In healthcare, it?s common to hear buzzwords thrown around. In the past we have given you a handy guide for navigating the tricky acronyms elder care professionals and caregivers frequently come across. ?
Given the complexity of innovation in the healthcare field, it?s sometimes tough to keep up the development of new care delivery models. Recently two community-based care models have garnered a great deal of attention: the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) model and the concept of Medicaid health homes.
While patient-centered medical homes and health homes share some similarities, there are key differences in how each model enhances care for those with chronic conditions and supports aging in place. We break those down for you here:
The Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) Model
Proposed in 2007 by the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), American Academy of Pediatrics (ACP), American College of Physicians (AAP), and American Osteopathic Association (AOA), the patient-centered medical home model aims to provide comprehensive, coordinated, and continuous care for all populations from children to seniors. It requires a team-based, physician-led approach that seeks to enhance the role of primary care and organize care around the patient. According to the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative, clinicians practicing within the medical home model:
Assume responsibility for the ongoing care of patients and coordinate care over multiple settings
Are more accessible to patients by providing expanded hours, easier scheduling, and remote consultations by phone and email
Utilize electronic personal health records
Conduct regular checkups and encourage preventative care
Medicaid Health Homes
As of early 2011, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) health reform law established ?health homes? as a Medicaid option to provide services specifically for beneficiaries with chronic conditions. Health homes are designed to a person-centered, integrated care model that coordinates medical care, behavioral health services, as well as community and social supports.
What Medicaid patients are eligible for participation in a health home?
Those with two chronic conditions
Those with one chronic condition and risk of a second
Those with one ?serious and persistent? mental health condition
According to the ACA, health homes must provide the following services:
Comprehensive care management
Care coordination and health promotion
Transitional inpatient to outpatient care
Individual and family support
Referrals to community and social support services
Services linked through health information technology
In many states the health home model builds upon the medical home model, expanding the linkages and breadth of services to support the needs of those with chronic illnesses. The goal of the Medicaid home health model is to improve clinical outcomes and overall healthcare quality for persons with long-term conditions, as well as reduce per-capita healthcare expenditures by delivering more effective, coordinated care. Unlike the PCMH model, States have flexibility to determine eligible health home providers. The provider may be a designated professional such as health clinic or home health agency or a team of health professionals which may include mental health workers, dieticians, nurses, and pharmacists.
What has your experience been with community-based care delivery models such as PCMH and Medicaid Health Homes?
Apr. 29, 2013 ? Most infants respond to a game of peek-a-boo with smiles at the very least, and, for those who find the activity particularly entertaining, gales of laughter. For infants with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), however, the game can be distressing rather than pleasant, and they'll do their best to tune out all aspects of it -- and that includes the people playing with them.
That disengagement is a hallmark of ASD, and one of the characteristics that amplifies the disorder as infants develop into children and then adults.
A study conducted by researchers at the Koegel Autism Center at UC Santa Barbara has found that replacing such games in favor of those the infant prefers can actually lessen the severity of the infants' ASD symptoms, and, perhaps, alleviate the condition altogether. Their work is highlighted the current issue of the Journal of Positive Behavioral Interventions.
Lynn Koegel, clinical director of the center and the study's lead author, described the game-playing protocol as a modified Pivotal Response Treatment (PVT). Developed at UCSB, PRT is based on principles of positive motivation. The researchers identified the activities that seemed to be more enjoyable to the infants and taught the respective parents to focus on those rather than on the typical games they might otherwise choose. "We had them play with their infants for short periods, and then give them some kind of social reward," Koegel said. "Over time, we conditioned the infants to enjoy all the activities that were presented by pairing the less desired activities with the highly desired ones." The social reward is preferable to, say, a toy, Koegel noted, because it maintains the ever-crucial personal interaction.
"The idea is to get them more interested in people," she continued, "to focus on their socialization. If they're avoiding people and avoiding interacting, that creates a whole host of other issues. They don't form friendships, and then they don't get the social feedback that comes from interacting with friends."
According to Koegel, by the end of the relatively short one- to three-month intervention period, which included teaching the parents how to implement the procedures, all the infants in the study had normal reactions to stimuli. "Two of the three have no disabilities at all, and the third is very social," she said. "The third does have a language delay, but that's more manageable than some of the other issues."
On a large scale, Koegel hopes to establish some benchmark for identifying social deficits in infants so parents and health care providers can intervene sooner rather than later. "We have a grant from the Autism Science Foundation to look at lots of babies and try to really figure out which signs are red flags, and which aren't," she said. "A number of the infants who show signs of autism will turn out to be perfectly fine; but we're saying, let's not take the risk if we can put an intervention in play that really works. Then we don't have to worry about whether or not these kids would develop the full-blown symptoms of autism."
Historically, ASD is diagnosed in children 18 months or older, and treatment generally begins around 4 years. "You can pretty reliably diagnose kids at 18 months, especially the more severe cases," said Koegel. "The mild cases might be a little harder, especially if the child has some verbal communication. There are a few measures -- like the ones we used in our study -- that can diagnose kids pre-language, even as young as six months. But ours was the first that worked with children under 12 months and found an effective intervention."
Given the increasing number of children being diagnosed with ASD, Koegel's findings could be life altering -- literally. "When you consider that the recommended intervention for preschoolers with autism is 30 to 40 hours per week of one-on-one therapy, this is a fairly easy fix," she said. "We did a single one-hour session per week for four to 12 weeks until the symptoms improved, and some of these infants were only a few months old. We saw a lot of positive change."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of California - Santa Barbara.
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Journal Reference:
L. K. Koegel, A. K. Singh, R. L. Koegel, J. R. Hollingsworth, J. Bradshaw. Assessing and Improving Early Social Engagement in Infants. Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, 2013; DOI: 10.1177/1098300713482977
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Despite the Galaxy S4's status as a highly anticipated phone that, frankly, is probably good enough to sell without any marketing gimmicks, Samsung can't seem to get a launch for the device right.
