Category: News

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This would be totally cool, can you imagine playing all your games on your handset with a Bluetooth controller? Zeemote has just released an Android SDK for their JS1 controller. Most Android devices would benefit from this because it will be compatible with 1.6 and up. By the time developers integrate this remote into their games, most phones should have their update.

These controllers will help bring a console like gaming experience to Android. the fact of the matter is, even the best games on Android are hard to control with the onscreen touch buttons or even the accelerometer. Developers can register for the new SDK on the Zeemote website.

By integrating Zeemote SDKs into their existing and future applications, developers can:

• provide a superior mobile gaming experience across multiple supported platforms (while maintaining compatibility with existing distribution channels)

• deliver true analog game control ( makes games stand out)
• enable multi-player mobile gaming (two controllers to one device)
• turn a TV-out featured smart phone into a mobile game console

Jim Adams, business development at Zeemote, said, “By adding the exciting Android SDK to our stable of supported platforms, we are able to give developers an excellent way in which to make their applications really stand out from the crowd. The Android community is proving itself to be wildly creative, pushing the boundaries of convention for mobile applications. When combined with the Zeemote JS1 Controller we expect to see some radical application creativity coming out of the Android community.”

A new study has found that certain types of hospital patients are far more likely to carry colonies of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in their noses than others, placing them at higher risk of contracting virulent hospital infections or passing it on to other patients. 

The study, published online in the medical journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, was led by researchers from Rhode Island Hospital along with researchers from the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions and other medical centers and universities.

The study found that, overall, one in three individuals had colonies of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in their nose, but certain groups, such as elderly nursing home residents, HIV patients and those undergoing kidney dialysis, were far more likely to carry the potentially deadly bacteria. Rhode Island Hospital announced the results of the study in a press release earlier this month.

MRSA infections, also known as “superbug” infections, have been steadily growing in the U.S. over the last decade. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are more than 2 million hospital infections acquired each year, resulting in about 90,000 deaths annually. Another 1.5 million long term care and nursing home infections occur every year. MRSA, which resists treatment by many antibiotics, has accounted for more than 60 percent of hospital staph infections in recent years.

In the most recent study, researchers took nose cultures from 2,055 patients at 13 different enrollment centers. About 444 of those cultures resulted in the growth of MRSA. Researchers found that 20% of long-term elder care patients carried MRSA colonies, as well as 16% of patients infected with HIV, and 14% and 15% of inpatient and outpatient hemodialysis patients, respectively.

“Hospitals performing active surveillance for MRSA should consider such patient populations for screening cultures,” said Dr. Leonard Mermel, of Rhode Island Hospital. Mermel was the study’s lead author.

Researchers also discovered that a variety of MRSA strains were found across different patient populations, including some strains which had not previously been detected in the United States.

The findings of this latest study follow the release of the results earlier this month of another study conducted by Johns Hopkins that found that 6% of  children admitted to pediatric intensive care units (PICU) carry MRSA as well.

Good news, Mega Man fans. Capcom has filed trademarks for what may be the next Mega Man game.

In their heyday, they had it all: looks, fame, money, talent. Now, no one can take away their genius (however faded), often their purses have grown fat with royalties, and though their fame may have wavered at times, they’re still household names. As for their looks, well that’s another story. Rock n roll lifestyles, creeping neuroticism and band member conflicts have taken their toll, and while once these icons of 60s soared high in the stratosphere of stardom, today spring chickens they most certainly are not. So here are seven stars you might have trouble recognising, in view of their former glory.

The Monkees

The made-for-TV pop quartet of Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork and Englishman Davy Jones may have spent the mid-60s monkeying around to their bubblegum tunes (then valiantly trying to deny their industry roots) but the ‘pre-fab four’ ain’t so sprightly anymore. After a string of reunions through the 80s and 90s, 2001 saw Dolenz, Jones and Tork tour the US – though the latter’s constant complaining soon got him fired by his band mates. Long gone are the cheeky comic book personae of these erstwhile pop primates, and false teeth and monkey peanuts don’t mix.

Neil Sedaka

Is that a senator smiling an elect-me-please smile? Close, it’s a shot of Neil Sedaka that accompanied a 2009 interview with the singer of “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do”, “Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen” and other, erm, classics. Although Sedaka’s popularity had plummeted by the end of the 60s, the cunning multi-lingual crooner made a comeback in the 70s, working with Elton John and tour supporting the Carpenters, who later fired him – allegedly for stealing the show. Sedaka continues to perform today, and even after a career spanning 50 years that tan shows no signs of fading.

