Thursday, December 13, 2012

Pew: Social Networking Most Popular In The UK, And Despite The ...

The Pew Center has been running a long-term study on U.S. consumer habits on the Internet and ?other digital media (you can read about past research findings?here); today it?s releasing a new set of data that looks at the wider global state of affairs, as part of Pew?s Global Attitudes Project, specifically covering social media and Internet and mobile usage.

A survey of 26,000 consumers across 21 nations, conducted in March and April of this year, found that the UK is the most social-networked country at the moment; that making voice calls is still, on average and by far, the most popular thing to do with a phone; and that events like the Arab Spring have pushed people to use the Internet more to express political opinions.

We?ve embedded the full document below, but here are some of the standout conclusions we have found:

  • When it comes to social networking, the UK has the highest proportion of users with 52%, of adults using social media services like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The U.S. tied in second place with Russia at 50%, while the Czech Republic and Spain at 49%.
  • For the most part, it looks like social media use runs in direct proportion with how widespread Internet usage is. So, for example, 89% of India?s surveyed consumers, and 94% of Pakistan?s, said they had no Internet access, and they were the two least socially-networked countries too, at 6% and 3% respectively. In the UK, only 15% of respondents said they did not have Internet access.
  • The one exception here seems to be Russia. It actually has a fairly high proportion of people without access: 40%, according to the report, and yet it still came in tied for second place in social media usage. This could be because Russia is one of the biggest Internet using nations in Europe ? so when people are online, they?re online a lot. Brazil has a similar profile to Russia?s, with only half its respondents saying they have Internet access with around 40% of them using social media.

As companies like Facebook know all too well, a lot of social networking, especially in markets with lower PC and broadband penetration, takes place over the mobile phone. In fact, Pew found that in 12 of the countries it surveyed, at least 60% of smartphone users were using their devices to access social networks. The top three for this trend, it said, were?Egypt (79%), Mexico (74%) and Greece (72%), where broadband penetration is low.

But how it?s used has some interesting variations depending on the region in question:

  • By and large, social networking is used for entertainment. Music and movies, Pew found, were the most popular topics on average across all 21 nations, with 67% of respondents saying that these were the topics discussed most by them. ?Community issues,? which could mean anything from chit-chat about friends and your life to local events, came in second at 46%, and sports at 43%.
  • Religion is very low down at just 14% ? whether that presents and opportunity or challenge to the Pope, who just started tweeting today, remains to be seen.

Politics on average globally is moderately more popular than religion, with a 34% average in terms of social media subject. But that changes when you focus on one specific group, Arabs. While Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan fell very squarely into the global average for social networking usage (around the arab social media use30-34% mark), they had double the amount of chatter about politics and, with the stark exception of Lebanon, five times the amount of chatter about religion compared to global averages. Community issues also got double the attention in these Arab nations than they did on average globally.

What does this show? That despite some of the restrictions that took place around the Arab Spring protests, the Internet remains a powerful force for information dissemination in communities where it has otherwise been difficult to express opinions through the media.

In mobile phone ownership and usage, Pakistan and India again stood out as having the lowest?penetrations at around 50% (again, showing the connection between mobile phones and social media, since these two also had the lowest proportion of social media users). Many many other countries at 80% or higher and the global average at 87%.

Although taking pictures and video are now noted as common mobile activities by 54% of respondents ? and those surely have shot up over the years ? voice calls remain by far the most popular thing to do on a phone, at 98% of all respondents noting it as their most regular mobile activity.

You might think that this is because smartphones are still are a relatively nascent phenomenon on the global stage ? it?s developed countries like the U.S. and UK where smartphones have started to tip past the 50% usage mark; many other countries are far behind that ? that voice has remained so popular. But in fact, what keeps it so high is that practically, no matter how fancy their phone is and how many apps it has on it, has pushed away from voice services altogether.

By comparison, Internet usage came out only at 26%. Again, turning to companies like Facebook, which are keen to grow their gobal audiences, this is another sign of how they will need to focus on other ways of accessing their networks, for example by text message (74% global penetration), while they wait for the rest of the world to catch up with the iPhone/Android generation.


