Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/236673317?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Chael Sonnen makes a few changes to UFC 148 poster
The background of Chael Sonnen's Twitter page showed a slightly different UFC 148 poster.
Yes, that's Sonnen with the belt and the taglines, "The rematch Anderson Silva has been running from" and "The true Middleweight Champions makes his third title defense." Sonnen's poster has little to do with the truth, but it is at least amusing.
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Veterans failing in latest battlefield: college
By Bill Briggs
During a pair of six-month stints in and around Fallujah, Iraq ? then a fiercely volatile city ? Navy corpsman Lucas Velasquez came to know about life.
And death.
From late 2005 through early 2007, not long after nearly 100 U.S. troops and more than 1,350 insurgents were killed in Fallujah during Operation Phantom Fury, Velasquez routinely rendered emergency aid to wounded Marines while ducking bullets, rocket-propelled grenades and IED blasts. Before coming home, he, too, was hit by enemy shrapnel that damaged his left knee. In uniform, Velasquez was smart and quick, adept at practicing field medicine literally while under the gun.
In 2007, after retiring from the Navy, Velasquez, then 23, enrolled at Columbus State University in western Georgia. He promptly failed four of his first six classes.
"It was a struggle," he said.
Velasquez hadn?t been in a classroom for more than five years. Instead of taking strategic lecture notes or studying highlights in the syllabus when prepping for exams, he scribbled nearly every word his professors uttered and tried to absorb every fact in his textbooks. Deeper, there was a vast cultural chasm between other freshmen and the survivor of multiple firefights and risky missions.
?At 19, I was in combat as opposed to trying to go find a party,? he said. ?They really don?t realize how precious life can be, how it can go away in the drop of a dime. They?re more worried about what they?re going to be wearing to school tomorrow, or the spring break that?s coming up. There?s nothing wrong with that. It?s just two different people.?
Among the approximately 800,000 military veterans now attending U.S. colleges, an estimated 88 percent drop out of school during their first year and only 3 percent graduate, according the American Council on Education.
Related: Company accused of deception turns GIBill.com over to VA
Scores of former servicemen and servicewomen who are among the best in the world at defusing bombs, tracking the enemy, patching bloody limbs, or negotiating with wary Afghanis become futilely lost when trying to author an English paper.
Indeed, the vast, life-experience divide between war veterans and teens fresh out of high school ? all now sharing the same classrooms ? can make the scholastic transition awkward and arduous for ex-soldiers, said Michael Dakduk, executive director of Student Veterans of America, a support network for ex-military college students. SVA now has chapters on more than 500 campuses
Mix in the fat gap of time between the vets? high school days and their attempts to blend into college life and the reasons for the dropout rate become even more obvious.
?They are (taking) academically rigorous courses after being removed from the academic setting for so long,? Dakduk said.
?I didn?t know how to study,? Velasquez said of his first months at Columbus State. ?In the military classes (we had taken), they spoon fed you everything because they didn?t want you to fail. It was a struggle going from a structured lifestyle to one where everything is on you.?
A number of colleges ? Dakduk mentioned the University of Arizona, Syracuse University, Rutgers University, Purdue University, Columbia University and Dartmouth College ? offer well-crafted services that truly help retired military folks thrive in the college classroom.
But some schools falsely sell themselves as ?military friendly? simply to attract veterans on the G.I. Bill when, in reality, they don?t have the adequate infrastructure or counselors to help former soldiers succeed, Velasquez said. After his initial failures, Velasquez had to independently seek external tutoring. He eventually boosted his grade point average to 3.8.
Related:?Pentagon, Congress eye new payday loan rules
Under the post-911 G.I. Bill,?the federal government covers up to 100 percent of veterans? tuition and fees. That money goes directly to the colleges, making the ex-servicemen and servicewomen financially attractive enrollees.
Earlier this year, SVA revoked chapters at 26 for-profit colleges that failed to meet the organization's requirements, mainly having a student-veteran ? not an administrator ? run the chapter. Those booted schools included the Art Institute of New York City, Brown Mackie College in Akron, Ohio, DeVry University in Orlando, Fla., ECPI College of Technology in Raleigh, N.C., and ITT Technical Institute in South Bend, Ind.
The misleading, so-called military-friendly sales pitch made by some colleges to attract vets, Velasquez said, is a big reason for the dropout rate.
?There was a concern around certain predatory, for-profit schools using our brand to legitimize their programs,? Dakduk said. (he added that better statistics are needed to precisely calculate the veteran dropout rate; the post-911 G.I. Bill was enacted three years ago, which means, Dakduk said, not enough time has passed to gauge its impact on today?s enrolled ex-soldiers).