In March, the company staged a bizarrely sexist series of skits in New York City for the phone's U.S. launch. Then, for the S4's recent launch in India, the Korean phone-maker put on a rendition of Psy's "Gangnam Style" involving women dancing in glittery skirts and not much else.
According to India Today, this is Bollywood actor Ranveer Singh doing his best Psy impression, replacing the phrase "Gangnam Style" with "Samsung Style," at a hotel in Mumbai. It's hard to imagine folks deciding to line up around the block to buy a smartphone because they heard lyrics like:
If you like the S3, then this phone is even better
It has an HD screen, and it's just a lot slimmer
441 ppi is not just a number
Look at this clarity, it's brighter!
But that's not all. The performance also included this take on Carly Ray Jespen's "Call Me Maybe," The Verge points out. While the audio is difficult to make out, the lyrics "Here's my Samsung / So call me, maybe" are apparent.
Poor songwriting aside, if Samsung or any electronics-maker thinks it needs barely-dressed women to make sales, it has bigger problems than a potential lemon of a gadget. (And again, the S4, the successor of the best-selling Galaxy S3, is a good phone.) In March, a South African promotional event for Samsung refrigerators and washing machines was criticized for featuring swimsuit-clad women. Also that month, Samsung's U.S. launch event for the S4 was filled with equally cringeworthy moments. One skit had a group of women getting hot and bothered after a man took off his shirt. ("While the women are cooling down, why don't you tell us about S Health?") Another made the phone's case to women by claiming how easy it would be to use while drying their fingernails.
The saddest part of Samsung's marketing campaign is that it does everything to undermine the company's clever "Next Big Thing" TV ads, which gently mock Apple fanboys and have been rewarded with praise and with views on YouTube.
Samsung, stick to making TV spots. And cell phones.
LONDON (Reuters) - The British online fashion retailer ASOS said it would launch a Chinese-language website in October, part of a strategy to be a global player and deliver over 1 billion pounds ($1.6 billion) of sales by 2015.
Shares in the firm, whose celebrity fans include United States first lady Michelle Obama, rose 4.7 percent on Tuesday after it posted an 11 percent rise in first-half profit and also said it would launch a Russian-language website on Wednesday.
While the UK's traditional high street stores have suffered as consumers fear for their jobs and see incomes squeezed, online retailers are faring far better. ASOS in particular has bucked the trend, helped by overseas expansion that has already seen it establish websites in the United States, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Australia.
In particular, it has tapped into demand from value-seeking, technology savvy, twenty-somethings for both branded and own-label products.
ASOS will use a different model for China from that used for its other overseas operations, which sell products shipped from a huge distribution center in Barnsley, northern England.
ASOS China will have a standalone technology platform, a local third-party distribution center, local delivery solutions and payment methods, and a larger in-country team.
Initially, the website will offer about 10 percent of ASOS's full range of 60,000 items, a share that will expand as the Chinese business grows. Set-up costs will be 8-12 million pounds over two years.
"We want to be truly global. We can't be truly global unless we're in China, and this is the start of that journey," Chief Executive Nick Robertson told Reuters. "It's a build-and-grow, learn, steady-as-she-goes type of approach."
Customers from Russia and China already access ASOS's UK site, putting them in the firm's top 10 markets.
SHARES JUMP
Shares in ASOS, which have more than doubled over the last year, were up 96 pence at 3,167 at 7:20 a.m. ET, valuing the business at 2.55 billion pounds.
"As comparables soften in H2 2012-13, we think that ASOS shares will see positive momentum," said Panmure Gordon analyst Jean Roche.
But she cut her 2013-14 and 2014-15 earnings forecasts by 4-5 percent to account for expected operating losses in China.
ASOS also announced a new long term incentive plan (ALTIP) for executives and senior management.
A "target" performance level of the scheme implies sales of 1.0 billion pounds for the 2014-15 year, while a "stretch" level implies sales of 1.3 billion pounds.
Robertson, who owns 9.4 percent of ASOS's equity, said participants had together invested 5 million pounds in the scheme.
If "stretch" targets were achieved, he said, the payout would mean a maximum dilution of 1.5 percent of ASOS's issued share capital - worth about 39 million pounds at Tuesday's prices.
"We'd have to double the size of the business," he said.
ASOS, which targets young women looking to emulate the designer looks of celebrities such as Nicole Scherzinger and Cara Delevingne, made an underlying pretax profit of 25.7 million pounds in the six months to February 28.
That compared with analysts' consensus forecasts of 25 million pounds, and was up from 23.1 million pounds in the same period of 2011-12.
The firm said six-month group revenue increased 33 percent to 359.7 million pounds, with trading momentum strong.
However, retail gross margin was 0.6 percent lower, partly reflecting lower prices and a higher proportion of UK sales, which attract 20 percent VAT sales tax.
The firm said UK retail sales rose 26 percent to 137.6 million pounds, while overseas sales increased 39 percent to 214.7 million pounds. ($1 = 0.6454 British pounds)
(Reporting by James Davey; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
JERUSALEM (AP) ? A veteran Israeli lawmaker and former defense minister says Syria's chemical weapons are "trickling" to Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group.
Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Israel Radio on Monday that he is shocked by the "world's silence" and that the West must intervene to stop the high civilian death toll in Syria.
He says he "has no doubt" Syrian President Bashar Assad used chemical weapons and that some of the weapons are "definitely reaching" Israel's enemy Hezbollah.
The Israeli government convened its security cabinet to discuss Syria late on Sunday but no details were released.
Both sides in Syria's civil war accuse each other of using chemical weapons.
The U.S. has warned such weapons cross a red line and last week said the weapons were probably used, though it still seeks definitive proof.
Bidzy, a new platform for connecting local services businesses with customers who need the service they offer in the next few hours, is launching at Disrupt NY 2013 today. Like the best ideas, Bidzy's premise is simple: allow the customer to specify exactly what they want and the amount they are willing to pay and then let the individual businesses decide if they're happy to take the job on.