Source: http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/12/pew-social-networking-most-popular-in-the-uk-and-despite-the-smartphone-app-boom-voice-calls-remain-king/

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Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Cassini spots mini Nile River on Saturn's moon Titan

Dec. 12, 2012 ? Scientists with NASA's Cassini mission have spotted what appears to be a miniature, extraterrestrial likeness of Earth's Nile River: a river valley on Saturn's moon Titan that stretches more than 200 miles (400 kilometers) from its "headwaters" to a large sea. It is the first time images have revealed a river system this vast and in such high resolution anywhere other than Earth.

Scientists deduce that the river, which is in Titan's north polar region, is filled with liquid hydrocarbons because it appears dark along its entire length in the high-resolution radar image, indicating a smooth surface.

"Though there are some short, local meanders, the relative straightness of the river valley suggests it follows the trace of at least one fault, similar to other large rivers running into the southern margin of this same Titan sea," said Jani Radebaugh, a Cassini radar team associate at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. "Such faults -- fractures in Titan's bedrock -- may not imply plate tectonics, like on Earth, but still lead to the opening of basins and perhaps to the formation of the giant seas themselves."

The new image is available online at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia16197.html .

Titan is the only other world we know of that has stable liquid on its surface. While Earth's hydrologic cycle relies on water, Titan's equivalent cycle involves hydrocarbons such as ethane and methane. In Titan's equatorial regions, images from Cassini's visible-light cameras in late 2010 revealed regions that darkened due to recent rainfall. Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer confirmed liquid ethane at a lake in Titan's southern hemisphere known as Ontario Lacus in 2008.

"Titan is the only place we've found besides Earth that has a liquid in continuous movement on its surface," said Steve Wall, the radar deputy team lead, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "This picture gives us a snapshot of a world in motion. Rain falls, and rivers move that rain to lakes and seas, where evaporation starts the cycle all over again. On Earth, the liquid is water; on Titan, it's methane; but on both it affects most everything that happens."

The radar image here was taken on Sept. 26, 2012. It shows Titan's north polar region, where the river valley flows into Kraken Mare, a sea that is, in terms of size, between the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean Sea on Earth. The real Nile River stretches about 4,100 miles (6,700 kilometers). The processes that led to the formation of Earth's Nile are complex, but involve faulting in some regions.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and ASI, the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the US and several European countries. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/n0Qo40m5dLQ/121212164028.htm

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Astronomers discover 'missing link' of black holes

Dec. 12, 2012 ? The discovery of a binging black hole in our nearest neighbouring galaxy, Andromeda, has shed new light on some of the brightest X-ray sources seen in other galaxies, according to new work co-authored by astronomers from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research's Curtin University node.

Using a suite of Earth-orbiting X-ray telescopes, including NASA's Swift and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton satellites, a large international team of astronomers watched as the X-ray emission from the black hole -- found over 2million light years away -- brightened and faded over the course of six months.

The study, published in the scientific journal Nature, also shows what happens when black holes feast rapidly on the material stripped from a companion star.

It is the second Ultraluminous X-Ray source (ULX) to have been spotted in Andromeda -- the Milky Way's nearest neighboring galaxy -- in the past two years.

X-ray telescopes have shown many nearby galaxies to host ULX sources, which can be bright enough to outshine an entire galaxy in X-rays.

Astronomers have spent years debating whether these are black holes just a few times the mass of the Sun which are gorging themselves on gas from an orbiting star, or whether they are more massive black holes eating more sedately.

Lead author Dr Matthew Middleton, who led the latest research while at Durham University, said the findings helped solve this debate.

Dr Middleton, now based at the University of Amsterdam, said: "The black hole we observed in Andromeda is the missing link.

"Our observations tell us that this ultraluminous X-ray source -- and by extension, many others -- is just a run-of-the-mill black hole, only about ten times the mass of the Sun, that is swallowing material as fast as it can."

Dr Middleton added: "We watched a black hole go from nibbling daintily at an appetiser to binging on the main course, and then gradually slowing down over dessert."

Black holes in our own Milky Way galaxy are very rarely seen to binge, but when they do, they also launch very powerful beams of material called jets, which are blasted outwards at close to the speed of light, and can be tracked using sensitive radio telescopes.

