EVANS CITY, Pa. (AP) ? A freight train and a rural transit bus carrying senior citizens and people with developmental disabilities crashed at an unmarked railroad crossing Friday morning, injuring at least 10 people.
Video from local TV news helicopters suggested that the small bus may have hit the train and then come to rest about 20 feet away. The bus was upright on an embankment and had only front-end damage. Police were investigating whether dense morning fog contributed to the crash.
The crash occurred in Evans City, about 25 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, at about 8:10 a.m. Friday. Eleven people, including the driver, were on the bus, and at least 10 were taken to hospitals, officials said.
Three men and a woman were being treated in the Allegheny General Hospital emergency room in Pittsburgh, said hospital spokesman Dan Laurent. The men were 35, 38 and 75 years old, and the woman's age was not immediately available.
Brian Greenawalt, a Harmony Township paramedic supervisor, said one victim suffered "a pretty significant head injury."
Police said the Butler Area Rural Transit bus was on its way to a program known as Lifesteps.
A woman who identified herself as the granddaughter of a 90-year-old woman on the bus told WPXI-TV that her grandmother was headed to geriatric care program at Lifesteps. The woman said the bus takes adult patients of all ages to the facility for a variety of programs.
A Lifesteps official did not immediately return a call for comment, but the facility's website said it is a nonprofit that has operated since 1923. Lifesteps "services for children, families, adults with special needs and seniors are designed to encourage growth, independence, confidence and dignity," the website said.
The transit agency's website indicates it partners with the Alliance For Nonprofit Resources, a social service agency based in the county seat of Butler, to provide reduced-fee transportation for people with disabilities. Neither agency immediately returned calls Friday.
The transit agency's website said it operates 17 wheelchair-accessible buses that make about 300 trips a day, six days a week.
BERLIN (AP) ? They were feasts of sublime asparagus ? laced with fear. And for more than half a century, Margot Woelk kept her secret hidden from the world, even from her husband. Then, a few months after her 95th birthday, she revealed the truth about her wartime role: Adolf Hitler's food taster.
Woelk, then in her mid-twenties, spent two and a half years as one of 15 young women who sampled Hitler's food to make sure it wasn't poisoned before it was served to the Nazi leader in his "Wolf's Lair," the heavily guarded command center in what is now Poland, where he spent much of his time in the final years of World War II.
"He was a vegetarian. He never ate any meat during the entire time I was there," Woelk said of the Nazi leader. "And Hitler was so paranoid that the British would poison him ? that's why he had 15 girls taste the food before he ate it himself."
With many Germans contending with food shortages and a bland diet as the war dragged on, sampling Hitler's food had its advantages.
"The food was delicious, only the best vegetables, asparagus, bell peppers, everything you can imagine. And always with a side of rice or pasta," she recalled. "But this constant fear ? we knew of all those poisoning rumors and could never enjoy the food. Every day we feared it was going to be our last meal."
The petite widow's story is a tale of the horror, pain and dislocation endured by people of all sides who survived World War II.
Only now in the sunset of her life has she been willing to relate her experiences, which she had buried because of shame and the fear of prosecution for having worked with the Nazis, although she insists she was never a party member. She told her story as she flipped through a photo album with pictures of her as a young woman, in the same Berlin apartment where she was born in 1917.
Woelk first revealed her secret to a local Berlin reporter a few months ago. Since then interest in her life story has been overwhelming. School teachers wrote and asked her for photos and autographs to bring history alive for their students. Several researchers from a museum visited to ask for details about her life as Hitler's taster.
Woelk says her association with Hitler began after she fled Berlin to escape Allied air attacks. With her husband gone and serving in the German army, she moved in with relatives about 435 miles (700 kilometers) to the east in Rastenburg, then part of Germany; now it is Ketrzyn, in what became Poland after the war.
There she was drafted into civilian service and assigned for the next two and a half years as a food taster and kitchen bookkeeper at the Wolf's Lair complex, located a few miles (kilometers) outside the town. Hitler was secretive, even in the relative safety of his headquarters, that she never saw him in person ? only his German shepherd Blondie and his SS guards, who chatted with the women.
Hitler's security fears were not unfounded. On July 20, 1944, a trusted colonel detonated a bomb in the Wolf's Lair in an attempt to kill Hitler. He survived, but nearly 5,000 people were executed following the assassination attempt, including the bomber.
"We were sitting on wooden benches when we heard and felt an incredible big bang," she said of the 1944 bombing. "We fell off the benches, and I heard someone shouting 'Hitler is dead!' But he wasn't. "
Following the blast, tension rose around the headquarters. Woelk said the Nazis ordered her to leave her relatives' home and move into an abandoned school closer to the compound.
With the Soviet army on the offensive and the war going badly for Germany, one of her SS friends advised her to leave the Wolf's Lair.
She said she returned by train to Berlin and went into hiding.
Woelk said the other women on the food tasting team decided to remain in Rastenburg since their families were all there and it was their home.
"Later, I found out that the Russians shot all of the 14 other girls," she said. It was after Soviet troops overran the headquarters in January 1945.
When she returned to Berlin, she found a city facing complete destruction. Round-the-clock bombing by U.S. and British planes was grinding the city center to rubble. ??
On April 20, 1945, Soviet artillery began shelling the outskirts of Berlin and ground forces pushed through toward the heart of the capital against strong resistance by die-hard SS and Hitler Youth fighters.
