DUBLIN, Ohio (AP) ? Wendy's Co. says its adjusted earnings fell 29.5 percent in the fourth quarter, while its revenue rose 5.6 percent.
The hamburger chain said Monday its income from continuing operations was $4.3 million in the period ended Jan. 1. That was down from $6.1 million a year ago.
The adjusted number stripped out one-time charges like costs related to selling sandwich chain Arby's. The company didn't report what net income would be if those charges were factored in.
Earnings were 4 cents per share, in line with the predictions of analysts polled by FactSet. After adjusting for the one-time charges, earnings were 1 cent per share.
Wendy's says revenue rose to $615 million, beating the $613 million predicted by analysts polled by FactSet.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Survival story "The Grey" starring Liam Neeson in a battle against weather and wolves led the box office pack with a better-than-expected $20 million in ticket sales over the weekend.
"The Grey" knocked last weekend's winner, "Underworld: Awakening," to second place. The vampire and werewolf sequel starring Kate Beckinsale brought in $12.5 million from Friday through Sunday at domestic theaters, according to studio estimates compiled by Reuters on Sunday.
In "The Grey," Neeson returns to an action role as a man who leads a team of plane crash survivors who must fight harsh weather and a fierce pack of wolves in the Alaskan wilderness.
The movie played at 3,185 North American (U.S. and Canadian) theaters and earned a per-theater average of $6,279, according to the box office division of Hollywood.com.
Distributor Open Road Films acquired the film for about $5 million and had projected up to $12 million in debut weekend sales. The film beat that forecast because "it doesn't look like every other movie out there. In a crowded marketplace, I think it's important to be distinctive," said Open Road Films CEO Tom Ortenburg.
Katherine Heigl's new comedy, "One for the Money," finished in third place with $11.8 million, topping industry forecasts of less than $10 million for the film based on a best-selling book by Janet Evanovich. Distributor Lions Gate Entertainment said readers who loved the book helped the movie beat expectations.
"We think the audience that showed up are not frequent moviegoers. They're just huge fans of Janet Evanovich," said David Spitz, head of domestic distribution for Lions Gate.
In the film, Heigl plays a cash-strapped woman who joins a bail-bond business and must track down a wanted man who happens to be an ex-boyfriend. Audiences surveyed by exit polling firm CinemaScore game the movie a B-minus on average.
OSCAR BOOST
The weekend's other new movie, crime drama "Man on a Ledge," landed in fifth place. The film was distributed by Lions Gate's newly acquired Summit Entertainment unit as release dates and marketing plans were set well before the studios combined earlier this month.
"Man on a Ledge" took in $8.3 million, within studio forecasts. The movie features "Avatar" star Sam Worthington as a fugitive who threatens to jump from a hotel ledge.
"Red Tails," a drama about black fighter pilots in World War Two, brought in $10.4 million to land in fourth place in its second weekend in theaters.
Also this weekend, a crop of films capitalized off last week's Oscar nominations.
"The Descendants," starring George Clooney as a father dealing with a family crisis, expanded to 2,001 theaters from 560 and gained 176 percent from last weekend. The movie took in $6.6 million, lifting its domestic tally to $58.5 million since its release last November. The movie has added $27 million in international markets for a worldwide total of $85.5 million.
Black-and-white silent film "The Artist" increased its weekend sales by 40 percent from a week earlier, bringing in $3.3 million after adding 235 more screens. To date, the film has grossed $16.7 million domestically.
Family film "Hugo," which led the Oscar nominations with 11, also jumped 143 percent to $2.3 million. Its total sales to date stand at $58.7 million domestically.
Open Road Films, a joint venture between theater owners Regal Entertainment Group and AMC Entertainment Inc, released "The Grey." The film unit of Sony Corp distributed "Underworld: Awakening." "Red Tails" and "The Descendants" were released by divisions of News Corp's Fox Filmed Entertainment. Privately-held The Weinstein Co released "The Artist," and Viacom Inc unit Paramount Pictures distributed "Hugo."
(Reporting By Lisa Richwine; Editing by Xavier Briand and Paul Simao)
AVENTURA, Florida (Reuters) ? Newt Gingrich describes the Palestinians as an invented people and seeks covert action against Iran, while Mitt Romney accuses President Barack Obama of throwing Israel under a bus.
But the Republican presidential candidates' tough talk on the Middle East in Florida before Tuesday's primary is doing little to sway the state's large Jewish population from its longstanding support for the Democrats.
If anything, it's Republican arguments on the U.S. economy - not Israel - that might win more favor with Jewish voters here come the general election in November.
"There has been, particularly among younger voters, a small shift toward the Republican Party in general," said Terri Susan Fine, a political scientist at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
She said there was some concern about Israel, but the larger reason was because some Jews see the Republican Party as more friendly to business.
"Economic conservativism is what is shifting their focus toward the Republican Party," she said. "Younger Jewish voters are very secure in Israel's stability."
Rabbi David Kaye of Congregation Ohev Shalom, a conservative temple north of Orlando, said members of his congregation were more concerned with economic issues in a state hard-hit by the housing crisis and one of the nation's highest unemployment rates.
"We still see that there's a lot of folks hurting," he said.
Jewish voters are also generally more liberal on social issues than the Republican candidates.
President Barack Obama received almost eight out of every 10 votes cast by Jewish voters in 2008. That overwhelming support among Florida's 640,000-member Jewish community, half of whom are over 65, was a key component in his narrow 3 percentage point victory in the swing state.
Jewish voters historically have been concerned with social justice and older voters especially have deep ties to the Democratic Party and labor movement going back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency during the 1930s and earlier.
