Rays center fielder Desmond Jennings turned the rare 8-unassisted double play in the top of the third inning during today?s game against the Athletics. After Eric Sogard singled with one out, starter Jeremy Hellickson got Coco Crisp to fly out to center. Sogard misread Jennings? ability to catch the ball, so he rounded second hard instead of retreating to first base. Jennings caught the ball on the run, and lightly jogged towards first base to get the second out to end the inning.
ESPN Stats & Info tweeted, via the Elias Sports Bureau, that Jennings? 8-unassisted was the first since Mike Cameron accomplished the feat in 2003.
Areas like Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Miami ? all hit pretty hard by the collapse of the last housing bubble ? are now seeing home prices rise at rates above the national average. But rather than this being an indicator that these areas are finally recovering, some worry that it?s just a lot of hot air being pumped into another bubble by Wall Street investors.
The Washington Post reports on the huge amounts of money that institutional investors are putting into single-family homes in some areas hit the hardest in recent years. They are rushing in to buy properties at what is hoped to be well below market rate, with the goal of reselling for a tidy profit as the economy recovers.
According to some in the Florida real estate business, these investors now buy 7-in-10 homes on the market there, and may account for the majority of home sales in other distressed areas over the last two years.
And so, in spite of the lack of probably the most important thing needed for a recovery ? jobs ? real estate prices in Phoenix have soared 23% in the last year. In Vegas, they are up 15%; 11% in Miami, while the national average is only up 8%. It?s possible that home prices were overly depressed in these cities, and so this is just about playing catch-up, but there are many who see this as false, unsustainable inflation.
?I don?t know whether things are as good as they seem to be,? an owner of a Florida firm that scouts investment properties tells the Post. ?The end-user would need to see a great increase in jobs, availability of mortgage money and a loosening of the reins that have been holding them back. But all the economic indicators are that we are not at that point.?
For people currently in their homes but paying more on a mortgage than the home may be worth, this type of real estate speculation can be a boon, as it likely helps to bring the value of that home back up. Of course, this is only sustainable if actual consumers buy houses at these higher prices. If investors fail to see returns on their purchases, the prices will go down as they rush to get out of the market and recover their investment.
Making bubble worries worse are concerns that investors, who can pay cash for homes, are boxing out consumers who simply want to buy a home but must go through the often lengthy financing process, meaning they can not take advantage of the historically low interest rates.
?The investors are making it hard for a regular homeowner to buy a property,? explains a real estate broker in Fort Lauderdale, who says that 17 of his last 20 sales have been to investors. ?They are getting outbid by people with cash.?
A number of investors are not looking at these properties as things to flip once the price hits a certain level, but as sources of lucrative rental income for years to come.
One firm tells the Post it bought most of its houses in the Ft. Lauderdale area for between $60,000 and $70,000. Meanwhile, it charges rents in the range of $1,700/month, several times what a homeowner would pay each month in mortgage.
Mind mapping is a great way to brainstorm, make a plan, or turn ideas into the steps needed to make it real. Thankfully, there are great tools out there to help you build mind maps, organize them, and save them for later. Here's a look at five of the best, based on your nominations.
Earlier this week, we asked you which mind mapping tools you thought were the best. We tallied up your nominations, and now we're back to highlight the top five.
Mindjet (Windows/Mac/iOS)
Mindjet is more than just mind mapping software?it's a total suite of applications and tools designed to help you and the people you work with brainstorm, stay on top of projects, collaborate on tasks, and stay organized together. It's more like a complete project management and collaboration suite. It has an extremely powerful mindmapping and brainstorming tool however, designed from the ground up to help you organize your projects, assign different arms of your projects to different people, flesh out all of the individual to-dos and jobs required to make the whole project a success, and it works just as well if you're working with a hundred people, a dozen people, or just organizing your own to-dos. Plus, it integrates with web services and tools you already use, like Microsoft Office, Box,net, and more. Anyone familiar with the old tool MindManager will be happy to learn it's been rolled into Mindjet's individual apps. Most of Mindjet's users are companies willing to pay for it though: It's $15/mo per user for the individual plan, and $30/mo per user for the enterprise plan.
XMind (Windows/Mac/Linux)
XMind has been around for a good long time, and it even made the roundup the last time we looked at mind mapping apps. It hasn't lost its power though; it's still extremely flexible, works great on any desktop OS, and makes it easy to organize your ideas and thoughts in a variety of different styles, diagrams, and designs. You can use simple mind maps if you choose, or "fishbone" style flowcharts if you prefer. You can even add images and icons to differentiate parts of a project or specific ideas, add links and multimedia to each item, and more. If you're a project manager, you can even use XMind's built-in Gantt view to manage tasks in a way your colleagues may be familiar with. Best of all, XMind is completely free and open source. If you have some cash to spend, XMind Plus and XMind Pro offer some additional import/export and presentation features, along with some featured targeted at project managers and businesses who want to use XMind on the enterprise level. Plus will set you back $79 one-time, a subscription to Plus and all of its updates is $79/mo, and Pro is $99.
