Herman Miller may be best known today for its high-end, technical desk chairs, like the Aeron and the Embody, but they also make iconic modern furniture designed by legends like Eames and Noguchi?classic stuff, that will look as good in 50 years as it did 50 years ago. All of it is on sale right now.
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Public release date: 10-Jun-2013
Share ] Contact: Chris Chipello
christopher.chipello@mcgill.ca
514-398-4201
McGill University
Inbreeding is generally deleterious, even in flowering plants. Since inbreeding raises the risk that bad copies of a gene will be expressed, inbred progeny suffer from reduced viability.
Many flowering plants are able to recognize and reject their own pollen, thereby preventing inbreeding despite the plants' hermaphroditic nature. This mechanism is a complex trait that involves the interaction of a gene that tags the pollen with an identifier molecule, and a gene that produces a molecule capable of detecting pollen produced by the same plant.
Evolutionary biologists have often argued that once complex traits are lost, they are seldom regained. But a new study, led by biologists at McGill University and published in the journal PLOS Biology, suggests that this may not be the case for self-pollen recognition.
In the evolutionary lineage leading to the genus Leavenworthia (a plant group related to canola and cole crops such as broccoli and cabbage), the ancestral genes that code for self-pollen recognition were lost. But the self-pollen recognition function in Leavenworthia appears to have been taken up by two other genes that originally may have had a different role -- for example, in pathogen recognition.
"Self-incompatibility," the pollen-recognition system that enables plants to avoid the inbreeding caused by self-pollination, involves a pair of tightly linked genes known as the S locus. In this study, the researchers analyzed the gene sequence, genome organization, and gene evolutionary history of S loci in members of the Brassicaceae family, which includes plants of the genus Leavenworthia.
"We conclude that both genes that comprise the ancestral S locus in the Brassicaceae were lost in Leavenworthia," says McGill researcher Sier-Ching Chantha, lead author of the study. Our analyses show, however, that plants of this genus have two other linked genes that exhibit patterns characteristic of an S locus. These genes occupy the same genomic position in Leavenworthia as do two non-S-locus genes in a related species. We suggest that these genes have evolved to assume the function of the pollen recognition system of self-incompatibility in Leavenworthia."
How plants avoid inbreeding, and the related topic of S locus evolution have been important research subjects for plant biologists. There can be hundreds of variants of a single S-locus in individual plant populationsa very unusual situation. In the animal world, a similar pheomenon is the many variations in immune-system genes. Immune system genes in animals, like the S locus in plants, are also involved in recognition, though in the case of immune genes it is foreign antigens rather than pollen types that are recognized. It seems that the recognition function can act in both systems to allow the evolution of large amounts of genetic diversity.
"Franois Jacob, the famous French biologist, once compared the action of natural selection to that of a tinkerer who uses the materials around him to produce a working object," notes McGill biology professor Daniel Schoen, the corresponding author of the study. "The evolution of the genes involved in self-pollen recognition in Leavenworthia provides a compelling example of this idea, and lends credence to the notion that the loss of complex traits may not always be irreversible."
###
The study's other co-authors are Adam C. Herman and Adrian E. Platts of McGill's Department of Biology and Xavier Vekemans of Universit Lille 1 in France.
The research was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Genome Canada, Genome Quebec, and France's Agence Nationale de la Recherche.
To access the study: http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001560
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 10-Jun-2013 Share ] Contact: Chris Chipello
christopher.chipello@mcgill.ca
514-398-4201
McGill University
Inbreeding is generally deleterious, even in flowering plants. Since inbreeding raises the risk that bad copies of a gene will be expressed, inbred progeny suffer from reduced viability.
Many flowering plants are able to recognize and reject their own pollen, thereby preventing inbreeding despite the plants' hermaphroditic nature. This mechanism is a complex trait that involves the interaction of a gene that tags the pollen with an identifier molecule, and a gene that produces a molecule capable of detecting pollen produced by the same plant.
Evolutionary biologists have often argued that once complex traits are lost, they are seldom regained. But a new study, led by biologists at McGill University and published in the journal PLOS Biology, suggests that this may not be the case for self-pollen recognition.
In the evolutionary lineage leading to the genus Leavenworthia (a plant group related to canola and cole crops such as broccoli and cabbage), the ancestral genes that code for self-pollen recognition were lost. But the self-pollen recognition function in Leavenworthia appears to have been taken up by two other genes that originally may have had a different role -- for example, in pathogen recognition.
"Self-incompatibility," the pollen-recognition system that enables plants to avoid the inbreeding caused by self-pollination, involves a pair of tightly linked genes known as the S locus. In this study, the researchers analyzed the gene sequence, genome organization, and gene evolutionary history of S loci in members of the Brassicaceae family, which includes plants of the genus Leavenworthia.
"We conclude that both genes that comprise the ancestral S locus in the Brassicaceae were lost in Leavenworthia," says McGill researcher Sier-Ching Chantha, lead author of the study. Our analyses show, however, that plants of this genus have two other linked genes that exhibit patterns characteristic of an S locus. These genes occupy the same genomic position in Leavenworthia as do two non-S-locus genes in a related species. We suggest that these genes have evolved to assume the function of the pollen recognition system of self-incompatibility in Leavenworthia."
How plants avoid inbreeding, and the related topic of S locus evolution have been important research subjects for plant biologists. There can be hundreds of variants of a single S-locus in individual plant populationsa very unusual situation. In the animal world, a similar pheomenon is the many variations in immune-system genes. Immune system genes in animals, like the S locus in plants, are also involved in recognition, though in the case of immune genes it is foreign antigens rather than pollen types that are recognized. It seems that the recognition function can act in both systems to allow the evolution of large amounts of genetic diversity.
"Franois Jacob, the famous French biologist, once compared the action of natural selection to that of a tinkerer who uses the materials around him to produce a working object," notes McGill biology professor Daniel Schoen, the corresponding author of the study. "The evolution of the genes involved in self-pollen recognition in Leavenworthia provides a compelling example of this idea, and lends credence to the notion that the loss of complex traits may not always be irreversible."
