'DWTS' final four? The finale could see a shakeup

TV

Michael Maloney TODAY contributor

12 hours ago

There are seven remaining pairs on "Dancing With the Stars" and only three more elimination nights before the finals. So, barring any surprise double eliminations, there will be four couples -- not the traditional three -- competing in the finale on May 20.

ABC

?It?s good for that fourth couple who?ll get paid an extra couple of bucks,? pro Val Chmerkovskiy shrugged to reporters in Monday night?s post-show press line.

Derek Hough thinks it?s a good idea too.

"Honestly, it means more dances for the finals," the three-time mirror-ball champion said. ?It?s more entertainment for the viewers at home, and that?s what it?s all about.?

Hough has said in the past that it?s best to come in either fourth or first, since exiting right after the semifinals means a dancer doesn?t have to come up with two more routines for a finale that he or she may or may not win.

?I think differently about that now,? he said. ?When I said that, I might have been thinking I didn?t want to do all that hard work. But I?m of the frame of mind that it?s an absolute pleasure and joy to be able to do any dance number on the show -- every time, even for results shows.?

Recap: 'Dancing With the Stars' judges take the ballroom to the bathroom

While anything can happen between now and the finals, it seems likely that three of the four finalists will be the competition's consistently high-scoring duos: Kellie Pickler and Hough, Zendaya and Chmerkovskiy, and Jacoby Jones and Karina Smirnoff. The fourth slot is up for grabs.

But the only sure thing right now is that Hough and Pickler won?t be going home on Tuesday night. They scored enough points on Monday to earn immunity.

Related:? Andy on how he's ranked on 'Dancing': 'It's not fair'

But while Hough and Pickler are safe for now, the pro feels that writing off low-scorer Andy Dick before the end just might be a mistake, given the show?s passionate fan base.

?I hope the judges did Andy a favor with their (strong) comments,? Hough offered. ?If you feel that (your favorite) is being picked on, then you?re going to say to yourself, ?I?m going to vote for him!??

Source: http://www.today.com/entertainment/dancing-stars-final-four-finale-could-see-shakeup-6C9676198

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Microsoft to Open Florida Store Next Door to Apple

It?s no surprise that Microsoft is trying to add new retail stores to its network in the United States, but the company is apparently planning to open a new location right next to an official Apple store.

According to a report issued by the Daily Record, Microsoft is seeking authorization to open a new retail store at the St. Johns Town Center, the same commercial center that?s already hosting an Apple store.

It appears that tech giant Microsoft is willing to spend as much as $400,000 (?305,000) to set up the 4,975-square foot (462-square meter) location that would be used to provide easy access to some of its latest products, including the Windows OS, Surface tablets and other software solutions.

To make sure that it?ll get the authorization, the company has also promised to donate more than $1 million (?765,000) in software grants to local tech organizations creating opportunities for Florida youth.

Source: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Microsoft-to-Open-Florida-Store-Next-Door-to-Apple-349633.shtml

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Mitch McConnell Wants to Be the Republican Party's Chief Tech Innovator

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has set an ambitious goal for his reelection campaign: to build the most sophisticated Republican digital and data operation to date.

The Kentucky Republican, known more as tactician than technologist, is making a major investment in technology infrastructure in hopes that a treasure trove of real-time data about the electorate will help guide him to a sixth term.

?We?re making a commitment that we?re going to be on the cutting edge of both digital outreach and data collection and analysis,? said Jesse Benton, McConnell?s campaign manager. ?We?re committed to setting the gold standard.?

The McConnell operation, which is sitting on $8.6 million and likely to be at least one of the best-funded, if not the best-funded, campaigns in the nation next year, will be a crucial test case for Republicans who are desperate to close the technological divide that Democrats, led by President Obama?s political apparatus, have opened up.

The recent Republican Party ?autopsy? of its shortcomings listed high-quality data collection and deployment as among the GOP's greatest weaknesses. The McConnell team sees itself as a pilot program to fix the problem, road-testing new methods that, if successful, could be adopted more broadly by other Republican campaigns.

McConnell, 71, still doesn?t have any credible opposition, either a tea-party insurgent from the right or a prominent Democratic challenger. But his woeful approval ratings have Democrats believing they could still knock him out.

So 18 months before the 2014 election, the McConnell campaign is busy building dozens of personalized experiences for its website visitors. Staffers are measuring Kentucky voters? emotional state in real time. And, perhaps most important, they are matching up the Kentucky state voter file with people?s digital presences, so the campaign can track and target individual voters based on what they?re saying online.

Cyrus Krohn, one of the campaign?s data consultants, said it has already matched the voting records of close to 40 percent of Kentuckians ? more than 1 million voters ? with their online persona.

?That universe is large enough to model all kinds of things predictively,? said Krohn, who has split his career between the tech sector, at Microsoft and Yahoo, and the political world, where he once worked for the Republican National Committee. His latest venture is Crowdverb, a company he founded last year to perform live data-scrapping of what people are saying and how they are feeling online about a given topic (such as McConnell). Krohn calls it ?extracting human emotion in real time.?

Another McConnell consultant, Vincent Harris, who spearheaded online operations for the 2012 presidential campaigns of Rick Perry and then Newt Gingrich, said McConnell has promised to outspend either of those presidential-level efforts.

?They?re investing millions of dollars," Harris said. "It is a lot of money.?

The McConnell campaign?s first-quarter spending report doesn?t show that level of investment, and Benton declined to comment on an exact digital and data budget. (Engage, another digital company, was also used by the McConnell campaign last quarter, but it and the campaign have since parted ways. Patrick Ruffini, president of Engage, did not return a call for comment.)

Democrats are dubious that McConnell or the GOP can close the technology gap in one fell swoop. Jeremy Bird, the national field director for Obama?s reelection campaign and now a partner at 270 Strategies, said many political campaigns end up chasing ?vanity metrics? by purchasing ?off-the-shelf vendor tools that any corporation or any candidate could buy.?

?So much of this stuff is overblown,? Bird said. ?The question is, is your online presence connected to your off-line get-out-the-vote operation in a meaningful way so you can take this operation that?s online and turn it into voters???

