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Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/cnbc/50345527/

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Bomb planted near rape suspect's home | Kuwait Times

NEW DELHI: An Indian man shouts slogans during a protest to mourn the death of the gang-rape victim yesterday. ? AP

NEW DELHI: Indian police arrested a man yesterday as he tried to plant a crude bomb near the home of one of the suspects in the New Delhi gang-rape case as a backlash against widespread sex crimes gathered steam. As protests against harassment and violence against women continued, a chart-topping Indian rapper known for his sexually explicit lyrics also became embroiled in a growing campaign against sexism and misogyny in Indian society.

Yo Yo Honey Singh, whose hits include ?My home my village?, saw his New Year?s Eve concert in New Delhi cancelled following an online campaign which highlighted lyrics allegedly inciting abuse of women. His 2007 track ?Prostitute? refers to him having violent sex with a woman after he forces her to ?dance naked? and includes the line: ?You will scream and run but where can you go? I will take your life?.

The furore over the rap star comes as the country comes to terms with the December 16 gang-rape in which a 23- year-old medical student was repeatedly assaulted and violated with an iron bar while being driven around in a bus for 40 minutes. She died from internal injuries in a Singapore hospital at the weekend and her ashes were immersed Tuesday in the holy Ganges river by her family near their native village in northern Uttar Pradesh state.

The unnamed girl, whose parents had sold land to fund her studies, had been out to the cinema with her boyfriend when she was lured onto the bus by a gang of reportedly drunk joyriders. Sexual violence and gang-rapes are commonplace in India, but the case has brought simmering anger ? particularly among young urban women ? to the boil and led to protests in the capital and calls for the death penalty for rapists. Police said they had arrested a 37-year-old man yesterday in the narrow by-lanes of a slum in southwest Delhi after he allegedly tried to plant a crude bomb near the house of one of six suspects detained by police for the Delhi rape. The low-grade device was filled with explosives usually used in firecrackers, a police official told AFP.

Protests in India, which continued on Monday and on New Year?s Eve, have also spilled to other parts of the world with people taking to the streets in Hong Kong, Islamabad, London and Kathmandu. Yesterday, about 30 women?s rights activists protested outside the Indian consulate in Hong Kong, urging authorities to enact tougher laws to punish sex crimes.

The government, which has faced a wave of anger, has set up a panel headed by a former chief justice to recommend changes to the criminal law dealing with sexual crimes. The panel, which was set up last week, had already received more than 17,000 suggestions until Monday, The Indian Express newspaper reported. Also yesterday, the Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said the six suspects for the gang-rape risked the death penalty if found guilty and the case against them appeared very strong. ?We have a solid case with very good evidence? a magistrate has recorded the victim?s dying declaration and we have a prime witness, the girl?s friend, who has identified the rapists,? Shinde told The Economic Times newspaper.

The victim?s boyfriend, whom friends said she intended to marry, tried to prevent the rape and is likely to give crucial evidence during what is expected to be a fast-tracked trial. ? AFP

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Source: http://news.kuwaittimes.net/2013/01/01/bomb-planted-near-rape-suspects-home/

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Birdsong study pecks theory that music is uniquely human

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

A bird listening to birdsong may experience some of the same emotions as a human listening to music, suggests a new study on white-throated sparrows, published in Frontiers of Evolutionary Neuroscience.

"We found that the same neural reward system is activated in female birds in the breeding state that are listening to male birdsong, and in people listening to music that they like," says Sarah Earp, who led the research as an undergraduate at Emory University.

For male birds listening to another male's song, it was a different story: They had an amygdala response that looks similar to that of people when they hear discordant, unpleasant music.

The study, co-authored by Emory neuroscientist Donna Maney, is the first to compare neural responses of listeners in the long-standing debate over whether birdsong is music.

"Scientists since the time of Darwin have wondered whether birdsong and music may serve similar purposes, or have the same evolutionary precursors," Earp notes. "But most attempts to compare the two have focused on the qualities of the sound themselves, such as melody and rhythm."

Earp's curiosity was sparked while an honors student at Emory, majoring in both neuroscience and music. She took "The Musical Brain" course developed by Paul Lennard, director of Emory's Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology program, which brought in guest lecturers from the fields of neuroscience and music.

"During one class, the guest speaker was a composer and he said that he thought that birdsong is like music, but Dr. Lennard thought it was not," Earp recalls. "It turned into this huge debate, and each of them seemed to define music differently. I thought it was interesting that you could take one question and have two conflicting answers that are both right, in a way, depending on your perspective and how you approach the question."