Coggle (Webapp)
Coggle is a completely free, simple to use mind mapping tool that's easy to get started with. Sign in with a Google account of your choice and you're off and away. Double-click on any item to edit it, and click the plus signs on either side to add branches to your mind map. Click and hold to drag them around the canvas to design your mind map any way you like. Coggle will automatically assign different colors to your branches, but clicking on a branch will bring up a color wheel so you can personalize it yourself. When you've finished a map, you can download it as a PDF or PNG, share it with others who can just view it or, if you allow it, edit your mind map. You even get auto-saving and revision history, so if you want to see what your mind map looked like before someone you invited started working with it, you can. Best of all? Coggle is completely and totally free.
Freemind (Windows/Mac/Linux)
Freemind is a free, GNU General Public Licensed mind mapping app built in Java, so it runs on just about anything you throw it at. It was the winner of our last poll, partially because of its flexibility, and because its features and performance are pretty consistent regardless of the operating system you use with it. It's a pretty powerful mind mapping tool too, offering complex diagrams and tons of branches, graphics and icons to differentiate notes and connect them, and the option to embed links and multimedia in your mind maps for quick reference. Freemind can export your map as HTML/XHTML, PDF, OpenDocument, SVG, or PNG. Compared to a lot of the newer tools it may look a little dated, but it's still powerful and useful, especially if it's function you're looking for, not form.
MindNode (Mac/iOS)
MindNode is an elegant mind mapping and brainstorming app for OS X and iOS. The iOS version is designed to work well on touch devices, specifically the iPad, and makes it easy to drag branches around, add new nodes, connect nodes, share documents with others, and more. The Mac app is similar, and supports sharing your mind map with others and exporting as PDF and as a Freemind project. MindNode can automatically hide branches that have nothing to do with the items you're working on, embed images and screenshots onto nodes, create links on nodes, and even automatically organize your branches for you if they get messy. It can also support linked mind maps. The UI is relatively clean and hides a lot of its features in order to keep things clean, but that doesn't mean it's not powerful. Many of you who nominated it pointed out it's one of the first mind mapping apps you've seen that really does things right on a tablet. MindNode is $20 for the Mac app, and $10 for the iPhone/iPad app.
Now that you've seen the top five, it's time to put them to an all out vote to determine the community favorite.
Honorable mentions this week go out to Scapple and MindMeister, both of which just missed the top five by one or two votes each. Those of you who nominated them praised them for their ease of use. We recently praised Scapple for bringing dead simple mind mapping to the Mac, and we've loved for MindMeister for years. It made the top five the last time we asked you, so it's still a great tool. Also, props go out to Pen and Paper (or whiteboards, if you prefer), which many of you said were your brainstorming tool of choice.
Still, the nominations were so close this time, we're willing to bet you have a favorite that may have been left out! If so, let's hear what it is and why you love it in the discussions below. Include a screenshot or a photo of the app in use if you can, just so we can see what's so great about it!
Have something to say about one of the contenders? Want to make the case for your personal favorite, even if it wasn't included in the list? Remember, the top five are based on your most popular nominations from the call for contenders thread from earlier in the week. Don't just complain about the top five, let us know what your preferred alternative is?and make your case for it?in the discussions below.
The Hive Five is based on reader nominations. As with most Hive Five posts, if your favorite was left out, it's not because we hate it?it's because it didn't get the nominations required in the call for contenders post to make the top five. We understand it's a bit of a popularity contest, but if you have a favorite, we want to hear about it. Have a suggestion for the Hive Five? Send us an email at tips+hivefive@lifehacker.com!
In Slate?s Doctor Who TV Club, Mac Rogers discusses the Doctor?s travels via IM every week with the show?s bloggers and fans. This week he?s chatting about "Hide" with Phil Sandifer, who writes TARDIS Eruditorum.
Mac: So in ?Hide,? the Doctor and Clara arrive in 1974 at Caliburn House, a country manor that's been the site of hauntings?even before it was built?by the ?Caliburn ghast,? a spectral woman who always appears in the same beseeching position. There are already two investigators on site, a psychic named Emma Grayling (Jessica Raine), and Professor Alec Palmer (Dougray Scott), a former "spook" and war hero turned ghost-hunter. Was it odd or out of character that the normally nonviolent Doctor seemed so effusive about Palmer's war heroism?
Phil: Although, what is the Doctor if not a former spook and war hero turned ghost-hunter?
