Thursday, April 11, 2013

AT&T's Samsung Galaxy S2 Skyrocket gets Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean

AT&T Samsung Galaxy SII Skyrocket

Update only available via KIES software

The Jelly Bean flavor of Android is hitting yet another phone today. This time it's AT&T's Samsung Galaxy S2 Skyrocket that's getting Android 4.1.2, some nine months after its Ice Cream Sandwich update. This one's only available through Samsung's KIES desktop software, unfortunately, but that's a small price to pay for a big update. 

Here's what you have to look forward to:

  • Google Now with enhanced voice activation
  • Adds Browser bar, Drive Mode, ATT Locker, Mobile Hot Spot, Featured Apps widget as preloaded applications
  • Removes Qik and MSpot applications
  • Improved Call Quality

Samsung's KIES software is available on Windows or Mac. Be sure you've got at least 50 percent battery before performing surgery.

Download: Samsung KIES; Galaxy S2 Skyrocket Jelly Bean Instructions

    


Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/dKIWx8-JtL4/story01.htm

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China pulls 'Django Unchained' on day of premiere

BEIJING (AP) ? "Django Unchained" became "Django Unscreened" on Thursday as Quentin Tarantino's violent slave-revenge saga was pulled from Chinese theaters on its opening day, with the importer blaming an unspecified technical problem.

The rare suspension order by China Film Group Corp. was confirmed by theater employees throughout China, and has led to speculation that the Hollywood film could have run afoul of Chinese censors despite weeks of promotion in the country.

Calls to the importer and to China's regulatory agency, the State Administration of Radio Film and Television, were unanswered. The China office of Sony Pictures, which released the film, refused to comment.

"Django Unchained" reportedly cut some violent scenes and had already been cleared by China's rigorous censors, who generally remove violence, sex and politically edgy content. With such an exacting system, suspension on a film's premiere date is unusual.

Tian Zaixing, general manager of the Beichen Fortune Center movie theater in the southern city of Kunming, said he could not recall any other imported film being halted on the opening day. The order from China Film Group came in a phone call around 10 a.m., he said.

"We were excited about the film yesterday," he said. "We had had high expectations for this film's box office."

Tian said he had hoped the movie would bring about one-tenth of the monthly box office, or about 150,000 yuan ($24,000), to his six-screen theater in April. Now, he must scramble to fill newly opened slots for screening.

"This means we might not be able to meet our box-office goal for the year," Tian said.

The cited technical reason might only be a ruse, said Tian, who was unable to provide an alternative explanation.

He dismissed speculation that a nude scene was the offending culprit.

"The censors have sharper eyes than we do," Tian said. "Shouldn't they have already spotted it?" He added the scene was not lewd at all but powerful in making the audience sympathetic toward one character.

The film stars actors well known to the Chinese audience: Leonardo DiCaprio as a plantation owner and Jamie Foxx as a freed slave who trains to become a bounty hunter and demands his wife's freedom.

It made more than $160 million at the North American box office and has proved successful overseas as well. China has risen to the second-biggest movie market with sales of $2.7 billion last year, according to the Motion Picture Association of America.

A man who is on the official promotional team for the film but refused to give his name because of the perceived sensibility of the issue said there had been no prior warning about the suspension and that the film's midnight premiere was unaffected.

Photographer Xue Yutao said he was about one minute into the movie at a Beijing theater Thursday morning when a couple of theater employees walked in and told the audience that the screening would be postponed. The announcer did not give a reason or say when the movie would be re-shown, Xue said.

"It was so sudden. I was very shocked," Xue said. "How could this be possible? Something like this has never happened before."

Xue said he resorted to a pirated copy of the film and did not see anything that would have offended Chinese censors.