As a senior last year, Earp received a grant from the Scholars Program for Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Research (SPINR), and a position in the lab of Maney, who uses songbirds as a model to study the neural basis of complex learned behavior.

When Earp proposed using the lab's data to investigate the birdsong-music debate, Maney thought it was a great idea. "Birdsong is a signal," Maney says. "And the definition of a signal is that it elicits a response in the receiver. Previous studies hadn't approached the question from that angle, and it's an important one."

Earp reviewed studies that mapped human neural responses to music through brain imaging.

She also analyzed data from the Maney lab on white-throated sparrows. The lab maps brain responses in the birds by measuring Egr-1, part of a major biochemical pathway activated in cells that are responding to a stimulus.

The study used Egr-1 as a marker to map and quantify neural responses in the mesolimbic reward system in male and female white-throated sparrows listening to a male bird's song. Some of the listening birds had been treated with hormones, to push them into the breeding state, while the control group had low levels of estradiol and testosterone.

During the non-breeding season, both sexes of sparrows use song to establish and maintain dominance in relationships. During the breeding season, however, a male singing to a female is almost certainly courting her, while a male singing to another male is challenging an interloper.

For the females in the breeding state every region of the mesolimbic reward pathway that has been reported to respond to music in humans, and that has a clear avian counterpart, responded to the male birdsong. Females in the non-breeding state, however, did not show a heightened response.

And the testosterone-treated males listening to another male sing showed an amygdala response, which may correlate to the amygdala response typical of humans listening to the kind of music used in the scary scenes of horror movies.

"The neural response to birdsong appears to depend on social context, which can be the case with humans as well," Earp says. "Both birdsong and music elicit responses not only in brain regions associated directly with reward, but also in interconnected regions that are thought to regulate emotion. That suggests that they both may activate evolutionarily ancient mechanisms that are necessary for reproduction and survival."

A major limitation of the study, Earp adds, is that many of the regions that respond to music in humans are cortical, and they do not have clear counterparts in birds.

"Perhaps techniques will someday be developed to image neural responses in baleen whales, whose songs are both musical and learned, and whose brain anatomy is more easily compared with humans," she says.

Earp, who played the viola in the Emory orchestra and graduated last May, is now a medical student at the Cleveland Clinic.

So what music makes her brain light up? "Stravinsky's 'Firebird' suite," Earp says.

###

Emory University: http://www.emory.edu

Thanks to Emory University for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/126094/Birdsong_study_pecks_theory_that_music_is_uniquely_human

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Legimi Wants To Be The 'Spotify For Ebooks' With A Business Model ...

Legimi is definitely a startup I?ll be watching closely in 2013. Put simply, it aims to be the ?Spotify for ebooks,? in which for a monthly subscription, users get access to a potentially infinite library of reading material, all accessible via the cloud. But more than that, this Polish startup, whether it succeeds or not, epitomises the collision of old media business models with new technology and new consumer habits.

After years of being told that one day consumers will access all of their media from the cloud, anytime and anywhere, thanks to the likes of Spotify, Deezer and Rdio (music), or Netflix, Lovefilm and Hulu (film and television), that day has finally arrived.?The subscription, cloud-based model, combined with new consumption devices ? tablets, smartphones, and Internet-connected TVs and set-top boxes ? and near-ubiquitous broadband, has ushered in an era where consumers no longer feel the need or desire to own the media they consume.?So, why not apply that same consumption model to ebooks?

Well, as it turns out, there are a number of companies who already are, but in many ways it?s still very early days. Niche offerings, such as Safari Books Online, which specialises in professional and developer-related content, have been around for a while, where a subscription model is viewed by publishers as less-risky because the audience is already somewhat ring-fenced, and content becomes outdated quickly. More mass-market is Amazon?s Kindle Owners? Lending Library, but this is still very limited and can hardly make the claim to be anything close to a ?Spotify for ebooks.? Then there?s the much-hyped and Founders Fund-backed Oyster, which is yet to launch but plans to offer an all-you-can-eat subscription model with an emphasis on mainstream content.

However, the New York-based startup is remaining tight-lipped about which publishers are signed up, and it?s here where many commentators predict that any subscription-based ebook service will fall down at the last hurdle: They simply won?t be able to strike the content licensing deals required, with the number of publishers needed to make the all-you-can-eat proposition a reality. That?s because the new consumption model requires a new licensing model where publishers are given a share of subscription revenue based on the number of books accessed.

Or does it?

This is where we return to Poland. Legimi thinks it?s found a way to change the consumer offering without having to tear up the legal or commercial framework that already exists for ebooks on a pay-per-download basis.

