May 30, 2013 ? Observations by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity have revealed areas with gravel and pebbles that are characteristic of a former riverbed. Researchers, including members of the Niels Bohr Institute, have analysed their shapes and sizes and the rounded pebbles clearly show that there has been flowing water on Mars. The results are published in the scientific journal, Science.
The Mars rover's stereo camera took pictures of a few areas with densely packed pebbles, cemented together like concrete. The image field of an area named Hottah was a mosaic of approximately 1.4 meters x 80 centimeters. But when the picture is taken at an angle from the camera arm's two meter high mast down towards the ground-level, it gives a slightly distorted view in which the size of the rocks depend on their location in the image frame. To remedy this, the researcher first had to process the image so the proportions are comparable.
"Next, we divided the image into smaller fields of 10 mm and analysed the gravel, which consists of coarse grains of sand around 1/3 mm. We examined the pebbles which are between 4 and 40 mm in greater detail. Altogether we made a thorough analysis of 515 pebbles," explains Asmus Koefoed, a research assistant in the Mars Group at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.
Smooth, rounded stones
When rocks are worn by the wind, they become angular and rough -- similar to the result of sandblasting. When rocks are moving in flowing water, they are worn down in a completely different way. They tumble around in a mixture of water and sand bumping into each other and the corners and edges of the rocks eventually become smooth and rounded.
"We could see that almost all of the 515 pebbles we analysed were worn flat, smooth and round. We have classified them according to their geometry, which can be described using a single number -- the 'Corey shape factor', where 0 describes rocks that are completely flat like a piece of paper and 1 means they are perfect spheres," explains Asmus Koefoed.
There are both light and dark rocks in various shades and colours -- much like the original rocks on Earth and Mars. Densely packed deposits were formed locally, which occur when fine sand and mud flow along with the gravel and pebbles. This all clumps together into something that can harden into a concrete-like substance, a conglomerate. The solid sediments have then subsequently been worn flat on the top by wind-borne sand particles that flowed past the conglomerate during events of very strong wind.
Current like a Danish stream
The new results are interesting because they tell us about the climate history of Mars. What would it take to cause the stones to look like they do?
"In order to have moved and formed these rounded pebbles, there must have been flowing water with a depth of between 10 cm and 1 meter and a flow rate of about 1 meter per second -- or 3.6 km/h -- slightly faster than a typical natural Danish stream," explains Morten Bo Madsen, head of the Mars research group at the Niels Bohr Institute.
So it has not just been sporadic flowing water that evaporates quickly, but prolonged warmer periods where the streams were active. There was probably a higher atmospheric pressure on the planet than today, where the pressure is below about 1000 Pascal, about one percent of the Earth's atmospheric pressure. This means that the planet must have had a denser atmosphere, which caused a greater surface pressure than today.
Until now, it was believed that the warm period on mars was as far back as 3.5-3.7 billion years ago, but with the new studies it is now believed that this period may have extended to only 2-3 billion years ago.
Mars has thus been a dynamic place, which would not have been totally inhospitable to life, as we know it on Earth. Apart from running water recent investigations with Curiosity have shown that there were a pH-neutral environment and minerals that microbial life could use for nourishment.
Curiosity has thus achieved one of its objectives, namely to investigate whether there are areas on Mars, which could have been habitable for microbial life.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, center, accompanied by Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, right, and Acting Labor Secretary Seth D. Harris, speaks about Social Security and Medicare , Friday, May 31, 213, at the Treasury Department in Washington. The government says Medicare's giant hospital trust will not be exhausted until 2026, while the date that Social Security will exhaust its trust fund is unchanged at 2033. The date for Medicare is two years later than was projected last year. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, center, accompanied by Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, right, and Acting Labor Secretary Seth D. Harris, speaks about Social Security and Medicare , Friday, May 31, 213, at the Treasury Department in Washington. The government says Medicare's giant hospital trust will not be exhausted until 2026, while the date that Social Security will exhaust its trust fund is unchanged at 2033. The date for Medicare is two years later than was projected last year. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, accompanied by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, speaks about Social Security and Medicare, Friday, May 31, 2013, at the Treasury Department in Washington. The government says Medicare's giant hospital trust will not be exhausted until 2026, while the date that Social Security will exhaust its trust fund is unchanged at 2033. The date for Medicare is two years later than was projected last year. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew listens at left as Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius speaks about Social Security and Medicare, Friday, May 31, 2013, at the Treasury Department in Washington. The government says Medicare's giant hospital trust will not be exhausted until 2026, while the date that Social Security will exhaust its trust fund is unchanged at 2033. The date for Medicare is two years later than was projected last year. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Medicare's long-term health is starting to look a little better, the government said Friday, but both Social Security and Medicare are still wobbling toward insolvency within two decades if Congress and the president don't find a way to shore up the trust funds established to take care of older Americans.
Medicare's giant fund for inpatient care will be exhausted in 2026, two years later than estimated last year, while Social Security's projected insolvency in 2033 remains unchanged, the government reported.
An overall slowdown in health care spending is helping Medicare. Spending cuts in President Barack Obama's health care law are also having a positive impact on the balance sheet, but they may prove politically unsustainable over the long run.
The relatively good news about two programs that provide a foundation of economic security for nearly every American family is a respite, not a free pass. Program trustees urged lawmakers anew to seize a current opportunity and make long-term changes to improve finances. Action now would be far less jarring than having to hit the brakes at the edge of a fiscal cliff.
Politically, however, Friday's positive report and the absence of a crisis could make legislative action less likely, especially in light of the lack of trust between President Barack Obama and Republicans in Congress. No end is in sight for the partisan standoff over what to do about Social Security and Medicare, two of the government's costliest programs, and the mammoth budget deficits they help fuel.
Still, fresh warnings were sounded.
"Under current law, both of these vitally important programs are on unsustainable paths," said economist Robert D. Reischauer, one of two independent public trustees overseeing the annual reports.
The window for action "is in the process of closing even as we speak," said his counterpart, Charles Blahous III, also a prominent economist.
Social Security provides monthly benefit checks to about 57 million people, including 40 million retirees and their dependents, 11 million disabled workers and dependents and 6 million survivors of deceased workers. Medicare covers nearly 51 million people, mainly retirees but also disabled workers.
If the funds ever become exhausted, the nation's two biggest benefit programs would collect only enough money to pay partial benefits.