Mac: Emma?s the one with the psychic powers, for sure, but Alec?s the one with all the substance, all the history. During the split-scene in which the Doctor talks to Alec and Clara talks to Emma, it's a Bechdel nightmare: The Doctor and Alec talk about regret and moral reckoning and redemption ? while Clara and Emma essentially talk about boys.
Phil: Yeah. That was not the episode's finest moment.
Mac: I did love the Smith/Scott half, though. Smith portrayed the Doctor as riveted by this opportunity to listen to a man assessing his life in this way. It?s rare that we see the Doctor interact with someone he's not educating or bantering with. Alec makes an interesting contrast to Kahler Jex from "A Town Called Mercy"?he may be deciding how his debt is paid, but at least he's not hiding his debt. But I?m forgetting the ongoing Clara mystery arc!
Phil: I'm not entirely sure about Clara in general, actually. I mean, I love Jenna Louise-Coleman, but I feel like the mystery of her character is kind of eating the actual character.
Mac: Is Moffat overdetermining the companion?s character arcs, do you think? In Season 5, I felt like we got both the mystery of Amy and the character of Amy.
Phil: But notably, the character came first. ?The Eleventh Hour? is all about selling us the character of Amy, and then you get the barest hint of the mystery of Amy at the end. Here we got the mystery of Clara first, then the character. I'm not convinced it's a problem. Is Generic Companion really so bad? Unless you really think that we still need the companion as our way in to Doctor Who?and most of the way through Series 7 of an enormously popular television show I think it's a pretty tough sell that you do?I'm not sure a Generic Companion who serves as an interesting mystery isn't perfectly fine.
Mac: So we reaffirm, through Emma?s psychic powers, that Clara is an ordinary human. We have that now from both firsthand time travel observation and from psychic perception. Why give us the same non-clue a second time?
Phil: I assumed Grayling was initially hiding something from the Doctor. That her "Isn't that enough?" was "There's more, but you don't want to know it," and that there was a revelation that the Doctor now knows that we don't.
Mac: Ooohhh. I didn't pick up on that.
Phil: I assume it's going to tie back to River, since, well, that's just basic Aristotle. One thing that's interesting about Moffat's mysteries is that he tends to be really ambivalent on the question of when the Doctor figures it out. It's still not at all clear when the switch between RealAmy and FleshAmy in Season 6 happened, for instance. Which makes it very strange to play along at home, because the mystery cheats. But on the other hand, Moffat plays with a sort of scrupulous fairness: Part of why it's so ambiguous when the Amy swap happens is that if you rewatch ?The Impossible Astronaut,? it seems like the Doctor knows what's up when he asks Amy if someone is "making her say this" when she tells him he has to go to 1969. So I think there's an extent to which the mystery is designed to be speculation-proof. Clara is likely a mystery that is based around things that we can't quite tell are clues yet.
Mac: There's no doubt the pace of Doctor Who has picked up noticeably in the Moffat era, which is very much in evidence in "Hide." I like that this lets the show cover more ground, but other times I feel like we're losing chances to just hang out with the characters, get to know them a bit more.
Phil: The speed at which the premise gets set up is just breathtaking. You get a minute or two of generic ghost hunters story, drop the Doctor in, and you're off to the races. I kind of like the accelerated pace, in part because it just feels very fresh and interesting in the face of the American cable tendency toward slowness. Doctor Who is very actively going in the opposite direction?hyper-compressed storytelling.
Mac: There's almost a sense of writer Neil Cross and director Jamie Payne hurrying us through the obligatory haunted house exploration bits so they can get to the sci-fi explanation.
Phil: Well, if only because the sci-fi explanation lets you get to those gorgeous wooded sections. Which, wow. And that's quite clever too?switching from haunted house to Hound of the Baskervilles midway, which doesn't change the tone of the story but just makes the whole thing feel even bigger and more of a roller coaster. Plus, again, just stunning visuals.
Mac: No doubt, those scenes looked amazing! Moffat's definitely overseen a quantum leap in the show's visual texture.
Phil: And I love the very late reveal of the monster. I mean, the confidence the series has in its visuals these days is just mind-blowing to anyone who watched the classic series. It goes an entire episode acting like they didn't have the budget for a proper monster and were just going to get by with some CGI wooshes, and then they reveal an absolutely gorgeous design just for that moment of the Doctor being in "I'm reuniting lovers!" mode and then coming face to face with this thing.
Mac: I loved how it moved, how utterly inhuman (and non?Deep Space Nine-y) it was!
Phil: One thing I loved about ?Hide? was that it didn't quite have an ending. It feels like it wraps up at about 35-40 minutes, then suddenly acquires a whole new plot thread when the monsters are lovers, then leaves that off before quite resolving it.