Benton, who previously ran Ron Paul?s presidential campaign, said the McConnell campaign knows those are the pitfalls. ?You can have all the data in the world and if you?re not integrating into the right outputs, it?s not going to do the job you?re going to need it to do,? he said.

For now, the campaign is engaged in the same kind of rigorous trial-and-error testing of digital schemes that the Obama campaign helped pioneer, from measuring effectiveness of e-mail subject lines to the color palette and size of donation buttons.

?Does a green donation button work better than the red?? Harris asked. ?There?s a lot of testing going on, which is something this campaign respects and values?and most campaigns don?t.?

The language in a recent TV ad questioning ?how dirty will Obama?s allies get? in attacking McConnell was actually informed by the data-scrapping from Crowdverb, Benton said. The original script, as drafted, questioned ?how low? the Democrats would go.

?We found that, particularly a female audience [ages] 35-55, that they responded to ?dirty? a lot better than ?low,?? Benton said. ?So we made that change.?

In addition, visitors to McConnell?s website get different experiences, depending on their previous activity on the site, Harris explained. If a person has donated after a guns-related e-mail, then McConnell?s stance on the Second Amendment is front and center, for instance. If they?ve been back repeatedly, but not donated yet, the donate button may begin to grow in size.

The campaign then analyzes all the various designs to see what was most effective. The goal is to turn curious Web visitors into supporters, supporters into donors, and donors into full-fledged activists.

But all of those elements need eyeballs, and Mitch McConnell is not the transcendent and motivating figure that Barack Obama was in 2007. So the campaign has made a big push to modernize his appeal.

The McConnell campaign recently produced a Harlem Shake video, has begun posting memes on its Facebook page (including this one, which stirred some controversy) and has hired video-producing wunderkind Lucas Baiano to make splashy YouTube clips (including this one, although there are some questions about whether the McConnell campaign has inflated its page views).

Harris, a Texas-based consultant, said he had high hopes the McConnell campaign will help the GOP catch up to Obama?s digital and data prowess.

?Is there a gap? Yes. Is the gap fixable? Yes,? he said. ?The problem is, Republicans look to themselves to find the problem. Republicans look inside the Beltway, and that has to stop.?

Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled the name of Lucas Baiano.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mitch-mcconnell-wants-republican-partys-chief-tech-innovator-140353245.html

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OpenStreetMap Makes It Easier To Suggest Corrections, New HTML5-Based Editor Coming Later This Year

OpenStreetMap, the Wikipedia-like crowdsourced mapping service, announced a couple of changes today that will make it easier for anybody to contribute. Starting today, you can easily suggest corrections when you browse maps on OpenStreetMap. In the spirit of crowdsourcing, these proposed corrections will be farmed out to the service’s volunteers. Then the organizations, writes?Harry Wood?in today’s announcement, “a local mapper can visit the location to check the suggested information, and then update the map.” This new feature is meant to allow more users to participate in the mapping process, even if they don’t have the time or skills to get involved in the details of creating a local map. Users who spot issues just have to click on the “add a note” button in the bottom-right corner of the window and suggest the change. It’s worth noting that these suggestions don’t have to follow any specific format and users don’t need to have an OpenStreetMap account to suggest changes. Notes, Wood writes, “are free-form natural text, read by other people, making this a very simple way to communicate any problems we notice about the map without needing to get to grips with OpenStreetMap and its tagging system.” Later this year, OpenStreetMap also plans to launch a new HTML5-based map editor, which will also make it significantly easier to create and edit maps. ?By making it even easier to add to the map, we?re increasing the amount of on-the-ground knowledge we can capture ? further distancing OSM from the traditional map data companies and their lack of local expertise,” Simon Poole, the chairman of the OpenStreetMap Foundation said in a canned statement today. Google Maps, of course, also allows users to report problems with its maps, and the company constantly updates its maps. It can often take quite a while before the team gets to look at all the reports that come in.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/1C22jKGpA-0/

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TV providers to CRTC: reject bids for guaranteed spots on basic ...

OTTAWA ? Some of the country?s largest cable and satellite TV providers urged the?

by Steve Rennie, The Canadian Press on Monday, April 29, 2013 2:00pm -

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OTTAWA ? Some of the country?s largest cable and satellite TV providers urged the federal telecommunications regulator on Monday to reject a number of channels that are vying for guaranteed spots on the dial.

Shaw Communications (TSX:SJR.B), Rogers Communications (TSX:RCI.B) and regional telecom MTS Allstream (TSX:MBT) are among those who oppose what is known as mandatory carriage, which would force them to include the channels on their basic cable and satellite packages.

?(Mandatory carriage) status should be reserved for services that make an exceptional contribution and serve an audience with an extraordinary need,? said Shaw executive Barbara Williams.

?Movie, news and general-interest services clearly do not satisfy the commission?s criteria as they serve a mass audience. Mandatory distribution will only serve to distort competition within these genres. Like all services, they should compete for distribution and audience share based on their appeal to Canadians.?

The providers say costs would increase if the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission forces them to add channels to their basic cable and satellite packages.

CRTC chair Jean-Pierre Blais has said the bar for being granted mandatory carriage is set ?very high.? The providers argued none of the applicants meets the CRTC?s threshold to qualify for mandatory carriage.

?What these applicants are asking the commission to do is to revive a regulatory framework for the carriage of specialty services that was abandoned years ago,? said Rogers executive Phil Lind.

?Their proposals are flawed. They are indifferent to consumer demands and industry trends. They do not satisfy the stringent test for granting (mandatory carriage) orders and should be denied.?

The CRTC is holding eight days of hearings in Gatineau, Que., to examine 22 applications for mandatory carriage from new and existing channels, as well as channels that want to renew their mandatory distribution status.

Perhaps the most high-profile applicant is Sun News, the Quebecor-owned network that?s arguing for a guaranteed spot because it produces 96 hours a week of uniquely Canadian, conservative-minded content.

Mandatory carriage would generate significant revenue for the network, which is proposing that it would earn 18 cents a month from every household that subscribes to a basic cable or satellite package.

That would help offset the network?s losses, which were $17 million in 2012 ? a situation that Quebecor (TSX:QBR.B) calls ?clearly unsustainable.?

