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OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — The San Francisco Bay Area's main commuter train system and its unions reached a tentative agreement on a new contract Monday night, ending a crippling four-day strike.

Union officials announced the deal, which still requires approval from union members.

BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost said limited service would begin Tuesday at 4 a.m. on all lines. BART officials hoped trains would be running at full strength in time for the afternoon commute.

BART is the nation's fifth-largest rail system, with an average weekday ridership of 400,000.

Workers walked off the job on Friday after talks broke down. Commuters endured jammed roadways and long lines for buses and ferries, as they looked for alternate ways around the region.

The contentious talks between BART and its two largest unions dragged on for six months— a period that saw two chaotic dayslong strikes, contentious negotiations and frazzled commuters wondering if they would wake up to find the trains running or not.

"The public expects us to resolve our differences and to keep the Bay Area moving," BART general manager Grace Crunican said Monday night.

Crunican said there would be no immediate announcements on the details while union leaders explained the agreement to their members, but she said it was a compromise and added: "This deal is more than we wanted to pay."

Negotiations resumed and a settlement was reached just two days after two track workers were killed in a BART train accident in Walnut Creek. Federal investigators said Monday that the train was run by a BART employee who was being trained to operate trains. Union officials had warned that training managers to operate trains during the walkout could be dangerous.

Antonette Bryant, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555, expressed her condolences Monday night to the workers who were killed.

"We did not want to strike," she said, "and we are glad to have a tentative agreement that we feel will work for all parties."

The key issues in the negotiations were salaries and worker contributions to their health and pension plans.

Talks began in April, three months before the June 30 contract expirations, but both sides were far apart. The unions initially asked for 23.2 percent in raises over three years. BART countered, offering a four-year contract with 1 percent raises contingent on the agency meeting economic goals.

The unions contended that members made $100 million in concessions when they agreed to a deal in 2009 as BART faced a $310 million deficit. And they said they wanted their members to get their share of a $125 million operating surplus produced through increased ridership.

But the transit agency countered that it needed to control costs to help pay for new rail cars and other improvements.

BART and its workers all but agreed on the typically contentious contract issues of wages and benefits. Then a deal fell apart, and workers went on strike Friday for a second time.

Commuters endured jammed roadways and long lines for buses and ferries, as they looked for alternate ways around the region.

The main sticking point was work rules, which can be anything from how schedules are made and how grievances are handled to how paychecks are distributed and whether reports are written electronically or in longhand. For workers, stricter rules create stability in their assignments and how they do their jobs. For managers, they limit how flexibly and efficiently they can run the system.

Some of the biggest work-rule changes BART sought relate to work shifts and worker protections.

For example, BART wanted to be able to change work schedules with greater ease; the unions wanted to preserve schedules such as a 4-day, 10-hour week, saying this would help workers with child care and other obligations. Other proposed changes would have affected the handling of worker claims of discrimination or harassment by managers.

BART workers also walked off the job in early July, shutting down train service for nearly five days.

___

Thanawala reported from San Francisco. Associated Press writers Haven Daley and Terence Chea in Walnut Creek contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=238877952&ft=1&f=
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Iterate 55: Eric Mayville, Clayton Morris, and Read Quick

Eric Mayville of Wondersauce and Clayton Morris of FOX news join Rene and Mark to talk about their speed-reading app, Read Quick, and what it took to bring the interface from iPad to iPhone.

Show notes

Read Quick

Guests

Eric Mayville of Wondersauce
Clayton Morris of Fox News

Hosts

Marc Edwards of Bjango
Rene Ritchie of iMore

Feedback

Yell at us on Twitter/ADN via the above accounts. Loudly.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/uRBFTWroxqA/story01.htm
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Brazil's General Superintendency of Prisons of Alagoas (SGAP) released this photo last Dec. 31 of a cat caught with contraband taped to its body at a medium-security prison in Alagoas state.

AP

Brazil's General Superintendency of Prisons of Alagoas (SGAP) released this photo last Dec. 31 of a cat caught with contraband taped to its body at a medium-security prison in Alagoas state.

AP

January:

"Cat Caught Smuggling Contraband Into Brazilian Prison." Gothamist

June:

"Cat Caught Smuggling Cell Phones Into Prison" (in Russia). The Moscow Times

Last week:

"Cannabis Cat On Drugs Run Collared At Moldova Jail." BBC News

So, we've got reports of:

— "Saws, drills, headset, memory card, cell phone, batteries and a phone charger" being" strapped to a cat in Brazil.