"It's part of our being - we are our brother's keeper," said Sydelle Sher, 79, of Delray Beach, a retired schoolteacher.
IRAN TENSIONS
But Sher, who attended a Gingrich rally last week, described herself as a fiscal conservative worried about the direction the country is going in under Obama.
"I fear the European-style socialism trend," she said, although she added that Israel policy is very important in her decision.
With tensions in the Middle East rising over Iran's nuclear ambitions, some Jewish Republicans wonder if the United States will stick by Israel.
Gloria Winton, 75, had harsh words for Obama on Israel as she headed into Mo's Bagels and Deli, near her home in Aventura, Florida. "I never thought before that Israel couldn't trust the United States. Now, I don't think that they can trust us," she said.
But she said she was leaning toward Romney, not Gingrich, because of Romney's more moderate tone. "I think (Gingrich is) very smart but I don't know if the independent voter would accept him," she said.
As they fight for their party's nomination, Romney and Gingrich have often seemed to compete over who can take the strongest pro-Israel line.
Gingrich, a former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, drew 700 people to a rally on Friday sponsored by a Jewish Republican group, and both he and Romney count pro-Israel businessmen among their financial supporters.
Gingrich dismisses the Palestinians as an "invented people," and promises he would move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv as soon as he takes office.
Despite years of U.S.-led negotiations toward a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Romney insists the Palestinians are not interested in living in their own nation alongside Israel, saying they want to destroy the Jewish state.
The former Massachusetts governor says Obama "threw Israel under the bus" for suggesting negotiations start with borders as they were before the 1967 Middle East war.
Democrats insist that Obama is not hostile to Israel, and call the Republicans' campaign a misleading and desperate attempt to make headway with an overwhelmingly Democratic voter bloc.
"Our ironclad commitment - and I meant ironclad - to Israel's security has meant the closest military cooperation between our two countries in history," Obama said in his State of the Union address on Tuesday.
Jewish voters typically account for 6-8 percent of turnout in Florida elections, and a lower percentage in Republican-only contests like Tuesday's primary, but they can make a difference if the vote is close.
Ira Sheskin, who runs the University of Miami's Jewish Demography Project, said statements like Gingrich's denial of the Palestinians' national identity could alienate the many Jewish voters whose main goal is Middle East peace.
"It was really not good for Gingrich to say that," Sheskin said. "Because if he becomes president, you want him to act as an honest broker in the Middle East. You don't do that if you've told one of the sides that they are an invented people."
"You won't advance the cause of peace."
(Additional reporting by Ros Krasny in Delray Beach; Editing by Alistair Bell and Doina Chiacu)
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? What a cast the Screen Actors Guild Awards have lined up: Marilyn Monroe, Laurence Olivier, Margaret Thatcher and J. Edgar Hoover.
Actors playing illustrious real-life figures factor into the 18th annual honors given by Hollywood's main acting union Sunday.
The best-actress category features Meryl Streep as Thatcher in "The Iron Lady" and Michelle Williams as Monroe in "My Week with Marilyn." Leonardo DiCaprio is up for best actor as FBI boss in "J. Edgar," while "My Week with Marilyn" co-stars supporting-actor nominee Kenneth Branagh as Olivier.
Streep won a Golden Globe for "The Iron Lady" and is considered a favorite for the SAG prize and for her third win at the Academy Awards, which are set for Feb. 26.
The front-runners for the other SAG awards are actors in fictional roles, though, among them George Clooney as a dad in crisis in "The Descendants" and Jean Dujardin as a silent-film star fallen on hard times in "The Artist." Both are up for best actor, and both won Globes ? Clooney as dramatic actor, Dujardin as musical or comedy actor.
Octavia Spencer as a brassy Mississippi maid in "The Help" and Christopher Plummer as an elderly dad who comes out as gay in "Beginners" won Globes for supporting performances and have strong prospects for the same honors at the SAG Awards.
The winners at the SAG ceremony typically go on to earn Oscars. All four acting recipients at SAG last year later took home Oscars ? Colin Firth for "The King's Speech," Natalie Portman for "Black Swan" and Christian Bale and Melissa Leo for "The Fighter."
The same generally holds true for the weekend's other big Hollywood honors, the Directors Guild of America Awards, where Michel Hazanavicius won the feature-film prize Saturday for "The Artist." The Directors Guild winner has gone on to earn the best-director Oscar 57 times in the 63-year history of the union's awards show.
SAG also presents an award for overall cast performance, a prize that's loosely considered the ceremony's equivalent of a best-picture honor. However, the cast award has a spotty record at predicting what will win best picture at the Oscars.
While "The King's Speech" won both honors a year ago, the SAG cast recipient has gone on to claim the top Oscar only eight times in the 16 years since the guild added the category.
The SAG ceremony also includes an award for stunt ensemble, whose nominees include such hits as "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2," ''Transformers: Dark of the Moon" and "X-Men: First Class."
Airing live on TNT and TBS, the show features nine television categories, as well.
Receiving the guild's life-achievement award is Mary Tyler Moore. The prize will be presented by Dick Van Dyke, her co-star on the 1960s sit-com "The Dick Van Dyke Show."
Girls are not as good at playing football as boys, and they do not have a clue about cars. Instead they know better how to dance and do not get into mischief as often as boys. Prejudices like these are cultivated from early childhood onwards by everyone. "Approximately at the age of three to four years children start to prefer children of the same sex, and later the same ethnic group or nationality," Prof. Dr. Andreas Beelmann of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Germany) states. This is part of an entirely normal personality development, the director of the Institute for Psychology explains. "It only gets problematic when the more positive evaluation of the own social group, which is adopted automatically in the course of identity formation, at some point reverts into bias and discrimination against others," Beelmann continues.