The team trained the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array on the black hole, and saw extremely bright radio emission that dropped by a half in just 30 minutes.

"Discovering these radio waves from an ultraluminous X-ray source is the smoking gun, a dead giveaway that these are just normal, everyday black holes," said co-author Dr James Miller-Jones, of the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research in Perth, Australia.

"This tells us that the region producing radio waves is extremely small in size, no further across than the distance between Jupiter and the Sun."

This finding was confirmed by zooming in using the world's most eagle-eyed radio telescope, the Very Long Baseline Array.

This was the first time that radio jets had been detected from a stellar-mass black hole outside our own Milky Way galaxy.

Despite the large distance to Andromeda, the absence of dust and gas in that direction allows an unhindered view of the feast, giving scientists key new insights into how jets are produced by a binging black hole.

Co-author Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker, also from the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, said: "We were very lucky that this ULX appeared in our local neighbourhood; its proximity meant that we could make these radio observations and demonstrate that the black hole emitting the X-rays is fairly small."

ICRAR is a joint venture between Curtin University and The University of Western Australia providing research excellence in the field of radio astronomy.

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Journal Reference:

  1. Matthew J. Middleton, James C. A. Miller-Jones, Sera Markoff, Rob Fender, Martin Henze, Natasha Hurley-Walker, Anna M. M. Scaife, Timothy P. Roberts, Dominic Walton, John Carpenter, Jean-Pierre Macquart, Geoffrey C. Bower, Mark Gurwell, Wolfgang Pietsch, Frank Haberl, Jonathan Harris, Michael Daniel, Junayd Miah, Chris Done, John S. Morgan, Hugh Dickinson, Phil Charles, Vadim Burwitz, Massimo Della Valle, Michael Freyberg, Jochen Greiner, Margarita Hernanz, Dieter H. Hartmann, Despina Hatzidimitriou, Arno Riffeser, Gloria Sala, Stella Seitz, Pablo Reig, Arne Rau, Marina Orio, David Titterington, Keith Grainge. Bright radio emission from an ultraluminous stellar-mass microquasar in M 31. Nature, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/nature11697

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/1veHo7vapMw/121212130756.htm

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How outside money was poured into governors' races

By Paul Abowd and Andrea FullerThe Center for Public Integrity

Despite outraising its Democratic counterpart by a 2-to-1 margin, the Republican Governors Association won only four of 11 races in the 2012 election, a far cry from the success it enjoyed two years ago.

The Washington D.C.-based political organization raised almost $100 million, according to recently released Internal Revenue Service data. The group targeted six states it considered winnable, losing five of them. Democrats won seven of the 11 contests, but the GOP managed to pick up one seat in North Carolina, long held by Democrats.


The top donors to the so-called ?527? organization, which can accept unlimited contributions from billionaires, corporations and unions, are familiar Republican Party patrons ? No. 1 is?Bob Perry, a Texas homebuilder and perennial RGA supporter, who gave $3.25 million. That?s a little more than half of what he gave in 2010.

Billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is?No. 2, with $3 million in donations between him and his wife. According to the latest Federal Election Commission reports, Adelson is?the top donor to super PACs in?2012, doling out more than $93 million along with his family.

Conservative billionaire David Koch ? who has not made any contributions to?super PACs ??was the organization?s third-highest donor, writing?two checks totaling $2 million. Koch is co-owner of the second-largest privately held company in America, Koch Industries, an energy conglomerate.

Seven of the RGA?s top 10 donors are corporate executives who gave at least $1 million. Two of them, Paul Singer and Kenneth Griffin, are hedge fund managers.

Six of the Democratic Governors Association's top donors were unions. The American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees topped the DGA donors list, giving about $1.3 million. The Service Employees International Union gave about $1.1 million, while the American Federation of Teachers gave at least $772,000.

Top corporate donors to the DGA included pharmaceutical giants Pfizer, which gave almost $700,000, and AstraZeneca, which contributed nearly $600,000. The companies also gave comparable sums to the RGA. The DGA also got corporate support from?health insurer United Healthcare Services Inc., and?AT&T.