After about two weeks of heavy fighting, the city surrendered on May 2 ? after Hitler, who had abandoned the Wolf's Lair about five months before, had committed suicide. His successor surrendered a week later, ending the war in Europe.
For many Berlin civilians ? their homes destroyed, family members missing or dead and food almost gone ? the horror did not end with capitulation.
"The Russians then came to Berlin and got me, too," Woelk said. "They took me to a doctor's apartment and raped me for 14 consecutive days. That's why I could never have children. They destroyed everything."
Like millions of Germans and other Europeans, Woelk began rebuilding her life and trying to forget as best she could her bitter memories and the shame of her association with a criminal regime that had destroyed much of Europe.
She worked in a variety of jobs, mostly as a secretary or administrative assistant. Her husband returned from the war but died 23 years ago, she said.
With the frailty of advanced age and the lack of an elevator in her building, she has not left her apartment for the past eight years. Nurses visit several times a day, and a niece stops by frequently, she said.
Now at the end of her life, she feels the need to purge the memories by talking about her story.
"For decades, I tried to shake off those memories," she said. "But they always came back to haunt me at night." ??
Stumped? Shakuntala Devi, the woman known as the "Human Computer," could tell you, and probably faster than any mathematical computer could.
Devi, who passed away on April 21 at age 83 in her hometown of Bangalore, India, toured the world as a prodigy for much of her life, making appearances on radio, television and in theaters, the New York Times reports.
In a 1977 appearance at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Devi found the 23rd root of a 201-digit number in just 50 seconds, besting a slowpoke Univac computer that took 62 seconds to make the same calculation. The root of a number ("X") is equal to another number ("Y") that can be multiplied by itself a given number of times to equal "X." So the 23rd root of "X" equals "Y" multiplied by itself 23 times. [Creative Genius: The World's Greatest Minds]
Devi earned a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records in 1982 after she correctly multiplied two 13-digit numbers in just 28 seconds before a stunned crowd at Imperial College in London, the Times reports.
(And the cube root of 61,629,875 is 395. What took you so long?)
The early life of Devi, born Nov. 4, 1929, showed little promise. She was raised in an orthodox Brahmin family, the Telegraph reports, but one with a wild streak: Her father refused to follow family tradition by becoming a priest ? instead, he entered the circus as a trapeze artist, lion tamer and human cannonball.
Devi received virtually no formal education as a child. "At 10, I was admitted to Class 1 of St. Theresa's Convent in Chamarajpet," she once told the Times of India. "But my parents could not afford the monthly fee of Rs 2 [2 rupees], so in three months, I was thrown out."
While playing cards with his daughter, however, her father noticed Devi's unusual gift for computation and memory, so he launched her career of performing in the circus and in road shows.
"I had become the sole breadwinner of my family, and the responsibility was a huge one for a young child," Devi was quoted as saying. "At the age of 6, I gave my first major show at the University of Mysore [India], and this was the beginning of my marathon of public performances."
When she visited the United States in 1988, educational psychologist Arthur Jensen of the University of California at Berkeley tested her performance in several arithmetic tasks.
"Devi solved most of the problems faster than I was able to copy them in my notebook," Jensen later admitted.
"For a calculating prodigy like Devi, the manipulation of numbers is apparently like a native language, whereas for most of us, arithmetic calculation is at best like the foreign language we learnt at school," Jensen was quoted as saying.
"She was a vibrant lady who was sharp-minded and energetic. A witty person, she was fiercely independent as well," D.C. Shivdev Deshmudre, trustee of the Shakuntala Devi Educational Foundation Public Trust, told the Times of India.
Also a successful astrologer, cookbook author and novelist, Devi is survived by a daughter, son-in-law and two granddaughters.
Follow Marc Lallanilla on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
(Reuters) - Diversified U.S. manufacturer 3M Co cut its 2013 profit forecast on Thursday, citing weakening demand for electronics products as well as foreign currency fluctuations.
The lowered outlook came after first-quarter profit and revenue both missed Wall Street expectations.
3M, which makes a range of products from Post-It notes to films used in television screens, blamed falling sales in its consumer electronics segment.
Executives had expected weak demand for electronic insulation, computer touch screen materials as well as fluids used to make computer chips, but they said actual sales were worse than feared.
"We expected a challenging start to the year, but in fact market conditions were tougher than we had expected," Chief Executive Inge Thulin said on a conference call with investors.
While a 56 percent drop in pension payments boosted first-quarter margins, analysts were wary as margin strength wasn't more reliant on higher sales.
Additionally, the company changed its reporting segments on January 1, making it difficult for analysts to compare performance to prior years and track results, William Blair & Co analyst Nick Heymann said.
"This is a little more complex than normal," Heymann said.
3M now expects to earn $6.60 to $6.85 per share this year, a range mostly below the $6.82 average analyst estimate, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
3M previously had expected to earn $6.70 to $6.95 per share this year.
Also, the rising value of the U.S. dollar compared to other global currencies harmed results, executives said. Before, the company had not expected foreign currency changes to harm 2013 results, but now it was seen cutting revenue by 1.5 percent.
Its stock dropped 3.5 percent to $104.09 in mid-morning trading. It has gained about 16 percent this year, outpacing the Dow Jones industrial average's roughly 12 percent rise.