To prevent this, the Jena psychologist and his team have been working on a prevention programme for children. It is designed to reduce prejudice and to encourage tolerance for others. But when is the right time to start? Jena psychologists Dr. Tobias Raabe and Prof. Dr. Andreas Beelmann systematically summarise scientific studies on that topic and published the results of their research in the science journal Child Development (DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01668.x.).
According to this, the development of prejudice increases steadily at pre-school age and reaches its highest level between five and seven years of age. With increasing age this development is reversed and the prejudices decline. "This reflects normal cognitive development of children," Prof. Beelmann explains. "At first they adopt the social categories from their social environment, mainly the parents. Then they start to build up their own social identity according to social groups, before they finally learn to differentiate and individual evaluations of others will prevail over stereotypes." Therefore the psychologists reckon this age is the ideal time to start well-designed prevention programmes against prejudice. "Prevention starting at that age supports the normal course of development," Beelmann says. As the new study and the experience of the Jena psychologists with their prevention programme so far show, the prejudices are strongly diminished at primary school age, when children get in touch with members of so-called social out groups like, for instance children of a different nationality or skin colour. "This also works when they don't even get in touch with real people but learn it instead via books or told stories."
But at the same time the primary school age is a critical time for prejudices to consolidate. "If there is no or only a few contact to members of social out groups, there is no personal experience to be made and generalising negative evaluations stick longer." In this, scientists see an explanation for the particularly strong xenophobia in regions with a very low percentage of foreigners or migrants.
Moreover the Jena psychologists noticed that social ideas and prejudices are formed differently in children of social minorities. They do not have a negative attitude towards the majority to start with, more often it is even a positive one. The reason is the higher social status of the majority, which is being regarded as a role model. Only later, after having experienced discrimination, they develop prejudices, that then sticks with them much more persistently than with other children. "In this case prevention has to start earlier so it doesn't even get that far," Beelmann is convinced.
Generally, the psychologist of the Jena University stresses, the results of the new study don't imply that the children's and youths attitudes towards different social groups can't be changed at a later age. But this would then less depend on the individual development and very much more on the social environment like for instance changing social norms in our society. Tolerance on the other hand could be encouraged at any age. The psychologists' "prescription": As many diverse contacts to individuals belonging to different social groups as possible. "People who can identify with many groups will be less inclined to make sweeping generalisations in the evaluation of individuals belonging to different social groups or even to discriminate against them," Prof. Beelmann says.
###
Raabe T, Beelmann A.: Development of ethnic, racial, and national prejudice in childhood and adolescence: A multinational meta-analysis of age differences. Child Development. 2011; 82(6):1715-37. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01668.x.
Thanks to Friedrich-Schiller-Universitaet Jena for this article.
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James Francohit the Glendale, Calif. set of Lovelace on Thursday. The handsome, quirky actor, 33, was utterly transformed to film his cameo as none other than Hugh Hefner -- morphing into a younger version of the Playboy founder, 85.
PHOTOS: Celeb lookalikes
The normally hipster casual actor, artist and student wore Hefner's iconic red moking jacket and white scarf, with his hair in a 60s/70s style pompadour.
StarringAmanda Seyfriedas porn star Linda Lovelace, the film made a last-minute casting switch this week: Mary-Louise Parker is replacing the ailing Demi Moore in the role of Gloria Steinem, a source confirmed to Us Weekly exclusively.
PHOTOS: Hugh's brutal breakup
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It has been known for some time that house mice (Mus musculus) produce ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) during courtship but it has generally been assumed that these are no more than squeaks. However, recent spectrographic analyses have revealed that USVs are complex and show features of song. Although the vocalizations are inaudible to human ears, when playbacks of recorded songs are slowed down their similarity to bird song becomes striking. Frauke Hoffmann, Kerstin Musolf and Dustin Penn of the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna's Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology aimed to learn what type of information is contained in males' songs for the discerning ear of the female mouse to detect. Their initial studies, the first to study song in wild mice, confirmed that males emit songs when they encounter a females' scent and that females are attracted to males' songs. Additionally, the scientists discovered that females are able to distinguish siblings from unrelated males by their songs ? even though they had previously never heard their brothers sing.
In their recent studies, Penn's group recorded and analysed the courtship calls of wild-caught male house mice for the first time, using digital audio software to examine parameters such as duration, pitch and frequency. They found that males' songs contain "signatures" or "fingerprints" that differ from one individual to another. Moreover, they confirmed that the songs of siblings are very similar to one another compared to the songs of unrelated males, which helps explains how females can distinguish unrelated males. This finding could potentially lead us to understand how female mice avoid inbreeding.
Interestingly, in some species of birds the males with the most complex songs appear to be most successful at attracting females. Further studies are needed to determine whether the complexity of male mouse vocalizations has an effect on females that is similar to that of "sexy syllables" in birds.
The vocalizations of wild house mice differ significantly from those of inbred strains of laboratory mice. Wild male mice produce more syllables within high frequency ranges than laboratory mice, a result that is consistent with other studies that find genetic effects on mouse song. "It seems as though house mice might provide a new model organism for the study of song in animals," says Dustin Penn. "Who would have thought that?"
