Ahead of the film's release next month, Demi Lovato released her track off the soundtrack for Disney's "Frozen" on Monday (October 21).
Excited about sharing her music with fans, the "Heart Attack" singer tweeted, "Here it is!!!! Listen to my version of #LetItGo from Disney's Frozen!!!"
On Monday, November 25th, the full soundtrack from the animated film will be released, two days ahead of the movie.
In the frosty flick, Elsa, the Snow Queen (voiced by Idina Menzel) sings the song about breaking free from your insecurities. Check it out in the player below.
FILE - In this April 30, 2013 file photo, Michael Skakel leaves the courtroom after the conclusion of trial regarding his legal representation at State Superior Court in Vernon, Conn. A Connecticut judge on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2013, granted a new trial for Skakel, ruling his attorney failed to adequately represent him when he was convicted in 2002 of killing his neighbor in 1975. (AP Photo/The Greenwich Time, Jason Rearick, Pool, File)
FILE - In this April 30, 2013 file photo, Michael Skakel leaves the courtroom after the conclusion of trial regarding his legal representation at State Superior Court in Vernon, Conn. A Connecticut judge on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2013, granted a new trial for Skakel, ruling his attorney failed to adequately represent him when he was convicted in 2002 of killing his neighbor in 1975. (AP Photo/The Greenwich Time, Jason Rearick, Pool, File)
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — With a new trial ordered for Michael Skakel, a defense lawyer for the Kennedy cousin serving time in the 1975 slaying of a neighbor said he will seek his release from prison on bond.
Skakel's conviction was set aside Wednesday by a Connecticut judge, Thomas Bishop, who ruled that Skakel's trial attorney failed to adequately represent him when he was found guilty in 2002. Bridgeport State's Attorney John Smriga said prosecutors will appeal the decision.
Skakel's current attorney, Hubert Santos, said he expects to file a motion for bail on Thursday. If a judge approves it, Skakel could then post bond and be released from prison.
"We're very, very thrilled," Santos said. "I always felt that Michael was innocent."
Skakel argued his trial attorney, Michael Sherman, was negligent in defending him when he was convicted in the golf club bludgeoning of Martha Moxley when they were 15 in wealthy Greenwich.
Prosecutors contended Sherman's efforts far exceeded standards and that the verdict was based on compelling evidence against Skakel.
John Moxley, the victim's brother, said the ruling took him and his family by surprise and they hope the state wins an appeal.
"Having been in the courtroom during the trial, there were a lot of things that Mickey Sherman did very cleverly," Moxley said about Skakel's trial lawyer. "But the evidence was against him. And when the evidence is against you, there's almost nothing you can do."
In his ruling, the judge wrote that defense in such a case requires attention to detail, an energetic investigation and a coherent plan of defense.
"Trial counsel's failures in each of these areas of representation were significant and, ultimately, fatal to a constitutionally adequate defense," Thomas wrote. "As a consequence of trial counsel's failures as stated, the state procured a judgment of conviction that lacks reliability."
Among other issues, the judge wrote that the defense could have focused more on Skakel's brother, Thomas, who was an early suspect in the case because he was the last person seen with Moxley. Had Sherman done so, "there is a reasonable probability that the outcome of the trial would have been different," the judge wrote.
During a state trial in April on the appeal, Skakel took the stand and blasted Sherman's handling of the case, portraying him as an overly confident lawyer having fun and basking in the limelight while making fundamental mistakes from poor jury picks to failing to track down key witnesses.
Sherman has said he did all he could to prevent Skakel's conviction and denied he was distracted by media attention in the high-profile case.
Prosecutors said Sherman spent thousands of hours preparing the defense, challenged the state on large and small legal issues, consulted experts and was assisted by some of the state's top lawyers. Sherman attacked the state's evidence, presented an alibi and pointed the finger at an earlier suspect, prosecutors said.
"This strategy failed not because of any fault of Sherman's, but because of the strength of the state's case," prosecutor Susann Gill wrote in court papers.
Skakel, who maintains his innocence, was denied parole last year and was told he would not be eligible again to be considered for release for five years.
Microsoft said it improved Kinect on the Xbox One, and now a leaked setup manual indicates how little space it requires to operate. The PDF NeoGAF spotted notes that a minimum 1.4 meters (just over 4.5-feet) between the user and Microsoft's new do-all sensor is all that's required. For those of us with cozy living quarters, this could be a bit more generous than the last one's recommended six to eight-foot gap. We've reached out to Microsoft for an official comment and will update this post if we hear back. Until then however, we're hoping that November 22nd will mark the end of us rearranging our living room to play the latest Dance Central.
Arcade Fire on Saturday night in Bushwick. Win Butler on the left, Richard Reed Parry on the right.
Courtesy of Sachyn Mital
Arcade Fire on Saturday night in Bushwick. Win Butler on the left, Richard Reed Parry on the right.
Courtesy of Sachyn Mital
Saturday's hottest ticket in New York City was to see a band nobody's heard of. The Reflektors burned through a fan-only presale, and tickets hit the secondary market at prices high as $5,000 — a hefty sum to see any band, much less a band yet to release its first album, in Bushwick's warehousiest corridors. That's like half a year's rent for that neighborhood. But the hype was real. Based only on the "Is-this-really-happening?" disbelief stretching the faces of all the superfans and industry types in the audience, you'd think they were about to see a band that would never play a skuzzy converted depot in east Brooklyn: U2 or Bruce Springsteen, or, I don't know, Arcade Fire.