###
The study's other co-authors are Adam C. Herman and Adrian E. Platts of McGill's Department of Biology and Xavier Vekemans of Universit Lille 1 in France.
The research was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Genome Canada, Genome Quebec, and France's Agence Nationale de la Recherche.
To access the study: http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001560
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-06/mu-hdi061013.php
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Rockford Fire responded to a structure fire at 121 Washington Street in the early morning hours Sunday.? Upon arrival they found a detached garage behind the home fully engulfed.? Firefighters took control of the fire within ten minutes of being there.
In total, the fire resulted in $25,000 in damage including a car that was in the garage.? There were no injuries to residents or firefighters.?
An investigation was completed but the cause of the fire is unknown at this time.
Source: http://www.wrex.com/story/22543090/2013/06/09/overnight-fire-damages-home-and-family-car
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June 10, 2013 ? Diabetes patients often receive their diagnosis after a series of glucose-related blood tests in hospital settings, and then have to monitor their condition daily through expensive, invasive methods. But what if diabetes could be diagnosed and monitored through cheaper, noninvasive methods?A transmission electron microscopy image of the hybrid material revealing the formation of "titanium dioxide on a stick."
Chemists at the University of Pittsburgh have demonstrated a sensor technology that could significantly simplify the diagnosis and monitoring of diabetes through breath analysis alone. Their findings were published in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS).
Even before blood tests are administered, those with diabetes often recognize the condition's symptoms through their breath acetone -- a characteristic "fruity" odor that increases significantly with high glucose levels. The Pitt team was interested in this biomarker as a possible diagnostic tool.
"Once patients are diagnosed with diabetes, they have to monitor their condition for the rest of their lives," said Alexander Star, principal investigator of the project and Pitt associate professor of chemistry. "Current monitoring devices are mostly based on blood glucose analysis, so the development of alternative devices that are noninvasive, inexpensive, and provide easy-to-use breath analysis could completely change the paradigm of self-monitoring diabetes."
Together with his colleagues -- Dan Sorescu, a research physicist at the National Energy Technology Laboratory, and Mengning Ding, a Pitt graduate student studying chemistry -- Star used what's called a "sol-gel approach," a method for using small molecules (often on a nanoscale level) to produce solid materials. The team combined titanium dioxide -- an inorganic compound widely used in body-care products such as makeup -- with carbon nanotubes, which acted as "skewers" to hold the particles together. These nanotubes were used because they are stronger than steel and smaller than any element of silicon-based electronics.
This method, which the researchers playfully call "titanium dioxide on a stick," effectively combined the electrical properties of the tubes with the light-illuminating powers of the titanium dioxide. They then created the sensor device by using these materials as an electrical semiconductor, measuring its electrical resistance (the sensor's signal).
The researchers found the sensor could be activated with light to produce an electrical charge. This prompted them to "cook" the "skewers" in the sensor under ultraviolet light to measure acetone vapors -- which they found were lower than previously reported sensitivities.
"Our measurements have excellent detection capabilities," said Star. "If such a sensor could be developed and commercialized, it could transform the way patients with diabetes monitor their glucose levels."
The team is currently working on a prototype of the sensor, with plans to test it on human breath samples soon.
The paper, "Photoinduced Charge Transfer and Acetone Sensitivity of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube-Titanium Dioxide Hybrids," was first published in JACS online June 5. The work was performed in support of ongoing research at the National Energy Technology Laboratory.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/GWYdp8Xgx24/130610133125.htm
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Bumper stickers, coffee mugs, T-shirts, and even tattoos designed for breast cancer awareness month often say things like "Save the ta-tas," or "Save 2nd Base," both of which are sexually charged, and highly inappropriate, references to women's breasts. Other childish and unbecoming campaigns include "Feel Your Boobies" and the American Cancer Society (ACS)'s latest "It's Okay to Look at Our Chests" initiative, both of which degrade women for the apparent purpose of eliciting a shock-driven awareness factor.
"'Help The Hooters,' 'Save The Jugs,' 'Don't Let Cancer Steal Second Base,' 'Cop a Feel,' 'Save The Ta-tas,' 'Save The Boobies,' 'Save The Headlights;' these are just some of the slogans which have been used to promote breast cancer awareness and fundraising around the world," wrote Melinda Tankard Reist in the Australian paper Crikey back in 2010. Reist added that such campaigns focus primarily on women's breasts as an object of sexual desirability rather than as a subject of women's health and well-being.
This is the same sentiment held by "Maggie" over at NewsFixNow.com, who more recently pointed out that some online pornography websites are now jumping on the breast cancer awareness bandwagon with their own outlandish "Save the Boobs" and other such campaigns. This undignified approach to breast cancer awareness actually shames women -- but since it generates millions of dollars in sleazy merchandise and service-based profits, it is unlikely to stop anytime soon."I don't see the porn site to be much different from the 'Feel your boobies' T-shirts," said Gayle Sulik, author of the book "Pink Ribbon Blues," to USA Today. Sulik is disgusted with the fact that many magazines and advertising campaigns for breast cancer have actually now resorted to using topless young women to supposedly promote awareness about the disease. "It sexual objectifies women, trivializes breast cancer ... and uses the objectified woman as window dressing for the profit-making machine."
The group Breast Cancer Action (BCA), which unlike Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the American Cancer Society, and various other cancer groups is actually trying to promote legitimate breast cancer prevention methods, and is likewise sick of the endless profiteering at the expense of women's dignity. BCA is trying to raise awareness about the known causes of breast cancer, which includes environmental toxins, as well as inform women about the potential dangers of screenings -- and BCA does not have to sexualize women's breasts to seek these practical outcomes.
"The implicit message in these campaigns is that it is breasts that are sexy; sexy is what is important; and we should care about breast cancer because it takes those lovely, sexy breasts out of the world," says Karuna Jagger, Executive Director of BCA, about the cancer industry's filthy marketing tactics. "Every October, the stunts just get more bizarre and further removed from what's needed for this epidemic."