China sent a fleet of patrol ships today to the sea area it disputes with Japan, following a controversial visit by Japanese officials to a war shrine. The latest moves are seen as a setback for a diplomatic resolution.
By Ralph Jennings,?Correspondent / April 23, 2013
Chinese surveillance ships sail in formation in waters claimed by Japan near disputed islands called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China in the East China Sea Tuesday.
Kyodo News/AP
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Spats between Asia?s two most powerful nations, China and Japan, have grown uncomfortably routine since Tokyo nationalized a group of disputed islands in September. On Tuesday tensions reached a new and potentially worrisome high.
Skip to next paragraph Ralph Jennings
Taiwan Correspondent
Ralph Jennings has covered news in China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia for the past 14 years. He lives in Taipei and holds a degree in mass communication from the University of California in Berkeley.?
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China sent eight surveillance vessels into Japanese territorial waters, apparently to track a flotilla of Japanese activists who had gone to look at the contested area. China?s presence ? an effort to exercise authority in the region ? is its largest since Japan nationalized the uninhabited islets, Kyodo News reported.
China?s use of ships in disputed waters isn?t expected to cause a war, but it raises the specter of a miscalculation at sea that could in turn create a new diplomatic row, set off more protests in Chinese cities, and strike another blow at Japanese business caught in the crossfire. Hopes of polite negotiations are also off the map for now.
"Only when Japan faces up to its aggressive past can it embrace the future and develop friendly relations with its Asian neighbors," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a news conference on Monday.
As if the 80 pro-Tokyo activists weren?t enough to upset Beijing, that same day 168 Japanese lawmakers visited a Shinto shrine that?s reviled elsewhere in Asia for memorializing World War II heroes. Japan occupied parts of China from 1931 to 1945. Three cabinet ministers had already visited Yasukuni Shrine over the weekend, causing calculated reaction.
In protest, a high-level Chinese military official bailed on a trip this week to Japan as the Foreign Ministry lashed out.?
And China?s surveillance vessels probably weren?t loaded with olive branches. The Communist country has increasingly jousted?with Japan since around 2005 as it rose to become the world?s second largest economy.
?Such an intrusion [in the East China Sea] was certainly not undertaken spontaneously, but would have been planned and coordinated some time in advance for execution as soon as an opportunity presented itself,? says Scott Harold, associate political scientist with US-based think tank the RAND Corporation.
Japan controls the disputed islets, which it calls the Senkaku, despite 40 years of competing claims from China and a wave of destructive anti-Japanese street protests in Chinese cities last year. China criticizes the Shinto shrine visits because a memorial at the venue also honors 14 major war criminals.
The two sides are also disputing rights to an undersea natural gas field, while China periodically accuses Japan of not apologizing for the war of the 1940s. Japan says it has apologized.?
China and Japan, as the world?s No. 2 and No. 3 economies, also mean a lot to each other trade-wise. The number of Japanese subsidiaries in China has grown eight times since the 1990s, and they sold $147 billion worth of goods to the country in the 2011 fiscal year.
Will the two keep meeting, along with South Korea, to discuss a three-way trade agreement? After momentum last month, the latest events raise concern that this puts progress on ice.
?Both sides need to be more flexible,? suggests Ralph Cossa, president with US think tank Pacific Forum Center for Strategic and International Studies. ?Japan needs to acknowledge that the territory is in dispute, at least from a Chinese perspective, and the Chinese need to acknowledge that they are under Japan?s administrative control and that a military solution is unacceptable.?
President Barack Obama will nominate Charlotte, N.C., Mayor Anthony Foxx to run the Transportation Department, the Associated Press reports.
Foxx will be the first black nominee among Obama's picks for second-term Cabinet spots.
Also worth noting on Monday:
? Obama will speak at the National Academy of Sciences annual meeting. ? Republican former Gov. Mark Sanford and Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, sister of political satirist Stephen Colbert, face off in a debate leading up to a May 7 special election to fill South Carolina?s 1st Congressional District seat. ? U.S. Senate chaplain Barry Black speaks at the Heritage Foundation on ?Bridging the Religious and Secular Divide.?
And then there is this: Newt Gingrich will begin a three-day ?Thank You South Carolina Tour.? It is the first time Gingrich has returned to the Palmetto State since winning the Republican presidential primary last year.
Sources: Yahoo! News Politics, ABC News, Reuters and Associated Press.
How to Use the Most Effective Internet Marketing Tactics
We know perfectly how hard it can be to locate dependable information about Internet marketing strategy, and this can help you get started in the right direction. We are all acquainted with the feelings of trying to find out about something and not even being certain of what is necessary. Hardly anyone knows anybody online, so when you need important information or help it becomes critical deciding on the source of it. We do understand those feelings very well in our own research on the net. Do keep reading because what we have to convey about this specific subject may surprise you.
If you want to take your online business up to the next level, you could benefit from learning some effective Internet marketing tactics. Your marketing efforts will be directly related to your business growth. This all begins from an understanding of the exact market you want to target. These elements combined can bring you an increase in the number of visitors coming to your site that should result in increased profits. Creating long term success with any online business can mean implementing several Internet marketing elements together to give you the results you want. This article will discuss some Internet marketing tips that could help your online promotional efforts.
Anytime you are discovering a marketing or advertising method for the first time, it is almost always helpful to withhold judgment about it. Only those who are totally serious about really reaching the pinnacle of success with their online business will do this. Here is the bottom line, if effective Internet marketing strategies can be used in your business, then why would you ever not be willing to include it in your campaigns? You will always need to carefully assess anything new, though, and that means you have to base your decisions on research, first.
If you do lose money on some lame method that does not work, then you have learned a valuable lesson and just move on. We know how it feels to be alone and working on this stuff, and so it can feel bewildering at times trying to figure out if something is for real. That experience is very common with web marketers who are relatively new and with little experience. What can also muddle the whole picture are those who had bad results using solid methods, and then those people can malign the method as being bad. One thing that will happen on its own is that if you stay in this long enough, then you will have to do these things just to survive. One thing you have to keep in mind is that your customers may not see your product or promotions the same way you do. From the moment you start creating a product, you have to focus on how it will help your customer. Your customers have to be the main focus. Have it clear in your mind who you are targeting with your products.