The thing about the musicians on stage was that they looked a lot like Arcade Fire. Despite his Jack White-like red shirt and white tie, the bassist's flaming red hair drew Richard Reed Parry comparisons. And they sounded like Arcade Fire, too. They even covered "Sprawl II." And that's because — (no) surprise! — The Reflektors was Arcade Fire. That cat was never really in the bag. After a little tongue-in-cheek stage banter ("We started three years ago. We were nervous to play New York because we heard you're standoffish!"), a gold-suited Win Butler and his band ran through a set of mostly unheard tracks from their upcoming album Reflektor, masquerading as a brand new band riding the promotional cycle for its first album.
But the group that played at 299 Meserole this weekend, no matter what you called them, was clearly neither a set of wide-eyed naïfs dropping their first 12", nor the band that made sneaking out of your parents house feel like toppling the Berlin Wall. The musicians were belied by more than their popularity; never mind that most in attendance — who embraced the show's "formal" dress code with thrifted tuxes, reflective masks or fratty banana suits — only got access to buying these tickets after pre-ordering Reflektor. They're also darker, and maybe a more disillusioned, too. "We're so excited to play CMJ," Butler called out sarcastically. "Thank you so much to all the industry types who offered to sign our band!"
But the plucky effrontery that has underpinned all Arcade Fire's work to date is crumbling. The band has told stories about struggling under somebody's thumb since its 2003 debut album Funeral. Songs like "Wake Up" and "Crown of Love" captured an anthemic emotional power, half hope and half rebellion, unmatched by the group's successors and copycats. The songs bloomed around refrains that felt bigger than any stadium they eventually filled. But this is less so on Reflektor. The new songs Arcade Fire played Saturday were full of new (mostly rhythmic) ideas coming to the fore and many old (mostly romantic) identifiers fading away.
Some saw that change coming when Arcade Fire announced that James Murphy, the David Bowie-obsessed former face of LCD Soundsystem and head of disco-punk label DFA, was announced as Reflektor's producer. He introduced the band at the show. Others heard it in the album's dynamic, Bowie-featuring first single, which abandoned that operatic Springsteenian populism for pop reflective of the transformations undertaken by their arena-sized predecessors the Talking Heads and U2 (there's that similarity again).
That change got its first full public display in Bushwick. Take "We Exist," for one. Four years ago an Arcade Fire song with titles that way might've sounded like "Born to Run," but when that "Hang On To Your Love"/"Your Cover's Blown" bassline crept out beneath the venue's Murphy-esque disco balls and reflective hanging polygons, it left no ambiguities about the type of music Arcade Fire is now interested in making. Fans of the group should have been safe assuming they'd get the standard fare of marching violinists yowling to the rafters, but instead were blindsided by Sade. With strings marginalized and two miscellaneous percussionists in tow, this group looked and sounded more like Stop Making Sense than In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.
This departure is not a totally clean break from their last work, 2010's Grammy-winning, Twitter-enragingThe Suburbs. There were of course the type of joyful moments Arcade Fire is known for (see the swelling "Supersymmetry"), and brand new sounds, like the Princely backup vocals of "It's Never Over (Orpheus)" and the murky rave-up "Here Comes the Night Time." But taking the stage in the throes of a transformation didn't always work in Arcade Fire's favor. The band sometimes sounded uninspired performing new songs they'd written in their old style (like the underwhelming "Joan of Arc") or those that didn't do Butler's heady aspiration to sound like "a mash up of Studio 54 and Hatian voodoo" real justice (the chopped reggaeton of "Flashbulb Eyes"). Some old favorites even looked limp in their new duds (like the beloved "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)"), while others ("Haiti") sound suddenly prophetic of where the band has touched down.
Gone is the jubilation of the Arcade Fire of days past. The crowd occasionally felt awkward inside the band's new big beat, and responded to Butler's post-encore announcement that there would be no more Reflektors, or Arcade Fire, tonight but rather a DJ set from James Murphy for those who wanted to "dance all night," with more than a smattering of boos. But the band itself is dancing toward something that'll lead it outside the sounds their old crowd formed around. Seeing that live was alone worth the price of admission.
In this Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2013 photo, Matthew Cordle enters court for his arraignment on a charge of aggravated vehicular homicide in Columbus, Ohio. Attorneys are seeking a reduced sentence for Cordle, who confessed in an online video to causing a fatal wrong-way crash after a night of drinking. (AP Photo/Mike Munden)
In this Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2013 photo, Matthew Cordle enters court for his arraignment on a charge of aggravated vehicular homicide in Columbus, Ohio. Attorneys are seeking a reduced sentence for Cordle, who confessed in an online video to causing a fatal wrong-way crash after a night of drinking. (AP Photo/Mike Munden)
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — An Ohio man was sentenced Wednesday to 6½ years in prison for causing a fatal wrong-way crash after a night of heavy drinking, which he had confessed to in an online video.
Matthew Cordle, 22, had faced up to 8½ years in prison. "Whatever my sentence may be, there's no fair sentence when it comes to the loss of a life," Cordle told the judge before the sentence was handed down.
Franklin County Judge David Fais sentenced Cordle to six years for aggravated vehicular homicide and six months for driving under the influence of alcohol. He also revoked his driving privileges for life.
Cordle apologized to the family of his victim, Vincent Canzani, who was killed in the June crash. "It should have been me that night, the guilty party, instead of an innocent man," he said.
His guilty plea last month came just a week after he was indicted in a speedy process absent of the numerous court filings that usually cause such cases to drag on for weeks or months.
Canzani's daughter asked Fais for the maximum sentence. "My father got a death sentence and did nothing wrong," Angela Canzani told the judge.
Vincent Canzani was a talented artist and photographer who enjoyed working out and spending time with friends and family, she said. She said her children and her sister's children will never get to see their grandfather again.