Mac: Itties in to what you've been writing about how television has learned to let us fill in the gaps. We don't see the Doctor, Clara, and Emma save the creature at the end, but we've seen them pull it off once before so we don't need to see the whole process a second time?we ?auto-fill? in our minds.
The accelerated pace also made room for that quieter moment between the Doctor and Clara at the midpoint. After watching the Doctor pilot the TARDIS through ?the entire life cycle of Earth?s history,? Clara says, ?We?re all ghosts to you. We must be nothing. What can we possibly be?? The Doctor?s response is gonna have some Doctor Who fans baffled and some others angry: "You are the only mystery worth solving." That's one hell of a thing to have the Doctor?an intergalactic time traveler?say, right? We might think he just means Clara, but that's not what she asked him. She asked, "What can we possibly be?" meaning, as I take it, humans. But isn't that belied by the episode ending with him solving a mystery involving very non-humans?
Phil: I think the Doctor is clearly answering a slightly different question than Clara asked there. But I also think it's true for the Doctor?it's why despite being an intergalactic time traveler and quasi-god, he really loves late-20th/early-21st-century Britain more than anything else in the universe. This "humanity" thing keeps drawing him back in.
Mac: It seems this quasi-god has a real fascination for how much mayfly-like mortals can pack into their short lives.
Phil: One does get the sense that the Doctor does just like "people." Whatever their species. And that he's not all that invested in the differences. It fits with my overall view of Moffat's work, which is that it's about clever but fundamentally aloof people learning to exist in society with friends and family. And it?s the fundamental difference between Moffat and Russell T. Davies. Davies wrote the Doctor as a humanity fan: "I think you look like giants." Moffat writes him as someone constantly grappling with a desire for humanity.
Mac: Great example: When Clara's upset in the TARDIS, it clearly wigs the Doctor out. He doesn't know how to just step back and let the other person speak. He keeps prodding her: "Some help? Context? Cheat sheet? Something?" That?s some grappling with a desire for humanity right there.
Phil: And in that regard, Moffat's hyper-compressed storytelling fits what he's doing. If Doctor Who is going to be about a very strange man trying to understand us, its structure needs to be a bit strange and off-putting. But it's a new approach to television, and it's no surprise that Doctor Who sometimes flubs it. When it doesn't work you get "Power of Three," where this auto-fill tactic results in a very clumsy ending. When it does you get "Hide." That's the price of experimenting.
Mac: Was Clara?s line, "When are we going?" a tip of the hat to Inspector Spacetime?
Phil: It wouldn't surprise me. I still can't figure out how nobody made Matt Smith pronounce Metebelis Three correctly. (And also, how on Earth was the Doctor stupid enough to go back and get another crystal?)
Mac: Yeah, don't they have a classic series consultant on set at all times? And if not, where can one apply for that position?
Scientists decode genome of painted turtle, revealing clues to extraordinary adaptationsPublic release date: 10-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Alison Hewitt ahewitt@support.ucla.edu 310-206-5461 University of California - Los Angeles
Humans could learn a thing or two from turtles, and scientists who have just sequenced the first turtle genome uncovered clues about how people can benefit from the shelled creatures' remarkable longevity and ability to survive for months without breathing.
Understanding the natural mechanisms turtles use to protect their heart and brain from oxygen deprivation may one day improve treatments for heart attack and stroke, the researchers said.
UCLA conservation biologist and lead author Brad Shaffer collaborated with the Genome Institute at Washington University in St. Louis and 58 co-authors on the multi-year research project. Their paper, which appears in the journal Genome Biology, describes the genome of the western painted turtle, one of the most widespread and well-studied turtles in the world.
Researchers were somewhat surprised to find that the painted turtle's extraordinary adaptations were not the result of previously unknown genes but of gene networks that are common in vertebrates including humans, said Shaffer, a professor at UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability (IoES) and UCLA's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
"They're the same genes we have, and the turtles are just using them in different ways and really cranking up their activity in most cases," said Shaffer, who also directs the La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science at the IoES.
"Given how extreme their adaptations are, I imagined we would see weird new genes, so I was surprised," he added. "But the fact that they're common means they may have direct relevance to human health conditions, especially those related to oxygen deprivation, hypothermia and possibly longevity."
Inside the turtle genome, the researchers found 19 genes in the brain and 23 in the heart that became more active in low-oxygen conditions, including one that became 130 times more active. These genes, all of which are present in humans, may be important candidates for exploring oxygen-deprivation treatment in humans, the researchers noted.
Many of the extreme adaptations the researchers studied, such as the ability to survive months of anoxia total oxygen depletion are primarily seen in painted turtles, and the western painted turtle is the most anoxia-tolerant terrestrial vertebrate known. At low temperatures, such as in the ice-covered ponds where they hibernate, painted turtles can survive for four months underwater without coming up for air. Turtles are also famous for their extreme longevity, with some species even continuing to reproduce into their second century of life.