?Our approach is different; we pay the whole price of an ebook once an end user exceeds its free sample (approximately 10 percent of the book),? Legimi co-founder and CEO Mikolaj Malaczynski tells me in an email. The premise being that most readers never make it past the free excerpt, but if they do, the company pays the full wholesale price to publishers. ?We have statistically calculated the average consumption for tablet users and smartphone users, which is lower than one book per month,? he says.

Or maybe another way of looking at it is that the business model relies on a tl;dr generation (my words, not Malaczynski?s) where multiple content and services are constantly vying for a user?s attention, and that this is especially true when content is consumed on an always-connected tablet or smartphone. Whether or not consumers are reading less long-form content or not, however, perhaps misses the point. As long as the number of books read past the free sample remains inline with the overall economics of a monthly subscription, then the model could work, or at least act as a bridge until such time when publishers are more willing to embrace the idea of a subscription model.

To that end, Legimi has already launched an MVP in the form of an iPad app in the startup?s native Poland, while an iPhone version should follow in January, with Android and Windows Phone also in the pipeline. I?m told that major publishers locally are playing ball, too, such as W.A.B., Insignis, Muza, and Buchmann, enabling Legimi to offer a range of popular international and domestic titles.

Moving forward, Malaczynski says that the priority is to keep expanding the available catalogue and to optimise the business model, presumably to find the sweet spot in terms of what to charge. But much more ambitiously, Legimi is planning to launch in two additional European markets next, likely Germany and the UK. It?s at this point when the licensing ?loop hole? and assumptions about consumption will really be tested.

?If you ask about the average consumption of one book per month, I am not sure if it?s a universal figure,? concedes Malaczynski. ?We will need to test it market by market, but we have an algorithm to verify it.?

On the upside, Malaczynski says that the rights infrastructure for publishing doesn?t differ too much between countries, meaning that Legimi can hopefully avoid spending ?years negotiating new agreements with publishers, which don?t really understand the subscription model.?

And that?s where we come full circle. In the end, a ?Spotify for ebooks? seems inevitable, as consumer habits find themselves ahead of the market once again. It?s probably more a case of when not if. Perhaps Legimi, or another startup willing to take its model and run with it, can help to make it happen sooner rather than later. Here?s to 2013.

Legimi.com is a Polish online eBookstore with books, magazines and blogs. Legimi also develops cloud reading mobile applications for iPad, iPhone, Android, Windows Phone and PC.

? Learn more

Oyster is an iPhone app that gives members unlimited access to an ever-growing library of books. Read as much as you want for a single monthly price.

? Learn more

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/31/legimi-tl-dr/

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Hours from "fiscal cliff," Washington still awaits deal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress comes back on Monday without a deal to avert the "fiscal cliff" and only a few hours of actual legislative time scheduled in which to act if an agreement materializes.

Negotiations involving Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell appeared to offer the last hope for avoiding the across-the-board tax increases and draconian cuts in the federal budget that will be triggered at the start of the New Year because of a deficit-reduction law enacted in August, 2011.

A jolt from the financial markets could also prod the parties, as it has occasionally in the past.

"I believe investors will show their displeasure" at the lack of progress in Washington, said Mohannad Aama, managing director at Beam Capital Management, an investment advisory firm in New York.

Democratic and Republican leaders in the Senate had hoped to clear the way for swift action on Sunday. But with the two sides still at loggerheads in talks, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid postponed any possible votes and the Senate adjourned until Monday.

The main sticking point between Republicans and Democrats remained whether to extend existing tax rates for everyone, as Republicans want, or just for those earning below $250,000 to $400,000, as Democrats have proposed.

Also at issue were Republican demands for larger cuts in spending than those offered by President Barack Obama.

Hopes for a "grand bargain" of deficit-reduction measures vanished weeks ago as talks stalled.

While Congress has the capacity to move swiftly when motivated, the leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate have left themselves little time for what could be a complicated day of procedural maneuvering in the event of an agreement.

House Speaker John Boehner has insisted that the Senate act first, but that chamber does not begin legislative business until about noon Monday.

OTHER BUSINESS ALSO ON AGENDA

And the cliff is not the only business on the House agenda. Farm-state lawmakers are seeking a one-year extension of the expiring U.S. farm law to head off a possible doubling of retail milk prices to $7 or more a gallon in early 2013.

Relief for victims of Superstorm Sandy is waiting in line in the House as well, though it could still consider a Senate bill on assistance for the storm until January 2, the last day of the Congress that was elected in November 2010.