REVENUE RISES
St. Paul, Minnesota-based 3M posted first-quarter profit of $1.13 billion, or $1.61 per share, compared with $1.13 billion, or $1.59 per share, in the year-earlier period.
Profit per share missed analysts' estimates of $1.65. The number of outstanding shares fell, boosting the most recent earnings per share.
Revenue rose 2 percent to $7.63 billion, missing the $7.81 billion estimate from analysts.
Thulin, who took the top job last year, began a restructuring in January. He merged 3M's security and traffic-safety units, eliminating about 300 jobs, and identified other units that 3M would need to fix, sell or close.
Thulin has said 3M needs to prune its broad portfolio of products, and likely to focus on fewer but larger takeovers.
(Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Maureen Bavdek and Jeffrey Benkoe)
Bangladesh rescuers look for survivors and victims at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh,Thursday, April 25, 2013. By Thursday, the death toll reached at least 194 people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete. (AP Photo/A.M.Ahad)
Bangladesh rescuers look for survivors and victims at the site of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh,Thursday, April 25, 2013. By Thursday, the death toll reached at least 194 people as rescuers continued to search for injured and missing, after a huge section of an eight-story building that housed several garment factories splintered into a pile of concrete. (AP Photo/A.M.Ahad)
Ministry for Emergency Situations workers and fire fighters work at a site of a fire of a psychiatric hospital Friday morning, April 26, 2013. At least 38 people died in the fire in the psychiatric hospital outside Moscow late Thursday night. Police said the fire, which broke out at about 2 a.m. local time (6 p.m. Eastern, 2200 GMT) in the one-story hospital in the Ramenskoye settlement, was caused by a short circuit. (AP Photo/Pavel Sergeyev)
New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, left, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg hold a news conference, Thursday, April, 25, 2013 in New York. The two say the Boston Marathon bombing suspects intended to blow up their remaining explosives in Times Square. They said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told Boston investigators from his hospital bed that he and his brother had discussed going to New York to detonate their remaining explosives. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today:
1. BOMB SUSPECTS ALLEGEDLY TARGETED TIMES SQUARE
NYC's mayor and its top cop say the Boston suspects' plan to visit the Big Apple wasn't just "to party" after all.
2. MILLIONS POUR IN TO HELP BOSTON VICTIMS
People who lost limbs will face some of the biggest medical expenses ? artificial legs can cost more than $50,000 each.
3. HOW A COLLAPSED BANGLADESH BUILDING WILL IMPACT THE GARMENT INDUSTRY
With at least 290 dead, there's a renewed look at the conditions at the country's clothing manufacturers.
4. 38 DEAD IN RUSSIA AFTER PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL BLAZE
A nurse and two patients are believed to be the only survivors.
5. FIERY AFGHAN BUS CRASH KILLS 30 IN AFGHANISTAN
The bus collided with a truck left burning by the Taliban and could not stop.
6. WHAT PROPELLED GAY MARRIAGE TO VICTORY IN RHODE ISLAND
The savvy political campaign ? including bare-knuckle tactics ? could serve as a model for similar efforts in other states.
7. HISTORIC DROUGHT IS HISTORY
Spring rains soaking the central U.S. have washed away the worst dry spell in decades.
8. WHY THE TOP WINNER WASN'T THE FOCUS AT BILLBOARD LATIN AWARDS
While Reggaeton star Don Omar took home 10 prizes, homage to the late Mexican-American singer Jenni Rivera captured everyone's attention.
9. WHO'S NO. 1
The Kansas City Chiefs take offensive tackle Eric Fisher of Central Michigan as the top pick in the NFL draft.
10. NO MORE WOODER IN PHILUFFYA?
A linguistics professor says the Philadelphia dialect is evolving into a more northern accent
Apr. 25, 2013 ? The rediscovery of a mystery animal in a museum's underground storeroom proves that a non-native 'big cat' prowled the British countryside at the turn of the last century.
The animal's skeleton and mounted skin was analysed by a multi-disciplinary team of Durham University scientists and fellow researchers at Bristol, Southampton and Aberystwyth universities and found to be a Canadian lynx -- a carnivorous predator more than twice the size of a domestic cat.
The research, published today in the academic journal Historical Biology, establishes the animal as the earliest example of an "alien big cat" at large in the British countryside.
The research team say this provides further evidence for debunking a popular hypothesis that wild cats entered the British countryside following the introduction of the 1976 Wild Animals Act. The Act was introduced to deal with an increasing fashion for exotic -- and potentially dangerous -- pets.
The academics believe such feral "British big cats" as they are known, may have lived in the wild much earlier, through escapes and even deliberate release. There is no evidence that such animals have been able to breed in the wild.
The study of the Canadian lynx, rediscovered by research team member Max Blake among hundreds of thousands of specimens at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, details records unearthed at the museum which showed the animal had originally been mislabelled by Edwardian curators in 1903 as a Eurasian lynx -- a close relative of the Canadian lynx.
The records also showed that the lynx was shot by a landowner in the Devon countryside in the early 1900s, after it killed two dogs.
"This Edwardian feral lynx provides concrete evidence that although rare, exotic felids have occasionally been part of British fauna for more than a century," said lead researcher, Dr Ross Barnett of Durham University's Department of Archaeology.
"The animal remains are significant in representing the first historic big cat from Britain."