The judge also read a letter from Vincent Canzani's ex-wife who said she believed Vincent Canzani would not have wanted a maximum sentence. She said she believes Cordle will keep his promise never to drink and drive again.
Cordle's father, Dave Cordle, told the judge he was "disappointed, disgusted and heartbroken" at the choices his son made that night. He did not ask for leniency, and told Canzani's family his heart was filled with sorrow at their loss and hopes someday they can forgive his son.
In a 3½-minute video posted in early September, Cordle admitted he killed a man and said he "made a mistake" when he decided to drive that night. "My name is Matthew Cordle, and on June 22, 2013, I hit and killed Vincent Canzani," he says somberly. "This video will act as my confession."
Cordle acknowledged having a drinking problem after the crash and entered a treatment program as prosecutors gathered evidence against him. He told his attorneys early on that he wanted to plead guilty but made the video against their advice.
Prosecutors say a heavily intoxicated Cordle denied causing an accident or killing anyone when he was first taken to a hospital after the crash, in which he suffered broken ribs and a fractured skull. His attorneys say he may have suffered a brain injury.
Cordle, who lives in Powell, a Columbus suburb, told Fais last month that he had no recollection of the crash, how much he'd had to drink that night or whether he'd had anything to eat.
"I drank so much I was blacked out," Cordle said at the Sept. 18 hearing where he pleaded guilty.
Prosecutor Ron O'Brien said he believed Cordle's remorse in the video was genuine, but he said any further interviews would be self-serving. He also disputed Cordle's assertion in the confessional video that he could have fought the case against him, which O'Brien called "a slam dunk."
O'Brien sought the maximum sentence of 8½ years. Cordle's attorneys asked for a sentence that was fair.
The video posted on YouTube has been viewed more than 2.3 million times. It begins with Cordle's face blurred as he describes how he has struggled with depression and was simply trying to have a good time with friends going "from bar to bar" the night of the accident. He then describes how he ended up driving into oncoming traffic on Interstate 670. Cordle's face becomes clear as he reveals his name and confesses to killing Canzani.
He ends the video by pleading with viewers not to drink and drive.
___
Online:
Matthew Cordle's video confession: http://bit.ly/1dWug8i
HIV-positive babies rest in an orphanage in Nairobi, Kenya. Treatment right after birth may make it possible for HIV-positive newborns to fight off the virus.
Brent Stirton/Getty Images
HIV-positive babies rest in an orphanage in Nairobi, Kenya. Treatment right after birth may make it possible for HIV-positive newborns to fight off the virus.
Brent Stirton/Getty Images
A 3-year-old girl born in Mississippi with HIV acquired from her mother during pregnancy remains free of detectable virus at least 18 months after she stopped taking antiviral pills.
New results on this child, published online by the New England Journal of Medicine, appear to green-light a study in the advanced planning stages in which researchers around the world will try to replicate her successful treatment in other infected newborns.
And it means that the Mississippi girl still can be considered possibly or even probably cured of HIV infection — only the second person in the world with that lucky distinction. The first is Timothy Ray Brown, a 47-year-old American man apparently cured by a bone marrow transplant he received in Berlin a half-dozen years ago.
This new report addresses many of the questions raised earlier this year when disclosure of the Mississippi child's case was called a possible game-changer in the long search for an HIV cure.
"There was some very healthy skepticism," Dr. Katherine Luzuriaga, a professor at the University of Massachusetts in Worcester, tells Shots. She's part of the team that has been exhaustively testing the toddler's blood and considering every possible explanation for her apparently HIV-free state.
Luzuriaga is confident the latest tests prove that the child was truly infected with HIV at the time of her birth — not merely carrying remnants of free-floating virus or infected blood cells transferred before birth from her mother, as some skeptics wondered.
The UMass researcher says there's no way the child's mother could have contributed enough of her own blood plasma to the newborn to account for the high levels of HIV detected in the child's blood shortly after birth.
Similarly, Luzuriaga says, new calculations show that the mother "would have had to transfer a huge number of [HIV-infected] white blood cells to the baby in order for us to get the [viral] signal that we got early on."
Clinching the question as far as the researchers are concerned is the infant's response to anti-HIV drugs that she began receiving shortly after birth. The remarkable earliness of her treatment is a crucial feature that makes this child different from almost any other.
"There's a very characteristic clearance curve of viruses once we start babies on treatment," Luzuriaga says. "The decay of viruses we see in this baby is exactly what we saw in early treatment trials from 20 years ago when we initiated anti-retroviral therapy and shut off viral replication. That's a very different decay curve than you would expect if it were just free virus transferred to the baby."
It might be helpful to recap the unusual, if not unique, features of the Mississippi case.
Her mother did not receive prenatal care, so she was not identified as HIV-infected before delivery. If she had been, she would have received drugs that are highly effective in preventing mother-to-child transmission of the virus.
While the mother was in labor, she got HIV testing, as is routine for women without prenatal care. When that came up positive, Dr. Hannah Gay, a pediatrician at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, was ready to test the newborn for infection and start anti-retroviral medicines within 30 hours of birth.
The treatment quickly cleared the virus from the baby's blood. Normally such children would stay on antiviral drugs for a lifetime. But in this case the mother – whose life circumstances were reportedly chaotic – stopped giving the child the medication between 15 and 18 months after birth.
Gay and her colleagues caught up to the child when she was 23 months old and were astonished to discover she was apparently still virus-free despite being off treatment. Five rounds of state-of-the-art testing — at UMass, Johns Hopkins, federal research labs and the University of California San Diego — failed to reveal any trace of the virus in her blood.
That led to last spring's report and widely reported hope that the child had been cured of HIV.
