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Saturday, June 23, 2012

Concept sneakers track your dancing moves with smartphone app

30 min.

Devin Coldewey

Does your Lindy Hop need a little polishing before you break it out in public??These concept shoes are equipped with accelerometers that detect every step, spin, and tap, relaying your moves to a smartphone app for instant feedback.

The designer, UK-based?Tom Sykes, feels that dance was a great way for young people to exercise and learn, but existing dance products aimed at their demographic (games on the Wii and Xbox, for instance) aren't quite instructive enough. So he set out to make something new.

The result is the GroundWave Shadow, which combines a smart shoes with a smartphone. Each sneaker has an accelerometer built in, and they both connect wirelessly to an special app loaded with dance moves. As you stomp, slide, and turn, the moves are compared in real time?with what you should be doing.

How you are to keep your phone in view while popping and locking isn't addressed, but other than that, the project (still little more than a concept and prototype) seems realistic enough. Many pairs of shoes already come with sensors, like the Nike+ series, which also syncs with an app.

The futuristic shoes may never actually make it to market, but the idea is sound. You can learn more about them at the designer's site.

Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. His personal website is coldewey.cc.

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Wales on salvage mission against Wallabies

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Man with kidney disease finds perfect match

Caitlin knew she was in love, but giving her heart to Jonathan was not an easy choice. Because Jonathan needed more than a heart; he needed a kidney, and his prospects of finding one were close to zero.

He faced a bleak future. But in the end, Caitlin turned out to be the perfect match not only for his heart but also for his health. And now they are heading into a future far brighter than the one they imagined on their wedding day last October.

Jonathan and Caitlin Woodlief met three years ago at seminary school in Dallas. Soon after they began dating, his health began to deteriorate.

"Dating was really difficult," Caitlin says. "You're trying to figure out how much to put your heart on the line, like any dating situation. But now I have to decide whether or not to go with him to chemo treatments. It's scary and intimidating dealing with a big disease."

The disease was lupus, and it was the second time around for Jonathan, which made the stakes much higher.

When he was 18, Jonathan had his first kidney transplant. The donor was his mother. It is very rare for lupus to return in the donated kidney, but just as Jonathan and Caitlin were falling in love, that's what happened.

It is far more difficult to find a matching donor for a patient who has already had one transplant because the body has built up new antibodies.

Fewer than one in 100 people could provide Jonathan a kidney his body would accept. Doctors told him he would probably spend the next 15 years or more on dialysis, waiting for a match, his health deteriorating all the time.

"It was a rough year for us," Jonathan says, "and a tough decision."

Jonathan went from "superhealthy" to increasingly being in the hospital, sometimes for long stretches. He was in the hospital when he first met Caitlin's parents.

"That was humbling," he says, "me wanting to be a man who could provide and love her, and being insecure about my health."

"There were days that really take your breath away," Caitlin says, "when you think about the weight of the situation ... just how sick he was."

"One thing helped," Caitlin says, as she wrestled with whether or not to tie her life to a very sick man. "He would have done the same for me."

A month after the wedding, Jonathan went on the transplant list, which meant the search for a donor could begin.

Caitlin went with some of their friends to be tested. One by one they called to report they were not a match.

Then, at the end of January, the news no one expected: Caitlin herself was a match.

"It's like hitting the lottery," said transplant surgeon Dr. David Cronin. "Practically speaking," he said, patients like Jonathan have almost no chance of finding a matching donor.

After more testing, and still more testing to be sure, the newlyweds went into surgery on Tuesday at the transplant center at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas.

In the prep room together, Jonathan, the old hand in hospitals, reassured his wife, who had never been under anesthetic.

"I was pretty nervous," she admits.

Caitlin went into the operating room first, and an hour later they called for Jonathan.

Caitlin is back at home already. Jonathan joins her there Friday and they can begin planning for the healthy future they didn't think they would get.

"Swimming and jumping and running and playing basketball," is first on the list, Caitlin says. Jonathan is a big basketball player.

"Further down the road, we'd love to start a family," Caitlin says. "That was on the back burner until all this came together."

But Jonathan and Caitlin, now graduates of that Christian seminary school, are not just thinking of themselves.

"A lot of our story has been shaped by suffering," Jonathan says, "so we want to work with other people who are suffering."

Jonathan is thinking of ministry, maybe overseas. He spent a year studying in China and his good health makes a return there possible. Caitlin trained as a music therapist and wants to incorporate that into her career.

"We've had a big detour here," Jonathan says. Now, thanks to his perfect match, they are back on track.