Don?t try to be everything to everyone. No one product or service is for everyone. You will do better if you can gain a good reputation in your own niche. Your prospects will be happy to come to you for a specialized solution rather than going for someone else. Your reputation as a trusted authority will grow.
Another good marketing tip is to network online with other entrepreneurs and Internet marketers in your niche. It?s always a good thing to have lots of contacts. Don?t be afraid to reach out to people who are marketing something in your niche. Make an effort to be friendly to people. A good way to meet marketers is on networks like Ryze or Linkin. You should also participate in discussions and network with people on internet marketing forums such as the Warrior Forum, as these have a large number of helpful and successful marketers who regularly log in.
One rule that applies to every type of online strategy is that you should always test your results. If you don?t know what ads are working for you, and how your landing page is converting, it almost gets impossible to get good results. As soon as you begin applying a marketing technique, you should also be testing it. If you do any pay per click advertising, you should always create two or more ads and split test them so you can compare the results. Testing should even be applied to your websites and blogs, so you can determine what kind of look and content gives you the best results. Testing and tracking will help you in every area of your internet marketing.
Once you get comfortable with basic internet marketing practices, the whole process gets easier.
It only appears confusing when you aren?t familiar with how it works. The only way to make Internet marketing easy is to consistently move forward. Don?t be afraid of making any mistakes, as you will only learn from them. Before trying anything else, focus on building one way links to your site and getting as much information about your target audience as possible. It helps if you have a clear focus about your business and products so you can communicate this to your audience.
We are willing to bet that were not aware of the points covered about Internet marketing strategy in this article ? that is a common response we get from people who contact us. So if it suits your fancy, or need, then you are at your leisure to delve into it and know all about it.
Bring an open mind to the table as you do this, though, and many important tips will jump out at you.
What we all naturally do is zero-in on something that is very relevant to our situation and focus on that. The hierarchies that are inherent in this will prove to be most enlightening.
In the end, though, this is clearly your option to pursue or not.
How truly serious are you about effective Internet marketing strategies? Ok, cool? so you?re serious ? then read about online business systems. Do not neglect effective Internet marketing strategy, either. Related Site
Stonehenge may have been built on a site occupied by hunters for?roughly?5,000 prior to its construction.
By Tia Ghose,?LiveScience Staff Writer / April 24, 2013
Visitors are dwarfed by the Stonehenge monument in southern England.
Max Nash/AP/File
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A site near Stonehenge has revealed archaeological evidence that hunters lived just a mile from Stonehenge roughly 5,000 years prior to the construction of the first stones, new research suggests.
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What's more, the site, which was occupied continuously for 3,000 years, had evidence of burning, thousands of flint tool fragments and bones of?wild aurochs?, a type of extinct giant cow. That suggests the area near Stonehenge may have been an auroch migration route that became an ancient feasting site, drawing people together from across different cultures in the region, wrote lead researcher David Jacques of the Open University in the United Kingdeom, in an email.
"We may have found the cradle of?Stonehenge, the reason why it is where it is," Jacques wrote. [In Photos: A Walk Through Stonehenge]
The new discovery may also identify the people who first erected structures at Stonehenge. A few gigantic pine posts, possibly totem poles, were raised at Stonehenge between 8,500 and 10,000 years ago, but until now there was scant evidence of occupation in the area that long ago. The new research suggests those ancient structures may perhaps have been raised to honor a sacred hunting ground.
Mysterious monument
For decades, people have wondered at the enigmatic stone structures erected roughly 5,000 years ago in the plains of Wiltshire, England. No one knows why ancient people built the structure: some believe it was a place of ancient worship or a sun calendar, whereas still others think it was a symbol of unity or even that?Stonehenge was inspired by a sound illusion.
The large megaliths, known as sarsens, are up to 30 feet tall and weigh up to 25 tons, while the smaller bluestones weigh up to 4 tons. Researchers think the?giant boulders?came from a quarry near Marlborough Downs, just 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the iconic site, while the bluestones likely came from Preseli Hills in Wales, nearly 156 miles (250 km) away from Stonehenge.
Old photographs
Jacques was looking through archival photographs of the region surrounding Stonehenge when he spotted a site known as Vespasian's Camp, just a mile from Stonehenge in nearby Amesbury.
Realizing that it hadn't been fully surveyed, Jacques began to investigate the area, which harbored a freshwater spring.
Because animals like to stop and drink at such watering holes, Jacques wondered whether ancient man may have settled nearby as well.
The team uncovered roughly 350 animal bones and 12,500 flint tools or fragments, as well as lots of evidence of burning. Carbon dating suggested the area was occupied by humans from 7500 B.C. to 4700 B.C. ? roughly 5,000 years prior to the erection of the?first stones at Stonehenge. [See Photos of the Stonehenge Hunting Ground?]
"The spring may have originally attracted large animals to it, which would have aided hunting and may have led to associations that the area was a sacred hunting ground," Jacques wrote.
In addition, the researchers found tools made from stone from one region of England, but fashioned in the style of another region (for instance, a?stone tool?made from Welsh or Cornwall slate, but made in a style typical of Sussex). That suggests the people from different regions were coming together at the site, Jacques wrote.
Ancient builders?
The findings could help researchers pinpoint why the ancient builders of Stonehenge chose the place they did, Jacques said.?
"We have found a bridge from which transmission of cultural memory about the 'specialness' of the place where the stones were later being put up was possible," Jacques wrote. "We are getting closer to understanding their reasons for putting it up ? it is all to do with ancestors, but those ancestors go much further back than has previously been realised."
The findings show "there was a substantial interest in the Stonehenge landscape well before the stones were hauled there and erected," said Timothy Darvill, an archaeologist at Bournemouth University in the U.K., who was not involved in the study.