Expiring along with low tax rates at midnight Monday are a raft of other tax measures effecting tens of millions of Americans.

A payroll tax holiday Americans have enjoyed for two years looks like the most certain casualty as neither Republicans or Democrats have shown much interest in continuing it, in part because the tax funds the Social Security retirement program.

The current 4.2 percent payroll tax rate paid by about 160 million workers will revert to the previous 6.2 percent rate after December 31, and will be the most immediate hit to taxpayers.

A "patch" for the Alternative Minimum Tax that would prevent millions of middle-class Americans from being taxed as if they were rich, could go over the cliff as well. Both Republicans and Democrats support doing another patch, but have not approved one.

At best, the Internal Revenue Service has warned that as many as 100 million taxpayers could face refund delays without an AMT fix. At worst, they could face higher taxes unless Congress comes back with a retroactive fix.

After Tuesday, Congress could move for retroactive relief on any or all of the tax and spending issues. But that would require compromises that Republicans and Democrats have been unwilling to make so far.

Obama said on Sunday he plans on pushing legislation as soon as January 4 to reverse the tax hikes for all but the wealthy.

(Editing by Christopher Wilson)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fiscal-deal-stalls-clock-ticks-deadline-000951431--business.html

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Ski dreams come true: Government Peak Recreation Area at ...

Helen?Woodings?has been skiing in the?Matanuska Valley for almost 60 years, and for about half that time, she's been involved in trying to get a ski area built at?Hatcher?Pass, a popular skiing, touring and snowboarding destination for Southcentral snow buffs.

Woodings?finally saw that dream become reality last week, when the Government Peak Recreation Area officially opened.

Woodings, a trail advocate who's lived in the Valley since 1953, has spent much of her life dodging?snowmachines?and braving treacherous roads to find adequate?Nordic?skiing in the Mat-Su, an area the size of the West Virginia just north of Anchorage.?Now 82,?Woodings?finally can take advantage of trails groomed for classic and skate skiing at the base of Government Peak, a 3,000-foot peak at the edge of the?Talkeetna?Mountains.

Government Peak's trails are gentle and meandering, broken up by bridges crossing small creeks. Only 5 kilometers of the trails -- designed by former Olympian Bill Spencer -- are open to skiers, including a multi-use loop for?skijoring?and walkers -- with up to 50 kilometers possible in the future. It's the first phase in what winter sports buffs hope will one day become a world-class ski area at Hatcher Pass, capable of hosting World Cup-level Nordic events. Maybe even complete with an alpine resort.

Mat-Su?assemblyman Jim Colver calls the recreational area a ?toehold? in getting a larger development going -- even though it could be generations before any sort of major alpine dreams become a reality.

Long time coming

Plans for more skiing at Hatcher Pass -- a popular winter and summer destination known for its?backcountry?skiing, hiking, berry picking and its gold-mining past -- have come and gone since the mid 1980s. Nestled in the?Talkeetna?Mountains about 12 miles north of Wasilla?and Palmer, it offers spectacular views and jagged, snow-capped peaks. According to the borough, about 600,000 people visited the area in 2011.

But despite its beauty and relatively easy access for a large population (almost 400,000 people live in the Mat-Su and Anchorage boroughs combined), no major?Nordic?or alpine recreation has ever been developed in the area, despite numerous tries.

Colver said the lead-up to the 1992 Olympics, for which Anchorage bid, spurred private investment interest in the area. A Japanese corporation at one point entered into a 55-year lease from the state, with hopes to building a four-season alpine ski resort and golf course, but that effort faltered after Anchorage lost the Olympic bid to?Albertville, France. Other, smaller development ideas never materialized, either.

But a new century brought new hope. The borough took over a long-term lease from the state and began developing a management plan. The plan includes not only?Nordic?and alpine recreation areas, but commercial and residential real estate tracts, too.

In 2009 and with assistance from Alaska U.S. Rep. Don Young, the Mat-Su Borough was able to secure $6 million for the Government Peak project, mostly in highway funds from the Federal Transit Authority.

Colver served on the Assembly from 2000-2006, a time when?Hatcher?Pass ski proposals came and went. When Colver was re-elected in 2009, he vowed to make something happen.

?Up until now, it's been a lot of talk and little action,? he said.

Construction began on the 1-mile road leading to the area this summer. The road, critical to access the trails, cost $3.5 million.

In 2010, Ed?Strabel, a longtime Colony High School ski coach and current president of the Mat?Su?Ski Club, began working with volunteers, many of them local high school skiers, to mark trails, fell trees and clear roots, rocks and other debris.