###
The article "Spectrographic analyses reveal signals of individuality and kinship in the ultrasonic courtship vocalizations of wild house mice" by Frauke Hoffmann, Kerstin Musolf and Dustin J. Penn is published in the journal Physiology & Behavior (Volume 105, Issue 3, pp. 766-771). Abstract of the article online (full text for a fee or with a subscription): http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2011.10.011
University of Veterinary Medicine -- Vienna: http://www.vetmeduni.ac.at
Thanks to University of Veterinary Medicine -- Vienna for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
ASU center ensures access to archaeological data that otherwise may be lostPublic release date: 26-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Julie Newberg julie.newberg@asu.edu 480-727-3116 Arizona State University
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation provides grant to support the Center and to develop and expand the Digital Archaeological Record
TEMPE (Jan. 26, 2012) - Preserving archaeological information, facilitating access to a wide range of digital documents and data, and enhancing archaeological research are vital services that Arizona State University's Center for Digital Antiquity (http://www.digitalantiquity.org) provides for researchers, students and the public.
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded a grant of $1.2 million beginning in March 2012 that will support the Center's operations and development. The grant enables the Center to greatly expand the content of its digital repository, to enlarge the community of users and to continue development and enhancement of software to improve the repository user's experience.
The Center for Digital Antiquity develops, maintains and oversees the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR http://www.tdar.org), the country's largest digital repository of world-wide archaeological data and information. The Center was established in 2009 with support from an earlier grant from the Mellon Foundation.
Technology has changed the way that people create and store information moving from books and paper to digital files stored on tape, floppy disks, CD-ROMs and other media. A problem associated with this shift is that digital files are far more susceptible to loss due to degradation of storage media, software obsolescence and inadequate documentation.
When this happens with archaeological data, it is especially tragic. It entails a loss of irreplaceable information about our national and global heritage and represents a waste of time, effort and public money that has been expended to collect, analyze and report the data.
"In laboratory-based science, experiments can be repeated; however, you can't dig a site twice," said ASU Professor and Sustainability Scientist Keith Kintigh, who was the principal investigator for the first Mellon grant and is a co-principal investigator on the new grant. "The archaeological record provides our only access to most of human history. For example, human societies both contribute to and respond to gradual environmental change. Archaeological evidence allows us to better understand the conditions under which societies are resilient to long-term change, and the configurations that lead to collapse."
Francis P. McManamon, Center for Digital Antiquity executive director and principal investigator for the new Mellon grant, notes that "approximately 40,000 archaeological investigations take place every year in the United States, yet only a handful thoroughly publish their findings and the supporting data in traditional, general distribution books. Most projects do produce limited distribution paper reports that end up in just a few of the thousands of state and federal agency offices and university libraries." Compounding this problem, there is no reliable way to discover the existence of reports relevant to a particular research topic and the reports are frequently difficult to use and expensive to obtain.
The situation with the supporting data is far worse. Even in the unusual case that the supporting data (notes, drawings, photos etc.) exists in a public repository, they are even harder to find and are rarely adequately documented or maintained. Adam Brin, Center for Digital Antiquity director of technology and a co-principal investigator on the new grant, adds: "we want to make sure that these unpublished reports and the almost-never published supporting data and analyses are easily discoverable and widely accessible now and in 100 years. We have designed and built tDAR to ensure this."
tDAR has been in full operation for about a year and is growing rapidly with thousands of documents, data sets and images, including 3-D scans of artifacts.
"By providing Web-based discovery and access of reports, images and well-documented data sets, tDAR enables archaeological syntheses that could never have been done before. tDAR's cutting-edge data integration tools allow researchers to analyze data across projects that span large areas and long time intervals yielding new knowledge about the past," Kintigh said.
Organizations that currently use tDAR as a digital repository include the Phoenix Area office of the Bureau of Reclamation, the Midwest Archeological Center of the National Park Service, the Mimbres Foundation and the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization.
"We have archaeological information from across the United States, from the Arctic to the Southwest, and from the West coast to New England. Documents, data sets and images from places like Cape Cod, coastal Georgia, the California desert, the Great Lakes region and New York City, as well as from right here in Phoenix and Tucson, can be found in tDAR," McManamon said.
"We believe that digital copies of reports, along with the photographs, data sets and the other digital data from each project should be deposited in a trusted digital repository, such as tDAR, as part of every project's normal workflow. This will ensure that these digital records are preserved and can be easily discovered, accessed and used by current and future scholars," he added.
The repository is ideal for public agencies, research organizations and individual scholars who want to preserve and protect their archaeological research project records, while making them readily available for use in research, leading to new discoveries and better understanding of the past. Agencies and scholars also will find tDAR an effective and efficient means of providing appropriate access to their research results to the general public.
"We now have in tDAR the archaeological reports from many large projects that were completed decades ago," McManamon said. "For example, the repository includes a large number of reports and detailed records from archaeological investigations in the Phoenix area that were completed in advance of the construction of the Papago Freeway, the Hohokam Expressway and the Central Arizona Project."
Securing a grant to ensure the future of The Center for Digital Antiquity represents an important professional milestone for McManamon, who spent 32 years at the National Park Service where he served as chief archeologist and recognized the need for an archaeological information repository like tDAR.
"We have a terrific tool," he said. "The repository has been a crucial need for many years. We are very grateful to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for its essential and steady support that is advancing scholarship and preserving irreplaceable records of human history. We're committed to rapidly expanding our collection of information and to building tDAR's user community while ensuring long-term digital access to the archaeological record."
The Center is associated with ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Global Institute of Sustainability, and the University Libraries.
###
Contact:
Julie Newberg
Arizona State University
Media Relations
(480) 727-3116
Julie.newberg@asu.edu
[ | 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.