The DGA raised nearly $50 million, the organization's "strongest fundraising year ever," according to spokeswoman Kate Hansen.?

'Enormous impact on state elections'
The DGA and RGA have devised national strategies for collecting unlimited funds from unions, corporations, and wealthy individuals, and funneling the money into state races. Both have used networks of state-based PACs to maneuver around various state limits on campaign giving.

?They?ve had an enormous impact on state elections across the nation,? said Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, an election law expert at Stetson Law School. ?In many states they were consistently a top spender.?

The circuitous methods used by both organizations to inject corporate and union cash into state races and mask the identity of its donors have raised legal questions, prompted lawsuits, and tested the capacity of state election boards to enforce limits on outside spending.

Both organizations have told the Center for Public Integrity that they?fully comply with campaign finance laws, and that they report their donors and spending to the IRS.

The RGA set up a federal super PAC called RGA Right Direction, and fed it with $9.8 million in contributions. The super PAC ? another?type of organization that can?accept unlimited donations from individuals and corporations ? then made a?large contribution to Indiana Republican candidate Mike Pence, and bought ads in tight state races in Montana, Washington, New Hampshire, and West Virginia.

Super PACs are normally used to spend money on federal campaigns. By passing the funds through the super PAC, which reported its sole donor as the RGA, the association effectively shielded the identities of the donors who paid for ads in the state races.

In North Carolina, the RGA spent millions of dollars, directly from corporate treasuries to win in a state long?led by Democratic governors. The unlimited contributions from dozens of corporations across the country went toward ads supporting Republican candidate Pat McCrory, who won convincingly over Democratic Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton.

The DGA, too, used a network of state-affiliated PACs, to fund ad campaigns in battleground states like Montana and North Carolina. It was the primary funder of a PAC called North Carolina Citizens for Progress, which purchased ads attacking McCrory.

While America?s wealthiest corporate executives tend to prefer the RGA, and unions give almost exclusively to the DGA, some donors played both sides this election.

Agricultural giant Monsanto, credit card company Visa and health insurance company Humana were large donors to both the RGA and DGA ? each giving about $100,000 to both groups.

Despite the?Republicans' win-loss record, RGA spokesman Michael Schrimpf called 2012 "a successful year by any standard"?with Republicans now in control of governorships in 30 states. Most of those gains, however, came in 2010. The?North Carolina win and the failed effort to recall Scott Walker, Wisconsin's Republican governor, in June, were high points for the GOP this year.

In addition, in five?states targeted by the RGA where it lost, the Democrats held advantages unrelated to fundraising.?

Missouri and West Virginia featured?Democratic incumbents. Three other states ??Montana, Washington and New Hampshire ??had open seats where a Democrat had previously been in power.

The two organizations will put their fundraising powers to the test again in 2013, when Virginia and New Jersey choose their next governors.

Michael Beckel contributed to this report.

The Center for Public Integrity is a non-profit independent investigative news outlet.? For more of its stories go to publicintegrity.org

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akhisingh: Self-Defense For Women! | Jackies Womens Interest ...

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Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Sexual and social behavior modified by serotonin system drugs

Dec. 11, 2012 ? Drugs that bind to specific serotonin receptors in the brain can both improve and impair female sexual function in non-human primates.

These are the findings of a study conducted by Leiden PhD candidate Yves Aubert and colleagues at the division of Medical Pharmacology of the Leiden/Amsterdam Center for Drug Research (LACDR & LUMC).

The common marmoset

Aubert carried out his research in co-operation with the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 'Relationship dynamics between partners are a key factor in determining female sexual behaviour,' Aubert concludes from experiments conducted in common marmosets, a species of New World monkeys that form long-term pair-bonds similar to those of humans. After treating female marmosets for several weeks with drugs that have specific serotonin receptor binding properties, Aubert was surprised to find not only changes in the females' sexual and social behaviour directed at their male pairmates, but also changes in the males' behaviour towards the females. In an innovative approach, he used two experimental drugs in his experiments that resulted in opposite behavioural effects.