But Dr. Scott Hammer, an HIV researcher at Columbia University in New York, is not quite convinced. "Is the child cured of HIV infection? The best answer at this moment is a definitive 'maybe,' " Hammer writes in a New England Journaleditorial that accompanied the report.
The reason is that a couple of tests done when the child was about 2 years old found indications that her system may contain pieces of RNA or DNA from HIV. This hints that some of the nucleic acid building blocks of the virus are hanging around within her blood cells.
There's no evidence these "proviral" remnants are capable of assembling themselves into whole viruses that can make copies of themselves. But researchers are concerned about that possibility and how it might be headed off.
"The question is whether those viral nucleic acids have the ability at some point to replicate and allow a rebound of the virus," Luzuriaga acknowledges. "That's why it's important to continue to test the baby over time." She says that means years.
But for now, the signs from the Mississippi child's case are encouraging enough to have generated an ambitious global human experiment that Luzuriaga says is in final planning stages.
Women who present in labor without having had prenatal care will be tested for HIV and, if positive, their infants will be intensively treated within a couple of days of birth, as the Mississippi child was. Then they'll be followed with the most sensitive tests to determine if the virus has been eradicated.
If certain criteria are met, researchers plan to decide whether it would be safe to discontinue HIV treatment deliberately and follow the children closely to see if the virus returns. (If it did, treatment would be restarted.)
If the experiment succeeds, it would be a huge advance in the prevention of childhood HIV and AIDS in many parts of the world. More than 9 out of 10 of the world's 3.4 million HIV-infected children live in sub-Saharan Africa, where many women deliver without having had prenatal care or HIV treatment. Around 900 children are newly infected every day.
Meanwhile, researchers pursuing an HIV cure will convene next month in San Francisco to consider various strategies — for adults as well as children. One other recent glimmer of hope was provided this summer by Boston researchers who reported that two HIV-infected men with lymphoma remain virus-free without treatment for several months after stopping antiviral treatment.
Study of decline of malaria in the US could affect approach to malaria epidemic abroad, UT Arlington researcher says
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
21-Oct-2013
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Contact: Bridget Lewis blewis@uta.edu 817-272-3317 University of Texas at Arlington
Rethinking the 1930s attack on malaria
A new University of Texas at Arlington study about the elimination of malaria in the 1930s American South may have significant implications for solving modern day malaria outbreaks in parts of Africa, Central and Latin America, and Asia.
Researchers challenged a leading argument that movement of Southern tenant farmers away from mosquito breeding grounds was the dominant factor in the decline of malaria in U.S. during the 1930s.
Instead, targeted public health interventions and the development of local-level public health infrastructure helped eradicate the disease, according to Daniel Sledge, assistant professor of political science at UT Arlington and lead author of Eliminating Malaria in the American South: An Analysis of the Decline of Malaria in 1930s Alabama, a paper recently published by the American Journal of Public Health.
We found that targeted public health interventions, supported by the federally backed development of state and local public health infrastructure, led to the decline of malaria despite widespread and deep-seated poverty, Sledge said.
Beth Wright, dean of the College of Liberal Arts at UT Arlington, said Sledges research benefits the public, health professionals and policy makers globally.
Dr. Sledges work has far-reaching implications for those who work to eradicate malaria and similar diseases, Wright said. Huge challenges remain, but such research brings about better understanding of potential solutions and could ultimately help save lives.
Malaria is an infectious disease caused by a parasite called plasmodium and transmitted through the bites of infected mosquitoes. The disease causes fever, headache, and vomiting. Untreated, it can become life threatening.
Malaria killed an estimated 1.24 million worldwide in 2010 and decimated economies in the heavily populated, warm climate regions of the Global South, according to recent studies.
Malaria played a similarly devastating role in the American South until the 1930s, researchers detailed, by lowering the productivity of workers, deterring migration into the region and severely limiting economic growth.
Historian Margaret Humphreys argued in her landmark 2001 book, Malaria: Race, Poverty, and Public Health in the United States, that it was the removal of the malaria carrier and victim from the vicinity of the anopheles mosquito that likely had the largest effect on the decline of the disease.
But Sledge and co-author George Mohler, assistant professor of mathematics and computer science at Santa Clara University in California, found otherwise.
We assessed this argument using Census data on the number of farms operated by tenants during the 1930s. We found that highly malarial areas actually gained population during the period that malaria declined, Sledge said. Changes in the type of farms, meanwhile, didnt lead to a decline in malaria.
He added: Put another way, population movement didnt lead to the end of malaria in the United States public health work did.
During the 1930s, the federal Works Progress Administration put unemployed Southerners to work draining millions of acres of wetlands. Along with the federally sponsored creation of local health departments, these drainage projects led to the decline of malaria, the authors said.
The federal government further ramped up its efforts during World War II, creating the agency that became the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention specifically to fight southern malaria. After the war, the CDC used the insecticide DDT to eradicate the few remaining pockets of the disease.
For their study, Sledge and Mohler used a mathematical model to analyze the decline of malaria in each of the 67 counties in Alabama, an archetypical Deep South cotton state that experienced high levels of malaria incidence well into the 1930s.
In the model, we categorized counties into three risk levels and then estimated the dependence of mortality rates on variables related to weather, WPA projects, and population movement, Mohler said. After drought, the most important variable for predicting a decline in mortality rates was the amount of drainage in a county, rather than movement out of high risk counties or a reduction in tenant farms.
In addition to drainage work, researchers point to the importance of measures such as screening and public health infrastructure as well as the training of public health workers in the elimination of the disease.
While the team concedes that there are considerable distinctions between the current Global South and the American South of the 1930s, they argue that malaria can be controlled in the face of poverty and economic dislocation and without major social change.