Sun News says the current distribution agreements are inadequate to support the channel, which is only offered in 40 per cent of Canadian households. It says such distribution challenges also hurt advertising revenues.

The channels will have an opportunity to respond at the CRTC hearings later this week.

Source: http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/04/29/tv-providers-to-crtc-reject-bids-for-guaranteed-spots-on-basic-cable-satellite/

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Adhaalath Party accuses Nasheed of misleading ... - Minivan News

Additional reporting by Ahmed Nazeer

The Adhaalath Party has issued a statement condemning former President Mohamed Nasheed?s comments on Islamic radicalism during an address in Denmark.

During his address, Nasheed stated the Maldivian population had largely rejected Islamic extremism, and, in a veiled reference to the Adhaalath Party, noted that ?the Islamists were never a credible electoral threat.?

? The Islamic extremists also didn?t like the Maldives? new democracy because they were unpopular. They failed to win the Presidential elections in 2008, they failed to win local government elections ? in 2011 they won less that four percent of the vote. But now, after the coup, extremists have been rewarded with three cabinet positions in government, and in many ways set the tone of government communications. They are busy trying to indoctrinate people with a misguided version of Islam,? Nasheed said.

?Nasheed misled them about the party he fears and envies most: the Adhaalath Party,? the party responded in a statement. ?Nasheed knows very well that the Adhaalath Party is not a party that has no power and influence, unlike what he said in Denmark.?

The party accused Nasheed of ?placing idols? in Maldivian lands ? a reference to the SAARC monuments gifted to the country by other South Asian nations during the 2011 SAARC Summit hosted in Addu Atoll ? and of ?giving our assets to foreigners? ? a reference to the concession agreement to manage and upgrade the international airport granted to Indian firm GMR.

In his address, the former President acknowledged that there was ?a lot of xenophobia, Islamic rhetoric and intolerance going on in the Maldives?, and noted the destruction of 12-century Buddhist statues, manuscripts, and other evidence of the Maldives? pre-Islamic history.

?There is idea of wanting to return to Hejaz at it was in the 7th century. This is Wahabism in principle. And it is difficult and worrying,? Nasheed said.

?The vast majority of our society are very tolerant people. If all this Islamist rhetoric is removed from official discourse, there will be a much more liberal society. I assure you the rhetoric will be removed from official discourse,? he said.

The Adhaalath Party meanwhile expressed astonishment ?that there are a few Maldivians joining [Nasheed] in his work to get another chance to brainwash the Maldivian people. God willing Mohamed Nasheed will not be able to come to power ever again,? the party said.

Nasheed?s address at Copenhagen university:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bLZMKv6PPhs

Source: http://minivannews.com/politics/adhaalath-party-accuses-nasheed-of-misleading-danish-audience-on-extremism-in-the-maldives-57107

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Video: Conan O'Brian to host the White House Correspondents' Dinner (cbsnews)

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Sudan's Kenana plans to raise $200 mln in Johannesburg IPO

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Kenana, Sudan's biggest sugar producer, plans to raise around $200 million in an initial public offering in Johannesburg next year, its managing director said.

Last week, the Khartoum-based firm said it planned to make next year a stock market offer in Johannesburg with a secondary listing in Dubai, without giving details.

Mohamed El Mardi El Tegani told Reuters by mail on Saturday Kenana wanted to raise "around $200 million".

The firm, which is mainly owned by the governments of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Sudan, has appointed Russia-focused Renaissance Capital and Dubai investment bank Shuaa Capital to manage the offering.

Kenana wants to use the money from the share offer to help fund an expansion to more than double its annual sugar output to 1 million tonnes and triple its biofuel production by 2015.

Kenana expects also to get $500 million in a capital injection this year from its main shareholders, to help fund expansion.

Last year the firm had eyed a stock market listing in Hong Kong but gave up the plan due to U.S. sanctions which deterred firms from dealing with Sudan.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/sudans-kenana-plans-raise-200-mln-johannesburg-ipo-145929972.html

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Boeing Dreamliner Flights Resume (Voice Of America)

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Cultural Copying and Learning Observed in Monkey and Whale Species

Social learning is a more potent force in shaping wild animals' behavior than previously thought

By Karen Ravn and Nature magazine

Monkey see, monkey do: A Vervet relaxing at Skukuza Rest Camp, South Africa. Image: Flickr/Gwendolen Tee

Birds of a feather may flock together, but do birds that flock together develop distinct cultures? Two studies published today in Science find strong evidence that, at the very least, monkeys that troop together and whales that pod together do just that. And they manage it in the same way that humans do: by copying and learning from each other.

A team led by Erica van de Waal, a primate psychologist at the University of St Andrews, UK, created two distinct cultures ? 'blue' and 'pink' ? among groups of wild vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus aethiops) in South Africa. The researchers trained two sets of monkeys to eat maize (corn) dyed one of those two colors but eschew maize dyed the other color. The scientists then waited to see how the groups behaved when newcomers ? babies and migrating males ? arrived.

Both sets of newcomers seemed to follow social cues when selecting their snacks. Baby monkeys ate the same color maize as their mothers. Seven of the ten males that migrated from one color culture to another adopted the local color preference the first time that they ate any maize. The trend was even stronger when they first fed with no higher-ranking monkey around, with nine of the ten males choosing the locally preferred variety. The only immigrant to buck this trend was a monkey who assumed the top rank in his new group as soon as he got there ? and he may not have given a fig what anyone else ate.

?The take-home message is that social learning ? learning from others rather than through individual trial and error ? is a more potent force in shaping wild animals? behavior than has been recognized so far,? says Andrew Whiten, an evolutionary and developmental psychologist at St Andrews and co-author of the paper.

The study is striking because it is one of very few successful controlled experiments in the wild, says Frans de Waal, director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. ?It hints at a level of conformism most of us until now held not possible,? he says.

Whale see, whale do
In the second study, a team led by St Andrews marine mammal science student Jenny Allen examined 27 years of whale-watching data from the Gulf of Maine, off the eastern coast of the United States, to determine whether social cues helped an innovative feeding method to proliferate among humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae).