Social Security could cover only about 75 percent of benefits, while Medicare's fund for hospital and nursing rehabilitation care could pay 87 percent of costs.
With 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 every day, America's aging population is straining both programs.
While the combined Social Security fund was projected to be depleted in 2033, the trustees warned that the threat to one of its component trust funds that makes payments to workers on disability is much more urgent. They projected that the disability trust fund would deplete its reserves in just three years, in 2016. That date is unchanged from last year's report.
Blahous said he hoped that would prod lawmakers to act on the broad challenges facing Social Security.
The remaining trustees are senior administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. While acknowledging the need for long-term changes to improve program finances, they used the occasion of the annual report to assert that Obama's policies are working, particularly his health care overhaul.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest saw validation in the reports, too. The Medicare numbers showed Obama's health overhaul "is having a positive effect on the deficit," he said, while the Social Security report supports the president's contention that the retirement program is "not driving our short-term deficit."
Motivation for both sides to tackle federal spending deficits ?always risky because of the pain that could cause voters ? has already declined because the improving economy has also pushed projected federal deficits downward. This year's shortfall is now expected to be $642 billion, down from $1.1 trillion last year.
Obama has proposed significant changes to both benefit programs, in the context of budget talks. Those include a formula change that would pare cost-of-living increases for retirees, and nearly $400 billion in Medicare savings, mainly from cuts to service providers. Congressional Republicans want to do more, particularly on Medicare, by converting the program into a private insurance system.
Social Security is financed by a 6.2 percent tax on the first $113,700 of workers' wages, paid by both employers and workers. Congress temporarily reduced the tax on workers to 4.2 percent for 2011 and 2012, though the program's finances were being made whole through increased government borrowing.
The Medicare tax rate is 1.45 percent on all wages, paid by both employees and workers.
Blahous said if Social Security's shortfall were to be fixed immediately by boosting the payroll tax alone, that rate for workers and employers together would have to be increased from its current 12.4 percent to nearly 15.1 percent. If action were delayed until 2033 ? the year of insolvency ? the tax would have to rise to 16.5 percent.
If the savings were to come only from reducing benefits and were made immediately, the benefits would have to be cut 16.5 percent for both current and future recipients.
Targeting future beneficiaries alone would mean benefit cuts of nearly 20 percent.
Waiting until 2033 to impose the changes would mean benefit cuts of 23 percent for current and future recipients. If policymakers wanted to limit the cuts to future beneficiaries, even wiping out all of their benefits would not close the shortfall, said Blahous.
"The window of opportunity to deal with Social Security closes well before the early 2030s," he said.
Not all the news was bleak.
The trustees projected a 2 percent Social Security cost-of-living increase for 2014. And the monthly Medicare Part B premium for outpatient care was projected to remain the same as this year. That's generally $104.90, although upper-income retirees pay more.
The good news for Medicare may not last. The program's future costs are difficult to estimate, subject not only to economic fluctuations and the aging society but also to the impact of the latest blockbuster drug or technological breakthrough.
Nonetheless, the trustees said the overall slowdown in health care spending is providing relief for Medicare. It was the main reason for extending the life of the trust fund by two years. The report said there was a particularly sharp drop in spending on nursing home care. Medicare pays for limited nursing home stays while patients recuperate from hospitalization.
Also cited were reductions in payments to popular Medicare Advantage plans, the private insurance alternative within the program. About 1 in 4 Medicare beneficiaries are in such plans, which offer lower out-of-pocket costs usually in exchange for limitations on the choice of hospitals and doctors. The plans had once been overpaid when compared to the cost of care in traditional Medicare, but Obama's health care law cut back those payments.
Public trustee Reischauer, who specializes in health care economics, said he's hopeful and cautiously optimistic that the slowdown in health care costs will continue.
HHS Secretary Sebelius said the health care overhaul "has helped put Medicare on a more stable ground without eliminating a single guaranteed benefit."
But the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, said the report "shouldn't give anyone comfort" because Medicare's slower spending reflected the country's weak economy, even as the program faces rapidly growing numbers of recipients.
"Reforming Medicare and Social Security is a national imperative that policymakers on both sides of the aisle and at the White House must embrace if we are going to protect those programs for our seniors and for future generations, while simultaneously bringing down our sky-high debt," Hatch said
AARP, the seniors lobby, said it will continue to fight cuts in either program.
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AP Economics Writer Martin Crutsinger contributed to this report.
Astronauts heading to Mars would face exposure to a deluge of radiation, in some cases as much as NASA policy permits, according to new data from the Curiosity rover.
The space agency limits astronauts to a 3% increased risk of fatal cancer. This translates to different levels of radiation exposure, depending on an astronaut's age and gender.
But according to a paper published in Friday's edition of the journal Science, radiation exposure in a nonstop round-trip to Mars, which would take about a year, would ring in at about 662 millisieverts.
One sievert, or 1,000 millisieverts, of radiation over time is generally associated with a 5% increase in fatal cancer risk.
"It is clear that the exposure from the cruise phases alone is a large fraction of (and in some cases greater than) currently accepted astronaut career limits," the authors wrote.
As the Obama administration calls for a manned trip to the Red Planet by the mid-2030s, mission planners will have to address the challenge, experts said.
"It's not a show-stopper," said Lewis Dartnell, an astrobiologist at the University of Leicester in England who was not involved in the work. "But it does mean if we want to do a human mission to Mars as safely as we can, we perhaps need to start thinking about how to better shield and protect these astronauts against radiation in space."
Radiation detectors on most unmanned spacecraft are exposed directly to space and pick up all the energetic protons, helium ions and heavier particles flying around out there. But because Curiosity's Radiation Assessment Detector was huddled inside its protective spacecraft, its readings are the first to show what kind of radiation risk humans might face while traveling inside a shielded spacecraft.
Curiosity's RAD instrument was designed to measure the radiation on the surface of Mars. But late in the game, scientists realized they could also use it in flight to test how much radiation got through the vessel's shielding.
"It actually wasn't really planned until about a year before the launch, and then we realized we had the opportunity to do this," said first author Cary Zeitlin, a physicist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo.
At a news conference Thursday, RAD lead scientist and Southwest Research Institute physicist Donald Hassler compared Curiosity's protective spacecraft to the similarly designed Orion capsule, a manned craft Lockheed Martin is building that could carry humans to the moon and Mars.
