Recognising Karmic Relationships | Cauldrons and Cupcakes

?When someone has a strong intuitive connection, Buddhism suggests that it?s because of karma, some past connection.?
~?Richard Gere

?

Karmic relationships are a big part of our growth. We can experience a karmic relationship with lovers, siblings, children, parents or friends, even work colleagues.

Contrary to popular opinion, not all karmic relationships are soul mate relationships. ?Rather, karmic relationships happen because before we came to this life we have made a conscious choice to come together with another soul so that we can share, support, learn, heal, resolve past life issues, forgive and grow.

There are several defining characteristics of karmic relationships, but the most obvious ones are:

• instant recognition of each other on some level, especially when there is no way you have ever met before
• strong, and often unexplainable attraction (the sort we can?t justify to ourselves, let alone family or friends)
• an intensity to the relationship, either positive or negative
• a tendency for the relationship to become for a time, the most dominant or perhaps even our ONLY relationship
• a deep emotional or physical connection, often that has an addictive quality
• an ability to really press each other?s buttons
• an inability to easily walk away
• a feeling of the need to stay, even if it is hard, so that you can work through or resolve something

Usually karmic relationships serve to bring you together for a definite purpose, and once that purpose is achieved, the ?spell? is broken and the relationship loses its pull. Looking back you might wonder what ever brought you together ? even you won?t understand it!

Many of my clients have experienced intense friendships or love relationships that taught them hard lessons, that changed them in some way, and that caused them to move in a new direction. ?Often these relationships were painful, uncomfortable and a wild ride. ?None of their friends or family understood why they were in that relationship, and it often made little sense to my clients either, but they couldn?t seem to help it or avoid the pull of the other person.

A large number of them then went on to find a lifelong partner, or a satisfying new life direction?

Not all relationships are difficult ? some are wonderful, but last only a short time. ?They buoy us up and remind us of something positive and important about ourselves, building a stronger sense of self and purpose.

Some karmic relationships will support you for your entire life, and if one person dies before the other the one who remains will not find someone to replace that love, and that feeling of deep connection will endure even if that person takes a new partner. ?Note ? this relationship may not be with a lover, but could also be with a friend or family member.

These enduring karmic relationships are characterised by:

• the feeling that you understand in each in ways other people can?t
• a feeling of loyalty and a deep bond
• a sense of being very comfortable with the other person, as if you?ve known them forever, even if you?ve just met
• a knowledge that you are sharing a path through life
• a feeling of deep trust, and a knowledge that you are supported by this person
• an easiness with one another, even if you do have issues to work through
• an ability to truly forgive, and to move on, together

We are all connected, often in ways we can?t possibly understand from where we are, down here. I find it incredibly reassuring, to know that love transcends time and space, and that we care enough about each other as souls to show up in each others lives over and over again.

If you?d like to read more about karmic relationships and the incredible power of love you might enjoy these posts:

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Source: http://cauldronsandcupcakes.com/2013/06/23/recognising-karmic-relationships/

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Ohio air show resumes after stuntwoman, pilot die

CINCINNATI (AP) ? An air show in southwestern Ohio reopened with a moment of silence Sunday, a day after a pilot and wing walker died in a horrifying, fiery crash in front of thousands of spectators.

The Vectren Air Show near Dayton, which closed right after Saturday's crash, resumed Sunday in honor of pilot Charlie Schwenker and veteran stuntwoman Jane Wicker, both of Virginia.

"As a pilot, you accept the fact that accidents do happen ? it's an accepted risk we take," said John King, president of the Flying Circus Airshow, which had trained Wicker.

"They were both dedicated to flying and the act. They were true, ultimate professionals," King said. "I don't know of anyone who could have done any better than what they were doing."

Wicker and Schwenker were killed when their plane crashed in front of spectators who screamed in shock as the aircraft became engulfed in flames. No one else was hurt.

Video of the crash showed their plane gliding through the sky before abruptly rolled over, crashing and exploding into flames. Wicker, performing at the Dayton show for the first time, had been sitting atop the 450 HP Stearmans.

The decision to resume the show a day after the crash was an emotional one supported by Wicker's ex-husband, said air show general manager Brenda Kerfoot.

"He said, 'This is what Jane and Charlie would have wanted,'" Kerfoot said. "'They want you to have a safe show and go out there and do what you do best.'"

Wicker, 44, who lived in Bristow, Va., was a mother of two boys and engaged to be married, Kerfoot said.

"She was a well-rounded, delightful woman who was passionate about aviation," said Kerfoot. "She was in the business for a very long time and was well-loved by the air show community; she would certainly have wanted the show to go on."

Schwenker, 64, of Oakton, Va., was married.

The cause of the crash is unclear and the conclusion of an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board likely will take months. The NTSB planned a mid-afternoon news conference Sunday to discuss the accident.

Wicker's website says she responded to a classified ad from the Flying Circus Airshow in Bealeton, Va., in 1990, for a wing-walking position, thinking it would be fun. She was a contract employee who worked as a Federal Aviation Administration budget analyst, the FAA said.

In one post on Wicker's site, the stuntwoman explains what she loved most about her job.

"There is nothing that feels more exhilarating or freer to me than the wind and sky rushing by me as the earth rolls around my head," the post says. "I'm alive up there. To soar like a bird and touch the sky puts me in a place where I feel I totally belong. It's the only thing I've done that I've never questioned, never hesitated about and always felt was my destiny."

She also answered a question she said she got frequently: What about the risk?

"I feel safer on the wing of my airplane than I do driving to the airport," she wrote. "Why? Because I'm in control of those risks and not at the mercy of those other drivers."

A program for the air show touted Wicker as a performer of "heart-stopping" feats who did moves that "no other wing walker is brave enough to try."

"Wing riding is not for this damsel; her wing walking style is the real thing," the program said. "With no safety line and no parachute, Jane amazes the crowd by climbing, walking, and hanging all over her beautiful ... aircraft.

"Spectators are sure to gasp as this daredevil demonstrates in true form the unbelievable art of wing walking," it says.

On the video of the crash, an announcer narrates as Wicker's plane glides through the air.

"Keep an eye on Jane. Keep an eye on Charlie. Watch this! Jane Wicker, sitting on top of the world," the announcer said, right before the plane makes a quick turn and nosedive.

Some spectators said they knew something was wrong because the plane was flying low and slow.

Thanh Tran, of Fairfield, said he could see a look of concern on Wicker's face just before the plane went down.

"She looked very scared," he said. "Then the airplane crashed on the ground. After that, it was terrible, man ... very terrible."