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Friday, June 22, 2012

Be Your Own Handyman With These Simple Tips

Improvements to your home will not pay you back right away. Don?t make any upgrades or improvements to your home if you will be moving in less than three to five years. This is now the time frame that it takes in order to recoup the costs of the upgrades that you make.

Doing a home improvement to your deck or adding a deck to your home is a great project to add value to your home. Consider using materials other than wood for your deck addition. Many new products have come on the market that last three to four times longer than wood without the maintenance that has to be done to wood.

Improving your home and saving money at the same time is as easy as choosing ENERGY STAR approved replacements for everything from your kitchen appliances to your windows right down to your light bulbs. Not only will this save big money on your utility bills, but many of these investments also qualify for tax credits.

It is best to paint your home in the spring and fall months. During the winter the air is filled with too much moisture that can cause the paint to take an extended amount of time to dry. During the summer months it can be too hot and cause the paint to blister or bubble.

Here is a great home improvement idea! Ensure that your whole system (furnace, heat pump, air conditioner) is energy efficient. Leaky ducts can decrease the overall energy efficiency of your heating and cooling system by as much as twenty percent. Duct sealing increases efficiency and lowers your utility bills.

Consider hiring a professional landscaper to help you design a beautiful garden for your front yard. You can decide how much maintenance and effort you are willing to put into the upkeep, and he or she can suggest plants and flowers that will allow you to meet that goal.

Installing new countertops is a great place to start with a home improvement project. There are many things to consider, though. Your kitchen layout and how you use your counter space. Do you need something professional and durable or would you prefer something that is more appealing to the eye?

Replacing lights is an important task when making home improvements. Most people notice the lighting of a room when they walk into it. The type of lighting needed depends on the room. For instance, dining rooms and living rooms benefit from chandeliers because it gives the room a relaxing feeling.

If you are forming the construction of your house, try not to put a television in the kitchen. If you love television, you will then spend more time in the kitchen. This will put you in a position where you are tempted more, with the plethora of food around you.

Make use of your local re-use center for great deals on home improvement supplies. From remnants of new materials to used appliances, furniture, fixtures and more, these centers resell products donated to them by builders or renovators. They often donate a portion of their proceeds to charity, too, so you can fix up your home, recycle, and help a good cause all at the same time.

If you?re planning home improvements to create an income property, don?t skimp on drywall. It can help both sound proof your rental unit as well as create a fire barrier between floors. Drywall the ceiling to include protection on all sides, both dampening the sound of people walking above and noise from below.

When building an addition to your home, make sure to use insurance-friendly materials. Cement or steel buildings present less of a liability to the insurance company in case of fire, so they charge lower premiums for using them. Wood framed buildings will greatly increase your premiums, because these are much more likely to be damaged in any sort of disaster or fire.

Utilize the many magazines that cover the home improvement topic. There are many useful tips to keep the project within budget as well as many ideas on style, colors and effective ways to increase your property value. There is never too much preparation when taking on such an important endeavor.

As you can see, there is a lot involved in even the most simple of home improvement projects. But, if you follow this advice and use it to make really wise investment decisions, you should have no problem choosing the best projects and the best money saving ideas for your home.

To ensure the best quality springfield mo mini storage be sure to be methodical and choose the right business for you.

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Egypt president announcement delayed

CAIRO (AP) ? Authorities delayed Thursday's planned announcement of the winner of Egypt's presidential election, likely for several days, hiking tension as allegations of fraud swirled and each candidate declared he was the victor.

Amid the atmosphere of political confusion, the Muslim Brotherhood claimed there was an organized campaign of allegations against it to mar the election and keep its candidate, Mohammed Morsi, out of the presidency. The accusation raises temperatures and the possibility of a backlash from the Brotherhood if its rival ? former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq ? is declared the winner.

On top of the potentially explosive dispute over the election is murkiness over the latest health scare of the 84-year-old former President Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted in Egypt's uprising last year and is now serving a life sentence in prison.

Overnight, state media reported that he suffered a stroke and was put on life support. He was transferred to a military hospital from the Cairo prison hospital where he has been kept since his June 2 conviction and sentencing for failing to stop the killing of protesters during the uprising.

Security officials said Wednesday he was in a coma but off life support and his heart and other vital organs were functioning. But the ambiguity over his condition has fueled skepticism among the public, where many already suspect that reports of his deteriorating condition are merely a pretext by security and military officials sympathetic to the former boss to get him out of prison to a more comfortable facility.

Egypt's election of a successor to Mubarak was long touted as a landmark moment, the choosing of the country's first civilian president in generations, who was meant to take the reins of power from the generals who have ruled directly since Mubarak's removal on Feb. 11, 2011. Instead, it is shaping into a possible confrontation between the Brotherhood on one side and the military and entrenched elements of Mubarak's old regime.