But when the research team examined genes that may be responsible for turtles' longevity, instead of finding super-active genes like the ones protecting them from oxygen deprivation, the scientists found indications that turtles' long life spans may come from silencing "life-shortening" genes.
"We looked at two genes that are either absent or severely down-regulated in other animals that live a long time," Shaffer said. "We found turtles have only non-functioning vestiges of these genes, if they have them at all. Both of these genes are present and active in humans, so they're an appealing candidate to learn about human longevity."
Analysis of the turtle genome confirmed that the shelled creatures are more closely related to birds and crocodilians than any other vertebrates. The researchers also discovered that turtles have an extraordinarily slow rate of genomic evolution and that the turtle genome evolves at about a third the rate of the human genome.
One aspect of turtle evolution that is progressing rapidly, however, is the threat of extinction. More than half of the 330 turtle species worldwide are considered threatened, making them the most endangered major group of vertebrates. Their demise is largely due to humans, partly the result of human-caused habitat loss and modification. But it is their popularity on restaurant menus and dinner tables, particularly in Asia, that is the biggest reason for the global decline, Shaffer said.
"The challenge is to preserve the rich diversity of living turtles that still exist as we continue to unravel their secrets for success," Shaffer said. "Turtles have a tremendous amount to tell us about evolution and human health, but their time is running out unless we act to protect them."
###
The research was funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health, a National Science Foundation grant to Shaffer and other funding. The paper, "The western painted turtle genome, a model for the evolution of extreme physiological adaptations in a slowly evolving lineage," was published in Genome Biology on March 28.
For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.
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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.
Scientists decode genome of painted turtle, revealing clues to extraordinary adaptationsPublic release date: 10-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Alison Hewitt ahewitt@support.ucla.edu 310-206-5461 University of California - Los Angeles
Humans could learn a thing or two from turtles, and scientists who have just sequenced the first turtle genome uncovered clues about how people can benefit from the shelled creatures' remarkable longevity and ability to survive for months without breathing.
Understanding the natural mechanisms turtles use to protect their heart and brain from oxygen deprivation may one day improve treatments for heart attack and stroke, the researchers said.
UCLA conservation biologist and lead author Brad Shaffer collaborated with the Genome Institute at Washington University in St. Louis and 58 co-authors on the multi-year research project. Their paper, which appears in the journal Genome Biology, describes the genome of the western painted turtle, one of the most widespread and well-studied turtles in the world.
Researchers were somewhat surprised to find that the painted turtle's extraordinary adaptations were not the result of previously unknown genes but of gene networks that are common in vertebrates including humans, said Shaffer, a professor at UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability (IoES) and UCLA's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
"They're the same genes we have, and the turtles are just using them in different ways and really cranking up their activity in most cases," said Shaffer, who also directs the La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science at the IoES.
"Given how extreme their adaptations are, I imagined we would see weird new genes, so I was surprised," he added. "But the fact that they're common means they may have direct relevance to human health conditions, especially those related to oxygen deprivation, hypothermia and possibly longevity."
Inside the turtle genome, the researchers found 19 genes in the brain and 23 in the heart that became more active in low-oxygen conditions, including one that became 130 times more active. These genes, all of which are present in humans, may be important candidates for exploring oxygen-deprivation treatment in humans, the researchers noted.
Many of the extreme adaptations the researchers studied, such as the ability to survive months of anoxia total oxygen depletion are primarily seen in painted turtles, and the western painted turtle is the most anoxia-tolerant terrestrial vertebrate known. At low temperatures, such as in the ice-covered ponds where they hibernate, painted turtles can survive for four months underwater without coming up for air. Turtles are also famous for their extreme longevity, with some species even continuing to reproduce into their second century of life.
But when the research team examined genes that may be responsible for turtles' longevity, instead of finding super-active genes like the ones protecting them from oxygen deprivation, the scientists found indications that turtles' long life spans may come from silencing "life-shortening" genes.
"We looked at two genes that are either absent or severely down-regulated in other animals that live a long time," Shaffer said. "We found turtles have only non-functioning vestiges of these genes, if they have them at all. Both of these genes are present and active in humans, so they're an appealing candidate to learn about human longevity."
Analysis of the turtle genome confirmed that the shelled creatures are more closely related to birds and crocodilians than any other vertebrates. The researchers also discovered that turtles have an extraordinarily slow rate of genomic evolution and that the turtle genome evolves at about a third the rate of the human genome.
One aspect of turtle evolution that is progressing rapidly, however, is the threat of extinction. More than half of the 330 turtle species worldwide are considered threatened, making them the most endangered major group of vertebrates. Their demise is largely due to humans, partly the result of human-caused habitat loss and modification. But it is their popularity on restaurant menus and dinner tables, particularly in Asia, that is the biggest reason for the global decline, Shaffer said.