— "Two cell phones with batteries and chargers" being taped to a cat's back in Russia.

— And now, "bags of cannabis" concealed inside the "oversize decorative collar" worn by a cat in Moldova.

In each case, the felines were nabbed as they either climbed over or through fences. In Moldova, the cat had been "seen repeatedly entering and exiting a small hole in a prison fence," according to Gawker.

According to the reports, the cats aren't talking.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/10/21/239010848/these-cats-are-mules-kitties-smuggle-goods-into-prisons?ft=1&f=1001
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All and all, this year's Demo was a fascinating event. Along with the new technology on display, there were some excellent presentations. Dell's incredible Entrepreneur in Residence Ingrid Vanderveldt gave one on a program funded to empower small businesses run by women and turn them into successes. She works with organizations like the Clinton Foundation to help make this happen.

Demo's fall conference took place last week, and it didn't disappoint. This show has proven to be both a great and an expensive experience for me every year. Great because the technology shown is often truly amazing; expensive because I almost always end up buying one or two items, and my taste trends toward pricey. This year was no different, and my product of the week is the product I'd most like to personally own.

So let's get to it.

Mainframe2: The Network Is the Computer

I was pleased to see this product again. I received a personal demo that I had a ton of fun playing with before the show. Basically, what Mainframe2 does is give you a workstation or high-performance PC in the cloud.

The service uses Nvidia Grid as the central technology to provide a massive amount of performance on the cloud through your browser. The demo I received was Adobe Photoshop running in the cloud, and performance was equal to or better than it would be had I been running the application locally.

This means I could use Photoshop on an iPad. I think this is the future of computing. Mainframe2, which has a rather unfortunate name, is pointing to a very interesting future.

IdealAsset Match

Think of IdealAsset Match as a dating service that hooks up IP sellers to IP buyers. It mines both public and, with permission, private IP repositories. Using semantic analysis, it indexes and summarizes the related patents, and people who are looking for properties can then search on and find them.

More importantly, interests are also indexed, allowing the creation of buyer and seller profiles and connecting them virtually so that IP that is just collecting dust can be monetized.

One interesting result of this solution is that patent trolls are starting to look at the product to locate folks developing IP and then coming in and offering to help monetize and protect it in exchange for a piece of the action. This turns what are basically attorney-rich bandits into White Knights.

Justworks - Obamacare That Works

We've all seen that the federal government's implementation of Obamacare is likely the worst tech deployment at scale in the history of technology. Justworks, which now has a somewhat embarrassing name for the administration, is a tool targeting small businesses that helps them organize and provide their employee benefits -- mostly healthcare and payroll.

After watching these guys, I was hit with the Idea that the Obama administration should fire its tech staff and hire the folks from Justworks as replacements, because their solution should just work. For the small company needing a tool for its employees, something both comprehensive and easy is a godsend.

Argopay: 1-Click For Retail

Granted, I kind of thought Argopay might have some IP issues with Amazon, but what its solution effectively does is provide an alternative to a credit card that works like Amazon 1-Click.

The user experience is kind of like a blend of using the iPhone application and Amazon. You go to the cash register with the app open, scan a code to connect the phone to the transaction, and then press Buy to get it. This is very simple, and having it on a smartphone is potentially better than having it on a card.

You are less likely to lose a phone, it is harder to copy a phone, and if a phone is stolen, you possibly can disable the app. You can also get things like balance information as part of the process, which could -- but likely won't -- prevent you from overspending.

Explorer by Bounce Imaging

When Bounce Imaging started, I thought it was nuts. This is a ball with a camera built into it designed for military, police, fire departments, or parents with insane children (OK, I'm kidding about this last one).

It actually makes a ton of sense. You toss the ball into an area, and the ball, which is hardened and uses infrared, sends a 360-degree view while in flight and after landing back to a linked cellphone.

Before the space is entered -- and without putting the person tossing the ball at much risk -- the user can get a clear idea of what to expect. It could be an important tool for rescues, as well as police and military operations, not to mention paintball competition. This has turned out to be really cool, and it's much cheaper than robots or drones.

Bedscales by Genetrainer

The backstory on this product is actually a bit cooler than the product itself. The company, Genetrainer, which is offering this product through a Kickstarter program, takes your DNA information and designs an exercise program based on your DNA. That sounds so 21st Century.

Anyway, the product goes under your bed and monitors both the quality of your sleep and your weight over time. People on diets and other weight management programs are generally not as rigorous as they should be when it comes to weigh-ins. A connected service then can not only report on weight progress, but also can point to behavior that is hurting your sleep and suggest things to do that could help you sleep better.