ASU center ensures access to archaeological data that otherwise may be lostPublic release date: 26-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Julie Newberg julie.newberg@asu.edu 480-727-3116 Arizona State University
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation provides grant to support the Center and to develop and expand the Digital Archaeological Record
TEMPE (Jan. 26, 2012) - Preserving archaeological information, facilitating access to a wide range of digital documents and data, and enhancing archaeological research are vital services that Arizona State University's Center for Digital Antiquity (http://www.digitalantiquity.org) provides for researchers, students and the public.
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded a grant of $1.2 million beginning in March 2012 that will support the Center's operations and development. The grant enables the Center to greatly expand the content of its digital repository, to enlarge the community of users and to continue development and enhancement of software to improve the repository user's experience.
The Center for Digital Antiquity develops, maintains and oversees the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR http://www.tdar.org), the country's largest digital repository of world-wide archaeological data and information. The Center was established in 2009 with support from an earlier grant from the Mellon Foundation.
Technology has changed the way that people create and store information moving from books and paper to digital files stored on tape, floppy disks, CD-ROMs and other media. A problem associated with this shift is that digital files are far more susceptible to loss due to degradation of storage media, software obsolescence and inadequate documentation.
When this happens with archaeological data, it is especially tragic. It entails a loss of irreplaceable information about our national and global heritage and represents a waste of time, effort and public money that has been expended to collect, analyze and report the data.
"In laboratory-based science, experiments can be repeated; however, you can't dig a site twice," said ASU Professor and Sustainability Scientist Keith Kintigh, who was the principal investigator for the first Mellon grant and is a co-principal investigator on the new grant. "The archaeological record provides our only access to most of human history. For example, human societies both contribute to and respond to gradual environmental change. Archaeological evidence allows us to better understand the conditions under which societies are resilient to long-term change, and the configurations that lead to collapse."
Francis P. McManamon, Center for Digital Antiquity executive director and principal investigator for the new Mellon grant, notes that "approximately 40,000 archaeological investigations take place every year in the United States, yet only a handful thoroughly publish their findings and the supporting data in traditional, general distribution books. Most projects do produce limited distribution paper reports that end up in just a few of the thousands of state and federal agency offices and university libraries." Compounding this problem, there is no reliable way to discover the existence of reports relevant to a particular research topic and the reports are frequently difficult to use and expensive to obtain.
The situation with the supporting data is far worse. Even in the unusual case that the supporting data (notes, drawings, photos etc.) exists in a public repository, they are even harder to find and are rarely adequately documented or maintained. Adam Brin, Center for Digital Antiquity director of technology and a co-principal investigator on the new grant, adds: "we want to make sure that these unpublished reports and the almost-never published supporting data and analyses are easily discoverable and widely accessible now and in 100 years. We have designed and built tDAR to ensure this."
tDAR has been in full operation for about a year and is growing rapidly with thousands of documents, data sets and images, including 3-D scans of artifacts.
"By providing Web-based discovery and access of reports, images and well-documented data sets, tDAR enables archaeological syntheses that could never have been done before. tDAR's cutting-edge data integration tools allow researchers to analyze data across projects that span large areas and long time intervals yielding new knowledge about the past," Kintigh said.
Organizations that currently use tDAR as a digital repository include the Phoenix Area office of the Bureau of Reclamation, the Midwest Archeological Center of the National Park Service, the Mimbres Foundation and the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization.
"We have archaeological information from across the United States, from the Arctic to the Southwest, and from the West coast to New England. Documents, data sets and images from places like Cape Cod, coastal Georgia, the California desert, the Great Lakes region and New York City, as well as from right here in Phoenix and Tucson, can be found in tDAR," McManamon said.
"We believe that digital copies of reports, along with the photographs, data sets and the other digital data from each project should be deposited in a trusted digital repository, such as tDAR, as part of every project's normal workflow. This will ensure that these digital records are preserved and can be easily discovered, accessed and used by current and future scholars," he added.
The repository is ideal for public agencies, research organizations and individual scholars who want to preserve and protect their archaeological research project records, while making them readily available for use in research, leading to new discoveries and better understanding of the past. Agencies and scholars also will find tDAR an effective and efficient means of providing appropriate access to their research results to the general public.
"We now have in tDAR the archaeological reports from many large projects that were completed decades ago," McManamon said. "For example, the repository includes a large number of reports and detailed records from archaeological investigations in the Phoenix area that were completed in advance of the construction of the Papago Freeway, the Hohokam Expressway and the Central Arizona Project."
Securing a grant to ensure the future of The Center for Digital Antiquity represents an important professional milestone for McManamon, who spent 32 years at the National Park Service where he served as chief archeologist and recognized the need for an archaeological information repository like tDAR.
"We have a terrific tool," he said. "The repository has been a crucial need for many years. We are very grateful to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for its essential and steady support that is advancing scholarship and preserving irreplaceable records of human history. We're committed to rapidly expanding our collection of information and to building tDAR's user community while ensuring long-term digital access to the archaeological record."
The Center is associated with ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Global Institute of Sustainability, and the University Libraries.
###
Contact:
Julie Newberg
Arizona State University
Media Relations
(480) 727-3116
Julie.newberg@asu.edu
[ | 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.
PHNOM PENH (Reuters) ? The United Nations will send its investigating judge to resume work at the Khmer Rouge war crimes tribunal in Cambodia, despite moves by the government to have him replaced, a top envoy said Wednesday.
Cambodia had no authority to block Swiss Laurent Kasper-Ansermet from taking up the post under a 2003 agreement between the government and the United Nations, said David Scheffer, special expert on U.N. assistance to the Khmer Rouge trials.
Scheffer said Kasper-Ansermet would go to work on investigating two more unidentified suspects in the highly controversial cases being referred to as 003 and 004, which relate to their roles in the "year zero" revolution that killed as many as 2.2 million Cambodians from 1975-1979.