Today, disease surveillance, drainage measures and screening work to ensure that, on those occasions when malaria is reintroduced from outside of the U.S., the chain of transmission does not begin again, Sledge said.
###
Sledges work is representative of the world-class research under way at The University of Texas at Arlington, a comprehensive research institution of more than 33,000 students and more than 2,200 faculty members in the heart of North Texas. Visit www.uta.edu to learn more.
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Study of decline of malaria in the US could affect approach to malaria epidemic abroad, UT Arlington researcher says
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
21-Oct-2013
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Contact: Bridget Lewis blewis@uta.edu 817-272-3317 University of Texas at Arlington
Rethinking the 1930s attack on malaria
A new University of Texas at Arlington study about the elimination of malaria in the 1930s American South may have significant implications for solving modern day malaria outbreaks in parts of Africa, Central and Latin America, and Asia.
Researchers challenged a leading argument that movement of Southern tenant farmers away from mosquito breeding grounds was the dominant factor in the decline of malaria in U.S. during the 1930s.
Instead, targeted public health interventions and the development of local-level public health infrastructure helped eradicate the disease, according to Daniel Sledge, assistant professor of political science at UT Arlington and lead author of Eliminating Malaria in the American South: An Analysis of the Decline of Malaria in 1930s Alabama, a paper recently published by the American Journal of Public Health.
We found that targeted public health interventions, supported by the federally backed development of state and local public health infrastructure, led to the decline of malaria despite widespread and deep-seated poverty, Sledge said.
Beth Wright, dean of the College of Liberal Arts at UT Arlington, said Sledges research benefits the public, health professionals and policy makers globally.
Dr. Sledges work has far-reaching implications for those who work to eradicate malaria and similar diseases, Wright said. Huge challenges remain, but such research brings about better understanding of potential solutions and could ultimately help save lives.
Malaria is an infectious disease caused by a parasite called plasmodium and transmitted through the bites of infected mosquitoes. The disease causes fever, headache, and vomiting. Untreated, it can become life threatening.
Malaria killed an estimated 1.24 million worldwide in 2010 and decimated economies in the heavily populated, warm climate regions of the Global South, according to recent studies.
Malaria played a similarly devastating role in the American South until the 1930s, researchers detailed, by lowering the productivity of workers, deterring migration into the region and severely limiting economic growth.
Historian Margaret Humphreys argued in her landmark 2001 book, Malaria: Race, Poverty, and Public Health in the United States, that it was the removal of the malaria carrier and victim from the vicinity of the anopheles mosquito that likely had the largest effect on the decline of the disease.
But Sledge and co-author George Mohler, assistant professor of mathematics and computer science at Santa Clara University in California, found otherwise.
We assessed this argument using Census data on the number of farms operated by tenants during the 1930s. We found that highly malarial areas actually gained population during the period that malaria declined, Sledge said. Changes in the type of farms, meanwhile, didnt lead to a decline in malaria.
He added: Put another way, population movement didnt lead to the end of malaria in the United States public health work did.
During the 1930s, the federal Works Progress Administration put unemployed Southerners to work draining millions of acres of wetlands. Along with the federally sponsored creation of local health departments, these drainage projects led to the decline of malaria, the authors said.
The federal government further ramped up its efforts during World War II, creating the agency that became the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention specifically to fight southern malaria. After the war, the CDC used the insecticide DDT to eradicate the few remaining pockets of the disease.
For their study, Sledge and Mohler used a mathematical model to analyze the decline of malaria in each of the 67 counties in Alabama, an archetypical Deep South cotton state that experienced high levels of malaria incidence well into the 1930s.
In the model, we categorized counties into three risk levels and then estimated the dependence of mortality rates on variables related to weather, WPA projects, and population movement, Mohler said. After drought, the most important variable for predicting a decline in mortality rates was the amount of drainage in a county, rather than movement out of high risk counties or a reduction in tenant farms.
In addition to drainage work, researchers point to the importance of measures such as screening and public health infrastructure as well as the training of public health workers in the elimination of the disease.
While the team concedes that there are considerable distinctions between the current Global South and the American South of the 1930s, they argue that malaria can be controlled in the face of poverty and economic dislocation and without major social change.
Today, disease surveillance, drainage measures and screening work to ensure that, on those occasions when malaria is reintroduced from outside of the U.S., the chain of transmission does not begin again, Sledge said.
###
Sledges work is representative of the world-class research under way at The University of Texas at Arlington, a comprehensive research institution of more than 33,000 students and more than 2,200 faculty members in the heart of North Texas. Visit www.uta.edu to learn more.
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| E-mail
Share
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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.
So maybe you've considered your options, weighed the pros and cons of switching to Android, but you just know: The iPad is the tablet for you. But even if you demand iOS, both of yesterday's new versions are enticing. Are you going with the ultra-svelt iPad Air? Or should you be sticking a Retina iPad mini in your back pocket? Here's how to decide.
Two new smartphones are going after customers who want supersized screens: Nokia's new Lumia 1520, launched Tuesday, runs Windows Phone and HTC's One Max is an Android offering. But how do the two stack up side-by-side?
The screen When it comes to the best screen size for a device in this segment, HTC's and Nokia's product development departments seem to be in agreement. The Lumia 1520 has a 6-inch screen with a full HD resolution, while the One Max has a 5.9-inch screen with the same resolution.
Size and weight Since the two models have roughly the same screen size, the weight is also close. The One Max is slightly heavier at 217 grams versus the Lumia 1520's 209 grams. The overall size of the two devices is also similar; the One Max comes in at 164.5 x 82.5 x 10.3 millimeters compared to 162.8 x 85.4 x 8.7 millimeters.