In 2011, wing walker Todd Green fell 200 feet to his death at an air show in Michigan while performing a stunt in which he grabbed the skid of a helicopter.

In 2007, veteran stunt pilot Jim LeRoy was killed at the Dayton show when his biplane slammed into the runway while performing loop-to-loops and caught fire.

Still, King said, in the four decades since Flying Circus started, many kids have been so inspired watching the show that they later became military and commercial pilots.

"Our show takes them back to the barnstorming era of air shows," he said. "It's amazing how many people have taken up aviation careers because of their first exposure to the Flying Circus."

___

Associated Press writer Verena Dobnik in New York contributed to this report.

___

Follow Amanda Lee Myers on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AmandaLeeAP

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ohio-air-show-resumes-stuntwoman-pilot-die-131204772.html

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Parisian etiquette, for shorts-wearing tourists and waiters alike

On tourism and snobbery in the French capital.

By Sara Miller Llana,?Staff writer / June 22, 2013

Cyclists ride by a flower bed on the opening day of the new pedestrian walkway area between the Orsay Museum and Alma Bridge on the left bank of the River Seine in Paris June 19. The Monitor's Europe Bureau Chief learns about Parisian etiquette in the French capital.

Charles Platiau/Reuters

Enlarge

The Paris weather suddenly turning from cold and damp to hot and steamy prompted a discussion on wearing shorts at a play center where I take my daughter on Wednesday afternoons.

Skip to next paragraph Sara Miller Llana

Europe Bureau Chief

Sara Miller Llana?moved to Paris in April 2013 to become the Monitor's Europe Bureau?Chief. Previously she was the?paper's?Latin America Bureau Chief, based in Mexico City, from 2006 to 2013.

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?I would never wear shorts,? said the older, impeccably dressed supervisor, to which I nodded in agreement. I would never wear shorts either.

But then she took it further. ?It?s shocking to me to see visitors wearing shorts in Paris, even when they come from countries where wearing shorts is normal. On the beach, that is one thing. But in Paris, one should respect local customs.?

And to that, I had to respectfully disagree.

I could only imagine the looks she gives tourists, in cut-off jeans or flower-motif bermudas, lining up to enter the Louvre or Notre Dame cathedral. Such looks aren?t kind. But they are all too common. And even if shorts might not be pretty on many a tourist who wears them, they hardly rank up there in offense with halter tops at mosques.

It is this type of attitude - one might call it snobbery ? that France?s promoters are seeking to undo in the tourism industry in a new campaign launched this week as summer arrives and the tourist season kicks off.

The Paris chamber of commerce and regional tourism committee have published a new manual sent off to 30,000 in the tourism industry called ?Do you speak touriste??

?The aim of this campaign is to focus on the quality of welcome that visitors receive in Paris, and to train professionals here to understand the differences between them,? Fran?ois Naverro from the regional tourism committee, told The Local, an English-language news site in France.

He added that over 30 million tourists come to France each year, and while almost all leave satisfied (96 percent) there is always room for improvement ? a waiter who could have been kinder, a shop clerk who could have been more helpful.

I entered the website of the campaign and found a slew of really handy information, such as conversion charts for miles and inches and shoe and shirt sizes between regions (as an American newly arrived in Paris, I plan myself on printing this out).

The site also allows you to click on a nationality to learn some basic greetings in foreign languages and about general cultural traits, like typical times for eating or preferences for greetings. Americans like to lunch at noon. And they like fast and direct service. Shaking hands is rare for Japanese. The British seek authentic experiences. Germans eat at 12:30 and value clarity of information. ?It?s interesting to compare cultural traits ? and to?look at?how the French generalize other cultures (I, for one, never eat before 1 p.m.)

I looked to see if there was anything written about shorts, or clothing choices in general for hot, tired tourists who have been on their feet all day ? perhaps having been on an overnight flight the night before. But unfortunately, that I did not find.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/JIYbvTuKVxw/Parisian-etiquette-for-shorts-wearing-tourists-and-waiters-alike

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Pebble Mine: A Threat to Alaska's Salmon, People and Economy (Op-Ed)

Taryn Kiekow is a senior policy analyst for NRDC's marine mammal protection project;she contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Bristol Bay is located in the remote wildlands of southwest Alaska and supports the largest runs of wild salmon on the planet ? over half of the world's supply of sockeye.

Every year, some 40 million salmon return to spawnin the pristine rivers and streams of the Bristol Bay watershed. But right now, the future of this little-known natural jewel is caught up in a frenzied political fight, part of what the Washington Post calls President Barack Obama's biggest environmental decision that "you've never heard of."

That decision is whether to protect Bristol Bay from a proposed mega-mine called Pebble Mine ? a colossal, open-pit copper and gold mine that would be up to 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) long and 1,700 feet (518 meters) deep ? a huge worry for the residents of Bristol Bay who overwhelmingly oppose the project.

Although the mining industry is lobbying hard to build it, West Coast senators, House members and local businesses have lined up in opposition. And it's also something the Obama administration could easily stop.

Salmon are the lifeblood of the region. Alaska Natives have lived off salmonfor thousands of years, and their welfare, health and cultural stability are intricately tied to these fish. Salmon also support an abundance of wildlife ? from brown bears and eagles to whales and seals. [Fast-Evolving Fish Struggle to Spawn in Wild]

But the benefits of salmon to the region extend beyond sustenance: Salmon also form the economic backbone of the area.

An economic report released in April by researchers at the University of Alaska Institute of Social and Economic Research found that the Bristol Bay commercial salmon fishery is worth $1.5 billiona year, making it the most valuable wild-salmon fishery in the world. Not only do salmon sustain a prized commercial fishery, but they also sustain 14,000 jobs (according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)'s draft watershed assessment on Bristol Bay), world-class sports fishing and an economy for Alaska Natives.

Pebble Mine could put all of this at risk. If built as planned at the headwaters of Bristol Bay, Pebble Mine would be the largest mine in North America, producing some 10 billion tons (9 billion metric tons) of toxic mining waste that would be stored in the rivers, streams and wildlands of Bristol Bay's high-quality salmon habitat. Even under the best conditions, it would be virtually impossible to keep the hazardous waste from leaking, putting salmon ? which are highly sensitive to even the slightest increases in copper ? in great jeopardy. And Bristol Bay provides challenging conditions: The extremely porous tundra sits in a seismically active area, and the ore, once exposed to air, will produce acid drainage.