Wrapping Up: Waze to Vanderveldt

There are always a number of very interesting presentations at Demo. This year a Waze executive gave one that showcased what made this very successful app a success -- it is a GPS program supported by a social network that Google bought for $1 billion and will likely accidentally kill.

Dell's incredible Entrepreneur in Residence Ingrid Vanderveldt gave a presentation on a program funded to empower small businesses run by women and turn them into successes. She works with organizations like the Clinton Foundation to help make this happen. One of the companies receiving support is Current Motors, which sells the electric scooter I fell in love with last year.

All and all, this year's Demo was a fascinating event, but the product I really wanted to buy is...

Product of the Week: The Motorcycle Helmet Steve Jobs Would've Built

Product of the Week

There was something ironic about seeing a product on stage that immediately hit me had been built to Steve Jobs' product template named, and I kid you not, "Skully." It was almost as if it had been named after John Scully -- the guy who fired Steve Jobs from Apple and whom Jobs hated until his death.

I'm an ex-biker, and this is largely because the technology that helps me enjoy a ride only works in a car -- that is, until now. The Skully helmet puts GPS navigation and smartphone control, including music access, into the helmet using a heads-up display on the visor.

Not only that, but it has a built in rear-view camera that has an automatic horizon -- shows a level picture of everything, 180 degrees, behind you no matter what angle your head is in. This reminded me of what Iron Man gets to see in his helmet, and it's incredibly cool.

Like a Steve Jobs product, the Skully doesn't do a ton of things -- but what it does, it does amazingly well. I now have motorcycle lust again, thanks to this helmet, and that's what makes it my product of the week.

I'm trying to figure out a way to either buy another bike or get this thing to work with my car.

Rob Enderle is a TechNewsWorld columnist and the principal analyst for the Enderle Group, a consultancy that focuses on personal technology products and trends.

Source: http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/79223.html
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F1 Fanatic Live

Watch and follow the World Endurance Championship Six Hours of Fuji on F1 Fanatic Live.

F1 Fanatic Live combines updates from the teams and drivers in real-time via Twitter with comments from F1 Fanatic readers and more.

Audi have won all five races so far this season and have kept Toyota from pole position at their home race by less than two tenths of a second. Can Toyota finally score their first win of the year on home ground?

Launch F1 Fanatic Live: 2013 World Endurance Championship Six Hours of Fuji ^[1]

Image © Audi

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By J.J. Robinson

MALE (Reuters) - Maldives police forced a halt to a presidential election on Saturday, in what the leading candidate's supporters said was a new coup as he called on them to block the streets in protest.

The Indian Ocean archipelago which has been in turmoil since February 2012, when then-president Mohamed Nasheed was ousted by mutinying police, military forces and armed demonstrators.

The election was due to be held on Saturday, after a vote in September was annulled over allegations of fraud.

However, there had been confusion over whether it could go ahead as some candidates had still not signed a new voter register in accordance with a Supreme Court ruling early on Saturday to allow the election.

Just hours before polls were due to open for the vote that Nasheed looked set to win, police surrounded the secretariat of the Elections Commission, forcing a delay condemned by the international community.

Police said they could not support an election held "in contravention of the Supreme Court verdict and guidelines".

Police Chief Superintendent Abdulla Nawaz said he had acted due to concern about "any unrest that may occur in the country as a result of letting the election proceed".

Nasheed's supporters have staged violent protests since he was ousted, and masked men this month fire-bombed a television station that backs Nasheed, who came to international prominence in 2009 after holding a cabinet meeting underwater in scuba gear to highlight the threat of climate change.

"There has been a coup in the Maldives, and the coup backers, in order to maintain that coup, are committing bigger and bigger atrocities day after day," he told supporters staging a sit-in at two road junctions that brought Male to a halt.

"I call on you to block these streets ... Let us shut down Male. Male can't function, we must succeed."

Security forces cordoned off part of Male that included the president's office and the Supreme Court, while Nasheed's supporters blocked other streets with ropes, human chains, motorbikes and trucks, a Reuters reporter said.

Ahmed Khalid, 33, an artist at the protest, said: "The police are in control of this country. This is a coup."

"THREAT TO DEMOCRACY"

Elections Commissioner Fuwad Thowfeek told a news conference it could not proceed with the vote if police were obstructing it, saying officers had "overstepped their authority".

Thowfeek appeared on state television late on Saturday to say it would take a minimum of 21 days to amend the voter register again and the commission was in discussion with the government to potentially hold polls on November 2 or Nov 9.