Humpbacks everywhere feed by blowing bubbles under schools of fish, which then bunch together closely to avoid swimming through the bubbles. When the whales lunge upward, they can gulp down a super-sized serving of fish. But in 1980, observers in the gulf saw something new: a humpback slapping the surface of the water with its tail fluke before proceeding with a standard bubble feed. That year it happened just once in a sample of 150 feeding events, but by 2007, 37% of the humpbacks in the Gulf of Maine were observed using the technique, since dubbed lobtail feeding.

To determine how lobtail feeding became so popular so quickly, Allen and her colleagues applied a method called network-based diffusion analysis to observations of humpback behavior collected by the Whale Center of New England in Gloucester, Massachusetts, between 1980 and 2007. The technique assumes that individuals who spend more time together are more likely to transmit behaviors to each other. Allen's analysis found that up to 87% of whales that adopted the lobtail-feeding technique learned it from other humpbacks.

?We know that humpback songs are also culturally transmitted,? says Luke Rendell, a biologist at St Andrews and co-author of the whale study, ?so here we have a population with two independently evolving cultural traditions ? a culture.?

David Wiley, research coordinator at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary in Scituate, Massachusetts, says that the work is important and innovative. ?It adds to a growing body of information demonstrating the complexity of humpback-whale behavior and its apparent roots in social learning,? he says.

?

This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on April 25, 2013.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=6fdb2ed84847d144be1036dfc3e6d14f

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Russian court denies punk band convict Tolokonnikova parole

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian court refused to release from prison one of two jailed members of the Pussy Riot punk band so that she can look after her young daughter.

The court on Friday rejected Nadezhda Tolokonnikova's appeal for parole eight months after she was handed a two-year prison sentence for the band's performance of a "punk prayer" in Moscow's main Russian Orthodox cathedral.

Tolokonnikova, 23, has been serving her sentence for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" in a prison colony in central Russia, about 550 km (350 miles) southeast of Moscow.

"I've spent enough time in the prison colony. I've had enough of studying it. Half a year is long enough," Tolokonnikova, a philosophy student, told the judge at the parole hearing, the RAPSI legal news agency reported.

She complained of having frequent headaches in jail in Mordovia, a region that has a large number of prisons.

Her lawyer, Irina Khrunova, said Tolokonnikova's five-year-old daughter Gera needed her mother.

The judge said Tolokonnikova's parental status had been taken into account when she was sentenced - prosecutors had asked for three years - and pointed to two reprimands she has received as evidence her conduct has not been sufficiently "corrected", RAPSI reported.

Tolokonnikova and two other band members, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich, were sentenced last August after a trial that was widely condemned abroad as part of a clampdown on dissent by President Vladimir Putin.

Performers such as Madonna, Sting and former Beatle Paul McCartney offered their support for Pussy Riot last year.

SENTENCES DIVIDED OPINION

Although the two-year sentences outraged many liberals, many conservative Russians saw their profanity-laced protest against Putin's close ties with the Church, performed in short dresses and brightly colored tights and balaclavas, as sacrilege.

Samutsevich, 30, was freed in October when her sentence was suspended on appeal after she argued that she had been prevented from taking part in the protest because a guard seized her.

Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina, 24, lost their appeals and in January a judge rejected Alyokhina's request for her sentence to be deferred until her child is older. She has also requested parole and that appeal could be heard next month.

The three women said they had not meant to offend Orthodox Christians with their protest in February 2012, while anti-Putin protests were drawing tens of thousands of people to the streets of Moscow and other big cities.

The rallies have since dwindled and did not stop Putin winning a presidential election the next month.

In his annual nationwide question-and-answer session on Thursday, Putin denied using the courts for political ends.

But he made clear he did not regret Pussy Riot's sentences, mentioning them in the same breath as people who desecrate the graves of World War Two veterans.

But Samutsevich says Pussy Riot's protest at least succeeded in drawing attention to what the all-women protest band sees as Putin's unhealthy relationship with the church and a lack of political freedoms.

"We wanted to start a discussion in society, show our negative view of the merging of the church and state ... The problem was raised internationally, the problem of human rights was put sharply into focus," she said in a recent interview.

(Writing by Timothy Heritage; Editing by Steve Gutterman and Mike Collett-White)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/russian-court-denies-punk-band-convict-tolokonnikova-parole-184156369.html

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Trader Dan's Market Views: Trader Dan Interviewed at King World ...

DISCLAIMER:

The charts and analysis provided here are not recommended for trading purposes but are instead intended to convey general technical analysis principles. Trade at your own risk. Futures trading in particular is fraught with peril due to extreme market volatility.

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The commentary and other contents reflect the opinion of Trader Dan Norcini or Dan Norcini alone on the current and future status of the markets, various economies and world events. It is subject to error and change without notice. The presence of a link to a website does not indicate approval or endorsement of that web site or any services, products, or opinions that may be offered there.

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Source: http://traderdannorcini.blogspot.com/2013/04/trader-dan-interviewed-at-king-world_27.html

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'Taxels' convert mechanical motion to electronic signals

Apr. 25, 2013 ? Using bundles of vertical zinc oxide nanowires, researchers have fabricated arrays of piezotronic transistors capable of converting mechanical motion directly into electronic controlling signals. The arrays could help give robots a more adaptive sense of touch, provide better security in handwritten signatures and offer new ways for humans to interact with electronic devices.

The arrays include more than 8,000 functioning piezotronic transistors, each of which can independently produce an electronic controlling signal when placed under mechanical strain. These touch-sensitive transistors -- dubbed "taxels" -- could provide significant improvements in resolution, sensitivity and active/adaptive operations compared to existing techniques for tactile sensing. Their sensitivity is comparable to that of a human fingertip.

The vertically-aligned taxels operate with two-terminal transistors. Instead of a third gate terminal used by conventional transistors to control the flow of current passing through them, taxels control the current with a technique called "strain-gating." Strain-gating based on the piezotronic effect uses the electrical charges generated at the Schottky contact interface by the piezoelectric effect when the nanowires are placed under strain by the application of mechanical force.