"I'm not a noble man," the photographer said of his viewing of pirated movies. "I would still prefer to see it in the theater."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/china-pulls-django-unchained-day-070834644.html

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Google's Bufferbox Move To The Bay Area Didn't Surprise Swapbox, Which Remains Focused On Scaling

swapbox_nob1Who knew that package delivery would become a hot space, especially when it involves installation of physical lockers? Last week, we uncovered that Google’s recent acquisition, Bufferbox, was planning to invade the San Francisco Bay Area with its shipping service. Of course, after being acquired, nobody knew what would become of Bufferbox, so another Y Combinator company, Swapbox, stepped in to fill the potential void. I spoke with Swapbox’s founders today and learned that their plans and strategy are “unchanged,” and that the team knew that Bufferbox would eventually come to the Bay Area, expanding from its current locations in Canada. Swapbox recently installed its service in San Francisco’s Nob Hill section, mostly because of the concentration of people in the area. The company’s co-founder, Neel Murthy, says that activity with Swapbox is impressive in such a short period of time, with two-thirds of its customers being repeats. Of course, with Swapbox and Bufferbox, you don’t get assigned your own static P.O. Box, you can have your items shipped to any location that’s available. “We’re still just steadily rolling out Swapboxes, building out the independent infrastructure that everyone can use, and growing our footprint,” Murthy says. He added that the company is set up to install the Swapbox quickly, thanks in part to its modular design, which allows them to easily fit the cabinet into the space that’s available. Basically, no custom cabinets are needed. Of the feedback that Swapbox has received, the most interesting is that its customers are asking them to build out notification services that remind them to pick up their shipments before they leave work. Murthy says that Swapbox is seeing an average of four hours between notification that the item has been received and the actual pickup. The key to services like this, which are being mimicked by huge retailers Amazon and Walmart, is that consumers shouldn’t have to worry about being at home to wait for a package. If one of these services is available in an area where you work, it’s likely that you’d rather go there to pick up your package than to wait for FedEx to come back after a missed drop-off. Something like Swapbox isn’t limited to just Amazon and Walmart purchases, which is an advantage in getting repeat customers. After Nob Hill, Swapbox will be infiltrating the Mission, another highly populated area in San Francisco. The current cost to

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/kbjg_hn4HY4/

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Ben Affleck 'jealous' over Matt Damon smooch

GUS RUELAS / Reuters

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.

By Marc Malkin, E! Online

Ben Affleck admits it's not easy watching Michael Douglas kiss Matt Damon in their upcoming Liberace film, "Behind the Candelabra."

"Pretty jealous, pretty jealous," the "Argo" Oscar winner cracked Tuesday night at the premiere of his new movie, "To the Wonder," when we asked if he was envious of Mr. Douglas.

He added, "It burns me up. You know, I feel the envy in my heart. I can't stand it."

Remember, Damon does refer to Affleck as his "hetero life mate."

"I saw 'Behind the Candelabra,'" Affleck said Tuesday. "I don't know about the hetero part anymore."

NEWS: Are Justin Bieber and Ed Sheeran the next big bromancers?

"Candelabra," directed by Steven Soderbergh, is the real-life story of Liberace and his very tumultuous relationship his much younger lover Scott Thorson.

Matt Sayles / AP

"I've seen it," Affleck said. "It's spectacular to see. Matt is amazing. Michael Douglas is amazing. (Steven) Soderbergh's brilliant."

While the film is "light" and "fun," Affleck said, "It's also quite resonate."

We cannot wait.

Also at Tuesday's premiere, sponsored by Disaronno and Fiji Water, were Affleck's costars Rachel McAdams and Olga Kurylenko, Zachary Levi, Katie Aselton, Mark Duplass, Justin Chatwin and Wes Craven.?

PHOTOS: More movie premiere pics!

Related content:

Source: http://todayentertainment.today.com/_news/2013/04/11/17703060-ben-affleck-jealous-that-michael-douglas-got-to-kiss-matt-damon?lite

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New exploit roots Droid RAZR HD on Android 4.1.2, among others

RAZR HD

This latest root method works on all current Android versions of multiple Motorola phones

Yesterday we witnessed a Motorola milestone (no pun intended) when Dan Rosenberg announced he had found a method to unlock the bootloaders of multiple non-OMAP Motorola phones, including the Attrix HD, Droid RAZR HD/HD Maxx, and the Droid RAZR M. The unlock method would require root access, which unfortunately left Droid RAZR HD users out in the cold if they had already accepted the latest OTA update to Android 4.1.2.

Coming to the rescue of those disenfranchised Droid RAZR HD owners, Dan has released a new exploit that roots the following Motorola phones, regardless of what Android version they're currently running:

  • Droid Razr HD
  • Droid Razr Maxx HD
  • Atrix HD
  • Photon Q
  • Droid Razr M

The above phones are the only ones that are officially supported with this new root method. However, Dan has stated that this exploit will likely work with other phones -- including non-Motorola devices. For a complete list of instructions and links to the required files, follow the source link below.