Processors The two smartphones may have similar measurements, but they differ on processors. Both have quad-core processors from Qualcomm, but the Lumia 1520 is powered by the more powerful Snapdragon 800 at 2.2GHz compared to the One Max's Snapdragon 600 processor at 1.7GHz.
Storage and RAM Buyers of the HTC One Max can choose between 16GB or 32GB, while Nokia's spec sheet only lists a 32GB option. Both vendors will let users expand the integrated memory by up to 64GB using a MicroSD card. The amount of RAM available to applications is the same at 2GB.
Camera The camera on the Lumia 1520 has a 20-megapixel resolution compared to the 4-megapixel camera on the One Max. The sensor on the Lumia measures 1/2.5-inch and it has a f/2.4 aperture compared to a 1/3-inch sensor and a f/2.0 aperture on the One Max.
Price The Lumia 1520 is $749 before taxes and subsidies. The One Max sells for about $790 without VAT or subsidies in the U.K.
Audio for this story from Morning Edition will be available at approximately 9:00 a.m. ET.
Copy machines can be found in every office, and most of us take them for granted. But 75 years ago, the technology that underpins the modern photocopier was used for the first time in a small apartment in Queens.
Inventor Chester Carlson used static electricity created with a handkerchief, light and dry powder to make the first copy on Oct. 22, 1938.
The copier didn't get on to the market until 1959, more than 20 years later. When it did, the Xerox machine prompted a dramatic change in the workplace.
The first commercial model, the Xerox 914, was bulky and cumbersome. It weighed nearly 650 pounds. It was the size of about two washing machines and was prone to spontaneous combustion.
But even literally going up in flames wasn't enough to kill the product. In fact, it was in high demand.
"There was a distinct need for simple copying like this, and it just took off," says Ray Brewer, historical archivist for Xerox Corp. "We sold thousands of these machines, and the demand was such that we were manufacturing them in large quantities."
Brewer says the popularity of Xerox technology abroad inspired more clandestine uses for the copier. Some machines actually had miniature cameras built into them during the Cold War for the purpose of spying on other countries.
Back at home, the copier was proving to be a godsend for secretaries. One Xerox commercial features a female secretary saying:
"I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing a button. Anything he can see I can copy in black and white on ordinary paper. I can make seven copies a minute. ... Sometimes my boss asks me which is the original, and sometimes, I don't know."
Author and historian Lynn Peril says the machines had to have been "fabulously liberating."
"Oh my god, you didn't have to work with all the lousy carbon paper," she says. "You could just take it and put it on this glass surface, and press a button and you've got as many copies as you wanted."
The beauty of the technology, Peril says, was that it saved time for office workers without making their workplace role obsolete.
Angele Boyd is a business analyst at the International Data Corp. She says copier technology created a more democratic information system.
"Until then, you needed to go to a press or you needed to go to a third party external print shop to produce that kind of quality output," she says.
The core technology in the copier, later transferred to printers and scanners, has remained the same since the 1930s.
Songs by Lucy Wainwright Roche seems to be told with a shrug, a note of apology, or modesty. And, yet, her father is the witty and acerbic singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III. Her mother is Suzzy Roche — one third of the harmonious Roche sisters. Her half-brother and -sister are Rufus and Martha Wainwright, each acclaimed singer-songwriters in their own right.
But Lucy Wainwright Roche looked around at all that talent and didn't really want to be a part of it.
"I had no interest in being a musician because I was surrounded by them. It seemed like a terrible plan," Roche tells NPR's Melissa Block, laughing.
There's a Last Time for Everything is available from Amazon and iTunes.
Her own shyness was also an initial problem.
"The very first show I did alone had been a terrible, awkward, horrible disaster," she says. "And then the second one — about halfway through I realized I should just be the way I would be if I was just talking to one person. That solved the problem. Then I was like, 'Oh, I'm not really building the mystique. I'm just sort of being normal. And that helped because I'm not much of a mystique builder."
None of Roche's family appears on There's a Last Time for Everything. That's in part due to the short recording schedule, but she says it was "great to do it in a little bubble away from the family."
Somewhere in the middle of the album, Roche covers the empowering Robyn anthem "Call Your Girlfriend" and strips it down to what a friend of her calls a "sad snoozer."
"When I first heard that song, I was like, 'Wow, I have never heard someone say exactly that in that way in a song before.' I'd never heard somebody say, 'Look, call your girlfriend. Tell her we're going to be together now and tell her it's fine.' I thought it was a quite direct and interesting approach, although I'm not sure how well it would work in real life. But I was smitten with the idea of the song."
The first time listeners might have met Lucy Wainwright Roche was in a 1985 song written by her dad and aunt, Terre Roche. "Screaming Issue" is a beautiful lullaby about Roche as a screaming baby. She loves it now, but as a kid, she really didn't like it "because people would always sing it to me."
Her parents split up when she was two years old, and since Loudon Wainwright spent part of his time in England, father and daughter didn't see each other very much during her childhood. Roche says as an adult, she's traveled a lot with him on tour.
"I think it's a thing that most people who don't spend a lot of time with a parent as a kid, [they] rarely get to make it up," Roche says. "And we have in a way. So that's been a really interesting chapter for us, I think."
BlackBerry says its new app that opens up the proprietary BBM messaging platform to Android and Apple users was downloaded 10 million times in just over its first 24 hours of availability.
The free app was launched Monday morning.
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Using it, people with Android and iOS can exchange messages with friends and colleagues using the BBM system. The system notifies users when each message has been read and indicates when someone is in the process of responding. Files and photos can also be shared over BBM.