Sources for this article include:
http://www.usatoday.com
Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/040691_breast_cancer_sexualization_abuse_of_women.html
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US adds 175,000 jobs in May, in line with expectations but not enough to reduce the unemployment rate. Elsewhere in the economy, manufacturing and construction disappoint, but jobless claims fall.
Anu Vatal of Chicago, speaks with Patrice Tosi of BluePay, seated, during a career fair in Rolling Meadows, Ill. The US economy added 175,000 jobs in May, a gain that shows employers are hiring at a still modest but steady pace despite government spending cuts and higher taxes, according to the Labor Department.
M. Spencer Green/AP/File
EnlargeUS adds jobs, but unemployment rate rises: The US economy added 175,000 jobs in May, but the unemployment rate ticked up slightly, to 7.6 percent. The number of jobs added was about what analysts expected, but employment needs to grow faster if the US expects to get its elevated unemployment rate back to more normal levels.
Skip to next paragraph Schuyler VelascoStaff writer/editor
Schuyler Velasco is a writer and editor for the Monitor's business desk.? She writes about consumer issues, sports, and the occasional sandwich.
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The jobs report, released Friday by the Department of Labor, answered several nagging questions about the economy. Will the Federal Reserve reduce the pace of its purchases of debt sooner than expected, pushing up interest rates? If job-creation doesn't pick up, the Fed's unlikely to reduce its program until next year, analysts say. Are federal budget cuts under the sequester hurting the labor market? They probably will, analysts say, but the national job numbers don't show much of an effect yet. Can the job market grow while the economy is in a soft patch? Yes, at a tepid pace.
A large segment of the jobs added in May were in the temporary sector, which tends to be a?bellwether?for the rest of the labor market. For more on the May jobs report, read Monitor reporter Ron Scherer's take.?
Manufacturing disappoints: The ISM-Manufacturing Index for May sank slightly, to its lowest level in four years.?Many of the biggest activity declines were in the United States. Many economists expect that manufacturing growth will slow, but not disappear entirely. ?Becalmed still beats sinking,? Michael Montgomery, US economist with?IHS Global Insight wrote in an e-mailed analysis. "It looks like a long, cool summer in the manufacturing sector."
Despite the US decline, manufacturing?s global outlook remained positive, but still weak.?
Construction spending hits a snag: Construction spending increased 0.4 percent in April, while core construction spending (for single-family, multifamily, state and local government, and private nonresidential purposes) increased 0.9 percent. The increase was good news, but it came with a bit of bad: Construction spending estimates for February and March were revised downward, portending flat growth for the year. ?Going forward, public?construction?spending?is likely to drop through the end of this year because of budgetary problems state and local governments face, but turn in the first half of 2013,? Patrick Newport, US economist for IHS Global Insight, wrote via email. ?The sequester will have small effects on the public construction numbers since federal spending accounts for only 10 percent of public construction.?
Despite the tepid report, the housing sector was cited as a bright spot in the Federal Reserve?s June ?Beige Book,? a collection of economic information from on or before May 24.
Jobless claims fall: The number of people applying for initial jobless claims fell by 11,000 to 346,000 claims last week, a hopeful sign that the job market is gradually improving. The claims numbers have been up and down in recent weeks, but analysts think the numbers overall point to slow, steady gains.?
The end of low mortgage rates? The average interest rate for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage jumped 16 percentage points to 3.91 percent last week. Following a year of historic lows, rates have been climbing steadily in recent weeks, a trend that seems likely to continue in the face of rising house prices, economic rebound, and the Fed potentially easing off its buying up of Treasury bonds, which kept rates quite low.?
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Tutorial known as Monezilax System (search on google) kept appearing here on a lot of youtube and I thought they were scam. However after my mate follow it, and finally earn lots of money with this course, I?m persuaded. Do not take my own word for it, search? for Monezilax System on the internet.
Source: http://www.rangrage.com/small-business-marketing-online-unique-selling-point-secrets/
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An idea suggesting massive stone statues that encircle Easter Island may have been "walked" into place has run into controversy.
In October 2012, researchers came up with the "walking" theory by creating a 5-ton replica of one of the statues (or "moai"), and actually moving it in an upright position, and have published a more thorough justification in the June issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science. If the statues were walked into place, then the islanders didn't need to cut down the island's palm trees to make way for moving the massive carvings, the researchers argue.
The findings may help dismantle the traditional storyline of Easter Island, or Rapa Nui: that a "crazed maniacal group destroyed their environment," by cutting down trees to transport gigantic statues, said study co-author Carl Lipo, an anthropologist at California State University, Long Beach.
But not everyone in the field is convinced. While some experts find the demonstration persuasive, others think it's unlikely the large statues could have been walked upright on the island's hilly, rough terrain. [Aerial Photos of Mysterious Stone Structures]
Ancient enigma
Rapa Nui's majestic rock statues (also known as Stone Heads of Easter Island) have been a mystery since Europeans first arrived in the 1700s on the island, located in the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Chile. Though the island was filled with a giant palm forest when Polynesians first arrived in the 13th century, the first European explorers found massive megaliths on a deforested, rock-strewn island with just 3,000 people.
In the past, archaeologists proposed that a lost civilization chopped down all the trees to make paths to roll the megalithic structures horizontally for miles on top of palm trees used as "rolling logs" of sorts, from the quarries where they were created to ceremonial platforms. That transport method would have required many people, and led to deforestation and environmental ruin that would've caused the population to plummet.
Walking statues
But Lipo and his colleagues wondered whether that made sense. For one, other archaeological evidence in villages suggested the island's population was never that large, and the palm trees, essentially hardwood with a soft, foamy material inside, would be crushed by the rolling statues, Lipo said.
Along the road to the platforms are moai whose bases curved so they couldn't stand upright, but instead would topple forward, meaning the ones in transit would have to be modified once they reached the platform. That made the researchers wonder why the statues weren't made to stand upright in the first place if they were meant to be rolled ?into place, not walked, Lipo said
And the statues found on the roads to the platforms all had wider bases than shoulders, which physical models suggested would help them rock forward in an upright position.