The EPA re-released its draft Bristol Bay watershed assessment report in April, revealing the potential impacts of large-scale mining like the Pebble Mine on the watershed. The report's findings are shocking. Even in a best-case scenario ? operating at the highest industry standards and experiencing no leaks or failures ? Pebble Mine would destroy up to 90 miles (145 km) of stream, eliminate up to 4,800 acres (1,943 hectares) of wetlands, and dewater an additional 34 miles (55 km) of stream.

Even under routine operations, the construction and support of the mine would require a huge amount of infrastructure across land currently untouched by humans: from culverts and pipelines to power plants and tailings dams. Worse, a tailings dam failure could be "catastrophically damaging."

The EPA also found that large-scale mining could pose serious threats to wildlife and Alaska Native cultures.

It's no wonder that 85 percent of commercial fishermen in Bristol Bay, 81 percent of the Bristol Bay Native Corp.'s native shareholders and 80 percent of Bristol Bay residents oppose the Pebble Mine.

Right now, the people and wildlife of Bristol Bay are preparing for the annual return of the salmon. Commercial fishermen are readying boats and equipment. Alaska Natives are mending nets and smokehouses. Lodge owners and sportsmen are anticipating another lucrative tourist season. And hungry bears have awakened from hibernation.

The EPA is also preparing. The agency is accepting public comment on its draft watershed assessment. That draft has already undergone extensive public comment, including hearings in Alaska and peer review from a panel of 12 independent experts. Last year alone, the EPA received more than 233,000 public comments, over 90 percent of which urged the agency to protect Bristol Bay.

The EPA recently extended the current public comment period until June 30, in order to allow the public more time to weigh in. So far, the real winners of the extended comment period are pro-mining groups, who have recently generated a flurry of comments. According to a June 17, 2013 article in the Washington Post, the Competitive Enterprise Institute's (CEI) Resourceful Earth website has single-handedly flooded the docket with 99.25 percent of all anti-EPA comments. A conservative think tank, CEI is generally opposed to environmental regulations and has received millions of dollars over the years from the mining, oil and gas, and coal industries ? as well as from groups associated with the Koch brothers, the article adds.

Bristol Bay is too important to let the Koch brothers and mining interests win this fight. The EPA can stop the mine under Section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act ? something our government does sparingly and judiciously. If ever there were a case for using this power, Bristol Bay is the place. This is why NRDC asks everyone to join us and urge the Obama administration to protect the people, salmon, wildlife and businesses of Bristol Bay from the poisonous threats of the Pebble Mine. The future of one of the world's greatest natural treasures is at stake.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This article was originally published on LiveScience.com.

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

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pebble-mine-threat-alaskas-salmon-people-economy-op-213457938.html

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Researchers Have Found a Way To Cram 1,000 Gigabytes Onto a Single DVD

Now that its bigger brother Blu-ray has stolen the spotlight, paltry 4.7 GB DVDs have slowly started to fade into obscurity. But could they be poised for a comeback? A trio of Chinese scientists have discovered a breakthrough process that could, at least in theory, allow a DVD to store a whopping 1,000 GB?or a full petabyt?of data. Suck on that, Blu-ray.

The exact science and technology behind the discovery is detailed in this paper, but here's the gist of it in layman's terms. The storage capacity of a DVD is limited by the size of the laser beam burning the small pits that represent the streams of data. Blu-ray increased this capacity by switching to even smaller blue lasers, but the storage capacity of that technology maxed out as well.

You see, back in 1873, a German physicist named Ernst Abbe found that a beam of light focused through a lens could not be any smaller than half of the light's wavelength. And for visible light, which is used to burn digital media discs, that's around 500 nanometers. So instead of breaking that law, the researchers found a way to work around it using two beams of light that cancel each other out. And by ensuring the beams don't completely overlap, a much smaller beam can be created to burn even smaller pits on a disc, massively increasing its capacity.

There's a still a lot to be perfected before this technology could reach consumers. Like how these incredibly tiny pits of data can be actually be read after they're created. And since writing 1,000 GBs of data would take forever, developing faster ways to burn discs will also be necessary before consumers are ready to adopt the new technology. But the prospect of DVDs and Blu-rays taking a quantum leap in storage capacity is still incredibly exciting. [Nature Communications via The Conversation via Slashdot]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/researchers-have-found-a-way-to-cram-1-000-gigabytes-on-531549229

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Valar Morghulis, Or, ?Why I Don't Care That HBO Go Is On Apple TV'

Apple TV got HBO Go and Watch ESPN and some other content yesterday. Cool. Am I supposed to care? It?s asinine that the technology for producing quality content is so incredible (Blackwater Bay, anyone?) and yet we still have to have decades-old technology to access it.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/jxRRSZnKDU4/

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New Bing Experiment Adds Curated Lists Of Links, Images And Videos From Experts To Search Results

Microsoft today announced a new experiment for its Bing search engine that’s a bit different from the usual social search and algorithm updates we’ve come to expect from the service. Bing Boards, as this new effort is called, aims to create something akin to curated search results for a select group of searches. These lists, Microsoft says, “are visual collections of images, videos and links that tell a story from a unique point of view.” Currently, Microsoft is working with a small group of food and lifestyle bloggers, experts and “social influencers” to create these boards. If the experiment works out, the company plans to expand these offerings to other users and topics. For the time being, though, Microsoft isn’t saying how exactly its curators are creating these lists. Here is an example for a search query that brings up a Bing Board in the sidebar. The Bing team argues that what it’s trying to do here is similar to what it’s been doing with social search all along. “In the same way that we?ve brought knowledge from friends and recognized experts into search, we?re providing a new way for passionate people to create highly specialized content, specifically for search,” Bing Experiences Program Manager Chen Fang writes. Fang notes that these results are meant to be complementary to Bing’s regular web search results and will appear in Bing’s middle column. Microsoft also announced that it’s going to run a number of other social and community experiments on Bing in the near future. While Google seems to have de-emphasized social search, Bing still remains focused on the social aspects of search, and, if anything, it looks like it’s now doubling down on these features in an effort to set itself apart from its competitors.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/BWWlbcmvATE/

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Space Storm Could Black Out US East Coast for Two Years

Severe space "weather" can knock out satellite communications and GPS systems, expose space tourists and astronauts to dangerous levels of radiation, and even cause massive blackouts on Earth that could last up to two years, scientists and NASA officials warned.

A sun storm on the scale of one that happened in 1859, which was recorded by British brewer and amateur astronomer Richard Carrington, would potentially have sweeping consequences on huge population clusters in the United States, experts at the Space Weather Enterprise Forum said.