The research will be reported on April 25 in the journal Science online, at the Science Express website, and will be published in a later version of the print journal Science. The research has been sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Air Force (USAF), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"Any mechanical motion, such as the movement of arms or the fingers of a robot, could be translated to control signals," explained Zhong Lin Wang, a Regents' professor and Hightower Chair in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "This could make artificial skin smarter and more like the human skin. It would allow the skin to feel activity on the surface."

Mimicking the sense of touch electronically has been challenging, and is now done by measuring changes in resistance prompted by mechanical touch. The devices developed by the Georgia Tech researchers rely on a different physical phenomenon -- tiny polarization charges formed when piezoelectric materials such as zinc oxide are moved or placed under strain. In the piezotronic transistors, the piezoelectric charges control the flow of current through the wires just as gate voltages do in conventional three-terminal transistors.

The technique only works in materials that have both piezoelectric and semiconducting properties. These properties are seen in nanowires and thin films created from the wurtzite and zinc blend families of materials, which includes zinc oxide, gallium nitride and cadmium sulfide.

In their laboratory, Wang and his co-authors -- postdoctoral fellow Wenzhuo Wu and graduate research assistant Xiaonan Wen -- fabricated arrays of 92 by 92 transistors. The researchers used a chemical growth technique at approximately 85 to 90 degrees Celsius, which allowed them to fabricate arrays of strain-gated vertical piezotronic transistors on substrates that are suitable for microelectronics applications. The transistors are made up of bundles of approximately 1,500 individual nanowires, each nanowire between 500 and 600 nanometers in diameter.

In the array devices, the active strain-gated vertical piezotronic transistors are sandwiched between top and bottom electrodes made of indium tin oxide aligned in orthogonal cross-bar configurations. A thin layer of gold is deposited between the top and bottom surfaces of the zinc oxide nanowires and the top and bottom electrodes, forming Schottky contacts. A thin layer of the polymer Parylene is then coated onto the device as a moisture and corrosion barrier.

The array density is 234 pixels per inch, the resolution is better than 100 microns, and the sensors are capable of detecting pressure changes as low as 10 kilopascals -- resolution comparable to that of the human skin, Wang said. The Georgia Tech researchers fabricated several hundred of the arrays during a research project that lasted nearly three years. The arrays are transparent, which could allow them to be used on touch-pads or other devices for fingerprinting. They are also flexible and foldable, expanding the range of potential uses.

Among the potential applications:

? Multidimensional signature recording, in which not only the graphics of the signature would be included, but also the pressure exerted at each location during the creation of the signature, and the speed at which the signature is created.

? Shape-adaptive sensing in which a change in the shape of the device is measured. This would be useful in applications such as artificial/prosthetic skin, smart biomedical treatments and intelligent robotics in which the arrays would sense what was in contact with them.

? Active tactile sensing in which the physiological operations of mechanoreceptors of biological entities such as hair follicles or the hairs in the cochlea are emulated. Because the arrays would be used in real-world applications, the researchers evaluated their durability. The devices still operated after 24 hours immersed in both saline and distilled water.

Future work will include producing the taxel arrays from single nanowires instead of bundles, and integrating the arrays onto CMOS silicon devices. Using single wires could improve the sensitivity of the arrays by at least three orders of magnitude, Wang said. "This is a fundamentally new technology that allows us to control electronic devices directly using mechanical agitation," Wang added. "This could be used in a broad range of areas, including robotics, MEMS, human-computer interfaces and other areas that involve mechanical deformation."

This research was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Science Foundation (NSF) under grant CMMI-0946418, the U.S. Air Force (USAF) under grant FA2386-10-1-4070, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Basic Energy Sciences under award DE-FG02-07ER46394 and the Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences under grant KJCX2-YW-M13. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of DARPA, the NSF, the USAF or the DOE.

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Journal Reference:

1. Wenzhuo Wu, Xiaonan Wen, Zhong Lin Wang. Taxel-addressable matrix of vertical-nanowire piezotronic transistors for active/adaptive tactile imaging. Science, 2013 DOI: 10.1126/science.1234855

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

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/-jrj0Z-Yh-E/130425142247.htm

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Teaching the next generation of science learners

Apr. 25, 2013 ? In the April 19 issue of the journal Science, James Pellegrino, distinguished professor of psychology and education and co-director of the University of Illinois at Chicago Learning Sciences Research Institute, says the new changes provide educators a chance to redefine what it means to be a science learner in the 21st century.

The Next Generation Science Standards aim to make high school graduates more competitive in today's global economy. Released this month, the science teaching standards ? like the Common Core State Standards for math and reading ? emphasize depth over breadth.

With the goal in part to cultivate critical thinkers, changing science education is an "extraordinary opportunity," says Pellegrino, a leading expert in learning and assessment, who has produced influential research on educational policy and practice for over 30 years.

Pellegrino offers several reasons why the new standards, which could be adopted as early as 2014, bring opportunities and challenges.

Developed by education leaders representing 26 states, the new standards focus on science skills and content that K-12 students are expected to learn and will need for success in college and in life. Instruction and testing will challenge students' ability to combine conceptual knowledge with logic to explain scientific results.

The theory is that the new content will produce a larger and more talented pool of workers to help U.S. businesses compete in a high-tech global economy.

To ease the transition ? science standards were last revised 15 years ago ? Pellegrino says it's important to give teachers the necessary time, support, curricula, and assessment tools to find new ways of teaching and scoring student performance.

"Assessment is a key element in the process of educational change and improvement," he said. "Done well, it can signify what we want students to know and be able to do, and help educators create learning environments that support attainment of those objectives."

States should conduct rigorous assessment research, in collaboration with teachers and curriculum specialists, before implementing the new standards, he said. Educators should learn from other successful, large-scale assessments.

"The greatest danger is to rush," he said. "We don't have to rush."

No federal funds were used to create the standards, and the decision to adopt them will be left to the states.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Illinois at Chicago. The original article was written by Brian Flood.