Source: droidrzr.com

    


Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/goXJMdO0ruY/story01.htm

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Lights, chemistry, action: New method for mapping brain activity

Apr. 10, 2013 ? Building on their history of innovative brain-imaging techniques, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators have developed a new way to use light and chemistry to map brain activity in fully-awake, moving animals. The technique employs light-activated proteins to stimulate particular brain cells and positron emission tomography (PET) scans to trace the effects of that site-specific stimulation throughout the entire brain. As described in a paper published online today in the Journal of Neuroscience, the method will allow researchers to map exactly which downstream neurological pathways are activated or deactivated by stimulation of targeted brain regions, and how that brain activity correlates with particular behaviors and/or disease conditions.

"This technique gives us a new way to look at the function of specific brain cells and map which brain circuits are active in a wide range of neuropsychiatric diseases -- from depression to Parkinson's disease, neurodegenerative disorders, and drug addiction -- and also to monitor the effects of various treatments," said the paper's lead author, Panayotis (Peter) Thanos, a neuroscientist and director of the Behavioral Neuropharmacology and Neuroimaging Section -- part of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) Laboratory of Neuroimaging at Brookhaven Lab -- and a professor at Stony Brook University. "Because the animals are awake and able to move during stimulation, we can also directly study how their behavior correlates with brain activity," he said.

The new brain-mapping method combines very recent advances in a field known as "optogenetics" -- the use of optics (light activation) and genetics (genetically coded light-sensitive proteins) to control the activity of individual neurons, or nerve cells -- and Brookhaven's historical development of radioactively labeled chemical tracers to track biological activity with PET scanners.

The scientists used a modified virus to deliver a light-sensitive protein to particular brain cells in rats. Genetic coding can deliver the protein to specifically targeted brain-cell receptors. Then, after stimulating those proteins with light shone through an optical fiber inserted through a tiny tube called a cannula, they monitored overall brain activity using a radiotracer known as ^18FDG, which serves as a stand-in for glucose, the body's (and brain's) main source of energy.

The unique chemistry of ^18FDG causes it to be temporarily "trapped" inside cells that are hungry for glucose -- those activated by the brain stimulation -- and remain there long enough for the detectors of a PET scanner to pick up the radioactive signal, even after the animals are anesthetized to ensure they stay still for scanning. But because the animals were awake and moving when the tracer was injected and the brain cells were being stimulated, the scans reveal what parts of the brain were activated (or deactivated) under those conditions, giving scientists important information about how those brain circuits function and correlate with the animals' behaviors.

"In this paper, we wanted to stimulate the nucleus accumbens, a key part of the brain involved in reward that is very important to understanding drug addiction," Thanos said. "We wanted to activate the cells in that area and see which brain circuits were activated and deactivated in response."

The scientists used the technique to trace activation and deactivation in number of key pathways, and confirmed their results with other analysis techniques. The method can reveal even more precise effects.

"If we want to know more about the role played by specific types of receptors -- say the dopamine D1 or D2 receptors involved in processing reward -- we could tailor the light-sensitive protein probe to specifically stimulate one or the other to tease out those effects," he said.

Another important aspect is that the technique does not require the scientists to identify in advance the regions of the brain they want to investigate, but instead provides candidate brain regions involved anywhere in the brain -- even regions not well understood.

"We look at the whole brain," Thanos said. "We take the PET images and co-register them with anatomical maps produced with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and use statistical techniques to do comparisons voxel by voxel. That allows us to identify which areas are more or less activated under the conditions we are exploring without any prior bias about what regions should be showing effects."

After they see a statistically significant effect, they use the MRI maps to identify the locations of those particular voxels to see what brain regions they are in.

"This opens it up to seeing an effect in any region in the brain -- even parts where you would not expect or think to look -- which could be a key to new discoveries," he said.