Given the ships' similar silhouettes, measurements of radiation within Curiosity's spacecraft could help shed light on the exposure astronauts might face traveling in Orion, he said.
Scientists are concerned about the radiation dose humans might get once on Mars, but they think that exposure during the trip from Earth would be much more severe because particles are coming from all directions and not just from above, Zeitlin said.
The researchers used RAD to detect two types of radiation: galactic cosmic rays, which are particles hurled from supernova explosions and other high-energy phenomena; and solar energetic particles, shot out from the sun after a flare or a coronal mass ejection.
The RAD instrument picked up an average of about 1.8 millisieverts per day of galactic cosmic rays, according to the study. The total radiation was the equivalent of getting a CT scan every five to six days for the duration of the trip, Zeitlin said.
Over the 348 million miles Curiosity traveled to Mars, the rover only experienced five solar energetic particle events, which lasted up to a few days. Though levels of radiation shot up during those events, overall they contributed only about 5% of the total radiation exposure during the trip.
Still, the researchers noted, the sun has been in a very weak solar maximum recently. If NASA someday sends Mars-bound astronauts into outer space, it could be during a much more active solar season.
University of Leicester's Dartnell said that engineers would have to figure out how to make the spacecraft get to Mars much faster ? or would have to find creative ways to shield the spacecraft.
For example, some researchers have proposed using a ship's water and wastewater supplies to line a small protective chamber for astronauts. Water serves as a very effective shield against radiation.
Or, Dartnell added, it may be time to consider "reassessing what level of risk we think is acceptable" for astronauts.
Not so long ago, Judith Hill and Sarah Simmons were both strong candidates to win season four of ?The Voice.? On Tuesday night, both were axed from the hit singing competition.
Their reactions were vastly different.
?I was a little shocked,? admitted Judith after the show, ?but I think it was also a good, good lesson.?
Her blind audition was so strong that "The Voice" used it to promote the season premiere back in March. Yet she acknowledged that her version of the will.i.am and Justin Bieber song ?#thatPower? failed to connect with the voting public, even as she defended her decision to take the track in a funk direction.
?I don't think anything went wrong musically. I think that it was really one of my more exciting performances,? she said. ?I think that if a song is a lot more familiar, has a lot more pop sensibilities, I think that America tends to draw more to that than something they're not used to.?
So what lesson did Judith learn from her ?Voice? elimination? ?I think that I've learned more about America,? she explained. ?I've learned more about just how they receive music, and how to really make sure everything is something they can relate to.?
Teammate Sarah was much less surprised when her name was called. ?I just felt surrendered,? she told TODAY.com. ?You can't complain at all with this. I have no negative thing to say about it. It was an adrenaline rush and it was a taste of my dream.?
In fact, Sarah found herself calming down their coach, Adam Levine.
?He was really upset,? she explained. ?He wanted to talk to us outside (after the show).?
That discussion revolved around selecting Gotye?s ?Somebody That I Used To Know? for what became Sarah?s final performance on the ?Voice? stage. ?For the live rounds, I've basically chosen all of my songs (in) collaboration with (Adam), but for this one, he chose it for me,? she continued. ?I know he was feeling really bad that I was going home.
?I told him 'Please don't feel bad, because I've never worked so hard in my life on a freaking song.' I told him it challenged me and it stretched me.?
She left the show with high praise for her Grammy-winning coach. ?He?s amazing,? she enthused. ?I know he wants to stay in contact, which is awesome. He's a really good person. I'm really grateful to know him.?
Even ?Voice? host Carson Daly admitted to being stunned by the exits of Judith and Sarah, but he also suggested there was something to be gleaned from the development. ?I was surprised. I was surprised at Judith probably more than Sarah, because she's been just such a frontrunner from our eyes,? he admitted.
?But once we go live and we turn the power of the show over to America, there's something liberating about that. If you?re shocked about (Tuesday night's) results, then maybe there's something about America and the way they think and feel that you don't know about.?
They're one of the most annoying things about living in a big city, but pigeons?aka the rats of the sky?have developed a pretty clever defense mechanism designed to scare off attackers: a loud and repeated clapping noise that you probably hear when you scare an annoying pigeon into fleeing.
As BBC Earth Productions discovered by studying a pigeon's takeoff with a high-speed camera, the noise seems to be generated as the bird's muscular wings and stiff feathers clap together on the upswing. The footage also reveals how graceful a pigeon and almost makes you want to like them, until you remember the mountain of crap on your air conditioner and reach for a broom.
Disappointing to some professionals, I?m sure, is the fact that two disorders didn?t make it into the DSM-5 at all ? not even in the chapter ?Conditions for Further Study.?
Those two lonely disorders? ?Internet addiction? and parental alienation disorder.
This is a nice respite from the hype surrounding both these concerns and reaffirms what we?ve been saying here for years ? these are not mental disorders. Do some people have a usually-temporary and almost-always transitory problem with figuring out how much time to spend on the Internet? Sure they do ? it?s just not a disorder-level concern.
And the evidence is simply too sparse for ?parental alienation disorder,? which I believe has propagated more for legal than clinical reasons.
Nearly since the introduction of the term ?Internet addiction? in 1996, I?ve been beating the same drum about this so-called disorder ? it doesn?t exist. I wrote a guide to Internet addiction back in 1999, which we keep updated from time to time.
So here we have 17 years? worth of research, and still the disorder doesn?t even rise to the level of recognition in the DSM of a condition that may need further study. That could be for one of two reasons. One, the working group that looked at the research was biased and decided that such a disorder couldn?t possibly exist (which would require consensus among the entire working group ? a pretty unlikely scenario). Two, the research is still so flimsy and based upon the same flawed instruments it?s been using for most of that 17 years, the data are simply not robust or generalizable.
In 2008, I penned this article about why Internet addiction still doesn?t exist. I had to do an update just 8 months ago to rebut the claim by Forbes that Internet addiction was going to be included in the new DSM-5. (A good argument not to get your health information from a website like Forbes.)
The DSM-5 working groups also didn?t much care for parental alienation disorder, a disorder we covered late last year here. The research data for this concern simply doesn?t support its inclusion at this time. Which is exactly what we told our readers last September (just so there are no surprises!):
??The bottom line ? it is not a disorder within one individual,?? said Dr. Darrel Regier, vice chair of the task force drafting the manual.