Elections Commission member Ali Mohamed Manik said: "This is a dark day for democracy."

Nasheed, who came to power in the Maldives' first free elections in 2008, looked set to return to office when he won the first round of an election on September 7, putting him in a good position to win a run-off vote set for September 28.

But that election was cancelled by the Supreme Court which cited fraud. International observers had said the election was free and fair. The court later ordered a fresh election by October 20 and a run-off by Nov 3, if required.

The current president's term expires on November 11.

A spokesman for Nasheed's Maldivian Democratic Party, Hamid Abdul Ghafoor, called on Saturday for the intervention of world powers. "An interim arrangement has to be sought through international intervention," he said.

Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma said: "I cannot stress firmly enough how critical it is for all state institutions and presidential candidates to cooperate in good faith to ensure that this election can take place as soon as possible."

A U.S. diplomat in nearby Sri Lanka told reporters the failure to hold the election "represents a real threat to democracy in the Maldives".

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said new delays "will be seen as nothing less than an attempt to frustrate the democratic process".

Nasheed's main election rival is Abdulla Yameen, a half-brother of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who ruled for 30 years and was considered a dictator by opponents and rights groups. Holiday resort tycoon Gasim Ibrahim, who was finance minister under Gayoom, was also running.

Critical issues the new president will face include a rise in Islamist ideology, human rights abuses and a lack of investor confidence after current President Mohamed Waheed's government cancelled the biggest foreign investment project, with India's GMR Infrastructure.

(Additional reporting by Ranga Sirilal in Colombo and Marie-Louise Gumuchian in London; Writing by Shihar Aneez; Editing by Alison Williams)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/maldives-police-halt-presidential-vote-supporters-stage-sit-013525140--sector.html
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Credit: iStockphoto

One of the most hackneyed complaints in the modern world is the notion that being "treated like a number" is always a bad thing.

This isn't to say I'm disparaging the importance of treating customers as individuals, personalizing engagement with each of them, maintaining a 360-degree view of each, and keeping the human touch when possible. But given the focus of big data and its myriad applications on statistical analysis, most modern organizations have bet the business on treating every customer and everything else "like a number" (aka leveraging statistical data analysis).

[ Download InfoWorld's Big Data Analytics Deep Dive for a comprehensive, practical overview of this booming field. | For a quick, smart take on the news you'll be talking about, check out InfoWorld TechBrief -- subscribe today. ]

The concern has always been that big institutions are supposedly hiding behind opaque, abstract, impersonal "numbers" that prevent them from seeing each customer as a unique individual. However, today's irony is that the business world increasingly leverages the numbers (aka powerful statistical models and other advanced analytics) to drive fine-grained personalization of every customer recommendation, interaction, transaction, and experience.

Nonetheless, the "impersonal numbers" concern still retains a kernel of validity in the era of next-best actions powered by big data analytics. Inline recommendation engines (aka next-best action or decision automation infrastructure), which drive much of the personalization, often rely on extraordinarily complex analytical models, business rules, and other embedded logic.

As I noted in a recent LinkedIn post, the increasingly intricate yarn ball of logic that drives personalization can make it difficult to produce a full, transparent accounting of all the context, data, rules of thumb, and assumptions upon which specific automated decisions were made.

Just as problematic, personal responsibility for those decisions grows blurrier as the roster of data scientists and subject-matter experts who build and tune that logic grows more crowded.

Furthermore, these smart people collaborate to produce logic that drives highly unique, personalized, and situation-specific recommendations and guidance on across one or more engagement channels: portal, call center, smartphone interface, and so on. The specific recommendations and next best actions that their models drive cannot always be anticipated by any one human in advance.

My feeling is that it's OK to treat people "like numbers" as long as they are the correct numbers, drive desirable outcomes, and are available for deep introspection and clear explanation. These thoughts came back to me in spades as I read an excellent recent article on "deconstructing recommender systems." The piece, authored by Joseph A. Konstan and John Riedl, discusses a statistical modeling approach -- singular value decomposition (SVD) -- used by Amazon, Netflix, and others in their personalized recommendation engines. It discusses these and other modern-day recommendation engines within the context of industry innovations dating back to the early 1990s.

Source: http://www.infoworld.com/d/big-data/sometimes-its-ok-treat-people-numbers-228920?source=rss_infoworld_top_stories_
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The Motion Picture Association of America has announced that it has reached a settlement with the operators of IsoHunt, one of the larger BitTorrent indexers, which in its heyday was handling several million torrents for some 7.5 million unique visitors.