This work was supported by the intramural program at NIAAA as well as grants AA11034, AA07574, AA07611. Additional co-authors include: Lisa Robison and Ronald Kim, Stony Brook University; Eric J. Nestler and Michael Michaelides, Mount Sinai School of Medicine; Mary-Kay Lobo, University of Maryland School of Medicine; and Nora D. Volkow, NIAAA.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. P. K. Thanos, L. Robison, E. J. Nestler, R. Kim, M. Michaelides, M.-K. Lobo, N. D. Volkow. Mapping Brain Metabolic Connectivity in Awake Rats with ?PET and Optogenetic Stimulation. Journal of Neuroscience, 2013; 33 (15): 6343 DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4997-12.2013

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

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

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/aZlH-IuvApA/130410191602.htm

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Research enables fishermen to harvest lucrative shellfish on Georges Bank

Apr. 10, 2013 ? Combined research efforts by scientists involved in the Gulf of Maine Toxicity (GOMTOX) project, funded by NOAA's Ecology and Oceanography of Harmful Algal Blooms (ECOHAB) program, and administered by the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS), have led to enhanced understanding of toxic algal blooms on Georges Bank. This new information, coupled with an at-sea and dockside testing protocol developed through collaboration between GOMTOX and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) investigators, has allowed fishermen to harvest ocean quahogs and surf clams in these offshore waters for the first time in more than two decades.

The shellfish industry estimates the Georges Bank fishery can produce up to 1 million bushels of surf clams and ocean quahogs a year, valued $10 -- 15 million annually. "There is a billion dollars' worth of shellfish product on Georges Bank that is property of the United States but that can't be harvested because of the threat of toxicity, and 99.9% of the time, it is good wholesome product," says Dave Wallace of North Atlantic Clam Association and a GOMTOX participant. "In an unusual and unique partnership, we worked with GOMTOX scientists, the FDA, and the states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey and Delaware and now that huge resource can go into commerce, which helps the entire country."

"We are extremely pleased that research funded by NOAA can provide such an economic boost to New England shellfisheries," says Robert Magnien, Director of NCCOS' Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research. "It is a clear example of how research authorized by the Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Research and Control Act can protect both public health and local economies through collaborations between academic scientists, state and federal regulatory agencies, and the shellfish industry."

An elevated area of the sea floor between Cape Cod and Nova Scotia, Georges Bank is one of the best fishing grounds on Earth. But since 1990, it has been closed to harvesting of surf clams and ocean quahogs after harmful algal blooms (also referred to as "red tides") caused paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) that sickened fishermen. For decades scientists speculated the blooms on Georges Bank were fueled by coastal blooms in the Gulf of Maine.

More recent research by GOMTOX investigators, however, has shown that Georges Bank is home to a separate and distinct population of the toxic algae, which is described in a recently published paper by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientist Dennis McGillicuddy and other members of the GOMTOX team.

It has been known for many years that the phytoplankton Alexandrium fundyense is the cause of the harmful algal blooms that occur to varying severity each spring and summer along the coastal Gulf of Maine, sometimes extending as far south as Cape Cod and the adjacent islands. The algae's seed populations or "cysts" germinate from seabeds starting in early spring and bloom at the sea surface, until all of the necessary nutrients in the water are consumed. As the nutrients run out, the cells form cysts and fall to the seafloor, as seed for the following spring. High concentrations of the toxic algae can cause closure of shellfish beds and cost the region many millions of dollars.

Precisely why the blooms vary in severity has been much more difficult to determine, and has involved extensive seasonal sampling of water and sediments, study of coastal currents, environmental and oceanographic conditions, availability of nutrients, and the development of a computer program to model all of the variables.

Researchers got the first signal that something very different was happening on Georges Bank during a research cruise to count Alexandrium cells in sea water samples in spring/summer 2007. "We devised our sampling strategy to look at the cells' transport pathways from coastal waters onto the Bank," says McGillicuddy. Throughout the coastal Gulf of Maine, the numbers were very low. But when the research team started sampling at Georges Bank, they found very high concentrations of Alexandrium in the water, despite the fact that the bloom had not really begun along the coast of Maine.

"I'll never forget the moment we hit a big patch of cells on Georges Bank," says Dave Townsend, a GOMTOX scientist from the University of Maine and co-author of the paper. "We extended our sampling to go all the way across Georges Bank and we were still hitting them. We had to turn around and completely reorganize our sampling strategy based on what we were seeing in the microscope."

