Sunday, November 23, 2008

A Pembroke Pines, Florida teenager killed himself Wednesday, November 19, while broadcasting on the live video site Justin.tv. After making suicide threats and being encouraged by Justin.tv viewers and Bodybuilding.com forum members, Abraham K. Biggs, 19, committed suicide by taking an overdose of opiates and benzodiazepine, which had been prescribed for his bipolar disorder.

Biggs first began blogging about his planned suicide 12 hours before the actual event. He died after taking pills and lying on the bed in front of the webcam. After the broadcast, viewers who apparently thought it was a hoax posted messages such as “OMG”, “LOL”, and “hahahah”.

Hours later, after being alerted by viewers who had noticed that Biggs had stopped breathing, law enforcement and paramedics arrived, discovered his body, and covered the camera. The Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office has reportedly confirmed Biggs’ death.

According to Montana Miller of the Bowling Green State University, the circumstances of this case were not shocking: “If it’s not recorded or documented, then it doesn’t even seem worthwhile. For today’s generation it might seem, ‘What’s the point of doing it if everyone isn’t going to see it?'”

Biggs’ sister Rosalind was angry that neither the website nor its viewers reacted soon enough to save him. “They got hits, they got viewers, nothing happened for hours,” she said. She described him as “very happy” and “friendly and outgoing.” “On a normal day, you couldn’t really tell that he got as low as he did.” However, he did have relationship problems with his girlfriend, according to a friend.

Mental health professionals have warned about the possibility that other mentally troubled people would copy his actions. According to Dr. David Shaffer of Columbia University, “Any video showing it as heroic or romantic or glamorous could reduce the anxiety people might feel about suicide. It becomes a respectable behavior and lowers the threshold of suicide.” He and other psychiatrists recommend that potentially suicidal teens talk to others and “tell what’s going on.”

Thursday, June 9, 2005

The Globe and Mail (Toronto, ON), citing sources close to both sides in the dispute, reported Wednesday that the National Hockey League and the NHLPA have agreed to a salary cap structure, arguably the most contentious issue in the continuing lockout that led to the cancellation of the 2004-05 NHL season on 16 February, 2005.

The Globe and Mail is reporting that the deal, providing the “cost certainty” that the NHL has been seeking, will consist of a floating, team-by-team salary cap and floor based on a percentage of each team’s revenue projections. What is being reported as a six-year deal has a salary cap range of $34-36 million and a salary floor of $22-24 million, both hard caps. The new deal will also reportedly include the across-the-board 24% decrease in salary offered by the NHLPA in February. A dollar-for-dollar Luxury tax will also take effect at the halfway point between the lowest salary floor and the highest salary cap (slated to be $29 million for the first year of the deal). Details about what will be done with this money have not been completely worked out, but it is thought that this money will be distributed to teams below the halfway point in such a way as to make sure they remain above the salary hard minimum.

While this is one of the most contentious issues in the labor dispute, there are several other issues that may delay the signing of a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. These include deciding how high-payroll teams will drop to the new maximum, working on new systems for salary arbitration, free agency, Olympic participation, and drug testing, and to design a complete revenue-sharing system.

Friday, June 24, 2005

Seoul — More than 300 “citizen reporters” hailing from countries as far apart as Chile and Norway are coming together at the OhmyNews International Citizen Reporters’ Forum from June 23 to June 26, 2005 in Seoul. OhmyNews is one of the most popular South Korean news websites, and it has played an important role in the election of reformist President Roh Moo-hyun. Unlike traditional news sources, OhmyNews allows any individual with an Internet connection to contribute stories. A professional staff of journalists vets incoming submissions and decides which stories are to be published.

The project is sponsoring the forum in order to promote its English edition, officially launched in May 2004. Citizen reporters writing in English exchange ideas and stories, and try to understand the inner workings of the Korean edition. The conference is sponsored by Korean corporations such as Samsung, SK Corporation, LG, Yuhan-Kimberly, and Asiana Airlines.