Co-author Dr Darren Naish, from the University of Southampton, added: "There have been enough sightings of exotic big cats which substantially pre-date 1976 to cast doubt on the idea that one piece of legislation made in 1976 explains all releases of these animals in the UK.
"It seems more likely that escapes and releases have occurred throughout history, and that this continual presence of aliens explains the 'British big cat' phenomenon."
The researchers point out in their paper that Eurasian lynxes existed in the wild in Britain many hundreds of years ago, but had almost certainly become extinct by the 7th century. Laboratory analysis of the Bristol specimen's bones and teeth established it had been kept in captivity long enough to develop severe tooth loss and plaque before it either escaped or was deliberately released into the wild. Ancient DNA analysis of hair from the lynx proved inconclusive, possibly due to chemicals applied to the pelt during taxidermy.
Julie Finch, head of Bristol's Museums, Galleries & Archives, said: "Bristol Museum, Galleries and Archives were pleased to be a part of this ground-breaking research, which not only highlights the importance of our science collections, it establishes the pedigree of our 100-year old Lynx and adds to our knowledge and understanding of 'big cats' in the UK.
"Our museum collections are extensive and caring for them requires the considerable skills of our collections officers. We have an amazing collection of taxidermy animals on display and we welcome museum visitors to come along, to take a closer look and discover more about the natural world."
Dr Greger Larson, a member of the research team from Durham University and an expert in the migration of animals, said: "Every few years there is another claim that big cats are living wild in Britain, but none of these claims have been substantiated. It seems that big cats are to England what the Loch Ness Monster is to Scotland.
"By applying a robust scientific methodology, this study conclusively demonstrates that at least one big cat did roam Britain as early as the Edwardian era, and suggests that additional claims need to be subjected to this level of scrutiny."
The lynx is now on public display at Bristol museum.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Southampton, via AlphaGalileo.
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Journal Reference:
Max Blake, Darren Naish, Greger Larson, Charlotte L. King, Geoff Nowell, Manabu Sakamoto, Ross Barnett. Multidisciplinary investigation of a ?British big cat?: a lynx killed in southern England c. 1903. Historical Biology, 2013; : 1 DOI: 10.1080/08912963.2013.785541
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
The American wife of suspected marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Katherine Russell, leaving the house where he lived on Norfolk Street in Cambridge, Mass.
By Erin McClam, Staff Writer, NBC News
The American wife of the dead Boston Marathon bombing suspect is cooperating with investigators, and her husband?s alleged involvement in the attack came as an ?absolute shock,? her lawyers said Tuesday.
The lawyers would not say whether Katherine Russell, who is known as Katie and married Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2010, had already spoken with the FBI.
"The reports of involvement by her husband and brother-in-law came as an absolute shock to them all," lawyer Miriam Weizzenbaum said, speaking of Russell?s family, according to NBC affiliate WJAR in Providence, R.I.
"As a mother, sister, daughter, wife, Katie deeply mourns the pain and loss to innocent victims," she added.
Another lawyer, Amato DeLuca, said that Russell was doing "everything she can to assist with the investigation."
Russell converted to Islam after she met her future husband at a nightclub in 2009. She dropped out of college, got married and had a baby three years ago. She has been living in Cambridge, Mass., raising the child and working as a home health aide, the lawyers said. She has also been spending time with family in Rhode Island.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed after a shootout with police early Friday. His brother, Dzhokhar, 19, was captured that night, hiding in a boat in a suburban Boston driveway, after a daylong manhunt that paralyzed the Boston area.
Dzhokhar?Tsarnaev has been charged with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction and could face the death penalty. He was upgraded to fair condition from serious Tuesday at a Boston hospital.
The mother of the two brothers suspected of the Boston Marathon bombing has told ITV News that her sons went to the event last year. Her chilling admission comes a day after her youngest son was charged with the crime in hospital. From her home town in Dagestan, ITV's Martin Geissler reports.
Authorities said the brothers led police on a wild chase that began late Thursday. They shot and killed a college patrol officer, carjacked an SUV and engaged police in a wild, 200-shot gun battle, tossing explosives out the window of a car, authorities said.
The FBI checked out Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011, after the Russian government raised concerns that he might have ties to extremist groups, but turned up nothing, law enforcement officials have said.
Meanwhile, The brothers' mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, told the British broadcaster ITN on Tuesday that she was aware that investigators had talked to Tamerlan in the past, and that investigators had also spoken with her.
She said she was asked, "'He?s like a leader, he?s a strong boy, and do you think that he could get involved into kind of like any organization, you know like radical organization?' At that time because they told me that they saw whatever he was reading. And I said no, no."
"What happened was a terrible thing,? the mother told ITN from Makhachkala, in southern Russia. ?But I know that my kids have nothing to do with this. I know it. I am mother. I know my kids. I know my kids."
And also late Tuesday, the suspects' sisters, Ailina and Bella Tsarnaev, who live in New Jersey, released a short statement through their lawyers, which read: "Our heart goes out the victims of last week?s bombing. It saddens us to see so many innocent people hurt after such a callous act. As a family, we are absolutely devastated by the sense of loss and sorrow this has caused. We don?t have any answers but we look forward to a thorough investigation and hope to learn more."