The two cases have been a source of acrimony in the tribunal and have led to heated disagreements and several resignations. Cambodia's government is vehemently against indicting the two suspects, who are widely believed to be former Khmer Rouge military commanders.
"We do look forward to the judge returning to this country from his commitment in Switzerland this week and we look forward to him working on building a credible case files in case 3 and 4," Scheffer told reporters after meeting government officials.
"Recognizing that we believe in our interpretation of the (2003) agreement, namely regardless of that breach, the judge has full authority to operate as the international investigating judge," he said.
Critics have accused Cambodia's government of trying to prevent further cases from being investigated and Prime Minister Hun Sen, himself a former Khmer Rouge soldier, has even warned of a civil war if more indictments are issued.
CONTROVERSIAL CASES
The government said Monday its judicial bodies had full authority to reject judges if they did not consider them suitable and the United Nations was "confused" about an agreement it signed.
It gave no response Wednesday to Scheffer's announcement that the judge would return. Cambodian officials have said the government felt Kasper-Ansermet was unsuitable because he had used his Twitter account to draw attention to a debate over whether to purse cases 003 and 004.
The hybrid U.N.-Cambodian court is hearing case 002, involving three top members of the ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge regime, accused of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998.
Prosecutors have appealed the unexplained decision by a previous international judge Siegfried Blunk -- who resigned in October -- not to indict the two additional suspects, despite what rights groups say is overwhelming evidence to build a case against them.
Blunk's official reason for quitting was political interference.
The court, set up in 2005, has handed down just one sentence, a 35-year jail term commuted to 19 years for Kaing Guek Eav, also know as Duch, for his role in the deaths of more than 14,000 people at a torture center in Phnom Penh.
His appeal is due to be heard on February 3.
(Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Jennifer Lopez made this seemingly random assessment last night on American Idol, after the 19-year old Colorado native sang an original track for the judges. He titled the single "So Hard," but Jackson's soulful crooning made the panel's decision ever so easy.
Jairon was one of a number of Aspen contestants to celebrate this week with a Golden Ticket. Other standouts included Angie Zeiderman and Shelby Tweten.
SAN MATEO, Calif. ? Guidewire Software quickly found a following in its stock market debut Wednesday.
The insurance software maker's stock jumped to $18 within their first few hours of trading, a 38 percent gain from the initial public offering price of $13.
Guide Software Inc. sold 8.85 million shares in the IPO. The offering raised $115 million, before expenses.
The 11-year-old company is based in San Mateo, Calif. and employs about 200 people. It specializes in software that helps insurers analyze risks and manage claims.
After a history of early losses, Guide Software turned a profit in each of the last two fiscal years. It earned $36 million on revenue of $172 million in the year ending last July.
(Reuters) ? In the wake of news reports last week that presidential contender Mitt Romney owns an individual retirement account worth as much as $101 million, questions are growing over how it could have gotten so big when contribution limits are capped at $5,000 or $6,000 a year.
Tax lawyers and accountants suggest an answer: Romney may have made use of an Internal Revenue Service loophole that allows investors to undervalue interests in investment partnerships when first putting them into an IRA. These assets can produce returns far in excess of those that could be generated from other investments made at the capped level.
An investor could even set an initial value for a partnership interest at zero dollars, because under tax regulations an interest in a partnership represents future income, not current value, said Chris Sanchirico, co-director of the Center for Tax Law and Policy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Whether Romney used this technique, which is legal, when he put partnership interests into his IRA is a question that won't likely be answered when he discloses his 2010 tax returns on Tuesday.
Romney's IRA, valued at between $20.7 million and $101.6 million, as reported by The Wall Street Journal last Thursday, holds stakes in 13 investment entities run by Bain Capital, the private-equity firm he cofounded and led for 13 years.
"One possibility for its size is that he put his Bain partnership interests into the IRA and valued them at a very low number," said David Weisbach, a law professor who focuses on tax at the University of Chicago Law School.
Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for the Romney campaign, declined to respond to emails and calls.
In the wake of growing scrutiny of his personal wealth, Romney, one of the wealthiest contenders ever for the White House, told Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday that on Tuesday he would release his 2010 tax returns and estimates for his 2011 return.
The release will not provide much insight into his IRA. That is because a personal income-tax return shows IRA contributions and withdrawals only for the year of the return, and not for previous years, and does not show whether any contributions were in the form of undervalued partnership interests. While an IRA investor can sometimes be required to file a separate return for the IRA, it is unclear whether Romney intends to release any such returns.
Romney's personal financial summary, disclosed last August under federal election rules, shows that his IRA holds his most lucrative investments, which are stakes in partnerships run by Bain Capital. Those stakes include Bcip Trust Associates III, a Bain fund that is his single largest investment, with assets valued at $5,000,001 to $25,000,000. Bcip Trust Associates III produced income to Romney's IRA of over $5,000,000 over 2010 and through August 12, 2011, according to the summary.
Robert Stack, head of international tax at law firm Ivins Phillips & Barker, said it is possible that Romney's IRA grew so large not only because of an increase in the value of the funds in which it invests but also through lucrative profits, typically 20 percent of investment gains per year, that funds can generate for their general partners.
It is not known whether Romney is a general partner in the Bain funds, meaning invested in the partnership responsible for managing the funds, or simply an investor in the funds. The Romney campaign has declined to comment on this issue.
The general partners' cut of the profit, known as carried interest, is taxable each year if the funds in which the IRA is invested earn certain management fees or borrow to make their investments. Tax lawyers say they want to know whether Romney's IRA holds any carried interest and whether it has paid tax on it - something not disclosed in his personal financial summary or on a federal income tax return. "In the context of a $100 million IRA, that is what we would want to know," said David Miller, a tax lawyer at Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft.