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Journal Reference:

1. J. W. Pellegrino. Proficiency in Science: Assessment Challenges and Opportunities. Science, 2013; 340 (6130): 320 DOI: 10.1126/science.1232065

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

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/living_well/~3/jjj04HKwlR8/130425132335.htm

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WindsorNot: the 4-inch webOS smartphone that never saw the light of day

The downfall of webOS left more than a few canceled devices in its wake, but the most elusive of the bunch tends to be the WindsorNot: a touch-only smartphone. We've seen hints of it here and there, but the shy little device has largely been kept under wraps -- until now. The dedicated folks at webOS Nation have managed to get their hands on a functional prototype. The 4-inch devices seems to lie somewhere between a Pre3 and HP Touchpad, aping the hardware specifications of the former while adopting the latter's software version: webOS 3.0. The tweaked software does feature a smartphone-sized keyboard, but webOS Nation says some of the OS' trappings are difficult to read, and were clearly meant to be refined for the smaller screen before release. The phone's form, on the other hand, seems to be top notch, indicating that the project was canned before the software team had a chance to catch up. Check out the source link for a full walkthrough of the device and a brief history lesson of webOS' last days.

Filed under: Cellphones, HP

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Source: webOS Nation

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/24/hp-windsornot-a-4-inch-webos-smartphone/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Rethinking early atmospheric oxygen: Possibility of more dynamic biological oxygen cycle on early Earth than previously supposed

Apr. 24, 2013 ? A research team of biogeochemists at the University of California, Riverside has provided a new view on the relationship between the earliest accumulation of oxygen in the atmosphere, arguably the most important biological event in Earth history, and its relationship to the sulfur cycle.

A general consensus exists that appreciable oxygen first accumulated in Earth's atmosphere around 2.4 to 2.3 billion years ago. Though this paradigm is built upon a wide range of geological and geochemical observations, the famous "smoking gun" for what has come to be known as the "Great Oxidation Event" (GOE) comes from the disappearance of anomalous fractionations in rare sulfur isotopes.

"These isotope fractionations, often referred to as 'mass-independent fractionations,' or 'MIF' signals, require both the destruction of sulfur dioxide by ultraviolet energy from the sun in an atmosphere without ozone and very low atmospheric oxygen levels in order to be transported and deposited in marine sediments," said Christopher T. Reinhard, the lead author of the research paper and a former UC Riverside graduate student. "As a result, their presence in ancient rocks is interpreted to reflect vanishingly low atmospheric oxygen levels continuously for the first ~2 billion years of Earth's history."

However, diverse types of data are emerging that point to the presence of atmospheric oxygen, and, by inference, the early emergence of oxygenic photosynthesis hundreds of millions of years before these MIF signals disappear from the rock record. These observations motivated Reinhard and colleagues to explore the possible conditions under which inherited MIF signatures may have persisted in the rock record long after oxygen accumulated in the atmosphere.

Using a simple quantitative model describing how sulfur and its isotopes cycle through Earth's crust, the researchers discovered that under certain conditions these MIF signatures can persist within the ocean and marine sediments long after O₂ increases in the atmosphere. Simply put, the weathering of rocks on the continents can transfer the MIF signal to the oceans and their sediments long after production of this fingerprint has ceased in an oxygenated atmosphere.

"This lag would blur our ability to date the timing of the GOE and would allow for dynamic rising and falling oxygen levels during a protracted transition from an atmosphere without oxygen to one rich in this life-giving gas," Reinhard said.

Study results appear in Nature's advanced online publication on April 24.

Reinhard explained that once MIF signals formed in an oxygen-poor atmosphere are captured in pyrite and other minerals in sedimentary rocks, they are recycled when those rocks are later uplifted as mountain ranges and the pyrite is oxidized.

"Under certain conditions, this will create a sort of 'memory effect' of these MIF signatures, providing a decoupling in time between the burial of MIF in sediments and oxygen accumulation at Earth's surface," he said.

According to the researchers, the key here is burying a distinct MIF signal in deep sea sediments, which are then subducted and removed from Earth's surface.

"This would create a complementary signal in minerals that are weathered and delivered to the oceans, something that we actually see evidence of in the rock record," said Noah Planavsky, the second author of the research paper and a former UC Riverside graduate student now at Caltech. "This signal can then be perpetuated through time without the need to generate it within the atmosphere contemporaneously."

Reinhard, now a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech and soon to be an assistant professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, explained that although the researchers' new model provides a plausible mechanism for reconciling recent conflicting data, this can only occur when certain key conditions are met -- and these conditions are likely to have changed through time during Earth's long early history.

"There is obviously much further work to do, but we hope that our model is one step toward a more integrated view of how Earth's crust, mantle and atmosphere interact in the global sulfur cycle," he said.

Timothy W. Lyons, a professor of biogeochemistry at UCR and the principal investigator of the research project noted that this is a fundamentally new and potentially very important way of looking at the sulfur isotope record and its relationship to biospheric oxygenation.

"The message is that sulfur isotope records, when viewed through the filter of sedimentary recycling, may challenge efforts to precisely date the GOE and its relationship to early life, while opening the door to the wonderful unknowns we should expect and embrace," he said.

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Journal Reference:

1. Christopher T. Reinhard, Noah J. Planavsky, Timothy W. Lyons. Long-term sedimentary recycling of rare sulphur isotope anomalies. Nature, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/nature12021

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/YRepc-uxACM/130424185213.htm

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Evernote's John McGeachie on business expansion, the shift to mobile and an update on two-factor authentication

Evernote Business has only been around since last summer, but it's already having an impact on how teams far and wide keep track of what's on the collective mind. The division's vice president John McGeachie sat down with us for a bit at The Next Web Conference this week in Amsterdam, giving us an inside look at how the company has evolved, what it has learned and where it hopes to go. Specifically for Evernote Business, McGeachie affirmed that there's a greater need for educating users as compared to individuals just testing the waters on its free service. "It sort of takes a while for people to figure out how to best fit Evernote into their workflow," he said, "but once that starts happening, people see that it adds an amazing amount of value to all of these different areas." He added: "That's basically how our whole marketing strategy works. We're really just listening to how people use Evernote, and then put that back out there [as use case scenarios]."