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This story was originally published on Tue Apr 23, 2013 5:17 PM EDT
For the four of you who are worried about the potential fate of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's "Fast and Furious" character Luke Hobbs, you can now breathe easy. We have some good news for you. The Rock ain't going anywhere. Collider caught up with "Fast and Furious" producer Neal Moritz to talk about all the [...]
UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. (AP) ? NBCUniversal plans to begin construction this summer on a $1.6 billion, 25-year expansion of its Los Angeles-area theme park, offices and production facilities.
The company owned by Comcast Corp. announced Tuesday that it would start building The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at its Universal Studios Hollywood theme park, along with upgraded TV production studios and office space on the studio lot.
The project would eventually include a hotel and retail outlets, adding nearly 2 million square feet to the studio complex. The plan initially called for nearly 3,000 residences, but that was dropped last year after objections from local residents and politicians.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors tentatively approved the plan Tuesday, unanimously directing its lawyers to prepare documents for final approval.
From R2-D2 in "Star Wars" to Furby, robots can generate surprisingly humanlike feelings. Watching a robot being abused or cuddled has a similar effect on people to seeing those things done to a human, new research shows.
Humans are increasingly exposed to robots in their daily lives, but little is known about how these lifelike machines influence human emotions.
Feeling bad for bots
In two new studies, researchers sought to measure how people responded to robots on an emotional and neurological level. In the first study, volunteers were shown videos of a small dinosaur robot being treated affectionately or violently. In the affectionate video, humans hugged and tickled the robot, and in the violent video, they hit or dropped him. [5 Reasons to Fear Robots]
Scientists assessed people's levels of physiological excitation after watching the videos by recording their skin conductance, a measure of how well the skin conducts electricity. When a person is experiencing strong emotions, they sweat more, increasing skin conductance.??
The volunteers reported feeling more negative emotions while watching the robot being abused. Meanwhile, the volunteers' skin conductance levels increased, showing they were more distressed.
In the second study, researchers use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to visualize brain activity in the participants as they watched videos of humans and robots interacting. Again, participants were shown videos of a human, a robot, and, this time, an inanimate object being treated with affection or abuse.
In one video, for example, a man appears to beat up a woman, strangle her with a string and attempt to suffocate her with a plastic bag. In another, a person does the same things to the robot dinosaur.
Affectionate treatment of the robot and the human led to similar patterns of neural activity in regions in the brain's limbic system, where emotions are processed, fMRI scans showed. But the watchers' brains lit up more while seeing abusive treatment of the human than abuse of the robot, suggesting greater empathy for the human.
"We think that, in general, the robot stimuli elicit the same emotional processing as the human stimuli," said lead study author Astrid Rosenthal-von der P?tten of the University of Duisburg Essen, in Germany. Rosenthal-von der P?tten suspects that people still have greater empathy for humans than robots, as evidenced by the stronger effect of watching violence toward the human than the robot.
Still, the study only assessed people's immediate reactions to the emotional cues, Rosenthal-von der P?tten said. "We don't know what happens after the short term," she said.
Human-robot interactions
That humans would show empathy for the robot is not surprising, because the bot looked and behaved like an animal, roboticist Alexander Reben, founder of the company BlabDroid, LLC and a research affiliate at MIT, told LiveScience. Reben, who was not involved in the recent study, himself builds small cardboard robots that tap into the human affinity for cute creatures.
Some people find the idea of humans empathizing with robots concerning. But Reben compared trends in robot development with breeding dogs for companionship. "We have been doing this for millennia," he said. "I think we're doing the same thing with robots."
Humans have been known to show empathy for robots in a variety of contexts. For instance, soldiers form bonds with robots on the battlefield. Other research suggests that humans feel more empathy for robots the more realistic they seem, but not if they're too humanlike.
As robots become more and more ubiquitous, understanding human-robot interactions will take on increasing importance, Rosenthal-von der P?tten said.
The new research will be presented in June at the International Communication Association Conference in London.
Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter and Google+.?Follow us @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on?LiveScience.com.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
SEOUL/GENEVA (Reuters) - North Korea insisted on Tuesday that it be recognized as a nuclear weapons state, a demand the United States promptly dismissed as "neither realistic nor acceptable".
After weeks of tension on the Korean peninsula, including North Korean threats of nuclear war, the North has in recent days begun to at least talk about dialogue in response to calls for talks from both the United States and South Korea.
The North's Rodong Sinmun newspaper rejected as unacceptable the U.S. and South Korean condition that it agree to dismantle its nuclear weapons and suspend missile launches before talks can begin.
"If the DPRK sits at a table with the U.S., it has to be a dialogue between nuclear weapons states, not one side forcing the other to dismantle nuclear weapons," the newspaper said, referring to the North by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The United States swiftly rejected Pyongyang's claim of nuclear status, while NATO foreign ministers condemned its pursuit of ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs and called for "credible" talks to be held on denuclearization.
"North Korea's demand to be recognized as a nuclear weapons state is neither realistic nor acceptable," Thomas Countryman, U.S. Assistant Secretary for International Security and Non-Proliferation, told Reuters in Geneva.
Countryman, who is heading the U.S. delegation to two-week talks on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), told reporters on Monday: "It is important that the world respond calmly but deliberately without changing our emphasis that the goal of the world to which North Korea is committed is a denuclearized Korean peninsula.
"And the more states that make that clear, the greater the chance we have of arriving at exactly that goal," he said.