For such a large bloom to occur, the researchers reasoned the number of cysts on Georges Bank must be similar to the quantities needed to initiate a bloom along the coast. Yet, their fall 2007 survey to map the cyst distribution in the seabed on the Bank found very few cysts -- quantities not likely to cause a large bloom along the coast.

In the three-year course of intensive study on Georges Bank since then, blooms have occurred every year, in concentrations that would typically lead to toxicities in coastal shellfish beds. Yet, a parallel effort by the fishing industry and federal testing labs to analyze shellfish samples from Georges Bank found the bivalves to be clean of toxins. So while toxins were produced at and near the surface, they were not delivered to the surf clams and ocean quahogs in the seabed in quantities sufficient to threaten human health.

The system on Georges Bank was indeed a riddle: Few cysts, yet large blooms; a large bloom, yet little to no toxicity in the shellfish. Applying the same detailed analyses to the offshore population of Alexandrium that they applied to coastal populations, the scientists discovered the optimum growing conditions for Alexandrium on Georges Bank were colder and saltier than those of their coastal relatives. Their analysis uncovered how the currents in the region can isolate Georges Bank to create colder and saltier conditions. If the conditions are favorable, the researchers say, Alexandrium populations can double every three days, and in a month's time, grow from concentrations of 10 cells per liter to 10,000.

Further setting the Georges Bank population apart was the finding by GOMTOX colleagues at University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth's School for Marine Science and Technology (SMAST), working in collaboration with the FDA, who determined that the toxin content of algae on Georges Bank was different than the coastal Gulf of Maine populations. "The toxins present in Alexandrium cells from Georges Bank were, on average, two times lower than those in the coastal Gulf of Maine," said Chrissy Petitpas, a doctoral student working in Professor Jefferson Turner's lab at SMAST.

Despite this new information and the knowledge that the clams have been shown to be safe for humans to eat at the present time, the fact remains that concentrations of the toxins in the clams on Georges Bank in 1989 and 1990 did reach dangerous levels. Scientists know that coastal shellfish populations are directly exposed to the toxins when the blooms make landfall, but they remain uncertain about the conduit for toxicity from the surface ocean to the deep shellfish beds on Georges Bank, located at about 50m depth.

But, thanks to an innovative screening protocol and regulatory structure developed collaboratively by the FDA, NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service, the fishing industry, and testing labs approved by the National Shellfish Sanitation Program, a system is now in place to monitor, test, and verify that clams harvested from Georges Bank are safe. The clams are checked by fishermen at sea using the newly available test kit, and re-checked by regulators when the fishing vessels reach the dock. Combined with the weekly monitoring of shellfish beds along the coast during the bloom season to protect human health, these monitoring systems are extremely effective at keeping toxic shellfish off the market.

"Toxin levels in shellfish on Georges Bank have been very low over the last few years. We are confident that this new testing protocol will serve to protect public health should toxin levels rise again in the future," said Stacey DeGrasse, seafood research coordinator in the FDA's Office of Regulatory Science and a major participant in the development of the new offshore testing protocol. "We intend to continue to work closely with NOAA to ensure that the shellfish from this region are harvested safely."

"I've run over 2,500 samples from Georges Bank since mid-March, and all of them have been clean of toxin," says Darcie Couture, a former manager of the marine biotoxins program at the Maine Department of Marine Resources, who now operates the federally permitted testing lab. "We've been fortunate in finding a way that we can safely harvest that product out there."

"Although we can't predict when conditions on Georges Bank will favor a large bloom, our knowledge of the bloom dynamics was used in establishing a suitable management approach," says Don Anderson, a senior scientist at WHOI and the lead investigator on the GOMTOX project.

For the scientists, the work to understand the dynamics of the Georges Bank population continues. New DNA evidence uncovered by Woods Hole Center for Oceans and Human Health researchers Deana Erdner (University of Texas) and Mindy Richlen from Don Anderson's laboratory at WHOI, suggests the Georges Bank Alexandrium population is genetically distinct.

"We thought the Georges Bank population was just the little toe at the end of the coastal population, but it's not. It is separate, and it occupies a distinct niche from the rest of the Alexandrium in this region," says McGillicuddy. "This was a big surprise to us."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

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

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/7nDqH4FI0l4/130410131447.htm

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