Bigitte Bardot

Arguably the 60s’ sexiest star, actress, singer, fashion model and, later, animal rights activist Bigitte Bardot was everything good about France, dressed in a bikini – the garment she helped popularise. Then, everyone loved Bigitte, and with good reason; though latterly matters have taken a turn for the worse. In 1989, she landed in hot water for castrating a neighbour’s donkey due to its “sexual harassment” of her own mare, and more recently for five counts of “inciting racial hatred”. Controversy aside, her looks bring to mind a prune in the sun, but she is 75 and doesn’t look like she’s been under the knife either.

Crosby, Stills and Nash

Folk rock supergroup Crosby, Stills and Nash may be legends, but behind those false teeth smiles and the band’s elaborate vocal harmonies lies a history of acrimonious discord. Born from the ashes of The Hollies and The Byrds, the sweet-sounding hippy activists with the suspect facial hair recorded their debut hit album in 1969, and went on to recruit Neil Young as a fourth member. Egos, bickering and substance abuse saw the band implode several times through the 70s and 80s, but the good old boys have been gigging again in recent years, including a 2009 show at Glastonbury Festival.

The Troggs

Most famous for their oft-covered hit single, “Wild Thing”, The Troggs formed in 1964, but had disbanded by ‘69, with major success eluding them. After largely fruitless attempts at reviving their career over the decades, peddling various versions of their most famous hit (one of them with notorious booze hound Oliver Reed), two of the original members passed way in 1992 and 2008 respectively. Still, these proto-punkers – never the greatest players – left a lasting legacy, and as pics show, grizzled lead guitarist Reg Presley can still rock the mic with the best of them on stage. Well, sorta.

Ursula Andress

In the light of that scene from Dr. No, where she emerges from the Caribbean Sea in a white bikini, sexiness personified as shell diver and Bond bed notch Honey Ryder, today Ursula Andress looks a bit scary. The movie entrance that made her the quintessential Bond girl – catapulting her to stardom and into the male fantasies of a generation – is often voted cinema’s sexiest moment. So hot was Andress in her day that the bikini she wore sold for £35,000 at auction in 2001. We’d definitely have bought it for our personal collection if it was fresh off her firm flesh in 1962, though maybe not nowadays.

Simon and Garfunkel

School chums turned folk songwriters Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel rose to stardom with “The Sounds of Silence”, and soon made noise as one of the most popular artists of the 60s. Success followed, but so too rising tensions, and the ironically titled album, Bridge Over Troubled Water signalled the duo’s second major breakup. Reunions occurred in the 80s and 90s, before the Noughties saw the old timers reunited for more touring and gigs. The singers with the choir boy voices may not have aged quite as well Mrs. Robinson, but they’re still proof that age is no barrier for partnership able to sing tunes like “I Am a Rock”.

In news that will be music to the ears of teeners, The Jonas Brothers are hitting the road for a new three-continent world tour — and their bringing middle bro Joe’s cute-as-a button girlfriend Demi Lovato along as a special guest.

The Jonas Brothers 2010 World Tour will coincide with the release of Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam, which will debut on The Disney Channel on Friday, Sept. 3. The musical adventure, which begins July 27 in Dallas, will make 45 stops in North America before hitting Latin America and Europe.

“The tour will combine spectacular production with unrivaled performances of both artist’s hits as well as music from the Disney Channel Original Movie, Camp Rock, and its highly anticipated sequel. Adding to the excitement this summer, the tour will also feature appearances by their friends and co-stars from both Camp Rock movies,” according to an official announcement issued by LiveNation.com on Tuesday.

Tickets go on sale May 15. Visit TeamJonas.com for a complete list of tour dates…..

Acaban de ser publicadas nuevas fotos espía del nuevo deportivo Audi R8 GT3. Este modelo de la marca alemana tendrá una potencia mínima de 420 CV lo cuál ya nos da una pista sobre el equipamiento del que hará uso.

Su rival más directo en el mercado no será otro que el Porsche 911 GT3. En lo referente a la motorización, es muy posible que tenga una variante del motor 5.2 FSI quattro con el que llegar a alcanzar una potencia de 550 CV.

Por el momento, Audi no ha dado a conocer la fecha en la que este modelo comenzará su comercialización asi que tendremos que seguir atentos.