Excavations dating to 2008 at Stonehenge also confirm earlier use at the?megalithic site, Darvill wrote. However, what makes the Amesbury discovery special is the large trove of auroch bones found in the area, which suggests the spring was on a natural migration route for the wild aurochs, he said.
A program about the Amesbury site will air on BBC 4 on April 29.
Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter?@tiaghose.?Follow?LiveScience?@livescience,?Facebook?&?Google+. Original article on?LiveScience.com.
Houston Rockets' Francisco Garcia (32) goes up for a shot as Oklahoma City Thunder's Serge Ibaka (9) defends during the second quarter of Game 3 in a first-round NBA basketball playoff series Saturday, April 27, 2013, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
Houston Rockets' Francisco Garcia (32) goes up for a shot as Oklahoma City Thunder's Serge Ibaka (9) defends during the second quarter of Game 3 in a first-round NBA basketball playoff series Saturday, April 27, 2013, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
Houston Rockets' Patrick Beverley (12) falls backward while blocking Oklahoma City Thunder's Nick Collison (4) during the first quarter of Game 3 in a first-round NBA basketball playoff series Saturday, April 27, 2013, in Houston. Beverley was called for a blocking foul. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
Oklahoma City Thunder's Nick Collison (4) goes up for a shot as Houston Rockets' Omer Asik (3), Francisco Garcia (32) and Jeremy Lin (7) defend during the second quarter of Game 3 in a first-round NBA basketball playoff series Saturday, April 27, 2013, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
HOUSTON (AP) ? Kevin Durant scored 41 points in his first game without injured All-Star Russell Westbrook, and the Oklahoma City Thunder fought off Houston's late rally to beat the Rockets 104-101 on Saturday night for a 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven playoff series.
Durant scored 27 points in the first half, and the Thunder led by 26 points before a big third-quarter rally by the Rockets put them within striking distance.
Houston regained the lead with about 4 minutes left, and was up with less than a minute remaining. But Durant hit a 3-pointer seconds later to put Oklahoma City on top 100-99.
A turnover by James Harden gave the Thunder the ball back and Derek Fisher made two free throws to push the lead to 3. Harden made a layup, but Reggie Jackson hit two more free throws after that.
Houston had a last chance, but Carlos Delfino's 3-pointer fell short.
Harden scored 30 points to lead the Rockets in the first playoff game in Houston since 2009.
Game 4 is Monday night in Houston
Westbrook was injured in Game 2 and had season-ending knee surgery Saturday. It was the first time Durant had ever played without Westbrook, who hadn't missed a game in his career before Saturday.
Durant tied a career high for the playoffs, and he added 14 rebounds, four assists, two steals and a block. Jackson started in place of Westbrook and had 14 points, and Ibaka added 17 points and 11 rebounds.
A 3-pointer by Chandler Parsons tied it with 5:46 left and Delfino gave Houston its first lead since early in the first quarter, 94-93, about 2 minutes later.
Ibaka made four straight points after that, ending with a reverse layup, to make it 97-94 with about a minute and a half left.
Harden hit a pair of free throws. Then Francisco Garcia's 3-pointer put them up 99-97 with 45 seconds left, before the clutch shot by Durant.
The Rockets rallied from a 15-point deficit to take a lead in the fourth quarter in Game 2. But they weren't able to hold on and Oklahoma City got the 105-102 win.
It was much the same this time, as Houston went up late only to fall again.
Westbrook's absence didn't seem to bother Oklahoma City early, as Durant had the big first half and the Thunder looked to be in complete control.
Things changed in the third quarter, as Durant was limited offensively and Houston outscored the Thunder 27-14 in the quarter.
Houston point guard Jeremy Lin, who suffered a bruised chest muscle in Game 2, started but scored only two points in about 18 minutes.
Parsons added 21 points for Houston, and Garcia had 18.
After the big run got Houston within eight points in the third quarter, Garcia and Harden made 3-pointers around a dunk by Durant to whittle the lead to 80-76 entering the last quarter.
Durant was scoreless in the third quarter until his dunk with 27 seconds remaining in the quarter.
The Thunder led by 19 points when the Rockets used a 16-5 run to get to 78-70 with 2 1/2 minutes left in the third quarter. The Rockets harassed Oklahoma City into three turnovers in that stretch, and Durant went cold as he missed four shots.
NOTES: Francisco Garcia and Houston coach Kevin McHale received technical fouls in the first quarter. ... Pitching great Roger Clemens and Houston Texans star receiver Andre Johnson attended the game. ... Houston's Aaron Brooks, who was the only player on the roster the last time the Rockets reached the playoffs, had four points.
A Chinese company's trucks were a hit among Libyan rebels, and it's now seeking inroads to the lucrative insurgent market.?'The car really proved its launch strength,' wrote one Libyan rebel.
By Peter Ford,?Staff Writer / April 26, 2013
Libyan rebels riding at the back of a pickup truck retreat east towards Benghazi from Ajdabiya, Libya, in April 2011. When the Shanghai auto show opened a week ago, ZX Auto, proudly displayed on its stand a version of its trucks that were a hit among Libyan rebels.
Nasser Nasser/AP/File
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Ever fancied owning your own ?technical? ? the sort of pickup truck fitted with a heavy machine gun that rebels careering around the streets from Somalia to Libya have made notorious? Come to the Shanghai Auto Show and a Chinese automaker will sell you one.
Skip to next paragraph Peter Ford
Beijing Bureau Chief
Peter Ford is The Christian Science Monitor?s Beijing Bureau Chief. He covers news and features throughout China and also makes reporting trips to Japan and the Korean peninsula.
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When the show opened a week ago, Zhongxing Auto proudly displayed on its stand a version of its Grand Tiger pickup with an unusual accessory ? a four-legged steel frame fixed to the cargo bed, ready for the weapon of your choice.
Once upon a time, irregular forces had to do their own welding to turn Toyotas and other pickups into mobile platforms for rocket launchers or machine guns. Now the small Chinese auto company, based in the eastern province of Hebei, takes the trouble out of such transformations for you.