After being sued by Hollywood studios for massive copyright infringement, IsoHunt will now shutter, according to the terms of the deal, and the parties have jointly asked a California federal court to enter a judgment of $110 million against the defendants. The settlement also is said to include a global prohibition against founder Gary Fung further profiting from the infringement of MPAA member studio content.

EARLIER: Studio Fight Against IsoHunt Gets Trial Date

“Today’s settlement is a major step forward in realizing the enormous potential of the Internet as a platform for legitimate commerce and innovation,” said former Sen. Chris Dodd, chairman and chief executive of the MPAA. “It also sends a strong message that those who build businesses around encouraging, enabling and helping others to commit copyright infringement are themselves infringers, and will be held accountable for their illegal actions.”

The development comes in advance of a scheduled trial date next month; the MPAA had been aiming to collect hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

It also occurs after a ruling last March by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to affirm the liability of IsoHunt for inducing users to infringe plaintiffs’ copyrighted material through the trading of popular movies and TV shows. The plaintiffs, led by Columbia Pictures, originally submitted 44 infringed works, but later said there were thousands of movies and TV shows being infringed by IsoHunt. The appeals court rejected Fung's contention that his service was just indexing what was out there, saying it had “red flag” knowledge of a broad range of infringing activity.

IsoHunt's lawyers declined comment.

The settlement likely will mean the end of the company, which is currently ranked as the 426th most-visited website on the Internet, according to Alexa.com.

E-mail: Eriq.Gardner@THR.com
Twitter: @eriqgardner

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheHollywoodReporter-Technology/~3/vfkhVIgbgEE/story01.htm
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LAS VEGAS (AP) — Webb Simpson cruised to victory Sunday at TPC Summerlin, pulling away for a six-stroke win in the second event of the PGA Tour's new wraparound season.

Winning for the first time since the 2012 U.S. Open, Simpson closed with a 5-under 66 in the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open. He finished at 24-under 260 after opening with rounds of 84, 63 and 67 to take a four-stroke lead into the final round.

Ryo Ishikawa and Jason Bohn tied for second. Ishikawa, the Japanese player who had to play the Web.com Tour Finals to regain his PGA Tour card, shot a 65. Bohn had a 66.

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=238678982&ft=1&f=
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Lou Scheimer, a pioneer of Saturday morning television, has died. He was 84.

Scheimer's wife, Mary Ann, told The Los Angeles Times he died Thursday after suffering from Parkinson's disease.

PHOTOS: Hollywood's Notable Deaths of 2013

Scheimer co-founded Filmation Studios in 1962 with a $5,000 loan from his mother-in-law. The studio went on to produce the first animated series for DC Comics, including Superman, Batman, and Aquaman. It also produced The Archies, the Emmy-winning Star Trek: The Animated Series, and Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids.

In the 1980s Scheimer and Filmation worked on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. DreamWorks purchased Filmation's library in 2012.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by a daughter, Erika, and a son, Lane.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thr/television/~3/fjXkOKMtd40/story01.htm
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JH Williams/DC Entertainment

This week sees the release of Batwoman #24, the final issue in the series from the writing team of W. Haden Blackman and J.H. Williams III -- although not the final issue as they had originally intended it. Both Blackman and Williams had originally intended #26 to be their last, bringing an end to the various storylines they'd been crafting for the last two years.

"Issue 24 was already written and being drawn by the time fallout came from our decision to leave the title. There had already been an issue 25 written by us and turned in, but at this point I don’t think this will ever be published," Williams wrote on his blog yesterday. "Issue 26 was to be the final chapter of the arc and is left unwritten by us currently. So DC isn’t publishing the end of the arc. Or at least not in any way we intended. If there is ever an offering of a conclusion to the last seven months of storytelling, it most likely will be by the hands of others, and we have no idea how exactly that direction will proceed."

STORY: 'Batwoman' Co-Authors Exit, Claim DC 'Prohibited' Lesbian Marriage

He went on, "What saddens me about it is that our issue 26, two months from now, would have ended in a place that would serve as an adequate end cap to our run in a lot of ways. We knew how we were going to wrap things by issue 26, and felt we would have done so in a satisfying manner, or so we hoped."

Amongst the many resolutions and developments teased were revelations about the connection between Department of Extranormal Operations Director Bones and Batwoman's alter ego Kate Kane, some hints about how Kate's sister Beth became her arch-nemesis Alice and events that would "bring the entire family to some form of beginning to heal." According to Williams, "we would’ve been able to end our run at a good spot for the next creative team. But that must only be happening in some parallel world."

