watch and Jewelry Business of Harry Winston

2:31 p.m. | Updated

The Swatch Group agreed Monday to make its largest acquisition to date, taking over the watch and jewelry business of Harry Winston, which plans to shift its focus to its diamond mining activities.

Swatch, the world’s largest maker of watches, said it would pay $750 million in cash for Harry Winston and assume $250 million of debt. The publicly traded Harry Winston Diamond Corporation, based in Toronto, will be renamed Dominion Diamond after completing the sale to Swatch.

For Swatch, the purchase of Harry Winston’s jewelry and watch business, based in New York, expands its vast portfolio by adding a prominent jewelry brand immortalized decades ago by Carol Channing on Broadway and Marilyn Monroe in Hollywood. Harry Winston jewels still regularly adorn actresses on the red carpet at awards shows.

Swatch owns not only the brand that makes colorful plastic watches but also upscale names that include Omega, Breguet and Blancpain. Swatch also controls the bulk of the sector’s production of watch movements after buying several makers of components.

Swatch is paying about 23 times estimated earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of Harry Winston, said René Weber, a watch analyst at Bank Vontobel in Zurich, who welcomed the takeover. He said that the price was high but justified, considering that Swatch has about 2 billion Swiss francs ($2.2 billion) in cash reserves.

The purchase of Harry Winston also comes after the four-year partnership by Swatch and Tiffany, another luxury jeweler, ended acrimoniously in 2011. The other two luxury groups that dominate the watch sector — Richemont and LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton — already have a strong presence in jewelry. Richemont owns Cartier and  LVMH acquired Bulgari, the Italian jeweler, nearly two years ago.

‘‘It is a great fit,’’ Mr. Weber said of the new purchase, adding a strong jewelry brand that ‘‘fills the gap in the portfolio’’ at Swatch, particularly following the unsuccessful alliance with Tiffany.

Swatch, based in Biel, Switzerland, is listed on the SIX Swiss exchange in Zurich, with its shares rising 4.2 percent to 513 Swiss francs on Monday, as investors applauded the deal.

Still, Swatch’s management and about a third of its equity remain in the hands of the family of Nicolas Hayek, who founded the company and helped revive the whole Swiss watch industry in the 1980s, in the face of stiff Japanese competition, by introducing the inexpensive and highly successful Swatch plastic watches. Mr. Hayek died in 2010.

Nayla Hayek, his daughter and chairwoman of the company, said in a statement on Monday that the takeover of Harry Winston, which has 535 employees, ‘‘brilliantly complements the prestige segment’’ of her company.

‘‘Diamonds are still a girl’s best friend,’’ she added, echoing the lyrics from the stage and film versions of ‘‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,’’ a song that made Harry Winston a household name.

Robert Gannicott, chairman and chief executive of the Harry Winston Diamond Corporation, said the sale ‘‘will leave us well equipped to realize upstream opportunities in an environment where cash has become a strategic resource while preserving and expanding our relationship with the downstream diamond business.’’

In November, the company acquired the Ekati diamond mine in Canada from BHP Billiton. It has also maintained a 40 percent stake in the Diavik diamond mine, also in Canada, which it has developed with Rio Tinto. Rio Tinto, however, indicated last year that it was likely to divest its diamond assets.

Read More..

4 gadgets that defined Vegas electronics show

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The world’s largest gadget show wrapped up on Friday, and the organizers said it was the biggest ever, beating last year’s record in terms of the floor space companies purchased to display their wares.

What was it that drew more than 3,500 companies and 150,000 people to Las Vegas for this mega-event? Here are four gadgets that exemplified the top trends at this year’s International CES.

— Sony‘s 55-inch ultra-high-definition TV

The introduction of high-definition and flat-panel TVs sent U.S. shoppers on a half-decade buying spree as they tossed out old tube sets. Now that the old sets are mostly gone, sales of new TVs are falling. To lure buyers back, Asian TV makers are trying to pull the same trick again. They’re making the sets sharper. This fall, Sony and LG introduced 84-inch sets with four times the resolution of regular high-definition sets. They provide stunning sharpness, but they’re too big for most homes, and at more than $ 20,000, too expensive. At the show, the companies unveiled smaller “ultra-high-definition” sets, measuring 55 inches and 65 inches on the diagonal. They will go on sale this spring. Prices were not announced, but will presumably be a lot lower than for the 84-inch sets, perhaps under $ 10,000.

Both the size and price of these smaller ultra-HD TVs should make them easier buys, but the higher resolution will be a lot less noticeable on a smaller screen, unless viewers sit very close. Analysts expect ultra-HD to remain an exclusive niche product for some years. There’s no easy way to get ultra-HD video content to the sets, so they will mostly be showing regular HD movies. However, the sets can “upscale” the video to make it look better than it does on a regular HD set.

Analyst James McQuivey of Forrester Research believes the TV makers are focusing on the wrong thing. He doesn’t think consumers really care that much about picture quality.

“What matters most is not the number of pixels or the quality of the pixels themselves … but the increasing convenience of the content’s discovery and delivery. This is why TV makers should be investing in a better experience rather than a bigger one,” McQuivey wrote in a blog post.

— LG’s 55-inch OLED TV

Organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs, make for thin, extremely colorful screens. They’re already established in smartphone screens, and they have a lot of promise for other applications as well. For years, a promise is all they’ve represented. OLED screens are very hard to make in larger sizes. Now, LG is shipping a 55-inch OLED TV set in Korea, and is expected to bring it to the U.S. this spring for about $ 12,000.