To see whether the statues may have been walked, the team transformed photos of one 10-foot-tall (3 meters) statue into a 3D computer model, and then created a 5-ton concrete replica. Last October, on a NOVA documentary, the team tried walking the replica, using people holding ropes on each side to rock the statue forward and back on a dirt path in Hawaii. [Gallery: See Images of the Easter Island Demonstration]
The statue moved easily.
"It goes from something you can't imagine moving at all, to kind of dancing down the road," Lipo told LiveScience.
The movers walked the replica about 328 feet (100 m) in 40 minutes; from this demonstration and assuming the ancient builders would have been somewhat of experts at their jobs, Lipo suspects they would have moved the Rapa Nui statues about 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) a day, meaning transport would have taken about two weeks.
In the new paper, the team hypothesizes the builders carved the statues'? bases so they would lean forward, as it would've been easier to rock a statue with a curved bottom back and forth. Then, the builders would have flattened the bases to stand the statues upright once they reached the ceremonial platforms.
No collapse
The findings suggest that relatively few people were needed to move the statues. As a result, the idea of a massive civilization collapsing because of their craze to build statues needs a rethink, Lipo said.
Instead, Lipo's team believes the population was probably always small and stable.
The Polynesian settlers did cause deforestation, through slashing-and-burning of the forest to make way for sweet potatoes and through the rats inadvertently brought to the island that ate palm nuts before they could sprout into new trees. But that deforestation didn't cause the civilization to die out: The palm trees were probably not economically useful to the islanders anyway, Lipo said.
Controversial conclusion
"It's an entirely plausible hypothesis," said John Terrell, an anthropologist at the Field Museum in Chicago, who was not involved in the study.
The combination of physics, archaeological evidence, satellite imagery of the roads, and human feasibility makes their story compelling, Terrell told LiveScience.
But not everyone is convinced.
The walking hypothesis relies on particular statue geometry; namely, that all the statues had wider bases than shoulders when they were moved, said Jo Anne Van Tilburg, the director of the Easter Island Statues Project, and a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the study.
Her research of 887 statues on Rapa Nui has found much more variation in this ratio, even in statues found in transit to their ceremonial platforms.
In 1998, Van Tilburg and others from the Easter Island Statues Project used a similar replica to show that moving the statues horizontally along parallel logs could work as well.
"I don't think you have to invent a very awkward, difficult transport method," Van Tilburg told LiveScience.
What's more, Rapa Nui's prepared roads were rough and uneven, and the statues would have been moved over hilly terrain, said Christopher Stevenson, an archaeologist at Virginia Commonwealth University, who was not involved in Lipo's study.
By contrast, "in the NOVA exercise it was like an airport runway," Stevenson said.
And the replica the team moved is on the small side for statues ? some of which are up to 40 feet (12 m) tall and weigh 75 tons. It's not clear the method would work for something much larger, Stevenson said.
Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter @tiaghose.?Follow?LiveScience @livescience, Facebook?& Google+. Original article on?LiveScience.com.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Source: http://news.yahoo.com/easter-islands-walking-stone-heads-stir-debate-122723947.html
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An aerial view of the NSA's Utah Data Center in Bluffdale, Utah, Thursday, June 6, 2013. The government is secretly collecting the telephone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon under a top-secret court order, according to the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The Obama administration is defending the National Security Agency's need to collect such records, but critics are calling it a huge over-reach. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
An aerial view of the NSA's Utah Data Center in Bluffdale, Utah, Thursday, June 6, 2013. The government is secretly collecting the telephone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon under a top-secret court order, according to the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The Obama administration is defending the National Security Agency's need to collect such records, but critics are calling it a huge over-reach. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
FILE - In this Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2011, file photo, a Facebook User Operations Safety Team worker looks at reviews at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. The Washington Post and The Guardian reported Thursday, June 6, 2013, the existence of a program used by the NSA and FBI that scours the nation's main Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, emails, documents and connection logs to help analysts track a person's movements and contacts. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)
FILE- In this his June 27, 2012 file photo, Vic Gundotra, Google Senior Vice President of Engineering, talks about Google Plus at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco. The Washington Post and The Guardian reported Thursday, June 6, 2013, the existence of a program used by the NSA and FBI that scours the nation's main Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, emails, documents and connection logs to help analysts track a person's movements and contacts. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? With every phone call they make and every Web excursion they take, people are leaving a digital trail of revealing data that can be tracked by profit-seeking companies and terrorist-hunting government officials.
The revelations that the National Security Agency is perusing millions of U.S. customer phone records at Verizon Communications and snooping on the digital communications stored by nine major Internet services illustrate how aggressively personal data is being collected and analyzed.
Verizon is handing over so-called metadata, excerpts from millions of U.S. customer records, to the NSA under an order issued by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, according to a report in the British newspaper The Guardian. The report was confirmed Thursday by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Former NSA employee William Binney told The Associated Press that he estimates the agency collects records on 3 billion phone calls each day.
The NSA and FBI appear to be looking even wider under a clandestine program code-named "PRISM" that was revealed in stories posted late Thursday by The Washington Post and The Guardian.
PRISM gives the U.S. government access to email, documents, audio, video, photographs and other data belonging to foreigners on foreign soil who are under investigation, according to The Washington Post. The newspaper said it reviewed a confidential roster of companies and services participating in PRISM. The companies included AOL Inc., Apple Inc., Facebook Inc., Google Inc., Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc., Skype, YouTube and Paltalk.
In statements, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL and Paltalk all said they only provide the government with user data required under the law. (Google runs YouTube and Microsoft owns Skype.)
The NSA isn't getting customer names or the content of phone conversations under the Verizon court order, but that doesn't mean the information can't be tied to other data coming in through the PRISM program to look into people's lives, according to experts.
Like pieces of a puzzle, the bits and bytes left behind from people's electronic interactions can be cobbled together to draw conclusions about their habits, friendships and preferences using data-mining formulas and increasingly powerful computers.