??It?s a relationship problem ? parent-child or parent-parent. Relationship problems per se are not mental disorders.?
Could you imagine the outcry the American Psychiatric Association ? the publishers of the DSM-5 ? would receive if they started coding relationship problems as mental illness, on the same level as schizophrenia or clinical depression?
The evidence for both these disorders is so lacking, neither made it into the category ?Conditions for Further Study.? That?s saying something ? especially for ?Internet addiction,? which has had hundreds of peer-reviewed studies published about it.
For all the misplaced angst and media-created melodrama surrounding the publication of the DSM-5, we can be thankful neither of these two disorders made the cut.
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Dr. John Grohol is the founder & CEO of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.
Like this author? Catch up on other posts by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. (or subscribe to their feed).
????Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 28 May 2013 ????Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.
APA Reference Grohol, J. (2013). Not in the DSM-5: Internet Addiction & Parental Alienation Disorder. Psych Central. Retrieved on May 29, 2013, from http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/05/29/not-in-the-dsm-5-internet-addiction-parental-alienation-disorder/
May 28, 2013 ? A novel disease in songbirds has rapidly evolved to become more harmful to its host on at least two separate occasions in just two decades, according to a new study. The research provides a real-life model to help understand how diseases that threaten humans can be expected to change in virulence as they emerge.
"Everybody who?s had the flu has probably wondered at some point, 'Why do I feel so bad?'" said Dana Hawley of Virginia Tech, the lead author of the study to be published in PLOS Biology on May 28, 2013. "That?s what we?re studying: Why do pathogens cause harm to the very hosts they depend on? And why are some life-threatening, while others only give you the sniffles?"
Disease virulence is something of a paradox. In order to spread, viruses and bacteria have to reproduce in great numbers. But as their numbers increase inside a host?s body, the host gets more and more ill. So a highly virulent disease runs the risk of killing or debilitating its hosts before they get a chance to pass the bug along. It finds the right balance through evolution, and the new study shows it can happen in just a few years.
Hawley and her coauthors studied House Finch eye disease, a form of conjunctivitis, or pinkeye, caused by the bacteria Mycoplasma gallisepticum. It first appeared around Washington, D.C., in the 1990s. The House Finch is native to the Southwest but has spread to towns and backyards across North America. The bacteria is not harmful to humans, which makes it a good model for studying the evolution of dangerous diseases such as SARS, Ebola, and avian flu.
"There?s an expectation that a very virulent disease like this one will become milder over time, to improve its ability to spread. Otherwise, it just kills the host and that?s the end of it for the organism," said Andr? Dhondt, director of Bird Population Studies at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and a coauthor of the study. "House Finch eye disease gave us an opportunity to test this?and we were surprised to see it actually become worse rather than milder."
The researchers used frozen bacterial samples taken from sick birds in California and the Eastern Seaboard at five dates between 1994 and 2010, as the pathogen was evolving and spreading. The samples came from an archive maintained by coauthor David Ley of North Carolina State University, who first isolated and identified the causative organism. The team experimentally infected wild-caught House Finches, allowing them to measure how sick the birds got with each sample. They kept the birds in cages as they fell ill and then recovered (none of the birds died from the disease).
Contrary to expectations, they found that in both regions the disease had evolved to become more virulent over time. Birds exposed to later disease strains developed more swollen eyes that took longer to heal. In another intriguing finding, it was a less-virulent strain that spread westward across the continent. Once established in California, the bacteria again began evolving higher virulence.
In evolutionary terms, some strains of the bacteria were better adapted to spreading across the continent, while others were more suited to becoming established in one spot. "For the disease to disperse westward, a sick bird has to fly a little farther, and survive for longer, to pass on the infection. That will select for strains that make the birds less sick," Hawley said. "But when it gets established in a new location, there are lots of other potential hosts, especially around bird feeders. It can evolve toward being a nastier illness because it?s getting transmitted more quickly."
House Finch eye disease was first observed in 1994 when bird watchers reported birds with weepy, inflamed eyes to Project FeederWatch, a citizen science study run by the Cornell Lab. Though the disease does not kill birds directly, it weakens them and makes them easy targets for predators. The disease quickly spread south along the Eastern Seaboard, north and west across the Great Plains, and down the West Coast. By 1998 the House Finch population in the eastern United States had dropped by half?a loss of an estimated 40 million birds.
Bird watchers can do their part to help House Finches and other backyard birds by washing their feeders in a 10 percent bleach solution twice a month.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) ? Cellphone pioneer Motorola announced Wednesday that it's opening a Texas manufacturing facility that will create 2,000 jobs and produce its new flagship device, Moto X, the first smartphone ever assembled in the U.S.
The company has already begun hiring for the Fort Worth plant. The site was most recently unoccupied but was once used by fellow phone manufacturer Nokia, meaning it was designed to produce mobile devices, said Will Moss, a spokesman for Motorola Mobility, which is owned by Google.
"It was a great facility in an ideal location," said Moss, who said it will be an easy trip for Motorola engineering teams based in Chicago and Silicon Valley, and is also close to the company's service and repair operations in Mexico.
The formal announcement came at AllThingsD's D11 Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., from Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry's office administers a pair of special state incentive funds meant to help attract job-creating businesses to the state, but Moss said the Republican governor did not distribute any money to close this deal.
"Motorola Mobility's decision to manufacture its new smartphone and create thousands of new jobs in Texas is great news for our growing state," Perry said through a spokeswoman. "Our strong, healthy economy, built on a foundation of low taxes, smart regulation, fair legal system and a skilled workforce is attracting companies from across the country and around the world that want to be a part of the rising Texas success story."
The factory will be owned and run by Flextronics International Ltd., a Singapore-based contract electronics manufacturer that has had a long relationship with Motorola.
Assembly accounts for relatively little of the cost of a smartphone. The cost largely lies in the chips, battery and display, most of which come from Asian factories. For instance, research firm iSuppli estimates that the components of Samsung's latest flagship phone, the Galaxy S4, cost $229, while the assembly costs $8.
In December, Apple Inc. said it would move manufacturing of one of its existing lines of Mac computers to the U.S. this year, reversing decades of increasing outsourcing. The company has come under some criticism for working conditions at the Chinese factories where its products are assembled.
Some other manufacturers, such as Hewlett-Packard Co., have kept some PC assembly operations in the U.S.