Marc Andreyko takes over as the new writer on the series with November's #25.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/THRComicCon/~3/fM-Oaqgy-Fs/story01.htm
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Church elder Elwood Cornett preaches at a recent reunion of Old Regular Baptists. Brother Don Pratt is seated behind him in a blue shirt and tie.

Cindy Johnston/NPR

Church elder Elwood Cornett preaches at a recent reunion of Old Regular Baptists. Brother Don Pratt is seated behind him in a blue shirt and tie.

Cindy Johnston/NPR

Deep in the hills of Appalachia, there's a mournful, beautiful style of church music that hasn't changed since the 18th century.

The hymns of the Old Regular Baptist Church are sung in the so-called "lined-out" style brought to America by British colonists. It can be heard in the town of Sassafras, Ky., hidden in a hollow between mountainsides covered with sugar maple and yellow buckeye and shot through with veins of bituminous coal.

On a Saturday morning in September, several hundred men and women — many solidly built, with square faces — have gathered in a Depression-era building to worship and sing. They settle into green-cushioned pews in a large, well-lit sanctuary. One of the men sitting behind the pulpit, under the picture of a kneeling Jesus, feels moved to start a song.

"Let milk and honey flow..."

He sings a line of a hymn. Once the congregation recognizes it, it repeats the line in unison, its voices swelling in a minor mode. This is what's called lined-out hymnody.

"When shall I reach that happy place..."

Unlike the Southern a cappella tradition of sacred harp or shape-note singing, lined-out hymns have no musical notation. People listen, and they sing. The tradition began when churches didn't have songbooks.

Association for Cultural Equity/YouTube

The Thornton Old Regular Baptist church in Mayking, Ky., sings "I'm Going Home" in lined-out hymnody. This footage was captured by musicologist Alan Lomax in 1983.

"I've grown up all my life hearing these songs," Geraldine Ison says. She drove here from Blair Branch Old Regular Baptist Church in Letcher County, Ky. "When I was younger, I didn't like 'em. I thought they were too sad. But now I love 'em."

She has come to the annual reunion of the Indian Bottom Association — the largest group within the various branches of the Old Regular Baptist Church, and the one that has worked hardest to preserve these old songs.

"My mother, I can remember her singing 'Little Bessie,' something real sad, and I begged her not to sing," Ison says with a chuckle.

Church members say they don't consider this music sorrowful.

"As far as being just mournful, sad singing — and a lot of people look at it that way — it's not really," says Danny Amburgey, a retired state road inspector. "If you know the song, know what we're singing about, we're giving praise to God."

Don Pratt, retired assistant school superintendent and clerk of the Indian Bottom Association, adds: "It's been a part of my life from the beginning, and it's a joyful sound. It's a sound that touches your heart."

The Smithsonian Folkways label has released two CDs of songs by Old Regular Baptists. These hymns are considered the oldest English-language religious music passed down orally in America.

At noon after the Saturday-morning service, the ladies of the church have laid out a feast: fried chicken, ham slices, field peas, deviled eggs and cornbread. For dessert, there's banana pudding, dirt pudding, cherry pie, apple pie, vanilla cake and dump cake.

This is southeastern Kentucky where the morning mist settles in valleys like milk in bowls; where a quarter of the population lives in poverty; and where isolated communities are bound by food, family and faith. But the tradition in Appalachia is more than sacred song. The music is part of the moral universe in which the Old Regular Baptists dwell: a vivid faith life of baptism in cold-water creeks, repentance and salvation.

"Yes, I want to go to heaven some day..."

Brother Don Pratt chants in a spontaneous sermon while the rising voices of the congregation wrap him in song. He is one of a succession of pastors, called moderators in the church's tradition, who step up to the pulpit for spontaneous sermons.

"I want to hear him say when the gates swing wide..."

The preacher who brings the service to a crescendo is Elwood Cornett, a 76-year-old retired school administrator who is moderator of the entire Indian Bottom Association.

Elwood Cornett is the moderator, the church's term for preacher, of the entire Indian Bottom Association of Old Regular Baptists.

Cindy Johnston/NPR

Elwood Cornett is the moderator, the church's term for preacher, of the entire Indian Bottom Association of Old Regular Baptists.

Cindy Johnston/NPR

"Wooooooo, but the key is Jesus," Cornett intones, as a woman in the congregation shrieks in spiritual elation. "Glory, glory, glory, let Mount Zion rejoice!" His arms are wide and his face contorts in piety.