Beyond being thin, power-thrifty and capable of extremely high color saturation, OLEDs are interesting for another reason: they can bend. LCDs have to be laid down on flat glass substrates, but OLEDs can be laid down on flexible glass or plastic. The major obstacle here is that flexible substrates tend to let through air, which destroys OLEDs, but manufacturers seem to have tackled the problem. Samsung showed off a phone that can bend into a tube. It consisted of a rigid plastic box with electronics and an attached display that is as thin as a piece of paper. The company suggested that in the future, it could make displays that fold up like maps — big screens that fit in a pocket.

We’re likely to see the benefits of bendy OLEDs sooner in a less eyebrow-raising but more practical implementation. It may never have occurred to you, but all electronic screens, except for cathode-ray tubes, are flat. With OLEDs, they don’t have to be. LG and Sony showed TV sets with concave screens at the show — not very useful, but an interesting demonstration. In the future, you could have a phone with a screen that laps over onto the edges, providing you with “smart” buttons with labels that change depending on whether you’re in camera mode or music mode. You could have a coffee mug with a wrap-around news and weather ticker. A revolution in design awaits.

By the way, you won’t have to choose between ultra-HD and OLED screens — Sony, Panasonic and LG showed prototype TVs that combine the technologies.

— The Pebble Watch

The Pebble is a “smart” timepiece that can be programmed to do various things, including showing text messages sent to your phone. The high-resolution display is all digital, so it can be programmed with various cool “watch faces.” But what’s really interesting about the Pebble is how it came to be —and that it exists at all.

Young Canadian inventor Eric Migicovsky couldn’t find conventional funding to make the watch, so he asked for money on Kickstarter, the biggest “crowdfunding” website. In essence, he asked people to buy watches before he actually had any to sell. The fundraising was a blowout success. Migicovsky raised $ 10.3 million by pre-selling 85,000 Pebbles. At CES, he announced that the watches were ready to ship.

Kickstarter’s goal is to bring things and events into fruition that otherwise wouldn’t happen, by creating a shortcut between the people who want to create something and the people willing to pay for it. The effect is starting to become apparent at CES. At least two other “smart” watches funded through Kickstarter were on display. Some startups were at the show to drum up interest in ongoing Kickstarter campaigns, including a Swedish company that wants to make a speaker with a transparent body, and a California outfit that wants to produce a swiveling, remote-controlled platform for cameras.

— Creative Technology Ltd.’s Interactive Gesture Camera

This $ 150 camera, promoted by Intel, attaches to a computer much like a Webcam. From a single lens, it shoots the world in 3-D, using technology similar to radar. The idea is that you can perform hand gestures in the air in front of the camera, and it lets the computer interpret them. Why would you want this? That’s not really clear yet, but a lot of effort is going into finding an answer. CES was boiling with gadgets attempting to break new ground when it comes to how we interact with computers and appliances like TV sets. The Nintendo Wii game console, with its innovative motion-sensing controllers, and the Microsoft Kinect add-on for the Xbox 360 console, which has its own 3-D-sensing camera, have inspired engineers to pursue ways to ditch —or at least complement— the keyboard, mouse, remote control and even the touchscreen.

Samsung’s high-end TVs already let viewers use hand gestures to control volume, and it expanded the range of recognized gestures with this year’s models. Startup Leap Motion was at the show with another depth-sensing camera kit, this one designed to mount next to a laptop’s touch pad, looking upward.

So far, though, the “new interaction” field hasn’t had a real hit since the Kinect. Consumers may be eager to lose the TV remote, but there’s a holdup caused by the nature of the setup: to effectively control the TV, you need to take command not just of the TV, but of the cable or satellite set-top box. TV makers and the cable companies don’t really talk to each other, and there’s no sign of them uniting on a common approach. Only when both devices can be controlled by hand-waving can we permanently let the remote get lost between the couch cushions.

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: 4 gadgets that defined Vegas electronics show
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/4-gadgets-that-defined-vegas-electronics-show/
Link To Post : 4 gadgets that defined Vegas electronics show
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

India Ink: Woman Raped by Seven Men in Punjab, Police Say

NEW DELHI — The police said Sunday that a 29-year-old woman had been raped by a bus driver, a conductor and five other men in the northern Indian state of Punjab in an episode that recalls the recent attack in Delhi that has caused widespread outrage.

The woman in the Punjab attack boarded a bus on Friday bound for Gurdaspur to visit her in-laws, the police chief of Gurdaspur, Raj Jit Singh, said in a telephone interview. When she got off the bus, the driver offered her a ride on his motorcycle, perhaps to her in-laws’ village, the police said. Instead, he took her to a nearby village, where he and six other men, including the bus conductor, raped her repeatedly through the night.

The next morning, the driver dropped her at her in-laws’ home, where the woman told family members of the rape and then reported it to the police, Mr. Singh said.

Six men, including the bus driver and conductor, have been arrested, he said. All of the men are their 20s.

Gurmesh Singh, the deputy police superintendent for the region, said it was unclear how or why the bus driver persuaded the woman to go with him on his motorcycle. She was in a state of distress during the bus ride, Mr. Singh said, and originally refused to get off the bus when it reached its destination.

The Press Trust of India reported that the bus driver did not stop when requested.

The gang rape of a woman on a bus in New Delhi on Dec. 16, and her death from injuries sustained during the attack, has led to widespread protests and calls for increased policing and tougher laws against sexual assault in India.

The evidence against five of the men arrested in the New Delhi rape is being heard this month in a special fast-track court created for sexual assault cases.

Read More..