Moss said the Moto X will go on sale this summer. He said he could provide few details, citing priority secrets. He said the idea from the beginning was to bring manufacturing back to the U.S.
"It's obviously our major market so, for us, having manufacturing here gets us much closer to our key customers and partners as well as our end users," he said. "It makes for much leaner, more efficient operations."
But Motorola will still have global manufacturing operations, including at factories in China and Brazil.
"Fact remains that more than 130 million people in the U.S. are using smartphones," Mark Randall, Motorola's senior vice president of supply chain and Operations, said in a statement, "but until Moto X, none of those smartphones have been built in the USA."
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Eds: AP Technology Writer Peter Svensson contributed to this report from New York.
An Indiana measure, which a lower court had already blocked, would have prohibited Medicaid funding for health providers like Planned Parenthood. The US Supreme Court declined the abortion case Tuesday.
By Mark Guarino,?Staff writer / May 28, 2013
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg discusses Roe vs. Wade, the landmark abortion ruling, on its 40th anniversary at The University of Chicago Law School, May 11.
Paul Beaty / AP
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States aiming to restrict abortion access were dealt a setback Tuesday when the US Supreme Court refused to consider an appeal of a lower court decision blocking an Indiana measure that would have prohibited Medicaid funding for health providers that perform abortion services.
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The decision is likely to affect a similar proposed ban making its way through the legislature in Arizona. Both states argue that taxpayers are inadvertently funding abortions when health-care clinics like Planned Parenthood receive Medicaid funding for services other than abortion. Federal law prevents the direct funding of abortion services, but the measures in Indiana and Arizona are seen as going a step further in stripping Medicaid dollars from any organization that offers abortion.
Opponents of the measures say the strategy denies low-income patients the right to obtain health care from their provider of choice. The Indiana chapter of Planned Parenthood, which operates 28 clinics in the state, says that it serves more than 9,300 Medicaid patients annually for preventive-care services that include cancer screenings, routine medical exams, and birth control.
Betty Cockrum, president and CEO of the Indiana chapter, released a statement Tuesday, characterizing legislators? strategy as ?trying to score political points and wasting taxpayer dollars.? Medicaid funding represents about 20 percent of the group?s annual budget of $15 million.
The Indiana ban passed in June 2011 but was immediately blocked by the US District Court in Indianapolis. In signing the law, then-Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) said he was confident ?that all non-abortion services ... will remain readily available? across the state and that, if the affected organizations eliminated abortion from their roster, they would once again become eligible for federal dollars.
?Any organization affected by this provision can resume receiving taxpayer dollars immediately by ceasing or separating its operations that perform abortions,? he said.
In October 2012, the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago upheld the lower court?s decision, which prompted the state to appeal to the higher court this year.
Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller said in a statement released Tuesday he would investigate ?any remaining legal avenues? to uphold the ban and stressed that the issue was one of states? rights, not an attack on abortion access.
?My office always contended this is ultimately a dispute between the state and federal government, not between a private medical provider and the state,? he said.
Even though a federal judge struck down a similar ban in Arizona last year, Gov. Jan Brewer (R) is including language along such lines as part of a plan to expand her state?s Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act. The plan passed the state Senate two weeks ago and faces an uncertain future in the House.
Tuesday?s high-court move may dampen similar efforts to restrict Planned Parenthood?s ability to offer abortion services, says Elizabeth Nash, the state issues manager at the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit in Washington that tracks abortion issues. But, she adds, such efforts will probably be replaced with other measures that are written with the same purpose ? such as creating a priority system for how Medicaid dollars can be spent, or instituting restrictions that are intended to separate abortion from other family-planning services.
?There are other ways that have been used to varying degrees of success to essentially keep Planned Parenthood out of public dollars,? Ms. Nash says.
Earlier this month, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) signed into law a bill restricting access to a so-called abortion pill, which accounts for about one-fourth of US abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute. The new law requires clinics that offer pill-induced abortions to meet the same standards as clinics that provide surgical abortions.
Planned Parenthood says the law is intended to target a single clinic in Lafayette, Ind., which is the only clinic in the state that offers nonsurgical abortions.
May 28, 2013 ? Some people seem to pick up a second language with relative ease, while others have a much more difficult time. Now, a new study suggests that learning to understand and read a second language may be driven, at least in part, by our ability to pick up on statistical regularities.
The study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Some research suggests that learning a second language draws on capacities that are language-specific, while other research suggests that it reflects a more general capacity for learning patterns. According to psychological scientist and lead researcher Ram Frost of Hebrew University, the data from the new study clearly point to the latter:
"These new results suggest that learning a second language is determined to a large extent by an individual ability that is not at all linguistic," says Frost.
In the study, Frost and colleagues used three different tasks to measure how well American students in an overseas program picked up on the structure of words and sounds in Hebrew. The students were tested once in the first semester and again in the second semester.
The students also completed a task that measured their ability to pick up on statistical patterns in visual stimuli. The participants watched a stream of complex shapes that were presented one at a time. Unbeknownst to the participants, the 24 shapes were organized into 8 triplets -- the order of the triplets was randomized, though the shapes within each triplet always appeared in the same sequence. After viewing the stream of shapes, the students were tested to see whether they implicitly picked up the statistical regularities of the shape sequences.
The data revealed a strong association between statistical learning and language learning: Students who were high performers on the shapes task tended to pick up the most Hebrew over the two semesters.
"It's surprising that a short 15-minute test involving the perception of visual shapes could predict to such a large extent which of the students who came to study Hebrew would finish the year with a better grasp of the language," says Frost.
According to the researchers, establishing a link between second language acquisition and a general capacity for statistical learning may have broad implications.
"This finding points to the possibility that a unified and universal principle of statistical learning can quantitatively explain a wide range of cognitive processes across domains, whether they are linguistic or nonlinguistic," they conclude.
This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (159/10) and by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (RO1 HD 067364 and PO1HD 01994).
Obama lipstick on collar happened at a celebration for Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month. The president referred to the smear in his remarks at the event Tuesday night.
By Peter Grier,?Staff Writer / May 29, 2013
President Obama points to lipstick marks on his collar in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday night. 'A sign of the warmth is the lipstick on my collar,' he said.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
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Why did President Obama have lipstick on his collar when he rose to make remarks at a White House reception Tuesday night?