According to attendance records announced at this year's reunion, 1,744 Old Regular Baptists in 41 congregations make up the Indian Bottom Association. But their numbers shrink a little each year. The room contains mostly gray heads.

Elwood Cornett worries about continuity. "My grandfather was born 100 years before I was," he says. "My mother said that he sang this very way. And I sing this very way. And I'm committed to doing what I can to keep this sound alive. I want it to be around 100 years from now."

While the Old Regular Baptists wait on the Lord to return, they sing their sacred songs here in the mountains — living, as they say, "in the world, but not of the world."

Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/10/15/234606252/before-church-songbooks-there-was-lined-out-singing?ft=1&f=1016
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Salmonella sensing system

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

18-Oct-2013

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Contact: Jason Socrates Bardi
jbardi@aip.org
240-535-4954
American Institute of Physics

A new approach to detecting food contamination enables real-time testing of food and processing plant equipment

WASHINGTON D.C. Oct. 18, 2013 -- As anyone who has ever consumed bacteria-contaminated food and experienced "food poisoning" can tell you, it's a miserable experience. Yet it's an all-too-common one, with foodborne illnesses making 1 in 6 Americans -- or 48 million people -- sick each year. Of these people sickened, 128,000 end up in the hospital, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while 3,000 die.

Foodborne illnesses spread easily and, as such, are a difficult-to-control problem -- even more so in developing nations. This means that quick detection can play a critical role in halting the spread of contamination. Traditional detection methods, however, tend to be haltingly slow.

Recognizing the need for a real-time biosensing system to detect pathogenic bacteria, such as Salmonella, a team of Auburn University researchers came up with a novel design, which they describe in the American Institute of Physics' Journal of Applied Physics.

What sets this biosensing system apart from traditional detection methods is a design that involves using a magnetoelastic biosensor -- a low-cost, wireless acoustic wave sensor platform -- combined with a surface-scanning coil detector. The biosensors are coated with a bacteria-specific recognition layer containing particles of "phage," a virus that naturally recognizes bacteria, so that it's capable of detecting specific types of pathogenic bacteria.

Traditional technologies required the sensor to be inside a coil to measure the sensor's signals, said Yating Chai, a doctoral student in Auburn University's materials engineering program.

"The key to our discovery is that measurement of biosensors can now be made 'outside the coil' by using a specially designed microfabricated reading device," he explained.

"In the past, if we were trying to detect whether or not a watermelon was contaminated with Salmonella on the outside of its surface, the sensors would be placed on the watermelon, and then passed through a large coil surrounding it to read the sensors," Chai says.

By stark contrast, the new biosensing system is a handheld device that can be passed over food to determine if its surface is contaminated.

"Now, tests can be carried out in agricultural fields or processing plants in real time -- enabling both the food and processing plant equipment and all surfaces to be tested for contamination," notes Chai.

###

The researchers have filed a patent for their magnetoelastic biosensing system.

The paper, "Design of a surface-scanning coil detector for direct bacteria detection on food surfaces using a magnetoelastic biosensor," authored by Yating Chai et al., appears in the American Institute of Physics' Journal of Applied Physics. See: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4821025

ABOUT THE JOURNAL

The Journal of Applied Physics, produced by AIP Publishing, is an influential international journal featuring significant new experimental and theoretical results of applied physics research. See: http://jap.aip.org

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Salmonella sensing system

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

18-Oct-2013

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Contact: Jason Socrates Bardi
jbardi@aip.org
240-535-4954
American Institute of Physics

A new approach to detecting food contamination enables real-time testing of food and processing plant equipment

WASHINGTON D.C. Oct. 18, 2013 -- As anyone who has ever consumed bacteria-contaminated food and experienced "food poisoning" can tell you, it's a miserable experience. Yet it's an all-too-common one, with foodborne illnesses making 1 in 6 Americans -- or 48 million people -- sick each year. Of these people sickened, 128,000 end up in the hospital, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while 3,000 die.

Foodborne illnesses spread easily and, as such, are a difficult-to-control problem -- even more so in developing nations. This means that quick detection can play a critical role in halting the spread of contamination. Traditional detection methods, however, tend to be haltingly slow.

Recognizing the need for a real-time biosensing system to detect pathogenic bacteria, such as Salmonella, a team of Auburn University researchers came up with a novel design, which they describe in the American Institute of Physics' Journal of Applied Physics.