High school help

On Friday, dozens of skiers showed up for a ?solstice sprint,? with skiers trading off legs with one another.

Most were Mat-Su?high?schoolers, decked out in brightly colored spandex racing suits. While the race was unofficial, coaches in the area hope more races will come.?Strabel?said Alaska's limited winter daylight can be a challenge for high school cross-country skiers,?Strabel?said.?

For years, skiers in?Southcentral?have had to drive 10 miles up the steep and sometimes treacherous?Hatcher?Pass road toward Independence Mine, to access ski trails. It's a vital area for?nordic?skiers in the region looking for groomed trails that open earlier than most others. In years when snow in Anchorage or in the Mat-Su?at lower elevations is lacking,?Hatcher?Pass is often the only place to train.

Dave?Musgrave?coaches the Mat-Su?Junior Nordic Club for children ages 4 to 14. He said it can be difficult to find places to ski, especially for young athletes just learning to ski. Other trail systems, like Crevasse-Morraine?near Palmer, are full off steep, rolling hills that can be too challenging for novices. Skiing on?backcountry?trails in?Hatcher?Pass means sometimes encountering fast moving?snowmachines. So an area like the Government Peak is a blessing, he said.

Strabel?noted high?schoolers, who may be in charge of driving other students to practice, would no longer have to ?risk their lives? driving up the treacherous road up to Independence Mine for a ski workout.

What's next?

Trails are just the beginning for the recreation area.

The borough is requesting $4 million from the state to continue work on phase two of the project, which will help cover the cost of extending the access road, improving trails, installing trail lights and completing a stadium for mass starts and competitions.

?This isn't for me,??Strabel?said. ?It's for the community.?

In the spring, construction will start on a $800,000 chalet at the site, which will serve as community and transit center. Colver said the Federal Transit Authority funds require a mass transit component, so the chalet will become a bus stop for the valley MASCOT buses.

Another benefit to the chalet besides stunning views of the?Chugach?Mountains? Flushing toilets, a rare commodity at most Alaska ski trails, and something 82-year-old?Woodings?particularly supports.

Contact Suzanna Caldwell at?suzanna(at)alaskadispatch.com

Source: http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/ski-dreams-come-true-government-peak-recreation-area-hatcher-pass-now-open

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McConnell: Tax Deal Struck With Biden

Echoing President Obama?s statement that a fiscal-cliff deal is near, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell took to the Senate floor on Monday afternoon to announce that he and Vice President Joe Biden have struck a deal to prevent tax hikes on the middle class.

?I can report that we?ve reached an agreement on all of the tax, the tax, issues. We are very, very close as the president just said,? McConnell said.

The Republican leader?s statements ratchet up pressure on Democrats, who are split over how to handle across-the-board spending cuts, called sequestration, which start Jan. 2. McConnell is arguing that lawmakers should vote on tax relief now and leave the spending cuts for later.

McConnell and Biden have agreed to raise income-tax rates on families making more than $450,000 and make the Bush-era tax cuts permanent for everyone under that limit. And the estate tax would be exempted on the first $5 million with assets over that amount being taxed at 40 percent.

?A deal to prevent tax hikes on millions of Americans is finished,? a GOP aide said.

But Democrats disputed that, saying no deal is final until there is agreement on sequestration.

?There is no deal yet,? Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate?s No. 2 Democrat, told National Journal.

A Republican aide said that McConnell and Biden had a sequestration deal last night that would have allowed votes on two separate bills. But the White House backtracked when it became clear there was disagreement among Democrats on how to handle the votes.

On the floor, McConnell said his last conversation of the night with Biden was at 12:45 a.m. Monday. At 6:30 on Monday morning, the two kicked off another day filled with phone calls.

"This has been, clearly, a good-faith negotiation," McConnell said.

Here are the details of the tax agreement between McConnell and Biden, according to a Republican aide:

? Permanent extension of current policy on income-tax rates for those earning below $400,000 (single), $450,000?(couples).

? Permanent 15 percent rate on capital gains and dividends for those below $400,000?(single), $450,000?(couples).

? A 20 percent rate on capital gains and dividends for those above $400,000?(single), $450,000?(couples).

? Permanent extension of the personal exemption phaseout and Pease provision for those below $250,000?(single), $300,000?(couples).

? Permanent estate-tax exemption?at $5 million, but a 40 percent rate.

? Permanent alternative minimum tax patch.

? Finance Committee tax extender package.

? Five-year extension of American Opportunity Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, and Earned Income Tax Credit.

? One-year extension of 50 percent bonus depreciation.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mcconnell-tax-deal-struck-biden-162250280--politics.html

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