The average IRA held by Americans holds $42,500, according to the Investment Company Institute, a trade group. While the Romney campaign has said that some of his IRA consists of retirement savings rolled over from previous plans, accountants say rollovers would not likely explain the size of his IRA.
"Even if he rolled over a 401k, with the annual caps on contributions, you're still only talking about a few million dollars," said Robert Green, an accountant who is founder of Green Trading, a tax and accounting firm that caters to the investment industry. Last year, individuals could contribute a maximum of $16,500 a year to their 401(k) plans.
Tax lawyers say it is also important to know whether Romney's IRA holds stakes in Bain funds directly, or through related, offshore entities.
These entities, commonly used by tax-exempt investors such as Romney's IRA, legally allow the investors to avoid having to pay a special tax, known as the unearned business income tax, or UBTI.
While the Wall Street Journal suggested on Thursday that avoidance of the special tax was a big reason for the size of Romney's IRA, some tax lawyers said that its size might simply reflect the extreme profitability of a carried interest held by the IRA. "The best guess is that he put the carried interest into the IRA," Miller said.
Romney's IRA produced income of $1.5 million to $8.5 million over 2010 and through August 12, 2011, according to his financial summary, but it is unknown what, if any, taxes the IRA may have paid on its carried interest. Saul, Romney's campaign spokeswoman, declined requests for comment.
(Reporting by Lynnley Browning; Additional reporting by Gregory Roumeliotis; Editing by Amy Stevens, Eddie Evans and Carol Bishopric)
Codemonkeys exhibiting the kindness of strangers? Why, yes, this is such a tale. When XDA Developers member verygreen came across the pleas of one user obsessed with attaching an external USB keyboard to an eReader, he did what any decent hacker would and created a workable solution. Using a loaned Nook Simple Touch, this self-styled Make-A-Wish Hack was able to patch Barnes & Noble's existing kernel, which already supported USB host mode, and send commands over ADB to enable the connection. It's not a foolproof workaround, though, as only low-power devices will function without additional juice and even so, at a great cost to the greyscale device's battery life. Sure, this may not excite you much, but it's certainly made for one very satisfied forum dweller out there in cyberland. After all, isn't that what haxxors are for?
MONDAY, Jan. 23 (HealthDay News) -- Using human embryonic stem cells to treat the eye disease macular degeneration appears to be safe and leads to some vision improvement, a small, early-stage study found.
The study included one elderly patient and one younger adult patient with different types of macular degeneration that had led to severe vision loss.
After four months, the embryonic stem cell transplants seemed safe and both patients had some improvement in vision, the U.S. researchers said.
But researchers cautioned that the research is preliminary and far more study is needed before the practice might become widespread.
The study, published online Jan. 23 in The Lancet, is the first report of the use of human embryonic stem cells (hESC) in humans for any purpose, the researchers said in a news release from the journal.
One patient was a woman in her 70s with dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which is the leading cause of blindness in the developed world. The other patient was a woman in her 50s with Stargardt's macular dystrophy, the most common type of macular degeneration in younger patients. Both were legally blind.
Both patients received transplants of retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) derived from human embryonic stem cells into what's called the subretinal space (under the retina of the eye) in one eye. The patients received low-dose immunosuppression therapy, which was gradually reduced after six weeks.
Follow-up exams showed that the transplanted cells had attached to a part of the retina called Bruch's membrane and survived throughout the study period. Four months after transplant, there were no signs of so-called teratoma formation -- which occurs when stem cells turn into multiple cell types and form "incompatible" tissues that can include teeth and hair -- or related problems. And there were no signs of rejection or abnormal cell growth, the researchers said.
"Our study is designed to test the safety and tolerability of hESC-RPE in patients with advanced-stage Stargardt's macular dystrophy and dry age-related macular degeneration. So far, the cells seem to have transplanted into both patients without abnormal proliferation, teratoma formation, graft rejection, or other untoward pathological reactions or safety signals. Continued follow-up and further study is needed. The ultimate therapeutic goal will be to treat patients earlier in the disease processes, potentially increasing the likelihood of photoreceptor and central visual rescue," wrote Dr. Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer at Advanced Cell Technology in Marlborough, Mass., and his colleagues.
"It has been over a decade since the discovery of human embryonic stem cells. This is the first report of hESC-derived cells ever transplanted into patients, and the safety and engraftment data to date looks very encouraging," Lanza added in the journal news release.
"Although several new drugs are available for the treatment of the wet type of AMD, no proven treatments currently exist for either dry AMD or Stargardt's disease. Despite the progressive nature of these conditions, the vision of both patients appears to have improved after transplantation of the cells, even at the lowest dosage. This is particularly important, since the ultimate goal of this therapy will be to treat patients earlier in the course of the disease where more significant results might potentially be expected," he added.
Scientists believe that embryonic stem cells have the ability to "differentiate" -- or grow -- into most types of cells in the human body. But the use of such cells is controversial because it involves the destruction of a human embryo.
In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Anthony Atala, a professor and director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest School of Medicine, in North Carolina, wrote: "The potential to use human embryonic-derived cells with a therapeutic effect in patients is now finally realized ... The ultimate therapeutic goal for patients with visual loss would be to treat them earlier in the disease processes, hopefully increasing the likelihood of visual rescue. Much remains to be seen -- literally."
More information
The U.S. National Eye Institute has more about age-related macular degeneration.
January 20, 2009: ?At 12:00 noon Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States and the first African-American to hold the office.? NBC's Brian Williams reports.? ????