Related posts:

1. Fotos espía del Audi A5 Sportback
2. Audi RS5, fotos espía de alta calidad
3. Audi R8 Clubsport, fotos espía

New research conducted at the University of Oslo and published in the Archives of Internal Medicine has discovered four common bad habits can reduce your life span by as much as 12 years. The bad habits are:

• Smoking tobacco
• Less than two hours of exercise per week
• More than two alcoholic drinks for women or three drinks for men per day
• Eating less than three servings of fruits and vegetables a day

I wonder why men can drink more than women without seeing the negative effects?

Via: Huffington Post

The Conference Board says that its Consumer Confidence Index increased in April to 57.9 from 52.3 in March. That soundly beat consensus expectations of 53.5. Since February, the index has risen 11.5 points. Consumers are definitely feeling more confident about the U.S. economy.

Here’s the Conference Board’s tiny graph for Consumer Confidence:

According to the report, March’s point marks a high not seen since September 2008 — before the financial crisis hit its climax. This measure matters because it reflects Americans’ views of both business and labor market conditions. The latter still troubles many, since underemployment was around 17% in March. On average, however, even labor market sentiment must be improving according to the Conference Board’s data point for April.

This consumer confidence reading also contradicts a report from a Reuters/University of Michigan poll conducted earlier in April, which appeared to indicate that sentiment was worsening. If the Conference Board is right, then that’s good news for the recovery. In order for the economy to continue growing, Americans need to spend and invest.

The Conference Board’s sentiment measures experienced significant gains across-the-board. In addition to consumer confidence, its Present Situation Index increased to 28.6 from 25.2. Its Expectations Index also rose to 77.4 from 70.4. Again, this implies that Americans are doing better presently and foresee a brighter economic future than the recent past.

(Nav Image Credit: richkidsunite/flickr)

At the first gathering of the President’s bipartisan fiscal commission, former Congressional Budget Office Director Rudy Penner makes a good point about Social Security reform:

The other point that I’d make about Social Security, it’s not as
important as health care, but it’s much more simple to understand. We
understand the effects of every option. We know what we save. We do not
know the same sort of things about the various health options. So to me
that makes a strong argument  … [that modest changes to Social
Security] would make foreign investors more confident in our finances.

Here’s another way to make the same point. There is a compelling argument out there that there is no entitlement crisis. The logic goes like this: the entitlement crisis is a Medicare crisis; the Medicare crisis is a medical inflation crisis; medical inflation is national, rather than specific to Medicare; therefore, our fiscal crisis is not specific to our entitlements, but instead a Gordian Knot that entangles the entire medical system. In short, reforming Medicare is really, really complicated. A lot more complicated, at least, than announcing that you’ve raised the taxable income ceiling by a few thousand dollars and indexed it to life expectancies.

With one debate remaining for our potential Prime Ministers, Katy Wright looks at last week’s questions and what’s on the bill for Thursday night.

The next leaders’ debate on Sky takes place in two days. I find the entertainment factor of the debates is significantly increased by following the Twitter comments at the same time. While the tweets are no analytical commentary they are eagle-eyed in their appraisal of style! Last week, surges would occur any time there was a bit of drama or comedy in the debate – Gordon Brown’s “get real Nick” over Trident, Nick Clegg’s flattery of a female audience member, or another anecdote from David Cameron about who he’d met.

My feeling about the international debate as a whole was that it did not really focus on the international very much! We heard about Afghanistan but nothing about the people there; we heard about the banks, but nothing about the potential of a Robin Hood Tax; and we heard nothing about international development or aid. Then the debate very quickly moved on to expenses, pensions and immigration. Our parliamentary officer Jonathan Tench (@jonnytench) was busy tweeting for Oxfam – he summed it up well with his tweet, “‘uffffff’ on behalf of all our Oxfam followers who wanted to see the parties grilled on global poverty”.

We did however get a question on climate, which was great news. The leaders were asked what action they had taken in their own lives to reduce their emissions – a fair question, but to my mind it doesn’t acknowledge that these men are vying to become a world leader. Of course we should expect a personal lifestyle commitment from them – that goes without saying. But what we really need to know is what necessary domestic and international decisions they are going to make to tackle climate change. When you’re Prime Minister you can do more than insulate your loft – you can insulate everyone’s loft, provide money to help shield the world’s poorest people from the effects of climate change, lead negotiations for a global climate deal, and invest in a domestic green economy.