In a series of swift moves the past week, the ruling generals have cornered for themselves sweeping powers that effectively subordinate the next president and severely limit his capability for independent action.

A court order dissolved parliament, which was led by the Brotherhood, and the military issued a constitutional declaration that makes the generals the nation's legislators and gives them control of the budget. They will dominate the security system after reshaping a key National Defense Council to keep it under their control, not the president's. The generals will also oversee the process of writing Egypt's new, permanent constitution. Allies of the military and Mubarak-era officials also hold sway in the judiciary, the prosecutor's office and the election commission.

"It is clear that there is sharp polarization between the army and the Muslim Brotherhood," said Islamist Montasser el-Zayat, a prominent rights lawyer and activist. "It suggests that the next few days will probably be difficult for Egypt and the Egyptians."

Hundreds of Brotherhood supporters camped out in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Wednesday night, denouncing the ruling military and vowing to stay in place until the parliament, which was dissolved last week on a court order, is reinstated.

At the same time, figures seen as backers of the military were escalating rhetoric against the Brotherhood on TV political talk shows, accusing the group of seeking to set up a "parallel state" or forming armed militias. Others defended the military's moves, saying the generals had to do what was necessary to protect Egypt from destabilizing changes in the state. Further raising the tone and sense of confusion, rumors were circulating on social media sites and even some state-run media of tanks moving on the outskirts of Cairo, though the reports could not be confirmed.

The Elections Commission said in a statement that the announcement of results will be postponed from Thursday because a panel of judges has to look into some 400 complaints over voting submitted by both Shafiq and Morsi's campaign.

The Commission gave no new date. But its secretary-general Hatem Begato told the state Al-Ahram newspaper that the winner would be announced Saturday or Sunday.

Some of the complaints were presented on Wednesday night, shortly before the commission released its statement. It said that for five hours, the commission listened to lawyers of both camps. Shafiq's lawyers claimed fraud in 14 of Egypt's 27 provinces where they said ballots sent to polling centers were already marked in favor of Morsi.

Morsi's lawyers said that the voters' lists included soldiers, who are barred from voting, and the names of dead people.

Security officials said several employees of the state press, where election ballots were printed, were being questioned by prosecutors over allegations that thousands of the ballots were marked in favor of Morsi. Already, three heads of polling centers in different parts of the country have been arrested for questioning about alleged vote rigging.

There have been more complaints about last weekend's presidential runoff than any election since the ouster of Mubarak. But foreign and local monitors say the violations they observed were not serious or large-scale enough to question the legality of the process.

The Shafiq camp says that the former air force commander ? who was Mubarak's last prime minister ? won with 51.5 percent of the vote. The campaign of Islamist Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood says he got 52 percent to defeat Shafiq with 48 percent.

A group of independent judges known as the Judges For Egypt said Wednesday that Morsi was the winner, at a similar proportion as the Brotherhood's count. The group result was based on their review of returns filed by election officials carrying out the count.

Rumors of fraud grew so strong that on Wednesday night, the deputy head of the Muslim Brotherhood, Khairat el-Shater, appeared on television to debunk reports that he had been arrested, describing them as part of "psychological warfare." He said the Brotherhood does not commit fraud, considering it "religiously forbidden."

"There are attempts to spoil the political scene and delay the birth of a good regime," said el-Shater, who was the Brotherhood's original candidate for the presidency until he was disqualified from running by a Mubarak-era conviction, forcing the group to run Morsi in his place.

"There is an attempt to recreate Mubarak's regime ... through a fierce campaign of black rumors all across the country," he said. "There are rumors related to elections' results, to arrests, illness and martial laws." Morsi, he underlined, "is the first president elected by the people."

He said that his listed 16 different rumors circulating all at the same time with the aim of "diverting attention of Egyptians or sparking sedition."

Still, el-Shater sought to defuse fears that the group would resort to violence if Shafiq is declared the winner, saying the Brotherhood will resort to peaceful means, "not through violence or terrorism."

Tens of thousands of Islamists from the Brotherhood and its allies staged a protest in central Cairo on Tuesday night to denounce the dissolution of parliament and the military's arrogation of increased powers. But the rally was equally a show of strength to push back against Shafiq's claim of victory. The protesters chanted in support of Morsi and touted his portraits.

Meanwhile, Shafiq's campaign sought to appeal to the international community, holding a press conference in English for foreign correspondents to send a message that it will accept "whatever the outcome."

Basil el-Baz, an adviser to Shafiq, said the campaign was confident he was the winner. But he added, "At the end of the day, candidate Shafiq is willing to accept the results regardless of the outcomes."