Zhongxing Auto, known as ZX Auto, seems a little conflicted, though, about its new model. The vehicle is clearly designed for people going to war, but the pickup on display at the opening of the auto show was emblazoned with the slogan ?Resist war, love peace!? In Arabic?
That is because the idea for the ready-made rampage wagon came from Libya. ZX had sold thousands of its Grand Tigers to Libya during Colonel Muammar Qaddafi?s rule, and as rebel forces took over government car pools during the civil war they came into possession of the Chinese-made trucks.
It didn?t take them long to fit them out with rocket launchers and machine guns, and TV news footage carried images of ZX pickups around the world.
?The car really proved its launch strength, engine strength ? and stability,? wrote one Libyan rebel, Saad Sati, in an account published on the?chinacartimes.com?website. ?It acted as a catalyst in the process of the Libyan revolution ? and gave the rebels the upper hand.?
ZX was pleased with the publicity. If World War II shot the Jeep to international prominence, and the Gulf War made the Hummer a must-have for a certain sort of driver, the Libyan civil war might do the same sort of thing for the Grand Tiger, the firm hoped.
?Models will stand out after the baptism of war that prove reliable, durable, and easy to maintain,? the company says coyly on its website. ?The Libyan civil war could really help build a name for the Zhongxing pickups.?
Heaven forbid, though, that anyone should think the appearance of the ZX technical on the company?s Shanghai Auto Show stand might suggest that the company is seeking new strife-torn markets.
?All the cars we design are for civilian use,? insisted Lin Jing, a ZX sales department employee, in a telephone interview from the auto show. ?If Libyans used them as vehicles of war that has nothing to do with us.?
Why had the company installed the machine gun stand, then? Ms. Lin?s answer was unconvincing. ?So that when people saw it they would think of the Libyan war which brought such disasters,? she said.
Eh?
There are no signs yet that Syrian rebels have done the same sort of thing as their Libyan forbears did to their Grand Tigers; ZX has sold less than 500 of the vehicles to Syria, according to Lin.
But if they want more, ready for action, they know where to come.
* Lewandowski scored four goals against Real Madrid * Poland international refuses contract extension (adds details, background) BERLIN, April 26 (Reuters) - Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund striker Robert Lewandowski have not signed a deal, the newly-crowned champions said on Friday, shooting down widespread speculation of another imminent surprise transfer. "Bayern, as opposed to some reports, has no contract with Robert Lewandowski," the Bavarian Champions League semi-finalists said in a brief statement. ...
American Academy of Arts and Sciences elects 3 UC San Diego professorsPublic release date: 26-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Inga Kiderra ikiderra@ucsd.edu 858-822-0661 University of California - San Diego
Three UC San Diego faculty members have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences: neuroscientist Steven Allen Hillyard, linguist David M. Perlmutter and anthropologist Kathryn Ann Woolard.
They are among 186 American fellows and 12 foreign honorary members selected to the 2013 class, representing some of the world's top scholars, scientists, writers, artists, and civic, corporate and philanthropic leaders.
The professors' election brings UC San Diego's current membership in the academy to 110.
"The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is one of our nation's most prestigious honor societies, and we are proud to have three additional UC San Diego faculty elected as members," said UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla. "The academy is composed of leaders, innovators and visionaries who are tackling some of the world's most pressing challenges. I look forward to their future successes and achievements, which will ultimately benefit us all."
Steven Hillyard, professor of neurosciences in the UC San Diego School of Medicine, received his Ph.D. in psychology from Yale University in 1968 and came to UC San Diego in that same year. He is widely recognized for his investigations into the neural bases of human perceptual and cognitive processes. By using noninvasive recording and neuroimaging, the Hillyard laboratory aims to identify and characterize spatiotemporal patterns of brain activity that underlie both normal and abnormal cognitive processes of perception, selective attention, stimulus recognition and consciousness. Hillyard's research has been supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research. His honors include awards from Cognitive Neuroscience Society, the Society for Psychophysiological Research and the NIMH.
David Perlmutter is a professor emeritus of linguistics in the UC San Diego Division of Social Sciences, where he has been on the faculty since 1977. He received his Ph.D. in linguistics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1968. He has done research on the syntactic structure of various Romance, Slavic and Germanic languages, as well as on selected Asian and Native American languages. He has also done research on the internal structure of signs in American Sign Language and on the similarities and differences between signed and spoken languages. Perlmutter has served as president of the Linguistic Society of America.
Kathryn Woolard is a professor of anthropology in the UC San Diego Division of Social Sciences and has been on the faculty since 1989. A linguistic anthropologist, she earned her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 1983. Woolard is recent past president of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology and is currently associate editor of Language in Society and the American Anthropologist. Woolard is an expert on the sociolinguistic situation in Catalonia and one of the leading figures in the anthropological study of language ideologies. She has also published research on Spanish-English language politics in the U.S. and on language and racial ideology and in early modern Spain. She is author of, among other works, "Double Talk: Bilingualism and the Politics of Ethnicity in Catalonia" (Stanford University Press).
UC San Diego alumnus Bruce A. Beutler, recipient of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, is also among the 2013 class. The new class will be inducted at a ceremony on Oct. 12 at the academy's headquarters in Cambridge, Mass.
Since its founding in 1780, the academy has elected leading "thinkers and doers" from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the eighteenth century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the nineteenth, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the twentieth. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.
A full list of academy members, past and present, is at https://www.amacad.org/members.aspx. UC San Diego's current members are listed at http://academicaffairs.ucsd.edu/faculty/awards/aaas.html.
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American Academy of Arts and Sciences elects 3 UC San Diego professorsPublic release date: 26-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Inga Kiderra ikiderra@ucsd.edu 858-822-0661 University of California - San Diego
Three UC San Diego faculty members have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences: neuroscientist Steven Allen Hillyard, linguist David M. Perlmutter and anthropologist Kathryn Ann Woolard.
They are among 186 American fellows and 12 foreign honorary members selected to the 2013 class, representing some of the world's top scholars, scientists, writers, artists, and civic, corporate and philanthropic leaders.