So, one debate left! And it’s going to be on the economy. I think it’s a pretty safe bet that a question on the banks will come up – and when it does, I’ll be waiting for an answer on the Robin Hood Tax. That will really be something to tweet.

Oxfam and the 2010 General Election

By Matt Holdridge

From Politifact.com:

Democrats like to parry Republican criticism of the recently passed health care law by talking about how it includes ideas that originated with conservatives. During an interview on NBC’s Today show on March 30, 2010, President Barack Obama offered a specific example.

Obama told host Matt Lauer that “when you actually look at the bill itself, it incorporates all sorts of Republican ideas. I mean a lot of commentators have said this is sort of similar to the bill that Mitt Romney, the Republican governor and now presidential candidate, passed in Massachusetts. A lot of the ideas in terms of the exchange, just being able to pool and improve the purchasing power of individuals in the insurance market, that originated from the Heritage Foundation. …”

We zeroed in on the notion that the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that is no fan of Obama’s health care law as a whole, might have “originated” the idea of the health insurance exchange — a virtual marketplace where individuals can purchase health insurance. Our interest only grew after we received an e-mail from Heritage president Ed Feulner that blasted Obama’s claim.

After analyzing the facts, the conclusion,

We agree with Heritage that the differences between its original vision and the version enacted into law are not trivial, and are enough to undercut the president’s effort to secure a Heritage Foundation seal of approval for his bill. But the president helped his case by wording his statement with extreme care. Intentionally or not, he gave himself subtle linguistic running room by saying that “a lot of the ideas” for the exchange came from Heritage, including the concept of “just being able to pool and improve the purchasing power of individuals in the insurance market.” Even if not all of the ideas in the two plans are identical, we feel that it was fair of him to say that “a lot of the ideas” are in common, including the notion of pooling. So we conclude that the president’s statement qualifies as Mostly True.

Dan McCarthy, senior editor of the American Conservative magazine and C4L contributor, put it this way, 

“Every think tank on the left and right knows that its recommendations will undergo some deformation before they make their way into law, if they ever do,” McCarthy told PolitiFact. “Heritage might prefer state insurance exchanges with greater individual choice, including for workers already covered by their employers. But I don’t imagine Ed Feulner would be complaining at all if a Republican president or a Republican Congress had passed a plan that deviated from the Heritage blueprint to the same degree that Obama’s bill has. While it’s not true that ‘lots of’ the specifics in the Obama plan were dreamed up by Heritage, the overall approach is similar to policies Heritage has long championed, including the individual mandate as well as the insurance exchanges. This is only controversial because the wrong party happened to pass the law, and it’s poison for any conservative to be identified with it.”

What do you think? Do many on the right only have “sour grapes” because it wasn’t them who passed the sweeping health care reform bill? 

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Article Tags: John O'Sullivan, NZ Climate Scandal

New Zealand climate scientists embroil themselves in as much of a climate data fraud scandal as Climategate and with eerily similar methods and results.

The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (NZCSC) in its article ‘NIWA Challenged to Show Why and How Temperature Records Were Adjusted’ (February 7, 2010) provides its readers with an insight into the climate scandal dubbed ‘Kiwigate.’

NIWA is New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research and is accused of repeatedly frustrating NZCSC in its attempts to get government climatologists to explain how they managed to create a warming trend for their nation’s climate that is not borne out by the actual temperature record.

According to NZCSC, climate boffins cooked the books by using the same alleged ‘trick’ employed by British and American doomsaying scientists. This involves subtly imposing a warming bias during what is known as the ‘homogenisation’ process that occurs when climate data needs to be adjusted.

Homogenisation Explained

When such data adjustments (homogenisations) are made, scientists must keep their working calculations so that other scientists can test the reasonableness of those adjustments. According to an article in Mathematical Geosciences (April 2009) homogenisation of climate data needs to be done because “non-climatic factors make data unrepresentative of the actual climate variation.”

The article tells us that if the raw data is not homogenised (or, in this case, “fudged” according to sceptics) the “conclusions of climatic and hydrological studies are potentially biased.”