In August 2011, Velasquez transferred to the University of Colorado Denver after getting married. (He had been to Colorado earlier in his life and purposely picked the state for a new start). UCD, he learned, had a three-tiered system to help vets transition from military to college, stay in school and then move from graduation to the workforce. As part of that program, the school assigns an upper classman to incoming, ex-military students to mentor them socially and academically. It?s based on a similar program used at U.S. military bases.
?What we try to facilitate with that is the camaraderie - the community - because that?s one of the biggest things (ex-military) people miss,? said Cameron Cook, head of UCD?s veteran student services. ?It?s one of the hardest things: missing your team, your friends in the military. That?s really hard to let go.?
A retired Marine, Cook soon e-mailed Velasquez and invited him to participate in the program,
?This is perfect, just what veterans need, something that helps them take that veteran experience and use it in college,? Velasquez said.
Related:?Feds move to help out underwater military homeowners
Cook and his team also try to help vets who carry to campus ?the invisible injuries? of war ?- post-traumatic stress disorder.
?When they get out of the military, the average student veteran is so focused on transition into college, finding a place to live, getting on the G.I. Bill. They?re very busy reintegrating,? Cook said. ?But then, after that first year, everything kind of slows down and that?s when the shadows come in.?
The ?shadows? of PTSD, including rampant anxiety and sleeplessness, often are triggered by daily stress ? for example, by exams.
?We see a big increase [in students presenting with PTSD symptoms] right at midterms and it grows exponentially until finals,? Cook said.
?One student told me that at the beginning of every semester he feels like he?s getting ready to go on a deployment,? Cook said. ?And you can parallel finals to being like miniature battles.??
?And I?ve had other students say: ?I don?t know why I?m stressed about a biology test when I was in Fallujah. Why am I stressed about this when I?ve been through so much previously?? The reason is: the Fallujah experience gets linked to the stress of midterms. They already have stress and then academic stresses just build on that.?
Or, as one retired non-commissioned officer who attends UCD summed up the challenges of the veteran-college experience and high dropout rate: "I was the man in the military. We had so much responsibility [overseas], people's lives were on the line. Now I'm sitting next to an 18 year old and I'm struggling to keep up with him in this class."
Bill Briggs is a frequent contributor to msnbc.com and author of ?The Third Miracle.??
More content from msnbc.com and NBC News:
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Iran says it wants 'win-win' in nuclear talks
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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/iran-says-wants-win-win-nuclear-talks-131205111.html
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Iran tests missiles that it says can reach Israel
Iran tested today the Shabab 3 missile, which has a range of 800 miles. Tehran said the test was a response to Israel's threats of military action.
In this photo released by Iranian Fars News Agency, in January, a Ghader missile is launched at the shore of sea of Oman during Iran's navy drill.
Hamed Jafarnejad/Fars News Agency/AP/File
EnlargeIran said on Tuesday it had successfully tested medium-range missiles capable of hitting Israel in response to threats of military action against the country, Iranian media reported.? ? ? ? ? ? ?
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Israel says it could attack Iran if diplomacy fails to force it to halt its disputed nuclear energy programme. The United States also has military force on the table as a last resort, but US officials have repeatedly encouraged the Israelis to be patient while new sanctions against Iran take effect.?The Islamic Republic announced the "Great Prophet 7" missile exercise on Sunday after a European Union embargo againstIranian crude oil purchases took full effect?after another fruitless round of big powers talks with Tehran.? ? ? ? ? ? ?
Iran's official English-language Press TV said the Shahab 3 missile with a range of 1,300 km (800 miles) ? able to reach Israel ? were tested along with the shorter-range Shahab 1 and 2.? ? ? ? ? ? ?
"The main aim of this drill is to demonstrate the Iranian nation's political resolve to defend vital values and national interests," Revolutionary Guards Deputy Commander Hossein Salami was quoted by Press TV as saying.? ? ? ? ? ? ?
He said the tests were in response to Iran's enemies who talk of a "military option being on the table."
"The manoeuvresare an answer to the rude words spoken against Iran," Fars newsagency quoted him as saying.? ? ? ? ? ? ?
Fars said dozens of missiles had been aimed as simulated airbases and that Iranian-built unmanned drones would be tested on Wednesday. Analysts challenge some of Iran's military assertions, saying it repeatedly exaggerates its capabilities.? ? ? ? ? ? ?
Tehran reguarly states its military dominance in the Gulf and has tested nerves across the oil industry, which is concerned by disruption in global crude supplies.? ? ? ? ? ? ?
Iran has previously threatened to block the Strait ofHormuz, through which passes more than a third of the world's seaborne trade, in response to increasingly harsh sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies.? ? ? ? ? ? ?