The professors' election brings UC San Diego's current membership in the academy to 110.
"The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is one of our nation's most prestigious honor societies, and we are proud to have three additional UC San Diego faculty elected as members," said UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla. "The academy is composed of leaders, innovators and visionaries who are tackling some of the world's most pressing challenges. I look forward to their future successes and achievements, which will ultimately benefit us all."
Steven Hillyard, professor of neurosciences in the UC San Diego School of Medicine, received his Ph.D. in psychology from Yale University in 1968 and came to UC San Diego in that same year. He is widely recognized for his investigations into the neural bases of human perceptual and cognitive processes. By using noninvasive recording and neuroimaging, the Hillyard laboratory aims to identify and characterize spatiotemporal patterns of brain activity that underlie both normal and abnormal cognitive processes of perception, selective attention, stimulus recognition and consciousness. Hillyard's research has been supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research. His honors include awards from Cognitive Neuroscience Society, the Society for Psychophysiological Research and the NIMH.
David Perlmutter is a professor emeritus of linguistics in the UC San Diego Division of Social Sciences, where he has been on the faculty since 1977. He received his Ph.D. in linguistics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1968. He has done research on the syntactic structure of various Romance, Slavic and Germanic languages, as well as on selected Asian and Native American languages. He has also done research on the internal structure of signs in American Sign Language and on the similarities and differences between signed and spoken languages. Perlmutter has served as president of the Linguistic Society of America.
Kathryn Woolard is a professor of anthropology in the UC San Diego Division of Social Sciences and has been on the faculty since 1989. A linguistic anthropologist, she earned her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 1983. Woolard is recent past president of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology and is currently associate editor of Language in Society and the American Anthropologist. Woolard is an expert on the sociolinguistic situation in Catalonia and one of the leading figures in the anthropological study of language ideologies. She has also published research on Spanish-English language politics in the U.S. and on language and racial ideology and in early modern Spain. She is author of, among other works, "Double Talk: Bilingualism and the Politics of Ethnicity in Catalonia" (Stanford University Press).
UC San Diego alumnus Bruce A. Beutler, recipient of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, is also among the 2013 class. The new class will be inducted at a ceremony on Oct. 12 at the academy's headquarters in Cambridge, Mass.
Since its founding in 1780, the academy has elected leading "thinkers and doers" from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the eighteenth century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the nineteenth, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the twentieth. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.
A full list of academy members, past and present, is at https://www.amacad.org/members.aspx. UC San Diego's current members are listed at http://academicaffairs.ucsd.edu/faculty/awards/aaas.html.
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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.
The free inSSIDer software utility for Windows, iOS, and Android is one of the most useful and easy-to-interpret wireless networking tools I?ve encountered. InSSIDer displays information about the wireless networks in proximity to you, including an access point?s MAC address, encryption type, signal strength, and channel. InSSIDer is a great tool for wireless networking novices, because it has an easy-to-understand interface and includes an abundance of help and tutorials. Experienced Wi-Fi professionals may find the software a bit too light and might be more interested in a more robust program such as?WiFiBuilder or Wireshark. But home power users looking to tweak their networks and those managing smaller business Wi-Fi networks would benefit by getting acquainted with inSSIDer.
Download inSSIDer is available as a free download from www.metageek.net/products/inssider/. It?s available as a Windows desktop app or as an iOS or Android mobile app.? I run it on a Windows 7 laptop and it?s a quick and lightweight install. I can honestly say that unlike what I?ve found with some other free networking utilities I?ve used, inSSIDer has given me no problems with memory leaks or interfered with my Windows wireless settings or any other installed software.
Features and Interface Opening inSSIDer?s interface displays the wireless adapter information of the client machine on which inSSIDer is installed. The program?s UI is divided between a pane that displays real-time information about wireless networks in proximity, and another screen shows really handy information, including tips and a user guide.
The user guide has illustrations and plain-speak about the features in the software. You don?t just get a user guide though. The interface includes links to free webinars for those who want to dive deeper into the wireless world?from diagnosing RF interference to performing basic wireless packet analysis.
There are also links to additional tools that help users find interference issues and reduce Wi-Fi saturation as well as selecting the right wireless channel.
Clicking on the ?network? tab pulls up the real-time information about all wireless networks in proximity. By default, the network you?re connected to gets starred. The software helps you optimize that network and considers it the main one to which you?re most likely to connect. The interface prominently displays details about this starred network, so you can view information such as how many other access points are using the same channel as your starred network. For performance improvement, you could place your starred network on a less crowded channel. This may be one of the most useful troubleshooting features in the software.
You get details on all networks in proximity, including signal strength (some tools refer to this as RSSI, in which the closer the number is to 0 the better), channel, security, MAC address of each access point, and the 802.11x standard being used. I do have an 802.11ac access point deployed nearby but inSSIDer reported it as 802.11n. 802.11ac reporting may not happen until the standard actually gets ratified; inSSIDer may require an update for this.
Right-clicking on any listed network opens a menu that lets you quickly select the information you want to see about that network: SSID, signal, channel, maximum rate, network type, and even the access point?s vendor. The entire view of networks can also be sorted by the same parameters.
inSSIDer will also calculate a Link score based on information such as channel overlap and signal strength for each wireless network. You can see how tweaking channel settings or even relocating an access point or router influences the score?the higher the score, the better the network performance you will receive.
A Fun, Useful Tool What?s great about inSSIDer is that you can use it for several real-world purposes for your wireless network. For instance, say you are trying to find the best location to place an access point or router. Position the device and then fire up inSSIDER to see what? signal strength the software reports. This is really useful if you are trying to setup a Wi-Fi network in a place with lots of thick walls, glass or mirrors or multiple levels.
You can also use inSSIDer to tweak your wireless channel. In the U.S, there are 14 channels used for the 2.4GHz signal. These channels typically are 1, 6, and 11. So if you see many wireless networks in your area using channel 11 for example, by using inSSIDer you can change your 2.4 GHz signal to operate on channel 6 to tweak performance.?