It's all part of a phenomenon known as "Big Data," a catchphrase increasingly used to describe the science of analyzing the vast amount of information collected through mobile devices, Web browsers and check-out stands. Analysts use powerful computers to detect trends and create digital dossiers about people.
The Obama administration and lawmakers privy to the NSA's surveillance say the data being collected is only dissected when there is credible evidence of a terrorist plot or other reasons to believe that national security is being threatened. The sweeping court order covers the Verizon records of every mobile and landline phone call from April 25 through July 19, according to The Guardian.
It's likely the Verizon phone records are being matched with an even broader set of data, said Forrester Research analyst Fatemeh Khatibloo.
"My sense is they are looking for network patterns," she said. "They are looking for who is connected to whom and whether they can put any timelines together. They are also probably trying to identify locations where people are calling from."
The Verizon data includes the duration of every call. Although the court order doesn't require it, experts suspect the NSA may also be getting some kind of data that helps determine the vicinity of the calls.
The location information is particularly valuable for cloak-and-dagger operations like the one the NSA is running, said Cindy Cohn, a legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group that has been fighting the government's collection of personal phone records since 2006. The foundation is currently suing over the government's collection of U.S. citizens' communications in a case that dates back to the administration of President George W. Bush.
"It's incredibly invasive," Cohn said. "This is a consequence of the fact that we have so many third parties that have accumulated significant information about our everyday lives."
It's such a rich vein of information that U.S. companies and other organizations now spend more than $2 billion each year to obtain third-party data about individuals, according to Forrester Research. The data helps businesses target potential customers. Much of this information is sold by so-called data brokers such as Acxiom Corp., a Little Rock, Ark., company that maintains extensive files about the online and offline activities of more than 500 million consumers worldwide.
The digital floodgates have opened during the past decade as the convenience and allure of the Internet ? and sleek smartphones ? have made it easier and more enjoyable for people to stay connected wherever they go.
"I don't think there has been a sea change in analytical methods as much as there has been a change in the volume, velocity and variety of information and the computing power to process it all," said Gartner analyst Douglas Laney.
In a sign of the NSA's determination to vacuum up as much data as possible, the agency has built a data center in Bluffdale, Utah that is five times larger than the U.S. Capitol ?all to sift through Big Data. The massive center has fed perceptions that some factions of the U.S. government are determined to build a database of all phone calls, Internet searches and emails under the guise of national security. The Washington Post's disclosure that both the NSA and FBI have the ability to burrow into computers of major Internet services will likely heighten fears that U.S. government's Big Data is creating something akin to the ever-watchful Big Brother in George Orwell's "1984" novel.
"The fact that the government can tell all the phone carriers and Internet service providers to hand over all this data sort of gives them carte blanche to build profiles of people they are targeting in a very different way than any company can," Khatibloo said.
In most instances, Internet companies such as Google, Facebook and Yahoo are taking what they learn from search requests, clicks on "like" buttons, Web surfing activity and location tracking on mobile devices to figure out what their users like and divine where they are. It's all in aid of showing users ads about products likely to pique their interest at the right time. The companies defend this kind of data mining as a consumer benefit.
Google is trying to take things a step further. It is honing its data analysis and search formulas in an attempt to anticipate what an individual might be wondering about or wanting.
Other Internet companies also use Big Data to improve their services. Video subscription service Netflix takes what it learns from each viewer's preferences to recommend movies and TV shows. Amazon.com Inc. does something similar when it highlights specific products to different shoppers visiting its site.
The federal government has the potential to know even more about people because it controls the world's biggest data bank about U.S. citizens through its collection of Social Security numbers, tax returns and health records through Medicare, said David Vladeck, a Georgetown University law professor who recently stepped down as the Federal Trade Commission's consumer protection director.
Before leaving the FTC last year, Vladeck opened an inquiry into the practices of Acxiom and other data brokers because he feared that information was being misinterpreted in ways that unfairly stereotyped people. For instance, someone might be classified as a potential health risk just because he or she bought products linked to increased chance of heart attack. The FTC inquiry into data brokers is still open.
"We had real concerns about the reliability of the data and unfair treatment by algorithm," Vladeck said.
Vladeck stressed he had no reason to believe that the NSA is misinterpreting the data it collects about people. He finds some comfort in The Guardian report that said the Verizon order had been signed by Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Judge Roger Vinson.
The NSA "differs from a commercial enterprise in the sense that there are checks in the judicial system and in Congress," Vladeck said. "If you believe in the way our government is supposed to work, then you should have some faith that those checks are meaningful. If you are skeptical about government, then you probably don't think that kind of oversight means anything."
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'I wanted to do harm to the person that called the police on me,' the MMG MC tells 'RapFix Live.'
By Rob Markman, with reporting by Sway Calloway
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1708586/gunplay-bible-on-the-dash.jhtml
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Resistance to a sweeping immigration overhaul is moving from conservative talk shows to the corridors of power.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives on Thursday rejected President Obama's policy to stop deporting young people brought to this country illegally as children. With all but six Republicans voting against funding a policy that lets hundreds of thousands of law-abiding but undocumented youth enrolled in high school or the military to stay in this country, the vote spotlighted the long odds facing the much broader Senate bill to allow 11 million illegal immigrants earn citizenship.
The House vote came two days after Republican Gov. Rick Scott of Florida vetoed a bill that would help young people whose deportations were halted by the Obama administration get driver's licenses. And on Wednesday, a key immigration leader in the House, Republican Raul Labrador of Idaho, defected from bi-partisan talks.
These unexpected developments reflect the stirrings of what could snowball into a full-blown revolt against the most ambitious overhaul of immigration law in a quarter century.
"If they think they're going to force-feed amnesty, there's going to be a rebellion," said Rep. Steve King of Iowa, who spearheaded the vote one day after House Republicans huddled with one of the champions of immigration reform, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. King added: "The vote might indicate that we're not particularly persuaded."