What sets this biosensing system apart from traditional detection methods is a design that involves using a magnetoelastic biosensor -- a low-cost, wireless acoustic wave sensor platform -- combined with a surface-scanning coil detector. The biosensors are coated with a bacteria-specific recognition layer containing particles of "phage," a virus that naturally recognizes bacteria, so that it's capable of detecting specific types of pathogenic bacteria.

Traditional technologies required the sensor to be inside a coil to measure the sensor's signals, said Yating Chai, a doctoral student in Auburn University's materials engineering program.

"The key to our discovery is that measurement of biosensors can now be made 'outside the coil' by using a specially designed microfabricated reading device," he explained.

"In the past, if we were trying to detect whether or not a watermelon was contaminated with Salmonella on the outside of its surface, the sensors would be placed on the watermelon, and then passed through a large coil surrounding it to read the sensors," Chai says.

By stark contrast, the new biosensing system is a handheld device that can be passed over food to determine if its surface is contaminated.

"Now, tests can be carried out in agricultural fields or processing plants in real time -- enabling both the food and processing plant equipment and all surfaces to be tested for contamination," notes Chai.

###

The researchers have filed a patent for their magnetoelastic biosensing system.

The paper, "Design of a surface-scanning coil detector for direct bacteria detection on food surfaces using a magnetoelastic biosensor," authored by Yating Chai et al., appears in the American Institute of Physics' Journal of Applied Physics. See: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4821025

ABOUT THE JOURNAL
The Journal of Applied Physics, produced by AIP Publishing, is an influential international journal featuring significant new experimental and theoretical results of applied physics research. See: http://jap.aip.org

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-10/aiop-sss101813.php
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"GUESS WHO JUST BOUGHT A NEW USB CHARGER?!" #bragaboutit pic.twitter.com/ZabUv0KMeo

— DAP (@dapwell) October 17, 2013

The discovery of a neural firing-rate set point opens the door to eventual treatment for devastating disorders

As we learn and develop, our neurons change. They make new pathways and connections as our brain processes new information. In order to do this, individual neurons use an internal gauge to maintain a delicate balance that keeps our brains from becoming too excitable.

Scientists have long theorized a larger internal system monitors these individual gauges, like a neural thermostat, regulating average firing rates across the whole brain. Without this thermostat, they reasoned, our flexible neurons would fire out of control, making bad connections or none at all. The result of a faulty neural thermostat could be an epileptic seizure, catatonia or autism.

This thermostat-like control of neuron firing has never been observed in a live, complex animal until now.

Brandeis University scientists observed in vivo that neocortical neurons, cells that control higher functions such as sight, language and spatial reasoning, have a set average firing rate and return to this set point even during prolonged periods of sensory deprivation. Furthermore, the average firing rate is so well regulated by this neural thermostat that the rates do not change between periods of sleep and wakefulness.

The study, led by professor Gina Turrigiano in collaboration with the labs of Don Katz and Stephen Van Hooser, was the cover story in the Oct. 16 issue of the journal Neuron.

There is a time in early development across mammalian species when the brain does most of its wiring, affected largely by the environment in which the animal is being raised. This study demonstrated that during this period, neurons are constantly "self-tuning" to adjust for changes in environmental inputs, says postdoctoral fellow Keith Hengen, the paper's first author.

"If something is disturbed during that critical period of early childhood development, functioning neurons can self-adjust and return to their set-point average firing rate," Hengen says.

In this study, Turrigiano's team studied young rats that temporarily lost vision in one eye. In the first 48 hours, the neuronal firing rates dropped significantly from lack of external stimuli. But within the next 48 hours, those neurons rebounded back to their set-point rate like a cold house heating up.

Soon, the neocortical neural firing rates were the same in both hemispheres, one with visual data and one without. Turrigiano's team studied the animals awake and asleep and found that although the pattern of neural firing changed, the rate of firing stayed exactly the same.

This homeostatic mechanism keeps neurons on an even keel even as they change in response to learning, development and environmental factors.

"The homeostatic rule can control average activity across periods of sleep and wakefulness," Hengen said. "The other rules in the brain have to play out in the context of this tightly regulated system of locked-in average firing rates."

A demonstrated neural firing-rate set point opens up a whole new approach to thinking about neurological disorders such as epilepsy, in which the brain is too excited, and autism, in which the brain is not excited enough.

"If we can figure out how these set points are built, we may be able to adjust them and bring the brains of people suffering from such disorders back into balance," Turrigiano says.

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The brain's neural thermostat

Public release date: 16-Oct-2013
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Contact: Leah Burrows
lburrows@brandeis.edu
781-736-4027
Brandeis University