Yes, it may be lightweight for those who deploy wireless networks professionally. But anyone managing a home or small business wireless network will certainly benefit from the information inSSIDer provides. It earns a 4.5 out of 5 star rating and is easily a PCMag Editors? Choice for networking utilities.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? A handful of senators from states without sales taxes are blocking a bill that would tax Internet purchases.
They don't have enough support to kill the bill, but they can delay a final vote until Friday ? or even this weekend ? if senators don't reach an agreement to vote earlier.
The bill would empower states to require online retailers to collect state and local sales taxes for purchases made over the Internet. Under the bill, the sales taxes would be sent to the states where a shopper lives.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is leading the fight against the bill. Oregon, Montana, New Hampshire and Delaware have no sales taxes, though the two senators from Delaware support the bill.
"It's coercive. It requires a number of states to collect the taxes of other states thousands of miles away against their will," Wyden said in an interview. "It's discrimination because this forces some people online to carry out responsibilities that brick and mortar retailers do not have to do."
Wyden said the bill also gives an advantage to foreign retailers, which would not be covered.
The bill has already survived two procedural votes this week, getting 74 votes in favor each time. If senators can't reach an agreement to vote earlier, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the Senate will vote Friday morning to end the debate.
The Senate is scheduled to go on vacation next week, and Reid vowed Thursday to pass the bill before senators leave town.
"One way or another, we will finish work on this measure before we leave," Reid said.
Wyden said he doesn't want to inconvenience senators eager to go home. But, he added, "I don't want to have our constituents rolled over in the process."
Under current law, states can only require stores to collect sales taxes if the store has a physical presence in the state. As a result, many online sales are essentially tax-free, giving Internet retailers an advantage over brick-and-mortar stores.
Supporters say the bill is about fairness for local businesses that already collect sales taxes, and lost revenue for states. Opponents say the bill would impose complicated regulations on retailers and doesn't have enough protections for small businesses. Businesses with less than $1 million a year in online sales would be exempt.
Many of the nation's governors ? Republicans and Democrats ? have been lobbying the federal government for years for the authority to collect sales taxes from online sales.
The issue is getting bigger for states as more people make purchases online. Last year, Internet sales in the U.S. totaled $226 billion, up nearly 16 percent from the previous year, according to Commerce Department estimates.
The National Conference of State Legislatures estimates that states lost $23 billion last year because they couldn't collect taxes on out-of-state sales.
The bill pits brick-and-mortar stores like Wal-Mart against online services such as eBay. The National Retail federation supports it. And Amazon.com, which initially fought efforts in some states to make it collect sales taxes, supports it, too.
The bill also gets support from many Republicans who have pledged not to increase taxes. The bill's main sponsor is Sen. Mike Enzi, a conservative Republican from Wyoming. He is working closely with Sen. Dick Durbin, a liberal Democrat from Illinois.
Enzi and Durbin say the bill doesn't raise taxes. Instead, they say, it gives states a mechanism to enforce current taxes.
In many states, shoppers are required to pay unpaid sales taxes when they file state tax returns. But governors complain that few people comply.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said he supports the bill in part because tax-free Internet sales are eating into sales by Delaware retailers.
"In our region, we've long benefited from significant commercial sales from residents of Maryland, of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, who come to Delaware to shop because we're a tax-free state," Coons said. "Over time, the benefit of that has eroded as folks discovered that they could buy the same things online without paying sales tax from home."
He noted that the bill would not require anyone from Delaware to pay sales taxes.
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Follow Stephen Ohlemacher on Twitter: http://twitter.com/stephenatap
LUXEMBOURG (AP) ? A court says the European Union's ban on importing products from seal hunts can stand, despite a challenge by manufacturers and traders.
EU law authorizes the marketing of seal products resulting only from hunts traditionally conducted by Inuit communities for subsistence.
The General Court of the European Union ruled Thursday that, as different member countries were enacting their own regulations, EU-wide action was needed to preserve the single market.
Rebecca Aldworth, executive director of Humane Society International/Canada, said animal rights activists are "thrilled that the European General Court has rejected this shameful attempt by the commercial sealing industry to overturn the EU ban on seal product trade."
(Ends first round) NEW YORK, April 25 (Reuters) - Selections in the first roundof the 2013 NFL Draft at Radio City Music Hall on Thursday (picknumber, NFL team, player, position, college): 1-Kansas City, Eric Fisher, offensive tackle, Central Michigan 2-Jacksonville, Luke Joeckel, offensive tackle, Texas A&M 3-Miami (from Oakland), Dion Jordan, defensive tackle, Oregon 4-Philadelphia, Lane Johnson, offensive tackle, Oklahoma 5-Detroit, Ezekiel Ansah, defensive end, Brigham Young 6-Cleveland, Barkevious Mingo, linebacker, LSU 7-Arizona, Jonathan Cooper, guard, North Carolina 8-St. ...
The USPTO published a number of Apple patent applications Tuesday, including two related to automobiles (via AppleInsider). The car patents both describe systems that can be built into future iPhones, replacing most of the functionality of your standard key fob with the smartphone, and providing a way to help drivers navigate the often maze-like interiors of parking garages to find their ride.
In healthcare, it?s common to hear buzzwords thrown around. In the past we have given you a handy guide for navigating the tricky acronyms elder care professionals and caregivers frequently come across. ?
Bidzy, a new platform for connecting local services businesses with customers who need the service they offer in the next few hours, is launching at Disrupt NY 2013 today. Like the best ideas, Bidzy's premise is simple: allow the customer to specify exactly what they want and the amount they are willing to pay and then let the individual businesses decide if they're happy to take the job on.
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Public release date: 26-Apr-2013
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The USPTO published a number of Apple patent applications Tuesday, including two related to automobiles (via AppleInsider). The car patents both describe systems that can be built into future iPhones, replacing most of the functionality of your standard key fob with the smartphone, and providing a way to help drivers navigate the often maze-like interiors of parking garages to find their ride.