In that sense, Evernote's quite unusual. Many startups have to maintain a focused product just to convince a new audience to try something foreign. Evernote, on the other hand, is deliberately open-ended, and it's the company itself that's now learning how to evolve based on direct feedback. "Our best source of new users that stay and really use the product is from understanding how someone they know or someone they can identify with uses it," said McGeachie. He did, however, acknowledge that the huge amount of flexibility does mean that the learning curve is steeper. "We see a lot of people download the app and use it once, and they aren't sure what to do next, so they go away. But a lot of them come back and reengage because they read something or run into someone they know who uses it, and it clicks."

Filed under: Software, Mobile

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/25/evernote-john-mcgeachie-business-expansion-security-mobile/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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ECB says ditching austerity would not help euro zone

By Martin Santa and Sakari Suoninen

BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - ECB policymakers rebuffed suggestions that Europe should ease up on austerity and said that while the central bank has room to cut interest rates, such a move would not necessarily help the economy much.

European Central Bank Vice-President Vitor Constancio said that seeking to stimulate economies by stopping measures aimed at cutting government debt could merely increase countries' borrowing costs rather than triggering growth.

Finance leaders of the G20 economies last Friday edged away from a long-running drive toward cutting spending and raising taxes in rich nations, rejecting the idea of setting hard targets for reducing national debt in a sign of concern about a sluggish global recovery.

With budget cuts blamed for a second straight year of recession in the euro zone, the EU's top economics official Olli Rehn indicated over the weekend that more flexibility on tough economic targets was needed.

His boss, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, said on Monday that austerity had reached its natural limits of popular support.

Recent surveys and data have pointed to economic weakness spreading to the euro zone core, and on Wednesday Germany's Ifo sentiment indicator came in weaker than the most pessimistic of forecasts as poor exports undermined Europe's largest economy.

"We certainly still have some margin of maneuver to take decisions, and as (ECB) President Draghi said in the latest press conference, we stand ready to act if economic conditions continue to provide bad news, as has unfortunately been the case," Constancio told the European Parliament in response to a question.

But ECB policymakers did not accept that weaker growth was a reason to change course on reform, insisting that more balanced budgets were essential to revive sustainable growth.

"Economic adjustment, both internal and external, has been significant, has implied high costs in terms of unemployment and should not (be) put into risk of unraveling now," Constancio told the European Parliament.

Joerg Asmussen, who sits on the ECB's Executive Board, also spoke of a risk of slipping back and warned against taking the current market calm for granted.

"(A) sound fiscal condition is really a precondition for growth," he told the Financial Times. "If one postpones fiscal consolidation to a later day, that comes not without risks."

ECB Governing Council member Ardo Hansson said EU states must push economic reforms further, strengthen public finances and avoid complacency.

German Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann had a stern message for France, the euro zone's second major economy, which is slipping already this year from commitments to cut its budget deficit.

Lessons should be drawn from earlier breaches of debt limits, Weidmann said. "France especially has an important role to serve as an example for credibility of the rules and trust in the sustainability of public budgets."

(Additional reporting by Eva Kuehnen in Frankfurt, Alexandra Hudson in Dresden and David Mardiste in Tallinn, writing by Sakari Suoninen; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ecb-says-ditching-austerity-not-help-euro-zone-182808604--business.html

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U.S. arms makers boost earnings, shares surge

By Andrea Shalal-Esa

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. weapons makers reported higher-than-expected profit and improved margins for the first quarter, even as revenue began to taper off after more than a decade of sharp growth in U.S. military spending.

Boeing Co's defense division, Northrop Grumman Corp and General Dynamics Corp on Wednesday followed the lead of Pentagon supplier Lockheed Martin Corp in reporting higher earnings and lower revenue.

Shares of the companies rose sharply on their financial results, with General Dynamics shares closing nearly 7 percent higher at $71.73 in what analysts said amounted to a strong vote of confidence in the firm's new chief executive, Phebe Novakovic.

Boeing shares closed 3 percent higher at $90.83, while Northrop shares gained 3.2 percent to close at $73.77. Lockheed shares, which saw big gains on Tuesday, edged up another 0.65 percent higher to close at $97.69.

Operating margins remained steady or improved across the sector, ranging from 10.3 percent to 12.4 percent, but executives warned that uncertainty about future military spending levels could weigh on revenue this year and next.

"Weaker revenues and strong earnings are typical of this point in the defense spending cycle. However, the erosion in revenues is probably a leading indicator of where earnings are headed," said defense analyst Loren Thompson of the Virginia-based Lexington Institute.

"Earnings eventually will erode as the impact of sequestration is fully felt," he said, referring to across-the-board federal spending cuts.

Northrop Grumman, which builds unmanned planes and other military equipment, said it was focused on executing programs, cash deployment and tweaking its portfolio as mandatory spending cuts known as sequestration start to take effect.

The company reported net earnings of $489 million, or $2.03 a share, compared with $506 million, or $1.96 a share a year earlier. Revenue dipped to $6.1 billion from $6.2 billion.

"Looking ahead, we recognize that we are operating in an uncertain and constrained budget environment," said Northrop Chief Executive Wes Bush.

Bush told analysts that he did not expect cancellation of any significant Northrop programs as a result of sequestration in fiscal 2013, but continuing uncertainty about future budget cuts could weigh on bookings this year.

Sales and bookings in the third and fourth quarters would help clarify the outlook for 2014, Bush said. "It is very likely this is going to negatively impact sales in 2014," he said. "To think that the sequester somehow dissipates and goes away and doesn't impact the future is putting your head in the sand."

Bush said a broader strategic review initiated by U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and due to be completed next month would also help inform future budgets. He cited double-digit growth on programs in the cyber security arena.

Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall said his office was closely involved in Hagel's department-wide review.

Kendall on Wednesday unveiled plans to further improve the way the Defense Department buys arms, including new guidelines on profits on fixed-price contracts, but he insisted the Pentagon did not aim to cut into companies' margins.

"We're not after people's profits as a way to reduce costs," Kendall told reporters at the Pentagon. "We want to tie profit and performance together."

General Dynamics, which builds ships, tanks and Gulfstream business jets, reported slightly higher first-quarter earnings, far exceeding analysts' forecasts, but revenue fell short of expectations.