"The challenge is to preserve the rich diversity of living turtles that still exist as we continue to unravel their secrets for success," Shaffer said. "Turtles have a tremendous amount to tell us about evolution and human health, but their time is running out unless we act to protect them."
###
The research was funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health, a National Science Foundation grant to Shaffer and other funding. The paper, "The western painted turtle genome, a model for the evolution of extreme physiological adaptations in a slowly evolving lineage," was published in Genome Biology on March 28.
For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.
[ | 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.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Secretary of State John Kerry headed to the Middle East on Saturday, his third trip to the region in two weeks, in a fresh bid to unlock long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Istanbul was the first leg of a six-nation trip that will see him travel on to Europe and Asia.
From Turkey, he planned to go to Jerusalem for meetings with the presidents and prime ministers of both Israel and the Palestinians. Kerry accompanied President Barack Obama there last month and made a solo trip to Israel shortly after.
Though expectations are low for any breakthrough on Kerry's trip, his diplomacy represents some of the Obama administration's most sustained efforts for ending more than six decades of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
Kerry probably will seek confidence-building measures between the two sides. Negotiators and observers see little chance right now for immediate progress on the big stumbling blocks toward a two-state peace agreement.
He may have more success on his first stop persuading Turkish leaders to continue improving ties with Israel. The two countries were once allies, but relations spiraled downward after Israel's 2010 raid on a Turkish flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip. Eight Turks and one Turkish-American died.
Hopes for rapprochement improved after Obama brokered a telephone conversation between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, while Obama was in Israel.
In Turkey, Kerry also will coordinate with Erdogan and other Turkish officials on efforts to halt the violence in neighboring Syria.
Kerry will also visit Britain and then South Korea, China and Japan, where talks will focus on North Korea's nuclear program and escalating threats against the U.S. and its allies.
He is scheduled to return to Washington on April 15.
Paleo lifestyle trends are popular at the moment?but they are rooted in evolutionary myths, says evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk of the University of California?Riverside. Her new book is Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us About Sex, Diet, and How We Live.
Your book is about pseudoscientific ideas you call "paleofantasies." What are they? They stem from the idea that evolution makes minuscule changes over millions of years, so we haven't had enough time to adapt to the modern industrial world?and that we would be healthier and happier if we lived more like our ancient ancestors.
Is there any truth to the idea that we haven't evolved fast enough to cope with modern life? To some extent it is true. Our bodies are ill-suited for sitting at computers all day, for example. Because humans evolved in an environment where they were not crouched over computers, sitting that way all day is going to have ill effects. But it's more nuanced than that. Being bipedal has a lot of costs on the human skeleton, too. Should we all long to be quadrupeds? It just doesn't make sense.
What is driving the tendency to idealize the way ancient humans lived? There is this caricature that organisms evolve until they get to a point when they're perfectly adapted to their environment, then heave this big sigh of relief and stop. Anything that happens to them after that is disastrous.
You see this attitude in what can be referred to as "paleo-nostalgia"?the notion that we were all better off before agriculture, or civilization, or the Industrial Revolution. It's not to say life has been unmitigatedly getting better. But it's more helpful and accurate to see that all organisms are constantly evolving. There has been no point in our past when we were perfectly adapted to our environment.
I'm not dismissing the idea that you need to look at our evolutionary heritage to think about what's best for us healthwise. But when you start plucking out pieces in an oddly specific way, you can run into trouble.
Are paleo diets, which usually involve eating lots of meat and avoiding grains or dairy, examples of this type of specific selection? These are predicated on the idea that there was a certain way humans ate 100,000 or 15,000 years ago?the era people want to hark back to varies. I think everybody agrees that we evolved eating certain things and we're going to be very unhealthy if we subsist on Diet Coke and Cheetos. But it gets more complicated when you look at the details. Should we eat a lot of meat, less meat? Should we eat dairy?
How much do we know about early human diets? We don't really know what they were eating. It's turning out that they may have eaten more starch and carbohydrates than we had realized. They also ate different things in different parts of the world. So it's hard to come up with this one perfect human diet that everybody was eating. Plus our genes have changed in the last 10,000 years. Lactase persistence?the ability to digest milk as adults?is the poster child for this. Our genes have changed extremely rapidly so that at least some populations of humans can digest milk into adulthood.
And just as with lactose, it turns out that in human populations that consume a lot of starch, there are more copies of genes that allow starch breakdown. All of this suggests that evolution is happening all the time and much more quickly than people think.