"In the event that candidate Morsi is indeed successful and victorious in the elections, the first phone he will receive will be from candidate Shafiq," el-Baz said.

Mubarak's transfer out of prison overnight could also stir up anger among opponents of the regime, who have long suspected that he is getting preferential treatment by the ruling generals led by Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the former president's defense minister for 20 years. Mubarak was kept out of prison for the entire time since his arrest last year in April and until June 2 when he was taken to Torah.

Mubarak's wife Suzanne was by his side in the Nile-side military hospital in Maadi, a suburb just south of Cairo, where he was transferred. The security officials said a team of 15 doctors, including heart, blood and brain specialists, was supervising the condition of Mubarak. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Mubarak was convicted of failing to prevent the killing of some 900 protesters during the 18-day uprising that forced him out of office. He and his two sons, onetime heir apparent Gamal and wealthy businessman Alaa, were acquitted of corruption charges. But the two sons are held in Torah awaiting trial on charges of insider trading.

The two were by their father's side at the Torah prison hospital, but the officials said prison authorities refused their request to accompany him to the Maadi military hospital.

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Thursday, June 21, 2012

Soon after the Big Bang, heavier elements emerge: Tin-100, a doubly magic nucleus

ScienceDaily (June 20, 2012) ? A few minutes after the Big Bang the universe contained no other elements than hydrogen and helium. Physicists of the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM), the Cluster of Excellence "Universe" and the Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research (GSI) have now succeeded in producing tin-100, a very unstable yet important element for understanding the formation of heavier elements.

The researchers report on their results in the current edition of the scientific journal Nature.

Stable tin, as we know it, comprises 112 nuclear particles -- 50 protons and 62 neutrons. The neutrons act as a kind of buffer between the electrically repelling protons and prevent normal tin from decaying. According to the shell model of nuclear physics, 50 is a "magic number" that gives rise to special properties. Tin-100, with 50 protons and 50 neutrons, is "doubly magic," making it particularly interesting for nuclear physicists.

Shooting xenon-124 ions at a sheet of beryllium, the international team headed by physicists from the TU Muenchen, the Cluster of Excellence Origin and Structure of the Universe and the GSI in Darmstadt succeeded in creating tin-100 and analyzing its subsequent decay. Using specially developed particle detectors, they were able to measure the half-life and decay energy of tin-100 and its decay products. Their experiments confirmed that tin-100 has the fastest beta decay of all atomic nuclei, as previously predicted by theoretical physicists.

A repeat of the experiment is slated for the near future at the RIKEN research center in Japan. The beam intensity at RIKEN is higher in the mean time, allowing even more precise measurements. The aim of the research work is to improve the understanding of processes in the formation of heavy elements during explosions on the surface of compact stars. In addition, the researchers hope to draw conclusions on the neutrino mass from the measurements.

This work was supported by the BMBF, by the GSI, by the DFG-Cluster of Excellence Origin and Structure of the Universe, by the EC within the FP6 through I3-EURONS and by the Swedish Research Council.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Technische Universitaet Muenchen.

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

Journal Reference:

C. B. Hinke, M. B?hmer, P. Boutachkov, T. Faestermann, H. Geissel, J. Gerl, R. Gernh?user, M. G?rska, A. Gottardo, H. Grawe, J. L. Gr?bosz, R. Kr?cken, N. Kurz, Z. Liu, L. Maier, F. Nowacki, S. Pietri, Zs. Podoly?k, K. Sieja, K. Steiger, K. Straub, H. Weick, H.-J. Wollersheim, P. J. Woods, N. Al-Dahan, N. Alkhomashi, A. Ata?, A. Blazhev, N. F. Braun, I. T. ?elikovi?, T. Davinson, I. Dillmann, C. Domingo-Pardo, P. C. Doornenbal, G. de France, G. F. Farrelly, F. Farinon, N. Goel, T. C. Habermann, R. Hoischen, R. Janik, M. Karny, A. Ka?ka?, I. M. Kojouharov, Th. Kr?ll, Y. Litvinov, S. Myalski, F. Nebel, S. Nishimura, C. Nociforo, J. Nyberg, A. R. Parikh, A. Proch?zka, P. H. Regan, C. Rigollet, H. Schaffner, C. Scheidenberger, S. Schwertel, P.-A. S?derstr?m, S. J. Steer, A. Stolz, P. Strme?. Superallowed Gamow?Teller decay of the doubly magic nucleus ¹⁰⁰Sn. Nature, 2012; 486 (7403): 341 DOI: 10.1038/nature11116

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

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

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