"The United States population that is at risk of an extended power outage from a Carrington-level storm is between 20-40 million, with an outage duration of possibly 16 days to one to two years," said Kathryn Sullivan, the first woman to walk in space and now the acting administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which hosted Tuesday's conference.

"The highest risk of storm-induced outages of these magnitudes in the United States is between Washington DC and New York City," she said, citing a report released last month by global insurance giant Lloyd's of London, which urged businesses to "think about their exposure to space weather."

"Space weather is not science fiction, it is an established fact," the Lloyds report said.

Space storms do have their hidden plusses: the Northern Lights, or aurora borealis, are a by-product of a storm in space. The super-storm of 1859 caused skies as far south as the Hawaiian Islands and Panama to erupt in red, green and purple auroras "so brilliant that newspapers could be read as easily as in daylight," NASA says on its website.

But the Carrington super-storm also sent a mammoth cloud of charged particles and detached magnetic loops - a "coronal mass ejection" - crashing into Earth's magnetic field, where it caused a geomagnetic storm that severely disrupted the telegraph system, which in the late 1800s was communications' equivalent of the Internet today.

"Spark discharges shocked telegraph operators and set the telegraph paper on fire. Even when telegraphers disconnected the batteries powering the lines, aurora-induced electric currents in the wires still allowed messages to be transmitted," NASA says.

An event on a similar scale today could cripple communications, said Sullivan.

"Our dependence on sophisticated electronics technology for almost everything we do today has introduced a new vulnerability into our societies," she said.

"We can't prevent space weather from happening but we can become more resilient to it," including by improving our capacity to accurately predict space weather events, taking steps to lessen the blow from space storms, and recovering better and faster when a space storm does hit.

Space weather is "one of six potential emergency scenarios in the upcoming shortlist of White House National Exercise Programs for 2013-14," Sullivan said, referring to training exercises that test the readiness of the United States to face various crisis scenarios.

The United States is also working with international partners to improve global readiness for the next big space storm, said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who next week will take part in the 56th session on the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, due to be held in Vienna, Austria.

The UN committee this year, for the first time, recognized space weather caused by solar activity as "a concern on par with close, approaching asteroids," Bolden said.

NASA is also collaborating with the European Space Agency on its Solar Orbiter mission, which aims to "brave the fierce heat" and study the sun from "closer than ever before," Bolden said, stressing that space weather, like terrestrial weather, "is a problem that crosses all borders."

Source: RIA Novosti

Source: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Space_Storm_Could_Black_Out_US_East_Coast_for_Two_Years_999.html

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Saudi Reportedly Expels Men for Being Too Handsome (Voice Of America)

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UK: Guardian newspaper's Twitter feeds hacked

LONDON (AP) ? The Guardian newspaper said Monday that its Twitter accounts have been hacked, and it cited a claim of responsibility from the group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army.

The British paper reported on its website that several of its feeds on the social media site were broken into over the weekend. It said that it has since discovered that the attack apparently originated from Internet protocol addresses within Syria.

"We are aware that a number of Guardian Twitter accounts have been compromised and we are working actively to resolve this," said a statement from Guardian News and Media, the company that publishes the paper.

The Syrian Electronic Army is a shadowy group that supports the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, which is battling an armed uprising.

The group has claimed responsibility for a string of Web attacks on other media targets, including The Associated Press. The Guardian said the group accused it of spreading "lies and slander about Syria."

Hackers attacked the AP's Twitter accounts last week, sending out a false tweet about an attack on the White House and triggering a brief plunge on the U.S. stock market.

The Guardian said it first recognized it was being targeted when suspect emails were sent to staff members to trick them into giving away security details. Some of the paper's Twitter accounts, including those focusing on books and film, were suspended Monday.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2013-04-29-Britain-Guardian%20Hacked/id-ef0af13d69c4423d8af48f2c4704b9d4

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Per-student pre-K spending lowest in decade

WASHINGTON (AP) ? State funding for pre-kindergarten programs had its largest drop ever last year and states are now spending less per child than they did a decade ago, according to a report released Monday.

The report also found that more than a half million of those preschool students are in programs that don't even meet standards suggested by industry experts that would qualify for federal dollars.

Those findings ? combined with Congress' reluctance to spend new dollars ? complicate President Barack Obama's effort to expand pre-K programs across the country. While Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius continue to promote the president's proposal, researchers say existing programs are inadequate, and until their shortcomings are fixed there is little desire by lawmakers to get behind Obama's call for more preschool.

"The state of preschool was a state of emergency," said Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, which produced the report.

During his State of the Union speech, Obama proposed a federal-state partnership that would dramatically expand options for families with young children. Obama's plan would fund public preschool for any 4-year-old whose family income was below twice the federal poverty rate.

If it were in place this year, the plan would allow a family of four with two children to enroll students in a pre-K program if the family earned less than $46,566.

Students from families who earn more could participate in the program, but their parents would have to pay tuition based on their income. Eventually, 3-year-old students would be part of the program, too.

As part of his budget request, Obama proposed spending $75 billion over 10 years to help states get these new programs up and running. During the first years, Washington would pick up the majority of the cost before shifting costs to states.

"It's the most significant opportunity to expand access to pre-K that this nation has ever seen," Barnett said of the president's proposal.

Obama proposed paying for this expansion by almost doubling the federal tax on cigarettes, to $1.95 per pack.

Obama's pre-K plan faces a tough uphill climb, though, with the tobacco industry opposing the tax that would pay for it and lawmakers from tobacco-producing states also skeptical. Conservative lawmakers have balked at starting another government program, as well. Obama's Democratic allies are clamoring to make it a priority.

To help it along, Duncan and Sebelius planned to join the report's researchers on Monday at a news conference to introduce the report, along with administration allies. They planned events later in the week to reiterate their support.

Yet those public events were unlikely to sway lawmakers who are already fighting among themselves over spending cuts that are forcing students to be dropped from existing preschool programs, the levying of higher fees for student loans and deep cuts for aid to military schools.

States spent about $5.1 billion on pre-K programs in 2011-12, the most recent school year, researchers wrote in the report.

Per-student funding for existing programs during that year dropped to an average of $3,841 for each student. It was the first time average spending per student dropped below $4,000 in today's dollars since researchers started tracking it during the 2001-02 academic year.

Adjusted for inflation, per-student funding has been cut by more than $1,000 during the last decade.

Yet nationwide, the amounts were widely varied. The District of Columbia spent almost $14,000 on every child in its program while the states of Colorado, South Carolina and Nebraska spent less than $2,000 per child.

"Whether you get a quality preschool program does depend on what ZIP code you are in," Barnett said.