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Washington Editor
Peter Grier is The Christian Science Monitor's Washington editor. In this capacity, he helps direct coverage for the paper on most news events in the nation's capital.
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Because an enthusiastic supporter had put it there accidentally, that?s why. He referred to that right up top as his way of softening up the crowd. Truth be told, he was already pretty happy to be there, as it was a celebration for Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Having been raised in Hawaii, Mr. Obama is something of a Pacific Islander himself.
Anyway, the president began by thanking everybody for the warmth of his reception.
?A sign of the warmth is the lipstick on my collar,? he said.
Then he said he knew the culprit, and he asked to see a woman named Jessica Sanchez.
?It wasn?t Jessica. It was her aunt. Where is she?? he said as the room dissolved in laughter.
Obama then made the obvious point that he did not want to get in trouble with the first lady on this.
?That?s why I?m calling you out right in front of everybody,? he said to the aunt in question.
The president had to say something about the smear, right? It was a pretty obvious lip imprint, right up there near his necktie. It was going to show up in pictures and become the subject of a thousand gossip blogs.
If Obama?s reelection campaign showed anything, it is that he and his advisers understand the power of nontraditional media and their ability to shape the president?s image. All those appearances by him and Michelle on everything from ?The View? to ?Dr. Oz? were a big part of his campaign strategy. A lipstick smear? That?s good for a week of special reports on ?Ellen.? Reddit would probably have done another of its crowd-source analysis things, measuring the parameters of the smear and then comparing them to pictures of lips in the crowd, eventually proving beyond a doubt that it could only have come from Joe Biden, or something like that.
Of course we?ve got our own conspiracy theory: Political guru David Axelrod had somebody put it there on purpose. A speechwriter then scripted impromptu remarks on the stain for Obama, loosening up the crowd and distracting the news media from the IRS scandal, Justice-ordered seizure of reporters' phone records, and so forth.
Looks like we can add ?Hornswoggle? to the list of lucky charms: After the WWE star signed on to play the title role in a reboot of horror series ?Leprechaun,? the film has finally found its director.
The Wrap reports that visual effects specialist Zach Lipovsky will helm the long-awaited feature, based on the 1993 flick starring Warwick Davis and Jennifer Anniston. Lipovsky, who got his big break when he won the short-lived Steven Spielberg-Mark Burnett reality series ?On the Lot,? has directed numerous short films and TV movies, but never a theatrical feature.
?Leprechaun,? which toed the line between horror and comedy and spawned several sequels, focused on an evil leprechaun searching for his pot of gold and dodging four-leaf clovers. Producers of the reboot have been mum about what screenwriter Harris Wilkinson?s script entails, preferring the franchise?s new direction remain a mystery ? though Hornswoggle?s WWE affiliation (and Irish in-the-ring persona) ensures that the new villain should be able to kick some gold-stealing butt.
The film is a joint venture between Lionsgate and WWE studios. No word yet on production or release dates, but here?s hoping Hornswoggle?s involvement keeps the tongue-in-cheek spirit of the original intact.
PARIS (AP) ? Roger Federer walked onto Court Suzanne Lenglen, smiled when greeted with applause and looked up into the stands, where three youngsters waved a banner that read, "Roger 4 Ever."
Forever? Probably not, but Federer easily outlasted qualifier Somdev Devvarman in the second round of the French Open, winning 6-2, 6-1, 6-1 Wednesday.
Top-ranked Serena Williams also showed staying power, extending her career-best winning streak to 26 matches by beating wild card Caroline Garcia of France, 6-1, 6-2.
While Williams looks unbeatable of late, Federer has yet to win a tournament this year, the first time he has arrived at Roland Garros without a title since 2000. But he's rested and healthy, and his vast repertoire of shots was on full display against the overmatched Devvarman, who is ranked 188th and now 0-9 against top-10 players.
"I tried to finish the match quite quickly, because I was afraid it would rain," Federer said. "So I was very focused, and I'm very happy for that."
The No. 2-seeded Federer glided across the clay, hitting winners from all over the court ? even beyond the alleys ? and looking at ease on a surface that once vexed him.
He moved ahead of Budge Patty into third place on the men's list for match victories at Roland Garros with 56. Guillermo Vilas and Nicola Pietrangeli share the record of 58.
When Federer finally took the Roland Garros title in 2009, Federer completed a career Grand Slam and tied Pete Sampras' record of 14 major titles. He now seeks a record 18th major title, and his first since Wimbledon last year.
Through two rounds, both against qualifiers, Federer has lost only 11 games.
"I'm happy that I was playing offensive and aggressive tennis in the first two matches," he said. "I didn't back off and start to play passive tennis and wait for mistakes. I took it to my opponent."
Williams has dropped just four games so far. She played the day's final match and finished in a hurry, committing only nine unforced errors never facing a break point.
"It's important for me to win easily," she said. "It's also important for me to play well. If I play well, it will bode well for me at Roland Garros."
Speaking French to the crowd during a post-match interview, Williams was asked what she plans to work on in practice.
"I'd like to improve everything. My French, too," she said, laughing.
The No. 1-ranked Williams seeks her first French Open title since 2002. She last reached the semifinal in 2003.
Since losing in the first round a year ago at Roland Garros, Williams is 69-3, including titles at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, the London Olympics and the season-ending WTA Championships.
While Williams and Federer savored their latest successes, Jamie Hampton earned her first career French Open victory, an upset of No. 25 Lucie Safarova 7-6 (5), 3-6, 9-7. With her win, American women finished the first round 10-5.
Also part of the resurgence in U.S. fortunes was No. 29 Varvara Lepchenko, who reached the third round by whacking 22 forehand winners to defeat Elina Svitolina 7-6 (5), 6-1.
"A couple years ago, we weren't even in the scene," Hampton said. "There wasn't even a group of us. We've progressed, and I think the whole group will continue to progress. We've all got really good games. We're just trying to find our way on the clay right now."
Three Americans did stumble in the second round ? Madison Keys, Mallory Burdette and Shelby Rogers. Keys was beaten in the twilight by Monica Puig 6-4, 7-6 (2), Burdette lost to No. 4-seeded Agnieszka Radwanska 6-3, 6-2, and Rogers squandered a lead against No. 20 Carla Suarez Navarro, 3-6, 6-4, 6-4.
American Sam Querrey, seeded 18th, reached the third round at Roland Garros for the first time by sweeping Jan Hajek 6-4, 7-5, 6-4.