Unlikely to overturn Obama's popular deportation policy, House Republicans and Gov. Scott are seeking to rebuke a president viewed as overstepping his authority. But the actions aimed at perhaps the most sympathetic immigrant group?people brought to this country illegally as children?could undermine the GOP's high-profile, multimillion-dollar investment in Hispanic outreach and recruitment in the wake of the 2012 election. Democratic operatives in Washington hammered the House vote as "extreme," while in Florida, Democratic lawmakers held press conferences for the second day in a row condemning Scott's veto.
"There's no way you can spin this as good," said Republican pollster Whit Ayres, who advises Rubio. "I have thought for some time that if there is going to be immigration reform, it will pass after very intense debate and very vocal opposition. I hope this is a baby step back."
Heritage Action, an influential conservative group, urged members of Congress to support King's amendment and said the vote would be included in its annual legislative scorecard. Its affiliated think tank was widely criticized last month for releasing an anti-immigration reform report by an author who once argued that Hispanic immigrants have lower IQs. Thursday's vote is expected to revive Democratic attacks that portray the GOP as anti-Hispanic and anti-immigrant.
"The optics are really bad for Republicans," said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum. "It's like they forgot what happened in November."
The immigration debate reflects a continuing rift between a Republican establishment that sees the path back to the White House through the fast-growing Hispanic community and the more ideological and conservative wing of the party. For many House Republicans who represent mostly white, conservative districts, immigration reform looks like political suicide.
But Thursday's vote suggested that even GOP members representing large Latino populations aren't willing to budge. Just four Republicans from districts with higher-than-average Latino populations voted against King's amendment; 43 voted for it, including 14 Republicans from districts that are at least one-quarter voting-age Hispanic.
Even members in Latino-heavy districts who may face tough reelection campaigns in 2014?such as Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., who earlier this year said that he supported a pathway to citizenship for undocumented minors brought here by their parents?supported King's amendment.
"There are two political games going on?the short game and the long game," said Gary Segura, a Stanford University professor and principal in the polling firm Latino Decisions. "There's a persistent fantasy that Latino voters are not that interested in immigration reform. So in terms of some Republicans reelection prospects, it might be a wash, but opposition to immigration reform hurts the Republican Party in the long term."
One of the reasons Scott's veto was so puzzling was that the measure coasted through the Republican-controlled Legislature, with only two no votes. Only two other Republican governors have taken the same position as Scott on driver's licenses for undocumented minors: Jan Brewer in Arizona and Dave Heineman of Nebraska.
All other states offer driver's licenses to young illegal immigrants with work permits whose deportation has been deferred by the Obama administration. In fact, five states this year have passed laws offering driver's licenses to adults regardless of their legal status: Colorado,?Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, and Oregon. Bills are pending in California, Connecticut, and?Vermont.
"Gov. Scott is certainly in the minority and looking backwards," said Tonya Broder, senior attorney with the National Immigration Law Center.
Scott's allies say his veto matches the hardline position against illegal immigration he took in the 2010 primary, when he vowed to bring an Arizona-like crackdown to the state. He dropped the issue in favor of jobs in the general election, and with a robust Spanish-language media campaign, won 50 percent of the Hispanic vote.
While Democrats argue the veto will make the unpopular governor's reelection campaign even tougher, Republicans dismissed the attacks as overblown. New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez's strong approval ratings suggest an easy reelection next year even though she has repeatedly tried to repeal a law granting driver's licenses to undocumented workers. In Arizona, Gov. Jan Brewer's embrace of a tough crackdown on illegal immigrants revived her flagging campaign in 2010. More recently, a judge refused last month to strike down her policy denying driver's licenses to undocumented but working young immigrants.
"If Hispanics see you are reaching out and making a concerned effort to communicate, I think that covers some of the bases," said Florida-based Republican consultant Rick Wilson. "I don't see this as the killer issue for the Democrats, and it doesn't offset the fact that the economy is improving and housing is coming back."
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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mounting-signs-gop-rebellion-against-immigration-reform-060019130.html
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www.realsimple.com:
Short on time? It's still possible to pull together a wow-worthy table arrangement that suits your party style. Create one of these inspiring ideas in five minutes or less.
Read the whole story at www.realsimple.com
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Last modified: April 22, 2012 13:36:56.
? Go back...College of Sharia and Islamic Studies End of Year Celebration 2013 
Honoring ceremony | |
| Organizer: | College of Sharia & Islamic studies |
|---|---|
| College / Department: | College of Sharia & Islamic Studies |
| Type: | Honoring Ceremony |
| Date: | Jun 06, 2013 |
| Time: | 11:00 to 14:00 |
| Venue: | College of Sharia & Islamic Studies - 2nd Floor ?? [ Map it ] |
| Email: | hisagazal@qu.edu.qa ahsaa@qu.edu.qa mona.juma@qu.edu.qa |
| Details: | Contact Person: Prof. Hessa Al Ghazal Dr. Amna Al Muraikhi Muna Al Sulaiti |
Source: http://www.qu.edu.qa/events/event.php?id=1500
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Public release date: 5-Jun-2013 Share ] Contact: Christine Pulliam
cpulliam@cfa.harvard.edu
617-495-7463
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
If you had a time machine that could take you anywhere in the past, what time would you choose? Most people would probably pick the era of the dinosaurs in hopes of spotting a T. rex. But many astronomers would choose the period, four and a half billion years ago, that our solar system formed.
In lieu of a working time machine, we learn about the birth of our Sun and its planets by studying young stars in our galaxy. New work suggests that our Sun was both active and "feisty" in its infancy, growing in fits and starts while burping out bursts of X-rays.
"By studying TW Hydrae, we can watch what happened to our Sun when it was a toddler," said Nancy Brickhouse of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). She presented the findings today in a press conference at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
Brickhouse and her colleagues reached this conclusion by studying the young star TW Hydrae, located about 190 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation Hydra the Water Snake. TW Hydrae is an orange, type K star weighing about 80 percent as much as our Sun. It is about 10 million years old, and is still accreting gas from a surrounding disk of material. That same disk might contain newborn planets.