Among the 40 states that offer state-funded pre-K programs, 27 cut per-student spending last year. In total, that meant $548 million in cuts.

Money, of course, is not a guarantee for students' success. But students from poor schools generally lag students from better-funded counterparts and those students from impoverished families arrive in kindergarten less prepared than others.

In all, only 15 states and the District of Columbia spent enough money to provide quality programs, the researchers concluded. Those programs serve about 20 percent of the 1.3 million enrolled in state-funded prekindergarten programs.

"In far too many states, funding levels have fallen so low as to bring into question the effectiveness of their programs by any reasonable standard," researchers wrote.

Part of the reason for the decreased spending are the lingering effects of the economic downturn in 2008, coupled with the end of federal stimulus dollars to plug state budgets.

"Although the recession is technically over, the recovery in state revenues has lagged the recovery of the general economy and has been slower and weaker than following prior recessions. This does not bode well for digging back out of the hole created by years of cuts," the researchers wrote in their report.

Nationally, 42 percent of students ? or more than a half million students ? were in programs that met fewer than half of the benchmarks researchers identified as important to gauging a program's effectiveness, such as classrooms with fewer than 20 students and teachers with bachelor's degrees.

That, too, suggests problems for Obama's plan to expand pre-K programs, especially if Washington insists its partners meet quality benchmarks to win federal dollars.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/per-student-pre-k-spending-lowest-decade-042832006.html

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Medicaid ?expansion? bill passes out of House committee (Offthekuff)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories Stories, RSS and RSS Feed via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/301473762?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Faith in God positively influences treatment for individuals with psychiatric illness

Apr. 25, 2013 ? Belief in God may significantly improve the outcome of those receiving short-term treatment for psychiatric illness, according to a recent study conducted by McLean Hospital investigators.

In the study, published in the current issue of Journal of Affective Disorders, David H. Rosmarin, PhD, McLean Hospital clinician and instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, examined individuals at the Behavioral Health Partial Hospital program at McLean in an effort to investigate the relationship between patients' level of belief in God, expectations for treatment and actual treatment outcomes.

"Our work suggests that people with a moderate to high level of belief in a higher power do significantly better in short-term psychiatric treatment than those without, regardless of their religious affiliation. Belief was associated with not only improved psychological wellbeing, but decreases in depression and intention to self-harm," explained Rosmarin.

The study looked at 159 patients, recruited over a one-year period. Each participant was asked to gauge their belief in God as well as their expectations for treatment outcome and emotion regulation, each on a five-point scale. Levels of depression, wellbeing, and self-harm were assessed at the beginning and end of their treatment program.

Of the patients sampled, more than 30 percent claimed no specific religious affiliation yet still saw the same benefits in treatment if their belief in a higher power was rated as moderately or very high. Patients with "no" or only "slight" belief in God were twice as likely not to respond to treatment than patients with higher levels of belief.

The study concludes: ." .. belief in God is associated with improved treatment outcomes in psychiatric care. More centrally, our results suggest that belief in the credibility of psychiatric treatment and increased expectations to gain from treatment might be mechanisms by which belief in God can impact treatment outcomes."

Rosmarin commented, "Given the prevalence of religious belief in the United States -- over 90% of the population -- these findings are important in that they highlight the clinical implications of spiritual life. I hope that this work will lead to larger studies and increased funding in order to help as many people as possible."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by McLean Hospital.

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

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Journal Reference:

1. David H. Rosmarin, Joseph S. Bigda-Peyton, Sarah J. Kertz, Nasya Smith, Scott L. Rauch, Thr?stur Bj?rgvinsson. A test of faith in God and treatment: The relationship of belief in God to psychiatric treatment outcomes. Journal of Affective Disorders, 2013; 146 (3): 441 DOI: 10.1016/j.jad.2012.08.030

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

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

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/mind_brain/mental_health/~3/_3Ziyj5LyF0/130425091606.htm

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MTV piping up for 'Scream' series to air in 2014

In this publicity image released by The Weinstein Company, Courteney Cox is shown in a scene from the horror film "Scream 4." The MTV network says it will produce a pilot for a TV-series adaptation of the wildly popular slasher films. The series would reinvent the horror-comedy franchise that began with the original release in 1996 and spawned three sequels, the most recent in 2011. The films? original director, Wes Craven, is in discussions to direct the one-hour pilot, MTV said. The "Scream" series is planned to debut in summer 2014. (AP Photo/Dimension Films-The Weinstein Company, Gemma La Mana)

In this publicity image released by The Weinstein Company, Courteney Cox is shown in a scene from the horror film "Scream 4." The MTV network says it will produce a pilot for a TV-series adaptation of the wildly popular slasher films. The series would reinvent the horror-comedy franchise that began with the original release in 1996 and spawned three sequels, the most recent in 2011. The films? original director, Wes Craven, is in discussions to direct the one-hour pilot, MTV said. The "Scream" series is planned to debut in summer 2014. (AP Photo/Dimension Films-The Weinstein Company, Gemma La Mana)

NEW YORK (AP) ? MTV is getting ready to blast viewers with a brand-new "Scream."

The network says it will produce a pilot for a TV-series adaptation of the wildly popular slasher films. The series would reinvent the horror-comedy franchise that began with the original release in 1996 and spawned three sequels, the most recent in 2011.

MTV said the films' original director, Wes Craven, is in discussions to direct the one-hour pilot.

The "Scream" series is planned to debut in summer 2014.

The announcement was made Thursday at MTV's presentation of its upcoming schedule to advertisers in New York.

MTV also said "Snooki & JWOWW" has been renewed for a third season. The reality show stars "Jersey Shore" pals Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi and Jenni "JWOWW" Farley.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-04-25-TV-MTV-Scream/id-38f9347c8156441b990f1de8a8102e6f

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The Poorly Attended Hearing on One of the Economy's Toughest Problems

It stands to reason that lawmakers who often decry the high jobless rate would want to be seen publicly trying to tackle the problem, right? Well, apparently not.

When a hearing to explore how to get the long-term unemployed back to work kicked off on Wednesday morning, only one lawmaker was in attendance. That was Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who was holding the hearing in her role as the vice chair of the Joint Economic Committee. The Joint Economic Commitee is one of a handful of committees whose members come from both parties and both houses of Congress. Klobuchar was eventually joined by three colleagues (in order of their appearance): Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, Maryland Rep. John Delaney and Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings. All four are Democrats.