The day began with No. 3 Victoria Azarenka filling a mostly empty stadium court with her familiar shrieks as she beat Elena Vesnina of Russia 6-1, 6-4 in a first-round match postponed one day because of rain. That meant Azarenka reached the second round 72 hours after some players.
"I felt like I'm one of the last ones to start," she said. "It was a long wait, but I think performance-wise it was a good match."
Azarenka waited in vain to play for much of the day on a rainy Tuesday, but said she wasn't flustered by the delay.
"I just really was chilling the whole day, watching 'The Voice,'" she said. "It was incredible. I was so entertained. There's this girl, her name is Judith. She was a duet singer with Michael Jackson. She's absolutely incredible. I mean, I have no idea how sounds like that can come out of somebody's mouth. It's just, wow."
Fans might say the same thing about Azarenka, who wore down Vesnina with her noisy but steady baseline game, committing only 13 unforced errors.
Sara Errani, the 2012 runner-up to Maria Sharapova, beat Yulia Putintseva 6-1, 6-1. Former No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki lost to Bojana Jovanovski 7-6 (2), 6-3.
In other men's second-round play, No. 4 David Ferrer broke serve eight times and beat fellow Spaniard Albert Montanes 6-2, 6-1, 6-3. No. 6 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France eliminated Jarkko Nieminen 7-6 (6), 6-4, 6-3. No. 10 Marin Cilic defeated 18-year-old Australian Nick Kyrgios 6-4, 6-2, 6-2.
May 28, 2013 ? What may be the ultimate heat sink is only possible because of yet another astounding capability of graphene. The one-atom-thick form of carbon can act as a go-between that allows vertically aligned carbon nanotubes to grow on nearly anything.
That includes diamonds. A diamond film/graphene/nanotube structure was one result of new research carried out by scientists at Rice University and the Honda Research Institute USA, reported today in Nature's online journal Scientific Reports.
The heart of the research is the revelation that when graphene is used as a middleman, surfaces considered unusable as substrates for carbon nanotube growth now have the potential to do so. Diamond happens to be a good example, according to Rice materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan and Honda chief scientist Avetik Harutyunyan.
Diamond conducts heat very well, five times better than copper. But its available surface area is very low. By its very nature, one-atom-thick graphene is all surface area. The same could be said of carbon nanotubes, which are basically rolled-up tubes of graphene. A vertically aligned forest of carbon nanotubes grown on diamond would disperse heat like a traditional heat sink, but with millions of fins. Such an ultrathin array could save space in small microprocessor-based devices.
"Further work along these lines could produce such structures as patterned nanotube arrays on diamond that could be utilized in electronic devices," Ajayan said. Graphene and metallic nanotubes are also highly conductive; in combination with metallic substrates, they may also have uses in advanced electronics, he said.
To test their ideas, the Honda team grew various types of graphene on copper foil by standard chemical vapor deposition. They then transferred the tiny graphene sheets to diamond, quartz and other metals for further study by the Rice team.
They found that only single-layer graphene worked well, and sheets with ripples or wrinkles worked best. The defects appeared to capture and hold the airborne iron-based catalyst particles from which the nanotubes grow. The researchers think graphene facilitates nanotube growth by keeping the catalyst particles from clumping.
Ajayan thinks the extreme thinness of graphene does the trick. In a previous study, the Rice lab found graphene shows materials coated with graphene can get wet, but the graphene provides protection against oxidation. "That might be one of the big things about graphene, that you can have a noninvasive coating that keeps the property of the substrate but adds value," he said. "Here it allows the catalytic activity but stops the catalyst from aggregating."
Testing found that the graphene layer remains intact between the nanotube forest and the diamond or other substrate. On a metallic substrate like copper, the entire hybrid is highly conductive.
Such seamless integration through the graphene interface would provide low-contact resistance between current collectors and the active materials of electrochemical cells, a remarkable step toward building high-power energy devices, said Rice research scientist and co-author Leela Mohana Reddy Arava.
Co-authors of the study are Honda senior scientists Rahul Rao and Gugang Chen; Rice graduate student Kaushik Kalaga; Masahiro Ishigami, an assistant professor of physics at the University of Central Florida; and Tony Heinz, the D.M. Rickey Professor of Physics at Columbia University. Ajayan is the Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and of chemistry at Rice.
The research was supported by the Honda Research Institute.
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I am new to C++ and I am stuck on an assignment and I can not figure out what I am doing wrong for nothing.
Here is what I need to do:
In most companies the amount of vacation you receive depends on the number of years you've been with the company. Create a c++ program that will allow the user to enter the number of years and you output the weeks of vacation according to the following:
0 years, 0 weeks vacation
1-5 years, 1 weeks vacation
6-10 years, 2 weeks vacation
11+ years, 3 weeks vacation
Prompt the user if they would like to enter another employee. Also personalize your program by naming your company!
Here is what I have:
#include <iostream> using namespace std; int main( ) { int years; bool tryAgain = true; while ( tryAgain == true ) { cout << "How many years have you been with us?\n"; cin >> years; if (years = 0) { cout << Sorry, no vacation days yet available\n; } else if (years >= 5 ) { cout >> Congratulations, you have 1 week Vacation!\n"; } } else if (years <5 >10 ) { cout >> Congratulations, you have 2 week Vacation!\n"; } } else if (years <11 100 ) { cout >> Congratulations, you have 3 week Vacation!\n"; } char choice; cout << "Would another employee like to enter their data? <y/n> : "; cin >> choice; if ( choice == 'n' || choice == 'N' ) { tryAgain = false; } } return 0; }
Can someone PLEASE tell me what I am doing wrong so I can fix it correctly? Any help will be greatly appreciated!!!!
Is This A Good Question/Topic? 0
Replies To: Very new to C++ Please help!
#2 CTphpnwb ?
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Re: Very new to C++ Please help!
Posted Yesterday, 07:01 PM
You don't say what the issue is, but I noticed that on line 16 you're using an assignment = where you want to use a comparison operator ==.
#3 jimblumberg ?
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Re: Very new to C++ Please help!
Posted Yesterday, 07:08 PM
So what seems to be the problem with your program? Please ask specific questions.
Jim
#4 jackedupchevy ?
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Re: Very new to C++ Please help!