One drug (8-OH-DPAT) had a negative impact on female sexual and social behaviour, while the other had a positive impact, as Aubert demonstrated for the first time in a non-human primate. 'Clearly, pair-bond quality between partners and sexual behaviour are closely linked. While one drug increases aggression between male and female and sexual rejection of the male by the female partner, the other drug increases social grooming between pairmates and enhances the female's sexual attractiveness to her male partner.'

A pharmacotherapeutic treatment option for women suffering from HSDD?

The drug with the positive impact, called Flibanserin, was developed as a potential non-hormonal treatment for pre-menopausal women with hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD). HSDD is the most commonly reported female sexual complaint and is characterised by a persistent lack of sexual fantasies or desire that causes marked personal distress and/or personal difficulties. Aubert suggests that Flibanserin's therapeutic effects in women with HSDD may stem from improvements in sexual, social and emotional bonding between partners.

Unraveling the neurobiology of female sexual behaviour

Using a monkey model provided the researchers with the opportunity to ask detailed questions about the neurobiological underpinnings of female sexual behaviour. Aubert and his teams of researchers in Madison (Wisconsin, U.S.A.) and in Leiden conducted endocrine, imaging and genetic experiments to learn about hormonal and brain activity and gene expression patterns that are involved in the processes leading to impaired or improved female sexual and social behaviour. 'I believe that our results provide new leads and may spur renewed interest in the study of female sexual function -- a topic that has been a taboo, or marginalised, for too long,' comments Aubert. 'Our study suggests that oxytocin may be the pivot of serotonergic regulation of female sexual behaviour, pair-bond and pharmacotherapy of HSDD; a finding that warrants attention in future studies.'

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/jyDJMXAAY-w/121211083033.htm

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Yoga and fitness Works Miracles In Order To Alleviate Stress And ...

Posted by DennenBusick188 on December 11, 2012 in Articles with No Comments


Tension is unavoidable in your life. That doesn?t suggest, nonetheless, that stress must principle your way of life. Getting stress from being a big part of your own working day to some little one is all dependent on hard work and some personality. Comply with some of the effective ideas within the report below.

Arts and crafts really are a wonderful way to remove stress. Making some thing permits your mind to express by itself as well as to cease focusing on stressful matters.

Signing up for a brand new exercise course it an incredible why to overcome tension. Workout offers you durability, provides you with time and energy to relax and crystal clear your thoughts and helps you to be full of energy and versatile.

The consumption of drinking water in standard amounts throughout the day will reduce pressure by enhancing your sense of fullness, aiding inside your attention, and washing the body of poisons. For that reason, try to eat at the very least a liter water per day for the very best tension decreasing advantages.

Routine amount of time in every day for stress. Very little irritations and troublesome opinions may be placed out rather than becoming capable to gnaw on your imagination for hours on end.

Very good organizational capabilities can be the step to dealing with anxiety and stress. Many people experience frustration and anxiousness because of the fact that they can aren?t organized. Possessing an area for every little thing will work magic at decreasing everyday nervousness and pressure.

Usually do not have this kind of heavy burden on your shoulder blades. Adjust your way of pondering, your mindset, and enable yourself to chill out and handle daily life the actual way it ought to be dealt with.

Going out to a dinner with someone you happen to be crazy about is a good move to make when you?re within a connection. By concentrating your focus on that individual, the strain producing situations of history or upcoming will never be the main thing on your thoughts.

Loyalty is really an useful strategy to maintain some nervousness and tension out of your life. Studies have shown that even tiny is could cause an excellent sensation of guilt making folks concerned the reality will likely be learned.

A professional restorative massage is recommended should you suffer from great levels of stress. Muscles tension is an actual physical manifestation of anxiety. Booking a professional therapeutic massage can also work the muscles directly into comfortable form.

Make strategies for amusement. When you make ideas, it will give you the opportunity to focus on something apart from the worries you might be sensation right now. Program to attend an anime meeting or perhaps a rock-scaling health and fitness center, as an example.

You must not live with stress. Anxiety triggers fury, frustration, and it also enables you to a typically distressing person. Surprisingly, tension is definitely an needless and avoidable element in your life. Utilize the advice you have been offered to help you have the changeover from the anxious individual to your more enjoyable version of your self.

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