In order to grow, the star "eats" gas from the disk. However, the disk doesn't extend all the way to the star's surface, so the star can't dine from it directly. Instead, infalling gas gets funneled along magnetic field lines to the star's poles.
Fortunately, we are looking almost directly down on one of the star's poles. As a result, we can study the accretion process in detail.
"We're looking right where the action is," said team member Andrea Dupree of the CfA.
Infalling material smashes into the star, creating a shock wave and heating the accreting gas to temperatures greater than 5 million degrees Fahrenheit. The gas glows with high-energy X-rays. As it continues moving inward, the gas cools and its glow shifts to optical wavelengths of light. To study the process, Brickhouse and her team combined observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory with those from ground-based optical telescopes.
"By gathering data in multiple wavelengths we followed the gas all the way down. We traced the whole accretion process for the first time," explained Brickhouse.
They found that accretion was clumpy and episodic in building a star. At one point the amount of material landing on the star changed by a factor of five over the course of a few days.
"The accretion process changes from night to night. Things are happening all the time," stated Dupree.
Some of the infalling material is pushed away in a stellar wind much like the solar wind that fills our solar system. Some gets channeled into giant loops and stellar prominences.
Astronomers have known that young stars are much more magnetically active than our middle-aged Sun, but now they can actually probe the interplay between the star's magnetic fields and the protoplanetary disk.
"The very process of accretion is driving magnetic activity on TW Hydrae," added Brickhouse.
###
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 5-Jun-2013 Share ] Contact: Christine Pulliam
cpulliam@cfa.harvard.edu
617-495-7463
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
If you had a time machine that could take you anywhere in the past, what time would you choose? Most people would probably pick the era of the dinosaurs in hopes of spotting a T. rex. But many astronomers would choose the period, four and a half billion years ago, that our solar system formed.
In lieu of a working time machine, we learn about the birth of our Sun and its planets by studying young stars in our galaxy. New work suggests that our Sun was both active and "feisty" in its infancy, growing in fits and starts while burping out bursts of X-rays.
"By studying TW Hydrae, we can watch what happened to our Sun when it was a toddler," said Nancy Brickhouse of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). She presented the findings today in a press conference at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
Brickhouse and her colleagues reached this conclusion by studying the young star TW Hydrae, located about 190 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation Hydra the Water Snake. TW Hydrae is an orange, type K star weighing about 80 percent as much as our Sun. It is about 10 million years old, and is still accreting gas from a surrounding disk of material. That same disk might contain newborn planets.
In order to grow, the star "eats" gas from the disk. However, the disk doesn't extend all the way to the star's surface, so the star can't dine from it directly. Instead, infalling gas gets funneled along magnetic field lines to the star's poles.
Fortunately, we are looking almost directly down on one of the star's poles. As a result, we can study the accretion process in detail.
"We're looking right where the action is," said team member Andrea Dupree of the CfA.
Infalling material smashes into the star, creating a shock wave and heating the accreting gas to temperatures greater than 5 million degrees Fahrenheit. The gas glows with high-energy X-rays. As it continues moving inward, the gas cools and its glow shifts to optical wavelengths of light. To study the process, Brickhouse and her team combined observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory with those from ground-based optical telescopes.
"By gathering data in multiple wavelengths we followed the gas all the way down. We traced the whole accretion process for the first time," explained Brickhouse.
They found that accretion was clumpy and episodic in building a star. At one point the amount of material landing on the star changed by a factor of five over the course of a few days.
"The accretion process changes from night to night. Things are happening all the time," stated Dupree.
Some of the infalling material is pushed away in a stellar wind much like the solar wind that fills our solar system. Some gets channeled into giant loops and stellar prominences.
Astronomers have known that young stars are much more magnetically active than our middle-aged Sun, but now they can actually probe the interplay between the star's magnetic fields and the protoplanetary disk.
"The very process of accretion is driving magnetic activity on TW Hydrae," added Brickhouse.
###
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-06/hcfa-yss060313.php
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23 hours ago
Remember phone booths? Okay, so if you're not as old as Superman, they may seem like anachronistic objects in this cell phone age. But if movies are any indication, their real purpose was to serve as killing jars for hapless, unsuspecting users who were about to come to (or narrowly escape) some kind of grisly end.
(Warning: Some uncensored language and violence.)
In this terrific compilation of some of film's greatest/worst phone booth moments by Slacktory, Tippi Hedren is (barely) protected from kamikaze birds ("The Birds"); Whoopi Goldberg gets towed away while on the line ("Jumpin' Jack Flash"); Will Ferrell goes bananas (repeatedly) while inside a "glass case of emotion" ("Anchorman"); and Michael Douglas has actually just left the phone booth when he attacks it with an Uzi ("Falling Down").
Lessons learned? Keep your calls short. You never know when a bulldozer might be about to run you over.
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It's no secret these days that VCs are getting into data in a meaningful way.?Firms can no longer afford to wait for companies, people and trends to come to Sand Hill Road. To start competing for deals, VCs have to be prospecting people, companies and trends well before events like Y Combinator's Demo Day. Many VCs have built their own data-parsing platforms internally, but one startup launching today, Mattermark, is hoping to be the go-to software for firms to use when quantifying signals of growing and potentially lucrative startups.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/EXSke2r6QMU/
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MILTON ? Effective immediately, The Florida Department of Health in Santa Rosa County (DOH-Santa Rosa) is closing its Environmental Health Building at 5505 Stewart Street.? The move will consolidate public health services under one roof and decrease expenses, making additional funds available for support of the Department of Health?s mission in Santa Rosa County.
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?Over the past several years, the Environmental Health staff has decreased from 13 positions to five and the building is more space than they need.? The staff can easily be absorbed into the main building without adversely affecting services,? said Sandra L. Park-O?Hara, A.R.N.P., DOH-Santa Rosa Administrator.? The vacant building will be returned to the county.? ??
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Environmental Health services will continue to be available at the new location during regular business hours, 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday.? Staff can be reached at 983-5275.? ?????