Posted Yesterday, 07:22 PM
It is not working correctly. For instance, on line 18, it keeps giving me an error that says cout is undefined, and I do not know what that means.
Im basically wanting someone to help me figure out what is right, what is wrong, am i using the right comparison operators? Why am I getting error(s)? etc.
Thanks!
#5 jimblumberg ?
Reputation: 3072
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Re: Very new to C++ Please help!
Posted Yesterday, 08:10 PM
On line 18 look at the direction of the >>
Quote
Im basically wanting someone to help me figure out what is right, what is wrong,
This a job for your compiler, if you get compile errors post the complete error messages exactly as they appear in your development environment. These warnings and errors tell you the where and why of your errors. Although they can at times be cryptic you need to start learning how to read these messages.
Very often you might find yourself struggling to accomplish something, let go of something or someone or make some kind of change. You may want to be happier, wealthier, or more successful. You may want to have closer, more loving relationships. Or you may want to travel, take a wonderful vacation, or change your career, or have a more successful business. You work hard, you do all the things you think you should do or that people tell you to do and yet it doesn?t seem to happen for you. The answer may be very simple.
Most of the time, the only thing that?s stopping you is you. You may simply need to give yourself permission to do, be or have what you want. That sounds so simple doesn?t it? It is, and yet it?s not always so easy.
It seems silly to think that if you want something you may not have given yourself permission to have it. Yet it?s true. Very often that can be the thing that holds you back. Think of something you want, and ask yourself if you?ve given yourself permission to have it. If you ask and answer honestly ? and journaling can help you discover your answer ? you might find that there?s a part of you that does not what you to have it and doesn?t give permission.
So the question is are you willing to give yourself permission to have what you want? If the answer is yes, then you simply acknowledge that to yourself.
What do you want to give yourself permission for? Create an affirmation for yourself:
I give myself permission to:
Release all excess weight
Have a close and loving relationship
Love myself
Have a successful business
Be myself
Take a fabulous trip
Make new friends
Make the money I know I deserve
Be a successful business owner
Have a new career
Open myself up to new possibilities for my life
Let go of fear
etc?
Create your affirmation and repeat it to yourself daily. Write it down. Notice how your body feels when you say it and write it. How do you feel? What thoughts come up for you? Do you feel resistance as you say or write it?
If you feel any discomfort, if you feel excuses or arguments coming into your thoughts, or if you feel any resistance at all, you will know that there?s a part of you that is withholding permission. You?ll want to find out what part of you that is. Perhaps it?s the voice of a parent or someone else. Perhaps it?s a part of your personality that?s afraid of what will happen if/when you have what you want.
Sometimes this is the only thing that?s holding you back. You just don?t have your permission to go for what you want. So what are you going to give yourself permission to do, be or have?
Linda Binns is an energy expert. She specializes in helping sensitive and highly sensitive people understand and manage themselves and their energy so they can be more successful and fulfilled both personally and professionally.
Linda Binns is the author of 7 books on energy, including her popular Energy Tips Series which demonstrates how to easily improve your health, increase your income, sell your house and create a supportive home environment by changing your energy.
Go to http://www.TheHighlySensitiveProfessional.com for a free survey to find out whether you are sensitive or highly sensitive and how you can manage and make the most of your sensitivity.
In a casual conversation in what was meant to welcome me to my new city, a white neighbor uncomfortably reminded of me the racial challenges that remain very much intact in the South between white folk and people of color, when he candidly referenced the degree of crime in the city as being the province of the ignorant, uneducated and low income ?blacks? in the neighborhood.?
No code words were necessary. He expressed concern regarding the racial ?other? moving into the white-dominated communities, causing a shifting of geography (white flight) within the city and surrounding areas of Memphis. (Amazingly, he openly discussed these issues with me, as he conveyed that I was an ?exception? to other blacks he encounters on a day-to-day basis.)
Dr. Darron Smith, writing over at the Grio, has a nice piece on race and crime as experienced in Memphis, Tennessee that is worth reading.
I appreciate the sincerity of his argument and concerns about black youth violence.
Inspired by Cornel West's essay some years ago, I have written about the problem of black nihilism and its toxic impact on young people several times. I am no closer to a solution or any particularly brilliant insight on the matter.
Perhaps, there is no easy answer to a problem that was centuries in the making. However, I have come to one qualifier in my thinking on these matters: the nihilism of the ghetto youthocracy and their Chief Keef heroes that kill dozens (if not hundreds) of other black people every week across the country are a symptom of a larger crisis in American cultural values.
The United States has one of the highest rates of inter-personal violence in the world. Americans worship the gun and donate their children to its cult of death. The United States is an imperialist power that kills abroad at will. The United States is a society typified by consumerism, media spectacle, Facebook narcissism, a reality TV show culture that promises that anyone can be famous for doing nothing, and gross wealth and wage inequality. Together those elements (and others) have created a national crisis of meaning wherein human life is equated with ability to buy things and hurt others without consequence.
The nihilism of many black ghetto underclass youth is a function of a debased type of biopolitics that reflects the values of the neo liberal national security corporate democratic surveillance State.
A question. How do we take the macro-level and institutional analysis of these dynamics as described by Darron below and apply it to actionable interventions on the day-to-day?
Memphis is ranked as the tenth deadliest city in the nation. Since I arrived here, not a week has gone by when a young black male under the age of 25 has not been injured or killed as a result of interpersonal conflict within predominately black spaces and, subsequently, reported on the nightly news. The face of crime is young, black and male, and those young men are typecast as angry, overly violent, aggressive and a general menace to society.?
That image pervades our thinking, informing our manufactured understanding that all black men are to be feared and are, thus, potential suspects in a police lineup. Inequality in society makes crime more likely as populations must find ways to cope with despair. Having few socially acceptable coping skills, black men often lash out, defending what little they may possess in the form of manhood and pride.
What my neighbor failed to realize, like most white Americans, is that these circumstances are realities that create the conditions that give rise to crime and deviance and can fuel society?s perceptions of crime that lead to unjust characterizations.
I am left confused and spent by these conversations about how institutions intersect with personal behavior and choices. My response is as follows: all of what Dr. Smith may have written here is true. But, so what?
Disappointing to some professionals, I?m sure, is the fact that two disorders didn?t make it into the DSM-5 at all ? not even in the chapter ?Conditions for Further Study.? 
Dr. John Grohol is the founder & CEO of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.
By Linda Binns ?