General Dynamics said net earnings rose to $571 million, or $1.62 per share, from $564 million or $1.57 per share, a year earlier. Revenue dipped to $7.4 billion from $7.58 billion.

Novakovic, who has carried out a series of management changes since taking over on January 1, said the company was focused on operations, cost improvement and cash generation.

"Going after overhead is critical to margin expansion in the down environment," she told analysts. She said General Dynamics would continue to reduce its workforce as needed in the current budget environment but declined to forecast any specific areas targeted for layoffs.

Boeing, the second-largest U.S. weapons maker, said its defense earnings rose 12 percent to $832 million, while revenue slipped 1 percent to $8.1 billion.

Boeing's operating margin remained the lowest among the companies that reported earnings this week, although it rose to 10.3 percent from 9 percent a year earlier.

Boeing Chief Executive Jim McNerney said Boeing expected growth in key areas such as space, unmanned systems, intelligent surveillance and reconnaissance, and cyber security. He said the company also expected expanding sales of its smaller commercial satellites.

(Editing by John Wallace and Matthew Lewis)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-arms-makers-boost-earnings-shares-surge-221411743--finance.html

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Big ecosystem changes viewed through the lens of tiny carnivorous plants

Apr. 23, 2013 ? What do a pond or a lake and a carnivorous pitcher plant have in common?

The water-filled pool within a pitcher plant, it turns out, is a tiny ecosystem whose inner workings are similar to those of a full-scale water body.

Whether small carnivorous plant or huge lake, both are subject to the same ecological "tipping points," of concern on Earth Day--and every day, say scientists.

The findings are published in this week's issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In the paper, ecologists affiliated with the National Science Foundation (NSF) Harvard Forest Long-Term Ecological Research site in Massachusetts offer new insights about how such tipping points happen.

"Human societies, financial markets and ecosystems all may shift abruptly and unpredictably from one, often favored, state to another less desirable one," says Saran Twombly, program director in NSF's Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research.

"These researchers have looked at the minute ecosystems that thrive in pitcher plant leaves to determine early warning signals and to find ways of predicting and possibly forestalling such 'tipping points.'"

Life in lakes and ponds of all sizes can be disrupted when too many nutrients--such as in fertilizers and pollution--overload the system.

When that happens, these aquatic ecosystems can cross "tipping points" and change drastically. Excess nutrients cause algae to bloom. Bacteria eating the algae use up oxygen in the water. The result is a murky green lake.

"The first step to preventing tipping points is understanding what causes them," says Aaron Ellison, an ecologist at Harvard Forest and co-author of the paper. "For that, you need an experiment where you can demonstrate cause-and-effect."

Ellison and other scientists demonstrated how to reliably trigger a tipping point.

They continually added a set amount of organic matter--comparable to decomposing algae in a lake--to a small aquatic ecosystem: the tiny confines of a pitcher plant, a carnivorous plant native to eastern North America.

Each pitcher-shaped leaf holds about a quarter of an ounce of rainwater. Inside is a complex, multi-level food web of fly larvae and bacteria.

"The pitcher plant is its own little ecosystem," says Jennie Sirota, a researcher at North Dakota State University and lead author of the paper.

Similar to lake ecosystems, oxygen levels inside the water of a pitcher plant are controlled by photosynthesis and the behavior of resident organisms--in this case, mostly bacteria.

Ellison says that conducting an experiment with bacteria is like fast-forwarding through a video.

"A bacterial generation is 20 minutes, maybe an hour," he says. "In contrast, fish in a lake have generation times of a year or more.

"We would need to study a lake for 100 years to get the same information we can get from a pitcher plant in less than a week."

The same mathematical models, Ellison and colleagues discovered, can be used to describe a pitcher plant or a lake ecosystem.

To approximate an overload of nutrients in pitcher-plant water, the team fed set amounts of ground-up wasps to the plants.

"That's equivalent to a 200-pound person eating one or two McDonald's quarter-pounders every day for four days," says Ellison.

In pitcher plants with enough added wasps, an ecosystem tipping point reliably occurred about 45 hours after the start of feeding.

The scientists now have a way of creating tipping points. Their next step will be to identify the early warning signs.

"Tipping points may be easy to prevent," says Ellison, "if we know what to look for."

Other authors of the paper are Benjamin Baiser of Harvard Forest and Nicholas Gotelli of the University of Vermont.

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Words of Nelson Mandela take over Times Square's billboards

By Jonathan Allen

(Reuters) - A film installation celebrating the words of Nelson Mandela, the former South African president, is taking over many of the electronic billboards of New York's Times Square for a few minutes every night for the month of April.

The short film was commissioned by the Tribeca Film Institute, an arts organization co-founded by actor Robert De Niro. It is being played shortly before midnight across many of Times Square's glowing screens for the rest of the month.

"We're in the crossroads of the world, it's all about the glitz and the glamour, and all of a sudden you're seeing this man to remind us of our humanity," Ndaba Mandela, a 30-year-old grandson of the anti-apartheid leader, said at a special screening of the film on Friday night.

De Niro also attended the event at a Times Square hotel and posed for pictures with Ndaba and Kweku Mandela, another grandson, but did not make any remarks.

The two grandsons worked with filmmakers Nabil Elderkin, Andrew van der Westhuyzen and Gregory Stern to choose inspiring quotes from Nelson Mandela's speeches to honor his 95th birthday in July.

Mandela spent 27 years on Robben Island and in other jails as a result of his struggle to end apartheid in South Africa before becoming the country's first black president in 1994.

His words have been animated to dance across screens that normally advertise clothing, movies and corporations. About a dozen electronic billboards, including one on Thomson Reuters' Times Square building, are participating, organizers said.

Mandela, who stepped down from office in 1999, has had health problems recently and spent more than a week in the hospital with pneumonia this month.

"He's doing much better," Ndaba Mandela, who said he lived with his grandfather in Johannesburg, said in an interview. "I would say he is about 80 percent."

He added that his grandfather had offered his approval upon learning that his words would be projected in Times Square. "If he doesn't support something, he'll let you know," Mandela said.

(Reporting By Jonathan Allen; Editing by Stacey Joyce)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/words-nelson-mandela-over-times-squares-billboards-104842256.html

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