Wednesday's announcement that Jay Leno would be stepping down from "The Tonight Show" hosting duties on NBC to make room for "Late Night's" Jimmy Fallon in Spring 2014 clearly had the staffs of every late night show scrambling to rewrite their opening monologues -- because everyone had something to say!
First, there was the back-patting; this transition is being done with an air of friendliness that did not necessarily characterize the one that brought Conan O'Brien into "Tonight's" seat for a few months in 2009.
"He is a hell of a guy!" said Leno last night to his audience about Fallon. "He's going to do a great job. I just have one request for Jimmy: We've all fought, kicked and scratched to get this network up to fifth place. Now we have to keep it there! Jimmy, don't let it slip into sixth! We are counting on you."
Over at "Late Night," Fallon acknowledged that his shift was the big news of the day: "Hello! Welcome!" he began. "This is 'Late Night With Jimmy Fallon'?-- for now," he said. "You guys probably heard the news -- I?m going to be taking over 'The Tonight Show'?next February! But don't worry. Until February, our focus is right here on whatever this show is called."
Added Fallon, "I want to thank everyone here at 'Late Night,' the staff, the crew and, of course, The Roots. I have to say thanks to Jay Leno for being so gracious. It means so much to me to have his support. I just want to thank the fans for staying up to 12:35 a.m. and watching us."?
Over on the other networks, former "Late Night" host David Letterman played up the story for laughs on CBS' "Late Show." Letterman was notoriously angered not to have been offered the "Tonight" show gig himself in 1992 when Leno was tapped, and that feud hasn't faded over the last 22 years.?
"I got a call from my mom today," said Letterman, who also devoted his Top 10 list to Leno. "She says, 'Well, David, I see you didn't get 'The Tonight Show' again."
Leno wasn't about to let it go unsaid, either, quipping, "Folks, I got to be honest with you, I had a really awkward day today," he said in the opening. "I had to call David Letterman and tell him he didn't get 'The Tonight Show' again. Awful! Terrible!"
The Hollywood Reporter noted that Letterman also referenced the O'Brien issue, questioning not Fallon but the choice to make another switch: "Didn?t we just go through this?" he said. "Jay Leno now is being replaced, and this is the second time this has happened. I mean, it?s crazy. He?s being replaced by a younger late-night talk show host -- what could possibly go wrong? Honestly. They had pretty good luck with this in the past."
Speaking of O'Brien, he also addressed the topic around the 30-minute mark of his TBS show "Conan." "I want to congratulate Jimmy. That is a really fun gig." His audience laughed, and he followed up: "You laugh, he said, but it really is. Jimmy is the perfect guy to do it. ... He's going to do a fantastic job. So congratulations, Jimmy."
The one broadcast late night host who doesn't have any dog in this race, Jimmy Kimmel, also had something to say.?
"It is a big one for the world of late-night television," said Kimmel in his "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" monologue on ABC, according to The Hollywood Reporter. "As you probably heard -- it was announced officially today -- that, starting in February of next year -- after the Olympics -- I will take over as new host of?'The Tonight Show.'?I spoke to Jay on the phone today." A member of his staff interrupted. "Excuse me for one moment.?...?OK.?Um, apparently it was a different Jimmy."
He read one of the headlines about the changeup on his cell phone and added, "Turns out I will not be hosting 'The Tonight Show.' Does anyone know what the return policy is on yachts?"
In the end, though, it was largely friendly banter and Fallon's ascension to the throne (which will move, along with the show, to New York City), seems to have gone over well. But Leno had one last warning: "NBC says in five years, they plan to replace Jimmy with Justin Bieber," he said. "They are moving too quickly!"
3 April 2013Last updated at 20:42 ETBy James GallagherHealth and science reporter, BBC News
Men going thin on top may be more likely to have heart problems than their friends with a full head of hair, according to researchers in Japan.
Their study of nearly 37,000 people, published in the online journal BMJ Open, said balding men were 32% more likely to have coronary heart disease.
However, the researchers said the risks were less than for smoking or obesity.
The British Heart Foundation said men should focus on their waistline, not their hairline.
A shifting hairline is a fact of life for many men. Half have thinning hair by their 50s and 80% have some hair loss by the age of 70.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo sifted through years of previous research into links between hair loss and heart problems.
Continue reading the main story
?Start Quote
It's more important to pay attention to your waistline than your hairline?
End QuoteDoireann MaddockBritish Heart Foundation
They showed that hair that went thin on the crown was associated with coronary heart disease. This was after adjusting for other risk factors such as age and family history.
However, a receding hairline did not seem to affect the risk.
Focus on lifestyle
Dr Tomohide Yamada, of the University of Tokyo, told the BBC: "We found a significant, though modest, link between baldness, at least on the top of the head, and risk for coronary heart disease.
"We thought this is a link, but not as strong as many other known links such as smoking, obesity, cholesterol levels and blood pressure."