Thursday, March 12, 2015

The Associated Press (AP) reported on Tuesday the U.S. Secret Service is conducting drone exercises over Washington, D.C. to defend against unmanned aerial vehicles being flown over the area.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approved the Secret Service to conduct these flying exercises. The exercises are to be over parts of D.C. airspace which is normally off-limits below 18,000 feet, also called a no-fly aone or the D.C. flight restricted zone. The exercises are to take place in the very early morning hours over the next several weeks.

According to AP, a U.S. official speaking under condition of anonymity said the agency is testing these drones for law enforcement and to defend against potentially dangerous drones, but declined to comment on the specific details because they’re classified. However, they sought to prevent concerns by possible witnesses by publicizing their intent to conduct tests. The agency is cautious of witnesses of unmanned aerial vehicles flying over D.C. because of a drone sighting incident several weeks ago. Witnesses saw several unidentified drones flying over Paris, France, which caused concerns.

AP said techniques to be tested include signal jamming. Most drones use radio-frequency signals for remote control. Intercepting these signals might allow tracking the drones. Jamming, though, could interrupt Wi-Fi of people in the vicinity.

The FAA last month announced preliminary guidelines requiring UAVs be operated within sight of the operator, prohibiting night flying, and requiring speeds below 100 miles per hour (about 160 kph) and altitudes below 500 feet.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

NASA is beginning the final preparations for next Wednesday’s launch of the Dawn probe, aboard a Delta II rocket. The Dawn probe, costing over US$250 million, will visit the dwarf planet Ceres and the asteroid Vesta. The launch was originally planned for mid-June, however due to a damaged crate, shipping delays, and a damaged solar panel, NASA chose to delay it until now. Last week the spacecraft was delivered to the launch pad, and engineers performed tests to ensure that it is ready for launch. Today, the payload fairings were installed, and the probe is ready for its launch next week onto its 5 billion kilometer (3.2 billion mile) mission.

As the Delta II launches, three stages of rockets will propel the probe towards its first target. With the help of ion thrusters, it will reach Mars in mid-2009. Using Mars’ gravity, the probe will speed up and proceed towards the first asteroid, Vesta, in late 2011. After orbiting for seven months, it will leave Vesta in mid-2012, and arrive at Ceres in 2015. After making scans of Ceres, it will enter an orbit around Ceres that will ensure that it does not impact the asteroid for half a century. This is required due to the United Nations’ “Outer Space Treaty”, which states that “harmful contamination” of these asteroids must be avoided.

The targets of this mission, Ceres and Vesta, couldn’t be less alike. Ceres (diameter 975 km, 600 miles) is larger than Vesta (578 km, 350 miles). This makes Ceres approximately the size of Texas. NASA believes Ceres could contain water beneath its outer crust because, like Earth, its inner layers are heavier than the outer layers, and Ceres’ outer layer is lighter than water. Vesta, on the other hand, is the size of Arizona, and has a surface of volcanic rock, which astronomers believe came from its hot inner layers. Vesta also has a large crater – almost 500 km (300 miles) across – on its southern pole. The collision that caused this likely blasted enough rock into space to fill a container 160 by 160 by 80 km (100 by 100 by 50 miles).

The probe will make several observations of these asteroids: it will compare the makeup, shape, size, and densities, analyze craters, and determine mass, gravity, rotation. To determine the makeup, the probe carries a mapping spectrometer, and tools to map emissions of neutrons and gamma rays. Using this information, NASA can compare the formation of these bodies to learn more about our solar system, for example, to test a theory which states that a number of stony meteorites may be debris from Vesta.

There’s one more piece of equipment aboard the probe: A small silicon chip containing the names of 350,000 people who submitted their names to the “Send Your Name to the Asteroid Belt” campaign. After next week’s launch, the spacecraft will deploy its solar panels and undergo two months of testing before it begins the cruise to Mars.

Friday, September 27, 2013

Tuesday, World Bank released the 2012 World Development Report on Gender Equality and Development. The United States is referred to many times, often as a benchmark to foster understanding of recent gains for women in other parts of the globe. At the same time, United States women still lag behind US men in a number of areas.