Lawmaker schedules are often packed with votes, hearings, meetings, press conferences, the works. By 10:30 a.m., when the long-term unemployment hearing began, more than 25 hearings had already kicked off in the House and Senate. But elected officials also often try to show up at important hearings, even if only for a few minutes, for no other reason than to be seen. For a group that often bickers over how to solve the nation?s biggest economic problems, Wednesday?s hearing represented a perfect chance to do just that: be seen discussing how to tackle the intractable problem of long-term unemployment.

The long-term unemployed have it incredibly rough: their ranks have swelled in recent years, accounting for a larger share of the unemployed; the problem is compounded by eroding skills; and the psychological effects of unemployment can take a toll on them and their families. In a 2010 Pew survey, close to half of the people out of work six or months said being unemployed for so long had strained family relations, and more than 40 percent said they?d lost contact with close friends.?Just being unemployed for a long period makes individuals less employable. It?s what Kevin Hassett, a former economic advisor to Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney, called a ?national emergency? at Wednesday?s hearing.

The purpose of the meeting was to explore bipartisan solutions to tackling the problem, including: equipping the unemployed with new skills; encouraging the private sector to hire more of the long-term unemployed by providing incentives, such as tax breaks or subsidies; improving the economy; and improving education. It's a daunting task, experts say, but not an impossible one.?

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/poorly-attended-hearing-one-economys-toughest-problems-143202477--politics.html

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Five Favorite Films with Dennis Quaid

Dennis Quaid came into his own as one of the astronauts in 1983's The Right Stuff, and has since been one of America's hardest-working, most consistent actors, appearing in everything from Innerspace and Wyatt Earp to Far from Heaven and Traffic. (And lest we forget his gallant, if doomed, effort to hold together Movie 43.) This week he plays dad to Zac Efron's rebellious son in Ramin Bahrani's At Any Price, and with the film opening in limited release, we had a chance to sit down with Quaid recently and talk about his favorite movies.

I think my favorite movie is Lawrence of Arabia. To me, it's just about a perfect film; in the performances and what it means to me. I saw it as a boy -- and I just can't stop watching it, every time it comes on. All David Lean's movies, really. I love Doctor Zhivago, too.

Five Easy Pieces is a film that hit me as a young man. Most of my favorite movies, I think, come from the '70s, in that period where I really wanted to become an actor. Jack Nicholson's performance in that... it's a film that would never be done by a major studio today.

There's Bonnie and Clyde. That's a film that kind of started the new wave in the '70s. That was incredible. I saw that when I was in about the eighth grade, I think. Those characters, and also the history of Bonnie and Clyde, you know... it was something new. I remember, in fact, Bonnie and Clyde came out in either late Spring or early Summer, and then it was pulled. I think it flopped when it came out, and then they brought it back out in the Fall. I mean, I loved it when I first saw it; then they brought it back out in the Fall and it was a huge success.

Scarecrow (Jerry Schatzberg, 1973; 71% Tomatometer)

There's another movie back then called Scarecrow, with Gene Hackman and Al Pacino. They play two hobos that are going across America to open up a car wash. Both performances are just amazing.

I'm gonna say The Godfather -- the first one. That's another movie that's just about a perfect film, you know, from a great filmmaker in his prime.

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At Any Price opens in limited release this week.

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1927319/news/1927319/

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Nets, harpoons could be used to haul in space junk

BERLIN (AP) ? Nets, harpoons and suicide robots could become weapons of choice to hunt down the space junk threatening crucial communications satellites currently in orbit round Earth, scientists said Thursday.

Even lasers that act like "Star Trek" tractor beams were among the proposals put forward to protect some $100 billion worth of satellites from man-made cosmic garbage.

"Whatever we do is going to be an expensive solution," Heiner Klinkrad, a space debris expert at the European Space Agency, said at the end of an international conference on space debris in Darmstadt, Germany. "But one has to compare the costs of what we are investing to solve the problem as compared to losing the infrastructure that we have in orbit."

Experts estimate that about 27,000 objects measuring 10 centimeters (4 inches) or more are flying through orbit at 80 times the speed of a passenger jet, Klinkrad said. Each one of those could destroy a satellite. And even vastly smaller debris of just 1 millimeter ? of which there are about 160 million ? can render sensitive space instruments useless.

Thomas Schildknecht, an astronomer at the University of Bern, Switzerland, said it would be technically feasible to send a satellite into space to capture objects with a net and harpoon.

But more elaborate proposals could also work, Schildknecht said. These include a satellite firing electrically charged atoms ? or ions ? at an object to gradually slow it down and thereby drag it back to Earth.

Ground-based lasers could be used in the same way, though only for very small objects, he said.

For larger objects like ESA's 18,000-pound (8,100-kilogram) Envisat, which broke down last year, a dedicated robot could be built which would be sent on a suicide mission to bring the satellite down safely. Such missions could cost up to $200 million each.

"I'm confident that we will see demonstration missions in the near future," said Schildknecht.

ESA says testing of new technologies for cleaning up space needs to start soon because the amount of junk spinning uncontrollably through orbit is growing.

Concerns about the risk of space junk increased in 2007, when China's military shot down one of the country's defunct weather satellites in a show of force, inadvertently spraying orbit with thousands of pieces of debris.

Klinkrad said 5-10 large objects need to be collected each year to prevent what is known as the Kessler Syndrome ? when a few major collisions trigger a cascade effect in which each crash vastly increases the amount of dangerous debris in orbit.

So far, major collisions have been rare. In 2009, a private communications satellite called Iridium 33 smashed into the Russian military satellite Kosmos-2251, destroying both in the process. Scientists say it's only a matter of time before the next one occurs, and smaller debris may pose the biggest danger because they are harder to track.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/b2f0ca3a594644ee9e50a8ec4ce2d6de/Article_2013-04-25-EU-Germany-Space-Junk/id-4704b578e2164495bdc8ef42dba36dd0

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Health insurer WellPoint's 1Q profit rises 3 pct

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) ? WellPoint says its first-quarter earnings rose about 3 percent, as the nation's second largest health insurer saw a revenue gain from an acquisition. It also raised its 2013 net income forecast.

The Indianapolis company says it earned $885.2 million, or $2.89 per share, in the three months that ended March 31. That's up from $856.5 million, or $2.53 per share, a year ago.

Adjusted earnings totaled $2.94 per share. Analysts forecast earnings of $2.38 per share.

Operating revenue jumped nearly 16 percent to $17.55 billion. Analysts expected higher revenue of $17.86 billion.

WellPoint now it expects 2013 earnings of at least $7.80 per share, up from the $7.60 per share it forecast in January.