There are around 60 million active monthly users of BBM.
The launch of BBM on Android and iOS is about more than just making it easy for people to message BlackBerry users.
"We intend to be the leading private social network for everyone who needs the immediate communication and collaboration of instant messaging combined with the privacy, control and reliability delivered through BBM," said Andrew Bocking, BlackBerry's executive vice president for BBM, in a statement.
But to do that, BlackBerry is up against stiff competition from companies like Yahoo, AOL, and Google, which have operated open instant messaging networks for years. It will not only have to convince people of their need for a new platform and to download the app, but it will also have to get people used to exchanging a BBM PIN, an alphanumeric code each user has that identifies them, instead of their email address.
BlackBerry has struggled to keep a foothold in the competitive smartphone market ever since it delayed an update to its OS. Over the last few years, the company's handsets didn't keep up with innovations in the market.
That changed earlier this year with the launch of BlackBerry's OS 10, which was critically praised. But the earlier delay now has BlackBerry battling a perception that it's an also-ran in the market.
Earlier this year, BlackBerry said it was exploring its options and has been in talks with several parties that are interested in acquiring the company.
Martyn Williams covers mobile telecoms, Silicon Valley and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Martyn on Twitter at @martyn_williams. Martyn's e-mail address is martyn_williams@idg.com
Apple's iPad Air and retina iPad mini may be getting all the headlines, but its elders also made a bit of news at the company's event today. As is the Apple way, with the introduction of new hardware comes a price drop for the old. How much? The old 16GB WiFi iPad mini now costs $299, down from its ...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court will take up a Florida case over how judges should determine if a death row inmate is mentally disabled, and thus ineligible for execution.
The justices said Monday they will review a Florida Supreme Court ruling that upheld the death sentence for a man who scored just above the state's cutoff for mental disability as measured by IQ tests.
Freddie Lee Hall was sentenced to death for killing Karol Hurst, a 21-year-old, pregnant woman who was abducted leaving a grocery store in 1978.
Florida law prohibits anyone with an IQ of 70 or higher from being classified as mentally disabled, regardless of other evidence to the contrary. Hall's scores on three IQ tests ranged from 71 to 80.
In 2002, the Supreme Court banned the execution of mentally disabled inmates. But the 6-3 decision in Atkins v. Virginia essentially left it to the states to determine how to measure mental disability.
Florida is one of nine death penalty states with a strict IQ limit, said Florida Supreme Court Justice Barbara Pariente. The others are: Arkansas, Delaware, Idaho, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Washington.
Pariente voted with the majority to uphold Hall's sentence, but noted there is no national consensus on how to determine mental disability.
Hall's case is legally complicated. In 1989, the Florida Supreme Court threw out Hall's original death penalty and ordered a new sentencing hearing. A judge then resentenced Hall to death, but declared he was mentally disabled. That took place before the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling and before Florida passed a law setting the IQ limit.
When Hall later filed another appeal, the same judge ruled he was not mentally disabled because his scores on IQ tests topped 70.
Union Square Ventures, the New York-based VC firm that has backed Twitter, Foursquare, Etsy, Zynga and many others, has debuted a newly redesigned website today. A VC firm launching a new site isn’t usually big news, but in this case, USV has added an interesting new sharing community that draws comparisons to Y Combinator’s Hacker News.
On the front page of the site, you’ll see a Hacker News-like, link-sharing stream (under the category community) which is partly curated and also open to anyone posting a link they think is relevant. USV’s partners, including Fred Wilson, consistently write their opinions about technology and the investment world on their own blogs, but as Wilson explains, this will be a place where their content can be cross-posted.
This is also a view into the links that the USV team is sharing with one other, he adds. But the new design is really meant to be a public destination where anyone can post an interesting link or story. Posting, which is powered by USV portfolio company and commenting system Disqus, requires you to log in with your Twitter handle. This is also a way for startups to pitch USV by sharing a link to their startup (using a Show syntax in the comment). As Wilson writes, “Pitching is not spamming at usv.com if it’s done correctly.”
USV is also offering a post bookmarklet, a Chrome extension, and an Android share app; it will be releasing a Firefox extension shortly.
In theory, the feature is similar to Hacker News. USV admits that the firm was inspired by Hacker News in developing the new feature. Similar to Hacker News, you can vote, comment and filter the stream. Hacker News is the brainchild of Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham, and started out as a community for ex-Redditors.
Similar to Graham, USV is attempting to bring together a community on its own site. But while Graham had originally designed the site for hackers and a smaller community (and has grown beyond this after a number of years), it seems as if USV is aiming for something broader at launch. The firm frames the stream as more of a “dialogue with the market.” As Wilson says, “The more the merrier I believe.” Graham has had his concerns with the effects of Hacker News’ steady growth, comparing the site to a crumbling building. Negativity in comments is particularly troubling to him.
It’s unclear yet what USV’s community will look like, but we anticipate it will be a mix of founders, fellow investors, engineers, and others in the tech world. The community will likely face some of the additional challenges that Hacker News faces (i.e. flame wars), but Graham has been able to mitigate these challenges using technology and an actual human editor.
Breaking her post-proposal silence, Kim Kardashian Instagrammed an image of her new engagement ring and fiancé Kanye West's scoreboard proposal from San Francisco's AT&T Park on Tuesday, Oct. 22. She captioned the photo, "YES!!!"
The 33-year-old reality starlet was surprised when her rapper beau popped the question after the "Black Skinhead" emcee rented out the entire stadium, inviting Kardashian's friends and high-profile family to be there for the big event.