He said younger men losing hair on the top of their head should focus on improving their lifestyle to ensure they keep their heart healthy.
However, he said there was not enough evidence to suggest screening bald men for heart problems.
Continue reading the main story
Deadly disease
Coronary heart disease is the biggest killer in the UK.
One in five men and one in eight women dies of the disease.
It is caused by blood vessels that nourish the heart becoming blocked.
Any explanation for the link is uncertain.
There are ideas about increased sensitivity to male hormones, insulin resistance and inflammation in blood vessels affecting both the heart and the hair.
Doireann Maddock, a cardiac nurse with the British Heart Foundation, said: "Although these findings are interesting, men who've lost their hair should not be alarmed by this analysis.
"Much more research is needed to confirm any link between male pattern baldness and an increased risk of coronary heart disease. In the meantime, it's more important to pay attention to your waistline than your hairline.
"Hereditary hair loss may be out of your control, but many of the risk factors for coronary heart disease are not. Stopping smoking, maintaining a healthy weight and being as active as possible are all things that you can do to help protect your heart."
Patrick Wolfe, a professor of statistics at University College London, said: "Right now the link that is seemingly responsible for this relative risk increase is not well understood, and so in future we might look forward to a day when understanding more about the various mechanisms underlying heart disease will tell us more about those underlying male pattern baldness, and vice versa.
"In the meantime it's a case of focusing on the things that we can control - our diet, exercise regimens and other risk factors - to lower our overall risk for heart disease."
The death 'Buckwild' star Shain Gandee will confirm backwoods stereotypes for some, but it also points to such shows' deeper appeal ? a glimpse into a life lived with less anxiety.
By Patrik Jonsson,?Staff writer / April 3, 2013
Shain Gandee from MTV's 'Buckwild' reality series was found dead Monday in a sport utility vehicle in a ditch along two other people near Sissonville, W. Va. Apparently, he had been 'mudding.'
Amy Sussman/Invision/AP/File
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MTV has stopped production of its wildly popular ?Buckwild? reality TV show after one of its carefree stars, Shain Gandee, was killed in a freak off-road accident, along with two other men.
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The tragedy instantly sparked questions about voyeurism in pop culture and the dangers that exist between the words ?reality? and ?TV.? Most specifically, did the push for provocative TV featuring reckless and stunt-prone West Virginia 20-somethings fuel Mr. Gandee?s abandon away from the cameras?
So far, the answer to that question isn?t known, though MTV is picking up Gandee?s funeral costs. But those who knew Gandee describe him as one of the most genuine on the show, whose actual personality and behavior didn?t change too much when the cameras rolled. The men died of carbon monoxide poisoning after getting their truck stuck in a mud hole in a late-night adventure.
?Buckwild? was already controversial before Gandee?s death, particularly for its portrayal of young self-described American rednecks and questions about whether the show was intended strictly to make fun of rural Americans ? a sort of ?hillbilly-sploitation.? It also had its share of real controversy. Recently, Gandee?s co-star, Salwa Amin, was arrested on drug charges involving heroin and meth.
Down to earth and slightly off-kilter, the crew escaped rural boredom by spinning wheels in mudholes and, occasionally, making swimming pools out of dump truck beds. Their alcohol-fueled love fumblings added to a sense of parody, but their overall travails and search for good times seemed to act as a link between an increasingly urbanized America and its agrarian and pioneer roots.
In that respect, Gandee?s death has, for many viewers, provided a moment to consider the cultural stereotypes that drive the show and have made white, rural Americans the ripest, and most acceptable, demographic for parody.
The kind of reckless escapades perpetrated by the ?Buckwild? crew are, on one hand, simply laugh fodder for ?urban supremacists,? says cultural critic Jim Goad, author of ?The Redneck Manifesto.? Yet there may be a deeper, more genuine appeal, he adds.
?Masculinity has been demonized and people have been denatured, so maybe [redneck reality shows] harken back to some genetic memory ? where something that seemed authentic got [lost] and smashed in this increasing push to urbanization,? says Mr. Goad.
CAIRO (Reuters) - An Egyptian court barred the extradition of a cousin of late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to his home country on Wednesday, saying Ahmed Gaddaf Alddam should be tried in Egypt, officials said. Gaddaf Alddam, who is wanted in Libya for alleged counterfeiting, forgery, fraud and money laundering, is under investigation on suspicion of attacking Egyptian police during his arrest last month. ...
Like those pin art toys where you can create images by pushing out certain pins, this mirror recreates your image by using hundreds of spokes and motors to re-align and replicate itself to look like the thing standing in front of it. It's a mind trip seeing little spokes making a bigger image. More »
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Public release date: 10-Apr-2013
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Bison steaks are a popular paleo diet option.