The insurer runs Blue Cross Blue Shield plans in 14 states, including California, New York and Ohio.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/health-insurer-wellpoints-1q-profit-rises-3-pct-103538832--finance.html

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The New Digital State?

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt

Photo by Manan Vatsyayana/AFP/Getty Images

Once upon a time, Google concerned itself with seemingly benign, profit-driven things: the optimal position of online ads for erectile dysfunction drugs, mapping the location of every sports bar in America, churning out free services to further cement a quasi-monopoly in global search.

But these are no longer the comfortable, well-established guardrails around Google.

More than two years ago, as governments on two continents were preparing to launch anti-trust investigations against it, Google began moving aggressively onto the turf of states. Today, Google is arguably one of the most influential nonstate actors in international affairs, operating in security domains long the purview of nation-states: It tracks the global arms trade, spends millions creating crisis-alert tools to inform the public about looming natural disasters, monitors the spread of the flu, and acts as a global censor to protect American interests abroad.?Google has even intervened into land disputes, one of the most fraught and universal security issues facing states today, siding with an indigenous group in the Brazilian Amazon to help the tribe document and post evidence about intrusions on its land through Google Earth.

In a new form of digital statecraft, Google?s executive chairman Eric Schmidt has traveled to North Korea against State Department wishes. ?Keep the government out of regulating the Internet,? he recently told an audience on a visit to Burma. (Disclosure: Schmidt is the chairman of the New America Foundation board. New America is a partner in Future Tense with Slate and Arizona State University.)

As Google evolves its role on the world stage, the fundamental question might be less about whether states might regulate Google, but whether states can compete against such a powerful, global technology platform. After all, Google appears to have emerged relatively unscathed from the threat of state intervention. In January, it was victorious after a two-year anti-trust investigation by U.S. regulators. Earlier this month, Google settled with European regulators following a two-year inquiry. And for the systematic collection of personal data, such as personal photographs and emails from Wi-Fi networks through its Street View mapping service, Google must pay what amounts to a pittance of a fine to a German privacy regulator.

Google?s most explicit and organized foray into state domains has been under the banner of Google Ideas, its ?think/do tank.? Jared Cohen, who gained fame as a rising star of ?digital diplomacy? at the State Department, joined Google in October 2010 to launch Google Ideas. It began with a trio of initiatives under the broad umbrellas of counter-radicalization, illicit networks, and fragile states. Through the unit, Google has collaborated with state authorities to dismantle what it calls illicit networks, such as drug cartels and human trafficking, and worked with the U.S. government?s broadcasting arm, Voice of America, to run the ?first phone-based constitutional survey? in Somalia.

It has even staked a claim in the fight against violent extremism, in which there has ?traditionally been an over-reliance on governments,? as Cohen wrote in a post on Google?s corporate blog nearly a year ago. ?What do a former violent jihadist from Indonesia, an ex-neo-Nazi from Sweden and a Canadian who was held hostage for 15 months in Somalia have in common?? Cohen asked. With this, Google Ideas launched the quasi-social network aimed at a demographic not typically coveted by advertisers: former gang members, religious extremists, right-wing nationalists, far-right fascists, or the victims thereof. The Against Violent Extremism network would spur a global conversation, ?de-radicalize? youth and serve as a ?one-stop shop? to reframe the issue of counter-radicalization. Wired called it the ?Facebook for terrorists.? Among America?s foreign policy elite, it was praised as an example of something Google can do ?much more easily than any government could.? A year later, 231 former terrorists and violent extremists have joined AVE. But they?re outnumbered: The network hosts almost three times as many private-sector members and Western elites, such as NGO workers and academics.

As Google carved out a role in terrorism prevention, state-based counter-radicalization programs have come under scrutiny. "Western governments ? are unlikely to succeed in tackling the risk of future terrorism by attempting to shape religious ideology," Samuel Rascoff, a law scholar at New York University, wrote in a January 2012 paper questioning the effectiveness of state-based counter-radicalization efforts that promote "mainstream" theological alternatives to radical Islam. In addition to criticizing state-led efforts, Rascoff questioned initiatives by the private sector. Despite having a ?less pronounced government footprint,? he writes, nongovernmental actors in this space may rouse suspicion, with skeptical targets worrying ?that the secretive national security apparatus plays some unknown role in the process.? Indeed, Google?s alignment with the national security apparatus is far from clear. Despite frequently touting transparency as a core value, the details of Google?s relationship with the National Security Agency on encryption and cybersecurity remains a secret.

In a series of sketches about ?our future world? in The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business, a new book by Schmidt and Cohen, there is the slightest of hints of what Google?s alignment with state security apparatuses might actually look like, especially in regards to counterterrorism efforts: ?We?ll use computers to run predictive correlations from huge volumes of data to track and catch terrorists, but how they are interrogated and handled thereafter will remain the purview of humans and their laws,? they write. Is there a global, nonstate actor with more access to ?huge volumes of data? than Google? Indeed, Google, which often bristles at regulation, may have little choice but to enter and cooperate more fully with states in the fraught arena of counterterrorism. ?The public will demand that [technology companies] do more in the fight against terrorism,? Cohen and Schmidt write. And this was before Boston, before every video watched and posted by Tamerlan Tsarnaev on YouTube had been scrutinized for signs of radicalization.

In The New Digital Age, Schmidt and Cohen describe the Internet as the largest experiment involving anarchy in history. They go further, too, arguing it might ?ultimately be seen as the realization of the classic international-relations theory of an anarchic, leaderless world.? By describing the Internet in such dystopian fashion?a space ravaged by code wars and cyberwarfare, a place where terrorists get radicalized and illicit networks find global reach?Cohen and Schmidt justify Google?s increasingly close ties with state security interests. Yet the authors conceive of the battle for power in our time as one mostly between citizens and states, a conception of the world that deflects less obvious questions: How state-like will states allow Google to become? As a global, borderless entity, what mechanisms exist for Google?s billions of global users to hold Google accountable? Yes, Google allows users to download personal data and activity logs, but that?s not exactly the same thing as having a say in how Google uses that same data.

Google?s view on state regulation is certainly no secret. The defining theme of Schmidt and Cohen?s book is ?the importance of a guiding human hand,? a clever rewrite of Adam Smith?s centuries-old metaphor for free markets that even today animates our endless debates about the proper role of the state in regulating the economy.? Schmidt and Cohen never explicitly refer to Google as the all-important ?guiding human hand? the world needs today. Yet for a company that?s never been humble, a company unafraid to enter the Sisyphean quest for global security, it is hard not to imagine that?s what they meant.