A White House spokesman said this month North Korea would need to show it was serious about abandoning its nuclear ambitions for talks to be meaningful.
In Brussels, NATO foreign ministers issued a statement saying that North Korea's "provocative actions" violated U.N. Security Council resolutions, undermined regional stability and jeopardized prospects for lasting peace.
"We urge the DPRK to refrain from further provocative acts," the NATO ministers said, calling for North Korea to comply with Security Council resolutions and return to the NPT from which the reclusive country announced its withdrawal in 2003.
Pyongyang should abandon all nuclear weapons and nuclear and ballistic missile programs in a "complete, verifiable and irreversible manner" and engage in credible talks on denuclearization, they said.
North Korea signed a denuclearization-for-aid deal in 2005 but later backed out of that pact. It now says its nuclear arms are a "treasured sword" that it will never give up.
It conducted its third nuclear test in February.
That triggered new U.N. sanctions which in turn led to a dramatic intensification of North Korea's threats of nuclear strikes against South Korea and the United States.
But in a sign the hostility was easing, North Korea last Thursday offered the United States and South Korea a list of conditions for talks, including the lifting of U.N. sanctions.
The United States responded by saying it awaited "clear signals" that North Korea would halt its nuclear weapons activities.
North Korea has a long record of making threats to secure concessions from the United States and South Korea, only to repeat the process later. Both the United States and the South have said in recent days that the cycle must cease.
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization said in Vienna on Tuesday that it had unexpectedly detected radioactive gases that could have come from North Korea's nuclear weapons test in February, possibly providing the first "smoking gun" evidence of the explosion.
(Additional reporting by Adrian Croft in Brussels; Editing by Nick Macfie)
Geochemical method finds links between terrestrial climate and atmospheric carbon dioxidePublic release date: 22-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Christine Buckley christine.buckley@uconn.edu 860-486-0680 University of Connecticut
New test results provide further evidence that the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide and Earth's surface temperature are inextricably linked
Nearly thirty-four million years ago, the Earth underwent a transformation from a warm and high-carbon dioxide "greenhouse" state to a lower-CO2, variable climate of the modern "icehouse" world. Massive ice sheets grew across the Antarctic continent, major animal groups shifted, and ocean temperatures decreased by up to 5 degrees.
But studies of how this drastic change affected temperatures on land have had mixed results. Some show no appreciable terrestrial climate change; others find cooling of up to 8 degrees and large changes in seasonality.
Now, a group of American and British scientists have used a new chemical technique to measure the change in terrestrial temperature associated with this shift in global atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
Their results suggest a drop of as much as 10 degrees for fresh water during the warm season and 6 degrees for the atmosphere in the North Atlantic, giving further evidence that the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide and Earth's surface temperature are inextricably linked.
"One of the key principles of geology is that the past is the key to the present: records of past climate inform us of how the Earth system functions," says Michael Hren, Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Geosciences at the University of Connecticut and the study's lead author. "By understanding past climate transitions, we can better understand the present and predict impacts for the future."
The transition between the Late Eocene and the Oligocene epochs (between 34-33.5 million years ago) was triggered in part, the authors write in their April 22 paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, by changes in the concentration of atmospheric CO2 that enabled ice to build up on the Antarctic continent.
Ice-sheet growth, coupled with favorable changes in the Earth's orbit, pushed the planet past a climatic tipping point and led to both the rapid buildup of a permanent ice sheet in the Antarctic and much larger changes in global climate, says Hren.
But much of what is known about this time period's climate comes from cores drilled deep in the ocean, Hren says. There, organic and inorganic remains of ancient marine creatures retain chemical signatures of ocean temperatures when they were alive.
Now, Hren and his colleagues have used a recently developed "clumped isotope thermometer" to examine terrestrial fossil shells from this time period. The team collected fossilized snails from the Isle of Wight, Great Britain, and looked for not just the kind and number of carbon and oxygen isotopes present, but how they were bound together.
The abundance of bonds containing heavy isotopes of both oxygen and carbon are temperature-dependent, so they can give a reliable picture of the terrestrial climate.
"The unique thing here is that we're using isotopologues to measure the temperature that these snails experienced, and relating that to the climate during this interval of declining CO2," Hren says.
What makes their results so important, says Hren, is that it's further evidence that CO2 is linked not only to climate by way of the vast oceans and their temperature, but by terrestrial temperatures, too.
"It gives further evidence of the close links between atmospheric CO2 and temperature, but also shows how heterogeneous this climate change may be on land," he adds.
Studies have shown that before this drastic cooling event, Earth's atmosphere contained 1000 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 or more, and by the end of the transition, it was likely lower than 600-700 ppm. Some predictions, notes Hren, suggest that Earth's current CO2 concentrations, currently at close to 400 ppm and climbing, could increase to nearly 1000 ppm in the next 100 years.
If that turns out to be the case, it's likely that temperature changes on the scale of the Eocene to Oligocene could occur but in the other direction, toward a much warmer climate that could again fundamentally alter the living things on Earth.
"We are on a path to fundamentally alter our global climate state," says Hren. "These data definitely give you pause."
###
The other members of the research group are: Nathan Dale Sheldon and Kyger C. Lohmann of the University of Michigan; Stephen T. Grimes and Melanie Bugler of Plymouth University; Margaret E. Collinson of Royal Holloway University and Jerry J. Hooker of the Natural History Museum.