Click source to read FULL report from John O’Sullivan

Source: climatology.suite101.com

Read in full with comments »   

Let’s face it it can be pretty annoying when you fire your game up and it says you have to download a patch before you can proceed. A lot of patches aren’t exactly quick downloads, especially

We’re all aware of the existence of the LG LU2300, aka the Aloha when it comes to the US. LG has released another Snapdragon powered Android device in Korea, the LG KU9500/SU950. These handsets have a few things in common but unlike the 2300 the 9500 is an all touch screen device.

The picture above is the LG 2300 and the one at the bottom is the LG9500. Both phones are running Android 2.1 at some point. When the LG LU2300 comes out it will have 1.6 but it will be updated shortly after its release to 2.1. they also share a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPUs, 3.5-inch AMOLED 800×480 touch screen displays, and 5-megapixel cameras.

LG announced these devices will have a new feature called “LG Air Sync”, this will allow the handsets to share contacts, calendar, mail, photos, music, and videos with a PC or web server wirelessly. Couple this with the new “Scan Search”, which is some type of augmented reality software, and LG may have some top tier devices on their hands. Pricing for these phones has not been released yet.

[via unwiredview]

By Matt Hawes

Reid will once again try today to advance Dodd’s bill to further entangle the government in the economy, benefit big Wall Street companies like Goldman Sachs, and give the Federal Reserve even more power.

Via Politico:

Senate Democrats are doubling down on financial reform, forcing a second consecutive procedural vote Tuesday even though there have been no reported breakthroughs that would significantly change the outcome of Monday night’s failed vote.

The short turn around between votes is part of the Democrats’ larger strategy of forcing Republicans to vote repeatedly against a motion to proceed on the sweeping regulatory reform package. Democrats hope they can eventually wear down enough Republican senators who will vote to begin debate on the Democratic bill, but there is no sign that Republicans have any cracks in their unity….

Read the rest.  Keep contacting your senators and urge them to fight for true reform!

Quite aside from the questions about Massey Energy’s role in the recent blast that killed 29 miners in West Virginia has been the question of whether the Mine Safety and Health Administration had the power to close the mine based on its long history of safety violations.

And the answer, according to a number of mine-safety experts, is an emphatic yes.

Ken Hechler, the former West Virginia congressman who was lead sponsor of a 1969 law that overhauled mining safety, said this week that while most of the fault lies with Massey, his bill “clearly” authorized MSHA officials to close unsafe mines.

“This is a case not only of the operator thumbing his nose at the strictly legal requirements and regulations,” Hechler said in a phone interview. ”It also involves a failure of [MSHA] itself to act aggressively against the mine in order to ensure that either the conditions be made safe as provided in the law, or to toughen the enforcement … to close the mine.

“There is sufficient legal authority under the circumstances that we know are present in that mine — a highly gassy mine — [for MSHA to have closed it],” Hechler added.

Complicating the issue, Massey and other coal companies have launched a strategy in recent years of filing more and more protests against safety violations — a trend that’s created an enormous backlog of citations and prevented MSHA from establishing the “pattern of violations” required to shutter entire mines. Yet, according to some experts, MSHA could have closed that loophole on its own, but simply chose not to confront the coal companies over a reform they oppose.

“[MSHA] was soft-pedaling,” a former MSHA manager told TWI recently. “Staying in the background, keeping a low profile — and you can’t do that with this industry. You’ve got to use a big stick.”

There are signs that the administration has gotten the message. Not only has President Obama kept the story on the front pages — most recently with Sunday’s visit to commemorate the 29 miners killed in the blast — but the Department of Labor yesterday announced that it will propose new “pattern of violations” rules governing the closure of troubled mines. Critics of the current policy, though, might not be pleased about the timeline: The proposed rules are not scheduled for release until January 2011.

Joule Biotechnologies, a Cambridge, Mass.-based ethanol developer, has closed $30 million in a  second round of funding from a group of undisclosed institutional and private investors.

Joule plans to use the cash to expand  a pilot plant in Leander, Texas. That plant is 25,000 gallons of ethanol per acre per year and 15,000 gallons of diesel per acre per year. The funds will also support ongoing research and development work. Joule is developing proprietary microorganisms that (at least on paper and in the lab) turn photons, water, and C02 directly into ethanol fuels — see the diagram below.

In a prepared statement Bill Sims, Joule president and CEO, said:

Propelled by this latest funding round, we intend to execute on an aggressive timeline to market by hitting key proof points that will substantiate the quality of our product and the scale and efficiency of our process.

Separately, the company also announced that it was changing its name from Joule Biotechnologies to Joule Unlimited — see full press release.