"The message of the ... missile manoeuvres is that ourcountry with full force is ready to provide security in the Persian gulf region and security for the transit of oil cargo,"said foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast.? ? ? ? ? ? ?
The EU embargo aims at pushing Iran to curb uranium enrichment that Western countries say is aimed at developing anatomic weapons capability, an accusation Iran has denied. Tehran says it wants only civilian nuclear energy from enrichment.? ? ? ? ? ? ?
On Monday, a group of Iranian parliamentarians proposed a bill calling for country to try to stop oil tankers shippingcrude through the Strait of Hormuz to countries that support sanctions against it.? ? ? ? ? ? ?
However, the Iranian parliament is relatively weak, analysts say, and the new measure has no chance of becoming law unless sanctioned by Iran's clerical supreme leader.?
Additional reporting by Yeganeh Torbati
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DNA sequenced for parrot's ability to parrot
ScienceDaily (July 2, 2012) ? Scientists say they have assembled more completely the string of genetic letters that could control how well parrots learn to imitate their owners and other sounds.
The research team unraveled the specific regions of the parrots' genome using a new technology, single molecule sequencing, and fixing its flaws with data from older DNA-decoding devices. The team also decoded hard-to-sequence genetic material from corn and bacteria as proof of their new sequencing approach.
The results of the study appeared online July 1 in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
Single molecule sequencing "got a lot of hype last year" because it generates long sequencing reads, "supposedly making it easier to assemble complex parts of the genome," said Duke University neurobiologist Erich Jarvis, a co-author of the study.
He is interested in the sequences that regulate parrots' imitation abilities because they could give neuroscientists information about the gene regions that control speech development in humans.
Jarvis began his project with collaborators by trying to piece together the genome regions with what are known as next-generation sequencers, which read chunks of 100 to 400 DNA base pairs at a time and then take a few days to assemble them into a draft genome. After doing the sequencing, the scientists discovered that the read lengths were not long enough to assemble the regulatory regions of some of the genes that control brain circuits for vocal learning.
University of Maryland computational biologists Adam Phillippy and Sergey Koren -- experts at assembling genomes -- heard about Jarvis's sequencing struggles at a conference and approached him with a possible solution of modifying the algorithms that order the DNA base pairs. But the fix was still not sufficient.
Last year, 1000 base-pair reads by Roch 454 became available, as did the single molecule sequencer by Pacific Biosciences. The Pacbio technology generates strands of 2,250 to 23,000 base pairs at a time and can draft an entire genome in about a day.
Jarvis and others thought the new technologies would solve the genome-sequencing challenges. Through a competition, called the Assemblathon, the scientists discovered that the Pacbio machine had trouble accurately decoding complex regions of the parrot, Melopsittacus undulates, genome. The machine had a high error rate, generating the wrong genetic letter at every fifth or sixth spot in a string of DNA. The mistakes made it nearly impossible to create a genome assembly with the very long reads, Jarvis said.
But with a team, including scientists from the DOE Genome Science Institute and Cold Spring Harbor in New York, Phillippy, Koren and Jarvis corrected the Pacbio sequencer's errors using shorter, more accurate codes from the next-generation devices. The fix reduces the single-molecule, or third-generation, sequencing machine's error rate from 15 percent to less than one-tenth of one percent.
"Finally we have been able to assemble the regulatory regions of genes, such as FoxP2 and egr1, that are of interest to us and others in vocal learning behavior," Jarvis said.
He explained that FoxP2 is a gene required for speech development in humans and vocal learning in birds that learn to imitate sounds, like songbirds and parrots. Erg1 is a gene that controls the brain's ability to reorganize itself based on new experiences.
By being able to decode and organize the DNA that regulates these regions, neuroscientists may be able to better understand what genetic mechanism causes birds to imitate and sing well. They may also be able to collect more information about genetic factors that affect a person's ability to learn how to communicate well and to speak, Jarvis said. He and his team plan to describe the biology of the parrot???s genetic code they sequenced in more detail in an upcoming paper.
Jarvis added that as more scientists use the hybrid sequencing approach, they could possibly decode complex, elusive genes linked to how cancer cells develop and to the sequences that control other brain functions.
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Duke University. The original article was written by Ashley Yeager.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Sergey Koren, Michael C Schatz, Brian P Walenz, Jeffrey Martin, Jason T Howard, Ganeshkumar Ganapathy, Zhong Wang, David A Rasko, W Richard McCombie, Erich D Jarvis, Adam M Phillippy. Hybrid error correction and de novo assembly of single-molecule sequencing reads. Nature Biotechnology, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/nbt.2280
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/~3/pZ4hxEDnBCA/120702210229.htm
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Gunmen kill 17 in twin attacks on Kenyan churches
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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kenya-church-attacks-leave-17-dead-144913512.html
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