Memphis Animal Services (MAS) is normally open only one weekend day (Saturday) which contributes to their abysmal live release rate since weekends are their greatest chance for increased traffic and adoptions.? The pound is closing this weekend for mandatory employee training on pet killing. Sunday will be the practical ? that is, killing actual pets.
It is impossible for a shelter to conduct a practical on ?humane euthanasia? for 9 hours on a designated day.? Here?s why:? Because there is no way of knowing if any pets at MAS (or anywhere) will cross over into the medically hopeless and suffering category in which humane euthanasia is warranted on Sunday.? Chances are very low that even one pet will suddenly be deemed by a vet to be medically hopeless and suffering on Sunday when there was still hope on Saturday ? never mind enough pets to fill up a 9 hour practical.? Therefore, it is impossible to conduct a day long practical on ?humane euthanasia?.? If MAS does hold this practical, what they will be doing is killing healthy/treatable pets.? That is not ?humane euthanasia? as the city is purporting the course to be.
The healthy/treatable pets who MAS is planning to kill on Sunday could potentially be adopted, fostered or rescued on Saturday if the city would keep the pound open.? I have offered to help if they would post their pets online so I could network them.? I know some of you would help too.? Further ? and I can not stress this enough ? whether or not the city opens the pound on Saturday, it is ethically wrong to kill healthy/treatable pets for a class on Sunday or for any reason, any day.
MAS kills more than 11,000 pets a year.? When will it be enough?
I say:? today.? Today is enough.
Please pick up the phone and speak for the pets at MAS who won?t be adopted this weekend but who will be killed in a practical for a killing course ? call Memphis Mayor AC Wharton at (901) 576-6000.? Politely explain that you are protesting both the closing of the pound on Saturday for a pet killing class and the needless killing of healthy/treatable pets on Sunday.? If you are unable to call, please e-mail the mayor to make your voice heard: ? Mayor@memphistn.gov
A worker at MAS drags a dog from his cage in the stray area on October 28, 2011.
The worker uses the chokepole to drag the dog to the kill room.
PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) ? Getting more small companies wired will help their businesses grow, and help their country fight unemployment, officials said Thursday as Google launched a project that makes it easy to showcase South African entrepreneurship on the Internet.
With a few clicks Thursday, the first entrepreneurs used Google Inc.'s Woza Online to create their own websites. Woza Online, which Google launched with help from South African government researchers and cash from mobile phone company Vodacom, offers free domain names with South Africa's co.za tag for the first 10,000 applicants.
It took Rajis Reddy less than 15 minutes to set up a website for her company, which employs 10 craftsmen and other workers in rural eastern South Africa to create traditional, brightly colored wooden toys.
"We've developed a website!" Reddy said. "I can't believe it."
South Africa has the most vibrant economy in Africa, but also is beset by high rates of unemployment and poverty. The government sees small business as a key weapon in the battle to create jobs.
Businesses with Web presence "are able to be part of the globe," said Elizabeth Thabethe, South Africa's deputy minister of trade and industry, who joined Google executives at Thursday's launch.
"Small businesses are an incredibly important part of a vibrant economy," said Luke Mckend, head of Google's South African operations.
The numbers in South Africa bear that out, said Taddy Blecher of South Africa's Human Resource Development Council. Blecher said small businesses employ 65 percent of the 13.8 million South Africans with jobs.
"If we can just increase that presence by 10 percent, that will create 1.4 million jobs, just like that," Blecher said.
Officially, a quarter of the labor force in this country of 50 million is unemployed.
Researcher Arthur Goldstuck, who regularly surveys small businesses in South Africa, says about 400,000, or two-thirds, are online. Woza Online is designed to address some of the most common reasons entrepreneurs give for not having websites ? that they are too busy, and lack funds and expertise.
Bryan Nelson, Google's business development manager, described Woza Online as "non-techie, simple, easy to understand."
Toy entrepreneur Reddy's unfamiliarity with the Web was apparent in her hesitant keyboard touch Thursday. But she easily navigated a fill-in-the-blanks process similar to completing an online order form. Entrepreneurs can dress up their sites with their own images or graphics provided by Google.
Blecher said services South Africans can turn to now would charge at least 1,000 rand ($125) to design a website, beyond the budget of many small businesses.
"We've been very slack online," said Reddy, who said advertising until now had consisted of word of mouth and flyers. She sells her toys and other crafts at crafts markets in Johannesburg.
She had been considering going online to reach a broader market when a Google representative saw her wares at a market and approached her about Woza Online.
____
Online:
www.wozaonline.co.za
Donna Bryson can be reached on http://twitter.com/dbrysonAP
Long after dropping the hyphenate, Eva Longoria is excising the remaining traces of her marriage to San Antonio Spurs baller Tony Parker ? she's having her Tony-celebrating tattoos removed!
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Sources tell E! News that she is undergoing the multiple treatments it takes to fully remove permanent ink, which in Longoria's case include the word "Nine" (Parker's jersey number) on her neck, her wedding date on her wrist and his initials ... somewhere.
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What a difference a year makes, right?
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Last January, the "Desperate Housewives" star wrote on Facebook, "Nothing is being removed, although I am always up for more tattoos!"
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But maybe her current fellow, Eduardo Cruz, didn't want to share real estate on his girlfriend's skin ? in case she decides to commemorate their romance in an inky fashion, that is.
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According to TMZ, Cruz accompanied Longoria to an appointment at a Dr. Tattoff clinic, but the actress' reps would not comment on the report.
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Longoria filed for divorce from Parker in November 2010 after more than three years of marriage.
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Public release date: 26-Jan-2012
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