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Geochemical method finds links between terrestrial climate and atmospheric carbon dioxidePublic release date: 22-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Christine Buckley christine.buckley@uconn.edu 860-486-0680 University of Connecticut
New test results provide further evidence that the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide and Earth's surface temperature are inextricably linked
Nearly thirty-four million years ago, the Earth underwent a transformation from a warm and high-carbon dioxide "greenhouse" state to a lower-CO2, variable climate of the modern "icehouse" world. Massive ice sheets grew across the Antarctic continent, major animal groups shifted, and ocean temperatures decreased by up to 5 degrees.
But studies of how this drastic change affected temperatures on land have had mixed results. Some show no appreciable terrestrial climate change; others find cooling of up to 8 degrees and large changes in seasonality.
Now, a group of American and British scientists have used a new chemical technique to measure the change in terrestrial temperature associated with this shift in global atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
Their results suggest a drop of as much as 10 degrees for fresh water during the warm season and 6 degrees for the atmosphere in the North Atlantic, giving further evidence that the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide and Earth's surface temperature are inextricably linked.
"One of the key principles of geology is that the past is the key to the present: records of past climate inform us of how the Earth system functions," says Michael Hren, Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Geosciences at the University of Connecticut and the study's lead author. "By understanding past climate transitions, we can better understand the present and predict impacts for the future."
The transition between the Late Eocene and the Oligocene epochs (between 34-33.5 million years ago) was triggered in part, the authors write in their April 22 paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, by changes in the concentration of atmospheric CO2 that enabled ice to build up on the Antarctic continent.
Ice-sheet growth, coupled with favorable changes in the Earth's orbit, pushed the planet past a climatic tipping point and led to both the rapid buildup of a permanent ice sheet in the Antarctic and much larger changes in global climate, says Hren.
But much of what is known about this time period's climate comes from cores drilled deep in the ocean, Hren says. There, organic and inorganic remains of ancient marine creatures retain chemical signatures of ocean temperatures when they were alive.
Now, Hren and his colleagues have used a recently developed "clumped isotope thermometer" to examine terrestrial fossil shells from this time period. The team collected fossilized snails from the Isle of Wight, Great Britain, and looked for not just the kind and number of carbon and oxygen isotopes present, but how they were bound together.
The abundance of bonds containing heavy isotopes of both oxygen and carbon are temperature-dependent, so they can give a reliable picture of the terrestrial climate.
"The unique thing here is that we're using isotopologues to measure the temperature that these snails experienced, and relating that to the climate during this interval of declining CO2," Hren says.
What makes their results so important, says Hren, is that it's further evidence that CO2 is linked not only to climate by way of the vast oceans and their temperature, but by terrestrial temperatures, too.
"It gives further evidence of the close links between atmospheric CO2 and temperature, but also shows how heterogeneous this climate change may be on land," he adds.
Studies have shown that before this drastic cooling event, Earth's atmosphere contained 1000 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 or more, and by the end of the transition, it was likely lower than 600-700 ppm. Some predictions, notes Hren, suggest that Earth's current CO2 concentrations, currently at close to 400 ppm and climbing, could increase to nearly 1000 ppm in the next 100 years.
If that turns out to be the case, it's likely that temperature changes on the scale of the Eocene to Oligocene could occur but in the other direction, toward a much warmer climate that could again fundamentally alter the living things on Earth.
"We are on a path to fundamentally alter our global climate state," says Hren. "These data definitely give you pause."
###
The other members of the research group are: Nathan Dale Sheldon and Kyger C. Lohmann of the University of Michigan; Stephen T. Grimes and Melanie Bugler of Plymouth University; Margaret E. Collinson of Royal Holloway University and Jerry J. Hooker of the Natural History Museum.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
While everyone else speculates about new Nexii and what sweet treat the next version of Android will be named after, we're anticipating some exciting news about Now at Google I/O. Specifically, that it might be coming to both iOS and the desktop. We've already seen quite a bit of evidence that the virtual assistant app will eventually land on Apple's mobile platform and maybe even Chrome. Newly discovered code in a Google page hints that it might just become part of the standard web search interface -- provided you opt to turn it on, of course. Source code for the page in testing encourages you to, "get started with Google Now," because it provides, "just the right information at just the right time." It also offers you the opportunity to change you home and work locations because, as the explanation goes, "Google Now uses your Home location to show relevant information like weather, traffic conditions, and nearby places." As you dig through you'll also find plenty of references to "now_card."
If Now becomes a standard part of the Mountain View lineup, regardless of platform, it could be huge for a company which already dominates the search market. Not to mention, it might satiate those seven people out there still mourning the loss of iGoogle. We won't know anything for sure until the wraps are taken off and have reached out to the company for comment, but we anticipate the response will be predictably non-committal.
It seems kind of ridiculous to integrate an iDevice into crayon and paper drawing time. Some things are sacred. But for kids who are addicted to all of the screens in their lives DRAWNIMAL might be a useful transition. More »
Q. Can I consider safety when deciding whether to hire a disabled applicant or retain an employee with a disability?
A. An employer may require that an individual not pose a ?direct threat? to the health or safety of herself or others. The ADA regulations define direct threat as a ?significant risk of substantial harm to the health or safety of the individual or others that cannot be eliminated or reduced by reasonable accommodation.? ?