This article arises from Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, the New America Foundation, and?Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, visit the?Future Tense blog?and the?Future Tense home page. You can also?follow us on Twitter.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=22fdd147d8ea141dfe081b728d54bafb

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Air pollution and hardening of arteries

Apr. 23, 2013 ? Long term exposure to air pollution may be linked to heart attacks and strokes by speeding up atherosclerosis, or "hardening of the arteries," according to a study by U.S. researchers published in this week's PLOS Medicine.

The researchers, led by Sara Adar, John Searle Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, University of Michigan School of Public Health, and Joel Kaufman, Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences and Medicine, University of Washington, found that higher concentrations of fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5) were linked to a faster thickening of the inner two layers of the common carotid artery, an important blood vessel that provides blood to the head, neck, and brain. They also found that reductions of fine particulate air pollution over time were linked to slower progression of the blood vessel thickness. The thickness of this blood vessel is an indicator of how much atherosclerosis is present in the arteries throughout the body, even among people with no obvious symptoms of heart disease.

"Our findings help us to understand how it is that exposures to air pollution may cause the increases in heart attacks and strokes observed by other studies," Adar said.

The authors reached these conclusions by following 5362 people aged between 45 to 84 years old from six U.S. metropolitan areas as part of the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis and Air Pollution (MESA Air). The researchers were able to link air pollution levels estimated at each person's house with two ultrasound measurements of the blood vessels, separated by about three years. All participants in their study were without known heart disease.

After adjusting for other factors such as smoking, the authors found that on average, the thickness of the carotid vessel increased by 14 ?m each year. The vessels of people exposed to higher levels of residential fine particulate air pollution, however, thickened faster than others living in the same metropolitan area.

"Linking these findings with other results from the same population suggests that persons living in a more polluted part of town may have a 2 percent higher risk of stroke as compared to people in a less polluted part of the same metropolitan area," Adar said.

"If confirmed by future analyses of the full 10 years of follow-up in this cohort, these findings will help to explain associations between long-term PM2.5 concentrations and clinical cardiovascular events," the authors wrote.

In an accompanying Perspective, Nino Kuenzli from the University of Basel in Switzerland says: "the [Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis and Air Pollution study] further supports an old request to policy makers, namely that clean air standards ought to comply at least with the science-based levels proposed by the World Health Organization."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Public Library of Science.

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Journal Reference:

1. Adar SD, Sheppard L, Vedal S, Polak JF, Sampson PD, et al. Fine Particulate Air Pollution and the Progression of Carotid Intima-Medial Thickness: A Prospective Cohort Study from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis and Air Pollution. PLoS Med, 2013 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1001430

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

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

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/health_medicine/heart_disease/~3/fNMbl5NT8J4/130423172706.htm

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Five Android apps that lessen the stress of your daily commute

The first time I lived in Los Angeles there were no smartphones. I spent 45 minutes each morning and each evening traveling four miles on the 405 commuting from Westwood to Beverly Hills, which was infinitely boring. But we live in a new age, and these days we have tools to help you get where you're going more efficiently.

Starting with navigation

If you've been doing your current commute for more than a week, you've probably settled in on a route that you believe is the fastest possibility. Of course, if you're using popular navigation apps like Google Nav or Waze, it could be that you're wrong. Those apps, I've found when I try to use them to get around L.A., always put you on the freeways, though you do have the option of telling the map to always avoid them. Even so, there are times when you will want to take your local freeway or interstate highway.

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Also on Android Apps

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But navigation apps are still good for one very important reason: they show you where you are on a map, and both Google Nav and Waze boast some cool map features. Google's key bit, to me, is its heat map. When in navigation mode, you can zoom out and view traffic levels on any street. Green means you're clear, orange means slow, and red means it's going to be a while. While Google does not take this data into account when giving you a route, you can use it to make your own, certainly. It's easy to look at the heat map and plan your own alternative route or to detour yourself when the need arises.

Waze, on the other hand, doesn't have a complete heat map of your city, but that's probably because that app has less data to work with since it's not pulling GPS data from every Android phone. It does, however, have other helpful information. It gives better freeway data than Google does, as it actually tracks vehicle speed and feed that information to other users. In those times where you need to know exactly how long it will take to get there, this is helpful. Still, you might get data on your route in some places but not others.

Waze, though, is also a social network, and it allows you to feed in information about the world around you. Waze users will, for example, make a note on the map when they drive through a construction zone, and then everyone else can see that information. If there's a bad wreck holding up traffic, they'll let you know that, too. More specific information is always good. Making educated decisions is also good.

Texting, tunes, and gas stations

A lot of folks, though, are happy with their routes and don't need a navigation app. Maybe they've gotten so used to it that they could sleep through their morning drive. Those people, I might think, would be tempted to text a bit while sitting in the car. That, as we all know, is bad news, and in some places it can earn you a ticket if you're spotted doing that by a police officer.

What those people need, then, is an app that won't let them text while they speed along the highway. That app does exist, and it's called Textecution. Allegedly, this app will prevent you from texting if you're moving more than 15 miles per hour, and you can also set it to shut off mobile data. It also costs $30 for some reason. While that?s probably too pricey for most, if you?re in the market for such an app, take it as a sign that you could have a serious problem.

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Best Educational Apps, Handpicked By Experts

Appolicious is pleased to introduce appoLearning.com, where parents, teachers and students find great education apps.

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While using your phone to actively entertain yourself while you're driving is a terrible idea, it can be quite helpful in keeping you entertained nonetheless. Most of us like to listen to something in the car or during a subway commute, and you don't need to use the FM radio or CDs or an MP3 player. Your Android phone can do all that stuff for you. If you're in the market for free apps, I heartily recommend iHeartRadio, which collects radio stations from all over the country in one streaming app. So if you've been living for years away from your hometown and feeling sad that you can't listen to your favorite childhood radio station during your commute, chances are this app has what you're looking for.

Alternatively, the ubiquitous Spotify is also available in a mobile app, but you'll need their premium service to use it. A subscriptions costs $10 a month, but the advantages are plenty. You can stream or download any song in the extremely extensive Spotify library to your phone. Finally, you can see how many different covers of Seal?s ?Kiss From a Rose? you can get through in the morning before you go mad.

One last thing I want to discuss, and it's GasBuddy. Most of us need to put gas in our cars, right? Well, this app keeps updated prices for gas stations all over, thanks to users, and it will help you find the best options near where you are and where you're going. It's an invaluable tool, especially if you live in a large city where prices can vary greatly from one neighborhood to the next.

Source: http://www.androidapps.com/tech/articles/13405-five-android-apps-that-lessen-the-stress-of-your-daily-commute

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