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For additional information on the Environmental Health program in Santa Rosa County, visit our website at healthysantarosa.com.
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Source: http://www.northsantarosa.com/2013/06/04/florida-department-of-health-in-santa-rosa-county/
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TRENTON, N.J. (AP) ? Republican Gov. Chris Christie on Tuesday set an October special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat made vacant by Democrat Frank Lautenberg's death, giving voters the quickest possible say on who will represent them in Washington but preserving Christie as the top attraction on November's ballot.
Christie's primary day announcement means there will be statewide elections three weeks apart, a rare occurrence that Democrats immediately criticized as wasteful and designed to help the governor's political position by preventing the possibility he would be on the ballot with a well-known Democrat, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who's expected to pursue the Senate seat.
"It's as if he gave the residents of this state the finger" by adding election expenses, Democratic state Sen. Richard Codey said. "Instead of holding an expensive special election that tries to protect the governor's political vulnerabilities, the voters should have the opportunity to have their say in the regular election in November."
Christie also said he would appoint someone by next week to fill the Senate seat until the special election but didn't say who it might be.
Christie's announcement, hours before he brushed aside a token challenge in the Republican gubernatorial primary, was the latest development in a whirlwind of political intrigue since Lautenberg's death early Monday. Christie's long-presumed opponent, state Sen. Barbara Buono, easily captured the Democratic nomination.
Although state law appears to give the governor a lot of power to decide how to handle a vacant U.S. Senate seat, whatever Christie decided would certainly have upset members of some important constituency: the New Jersey Democrats who have helped give him high approval ratings, the New Jersey Republicans who would like the Senate spot or Republicans across the country considering whether they want him to be their presidential nominee in 2016.
Christie said that after the death of Lautenberg, who was first elected to the Senate in 1982, the most important thing was to let democracy rule and to do it quickly. He said the Senate primary will be Aug. 31 and general balloting Oct. 16.
"The people need to have a voice and choice," Christie said at the State House.
In opting for a primary rather than letting each major party's political committee select a nominee, he said he didn't want "insiders and a few party elites to determine who the nominee of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party will be."
His decision leaves some disappointment for members of his own party and his opponents. Behind the scenes, Republicans had pushed for Christie to appoint a Republican and put off the Senate election until November 2014 to give the appointee time to build a following among voters.
Democrats and political analysts said they believe the Senate election could have been delayed by 20 days to save the $12 million it costs the state to run an election and to hold the vote Nov. 5, when voters in the Democratic-leaning state will decide whether to re-elect Christie to a second term.
There's nothing in the law that would have stopped Christie from holding the Senate election the day of this year's general election or on the November election date next year, said Frank Askin, director of the Constitutional Rights Clinic at the Rutgers-Newark School of Law.
If Christie had chosen the latter date, Askin said, Democrats would have challenged the decision and the state Supreme Court may have ordered the election held this November.
"It seems to me the option he chose was the only one that guarantees he will not be in an election with Cory Booker running on the Democratic line," Askin said.
Booker, who has a national following, announced last year that he was considering a run for Lautenberg's seat. Lautenberg at first bristled at Booker's candidacy but then announced in February that he would not seek re-election next year and would retire when his term expired at the beginning of 2015.
Lautenberg died after suffering complications from pneumonia. He was 89. His funeral is scheduled for Wednesday.
Booker could drive to the polls Democrats who might not otherwise be inclined to turn out for the little-known Buono. Booker campaign spokesman Kevin Griffis said Tuesday he would make an announcement "at the appropriate time."
U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone, a Democrat, previously had expressed interest in the seat. The state says candidates have until June 10 to file petitions.
The Democratic primary could be divisive, which could help Christie, said Rider University political scientist Ben Dworkin.
"The Democrats have to go through what may be a bitter and intense primary," Dworkin said. "They may not all be friendly by the time October happens."
Christie holds a clear advantage against Buono in terms of polling and funding, and a landslide victory would help him make a compelling argument to GOP voters should he seek the presidency.
Republican operatives in key presidential states acknowledged the unusual timing of Christie's decision but said the move reinforces his image as a brash leader who often plays by his own rules.
"It's Chris Christie. He's going to do what he wants how he wants to do it," South Carolina-based Republican operative Hogan Gidley said. "Some people love him for it, and some people don't."
New Hampshire-based GOP operative and tea party supporter Andrew Hemmingway said Christie's special election decision likely wouldn't hurt his standing among conservatives as much as his sometimes-moderate policies and praise of Democratic President Barack Obama's response to Superstorm Sandy, which pummeled the state last fall. He said he marvels at Christie's ability to grab attention.
"This is definitely a strategic move by him to do what Chris Christie is very good at doing: maintain and grabbing any little glimmer of spotlight there is," Hemmingway said.
Christie could announce an interim successor as early as Thursday. He is expected to name a Republican and could look to a member of Congress, a state legislator, a member of his staff or an elder statesman in the party, such as former Gov. Tom Kean Sr. All Christie would say Tuesday was that his list contained between one and 100 names and that he would choose someone regardless of whether he or she was interested in running for the seat in 2014.
It's unclear which Republicans might run. Possibilities include state Sens. Tom Kean Jr. and Joseph Kyrillos, who have run for the Senate in the past. The lawmakers would be in a good spot to seek the office because the October election date would mean they wouldn't have to abandon their seats in the state Legislature to do it.
Christie said he's not obligated to nominate someone in line philosophically with the liberal Lautenberg. Christie plans to have the temporary representative in place when the Senate begins debating immigration reform next week.
Christie said he'd choose someone who would not seek his guidance for every decision, but Dworkin, the Rider political scientist, said the appointee would be viewed as an extension of Christie.
"People will look at the Christie appointee," Dworkin said, "as, 'Here's how Christie would have voted had he been in Washington.'"
___
Associated Press writers Geoff Mulvihill in Trenton, Ken Thomas in New York and Steve Peoples in Boston contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nj-gov-christie-oct-vote-lautenbergs-seat-225326101.html
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