The individual must pose a significant risk, not just a slightly higher risk, based on objective evidence of the following factors:
Duration of the risk
Nature and severity of the potential harm
Likelihood that the potential harm will occur
Imminence of the potential harm.
If an individual poses a direct threat as a result of a disability, determine whether a reasonable accommodation would either eliminate the risk or reduce it to an acceptable level. If no accommodation would either eliminate or reduce the risk, you may refuse to hire an applicant or discharge an employee who poses a direct threat.
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Cable channel Showtime on Wednesday pulled the plug on "Dexter," the critically acclaimed show about a police analyst who is also a serial killer.
Starring Michael C. Hall in the title role, the show that pushed boundaries in terms of violence and dark humor will conclude this summer at the end of its eighth season.
"When it debuted in 2006, 'Dexter' redefined the genre, by taking the anti-hero to new heights ... its cultural impact will be felt for years to come," Showtime Chairman and CEO Matthew C. Blank said in a statement.
"Dexter" earned Hall a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild award. The show has more than 13 million fans on Facebook and about 7 million Americans watched last season's finale. The series is also broadcast in parts of Europe and Asia.
Hall, who is also an executive producer, told Entertainment Weekly that his character was ready for a final chapter after Dexter's secret life of killing - which he justified on ethical grounds - was discovered by his police officer sister Debra at the end of the sixth season.
"I've been an advocate for having a dialogue with the writers and getting a sense of how to best bring this story home ? not wrap everything up with a tidy bow, but find some sort of conclusion," Hall told Entertainment Weekly earlier this month.
"There has to be an end game. Once Deb found out, it felt like we were moving toward a place where the world as Dexter knew it would end," he added.
The final season of "Dexter" will begin on June 30. Showtime is a unit of CBS Corp.
(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Stacey Joyce)
Apr. 19, 2013 ? University of Chicago researchers have created a synthetic compound that mimics the complex quantum dynamics observed in photosynthesis and may enable fundamentally new routes to creating solar-energy technologies. Engineering quantum effects into synthetic light-harvesting devices is not only possible, but also easier than anyone expected, the researchers report in the April 19 edition of Science.
The researchers have engineered small molecules that support long-lived quantum coherences. Coherences are the macroscopically observable behavior of quantum superpositions. Superpositions are a fundamental quantum mechanical concept, exemplified by the classic Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment, in which a single quantum particle such as an electron occupies more than one state simultaneously.
Quantum effects are generally negligible in large, hot, disordered systems. Nevertheless, the recent ultrafast spectroscopy experiments in UChicago chemistry Prof. Greg Engel's laboratory have shown that quantum superpositions may play a role in the near perfect quantum efficiency of photosynthetic light harvesting, even at physiological temperatures.
Photosynthetic antennae -- the proteins that organize chlorophylls and other light-absorbing molecules in plants and bacteria -- support superpositions that survive for anomalously long times. Many researchers have proposed that organisms have evolved a means of protecting these superpositions. The result: improved efficiency in transferring energy from absorbed sunlight to the parts of the cell that convert solar energy to chemical energy. The newly reported results demonstrate that his particular manifestation of quantum mechanics can be engineered into human-made compounds.
The researchers modified fluorescein -- the same molecule once used to dye the Chicago River green for St. Patrick's Day -- and then linked different pairs of these dyes together using a rigid bridging structure. The resulting molecules were able to recreate the important properties of chlorophyll molecules in photosynthetic systems that cause coherences to persist for tens of femtoseconds at room temperature.
"That may not sound like a very long time -- a femtosecond is a millionth of a billionth of a second," said study co-author Dugan Hayes, a UChicago graduate student in chemistry. "But the movement of excitations through these systems also occurs on this ultrafast timescale, meaning that these quantum superpositions can play an important role in energy transfer."
To detect evidence of long-lived superpositions, the researchers created a movie of energy flow in the molecules using highly engineered laboratories and state-of-the-art femtosecond laser systems. Three precisely controlled laser pulses are directed into the sample, causing it to emit an optical signal that is captured and directed into a camera.
By scanning the time delays between the arriving laser pulses, the researchers create a movie of energy flow in the system, encoded as a series two-dimensional spectra. Each two-dimensional spectrum is a single frame of the movie, and contains information about where energy resides in the system and what pathways it has followed to get there.
These movies show relaxation from high energy states toward lower energy states as time proceeds, as well as oscillating signals in very specific regions of the signal, or quantum beats. "Quantum beats are the signature of quantum coherence, arising from the interference between the different energetic states in the superposition, similar to the beating heard when two instruments that are slightly out of tune with each other try to play the same note," Hayes explained.
Computer simulations have shown that quantum coherences work in photosynthetic antennae to prevent excitations from getting trapped on their way to the reaction center, where the conversion to chemical energy begins. In one interpretation, as the excitation moves through the antenna, it remains in a superposition of all possible paths at once, making it inevitable that it proceeds down the proper path. "Until these coherences were observed in synthetic systems, it remained dubious that such a complex phenomenon could be recreated outside of nature," Hayes said.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Chicago, via Newswise.
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Journal Reference:
D. Hayes, G. B. Griffin, G. S. Engel. Engineering Coherence Among Excited States in Synthetic Heterodimer Systems. Science, 2013; DOI: 10.1126/science.1233828
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Public release date: 22-Apr-2013
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