The E! mainstay has been married twice before, to NBA player Kris Humphries in 2011 for 72 days and in 2000 to music producer Damon Thomas, divorcing in 2004.
Kardashian and West welcomed daughter North West in June 2013 and have since made several public appearances together, including their recent trip to France for Paris Fashion Week.
The "Yeezus" rapper started dating Kardashian in April 2012 after years of friendship, and recently gushed about his baby mama on future mother-in-law Kris Jenner's now-canceled talk show.
"So someone could say, ‘The paparazzi surround you — if you don’t like paparazzi why would you be with this person? Everyone knows you don’t like paparazzi, why would you be with this person?’" he said. "And I’m like ‘I’m with this person because I love this person and she’s worth it to me.’She is my joy, and she brought my lead joy into the world. I love this person."
Preliminary Sunday ratings brought good news for NBC. Not only was the latest installment of Sunday Night Football up 30 percent in the demo for an early 9.5 rating among adults 18-49, the Colts-Broncos game gave the franchise its best overnight returns (17.3 rating and 29 share) in 15 years.
That makes it the highest-rated game of the season and the fourth-highest in NBC's NFL history. Early nightly averages give the network a 7.8 rating with adults 18-49 and 21.5 million viewers.
Distant runner-up CBS kicked off the night with strong NFL overage, delaying its primetime lineup by 30 minutes. Tentative early numbers give The Amazing Race an even 1.9 rating in the adults 18-49, while The Good Wife (1.4 adults) moved up two-tenths of a point and The Mentalist (1.2 adults) dropped a tenth from last week. CBS scored a 2.7 adults rating and 12.7 million viewers.
ABC kicked off the night with a steady America's Funniest Home Videos (1.1 adults). Once Upon a Time (2.0 adults) dropped four-tenths of a point at 8 p.m. to tie a series low, while Revenge (1.5 adults) lost a tenth of a point. Both dramas, which have seen steady drops in live-plus-same-day this season, continue to post strong gains among time-shifted viewings -- rising 46 percent (Once) and 53 percent (Revenge) in the latest live-plus-7 figures. Betrayal (0.9 adults) improved by a tenth of a point from last week, giving ABC a 1.4 adults and 5.6 million viewers for the night.
Airing encores of its animation block, Fox posted a 1.1 rating with adults 18-49 and 2.7 million viewers.
Miami coach Al Golden watches from the sidelines during the first half of an NCAA college football game against North Carolina in Chapel Hill, N.C., Thursday, Oct. 17, 2013. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)
Miami coach Al Golden watches from the sidelines during the first half of an NCAA college football game against North Carolina in Chapel Hill, N.C., Thursday, Oct. 17, 2013. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)
Miami's Duke Johnson (8) runs the ball as North Carolina's Dominique Green (26) and Tim Scott (7) move in to attempt the tackle during the first half of an NCAA college football game in Chapel Hill, N.C., Thursday, Oct. 17, 2013. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)
Miami Dolphins defensive end Olivier Vernon watches during the final seconds of an NFL football game against the Buffalo Bills, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2013, in Miami Gardens, Fla. The Bills defeated the Dolphins 23-21. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
CORAL GABLES, Fla. (AP) — When the NCAA releases its long-awaited report on the Miami investigation, the seventh-ranked Hurricanes may be among the last people to see the decision.
They're scheduled to be on the practice field when the news breaks.
The NCAA will unveil the findings of its investigation into Miami athletics and release any proposed sanctions Tuesday, 2½ years after the probe began and eight months after saying the Hurricanes did not "exercise institutional control" over former booster and convicted felon Nevin Shapiro's interactions with its football and men's basketball teams.
The report will be released at 10 a.m. EDT, the NCAA said. That's around the midpoint of Miami's football practice.
"We don't really concern ourselves with things that we can't control," Miami running back Duke Johnson said.
Miami is off to a 6-0 start, and the school's ranking matches its highest since 2005. The school met with the infractions committee in June, leaving those two days in Indianapolis hoping a decision would come within eight weeks.
It wound up taking more than 18 weeks. But finally, the school will know whether the football program, by self-imposing sanctions that included sitting out two bowl games, last season's Atlantic Coast Conference title game and making reductions in recruiting, has already paid enough of a price for the wrongdoing.
"Hopefully they just take a few scholarships off," said Miami Dolphins defensive end Olivier Vernon, who sat out six games of the 2011 Hurricanes season for his involvement with Shapiro. "The school has done so much already to avoid a harsh penalty by punishing themselves, so hopefully it's not too bad."
Shapiro alleged that he spent millions between 2002 and 2010 on football and men's basketball recruits, athletes and coaches. A study of the allegations by The Associated Press found the NCAA was able to identify about $173,330 in extra benefits — more than half of that, investigators said, going to former Hurricane players Vince Wilfork and Antrel Rolle.
Still, the institutional control charge is considered the worst that the NCAA can bring against a member school.
The report will end another chapter in the saga, though if more sanctions against Miami are recommended, the process almost certainly doesn't end Tuesday. The Hurricanes have said they will not stand for major penalties beyond ones they have already self-imposed, and have the right to appeal.
Shapiro's allegations first started coming to light in 2010, about four months after he was charged by federal authorities with bilking investors of nearly $1 billion. The NCAA's investigation of Miami started in 2011. Some of the NCAA's would-be accusations were erased early this year, when it was found that investigators improperly cooperated with Shapiro's attorney and gleaned some of their information wrongly from her.
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Apple's iPad Air and retina iPad mini may be getting all the headlines, but its elders also made a bit of news at the company's event today. As is the Apple way, with the introduction of new hardware comes a price drop for the old. How much? The old 16GB WiFi iPad mini now costs $299, down from its ...