In 2012, the authors note women in the United States still face challenges economically and socially. They are represented disproportionately in certain professions like teaching and nursing. They are paid less than their male counterparts. Jobs traditionally held by women also result in lower wages for men who hold these jobs. They are under-represented at the highest level of business, with only 28 of Fortune 1000 companies having a female chief executive officer. The bottom 20% of women economically have a slightly higher birth rate than their peers in the top 20%.

Immigrants to the United States from Southeast Asia and India have higher than expected male to female birth ratios, which the report authors suggest is partially deliberate sex selection based on cultural attitudes from home countries. In 2009, over half a million US women were victims of intimate partner violence. The report suggests US men have greater pension assets than US women. When compared to elderly US men, elderly women in the United States are more likely to live alone than with a spouse. US women are disproportionately under-represented in local police forces, accounting for less than 20% of all police officers. Women in the United States also bear a higher percentage of housework duties than men at 61%. When US women take part time work while raising children, they find it difficult to use that work experience to gain future full time employment. US women are disincentivized from re-entering the workforce after giving birth because of the high cost of childcare.

Many of the gains for United States women took place a while ago and took a long time to get. It took 40 years, 1870–1910, to see major improvements in the percentage of girls aged 6 to 12 attending school. In 1921, after women got the right to vote in the United States, the United States Congress passed the Promotion of the Welfare and Hygiene of Maternity and Infancy Act. This assisted in lowering infant mortality from 23% to 15%.

The report says affirmative action in the United States resulted in jobs transferring from men to women, but the authors hedged and did not draw a conclusion about the economic impact of these legislative efforts other than to say the impact was not negative.

Many of the legislative victories for United States women came early compared to developing countries. Property rights for women, while later than some of their European counterparts like Norway and the United Kingdom, started to come by 1848. That year, the Married Women’s Property Act was passed in New York. It was the first legislation of its kind in the country. Other states soon followed. Women got suffrage on a state-by-state level in the country until they got federal suffrage in 1920. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 barred discrimination against women and allowed married women to make loans without their husband’s consent. In 1980, airlines were barred from discriminating against flight attendances for their marital status during the hiring and firing stage.

The number of United States respondents agreeing with the proposition “a university education is more important for a boy than for a girl” decreased from about 14% in the period between 1994 and 1999 to about about 9% in the period between 2005 and 2007. Similarly, the number of people who agreed with “when jobs are scarce, men should have more right to a job than women” decreased from 19% to about 8% over the same period.

The report cites current research from the United States and England showing the more education a mother has, the better the outcomes for her children will be.

Currently in the United States, females academically outperform their male counterparts in all academic areas including [[mathematics|math] and science. On the Programme for International Student Assessment math test though, US boys tested better than US girls by a score of roughly 495 to 480. US girls outperform boys on the literacy test with mean scores of approximately 510 to 490. In this regard, the report suggests US girls’ performance patterns resemble global ones.

Mali’s percentage of girls in primary school is equivalent to the United States in 1810 at around 34%. Burkino Faso is worse, matching the United States in 1780 with a percentage of roughly 25%. Niger’s current enrollment for girls is around 50%, around the same percentage as the United States in 1900.

Friday, May 19, 2006

According to psychologists in Leipzig, Germany, apes and some birds are able to plan their actions ahead of time.

Psychologists Nicholas Mulcahy and Josep Call at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology say that apes are able to save tools to use at a later time, that will assist them in retrieving food.

The results of the testing are “groundbreaking” and is “a starting point from which we can begin to reconstruct the evolution of the human mind. Apes and jays can also anticipate future needs by remembering past events, contradicting the notion that such cognitive behavior only emerged in hominids,” said Thomas Suddendorf, a psychologist at the University of Queensland Brisbane, Australia.

One aspect of the study is that “our extraordinary abilities of planning for the future did not evolve entirely de novo. Planning for future needs is not uniquely human,” added Suddendorf.

An experiment was performed using bonobos and orangutans. The psychologists placed the apes alone in a room for five minutes. Each of them had a choice of two tools that would allow them to retrieve food and six that would not. The apes were allowed to look at and observe the tools; however, they were not allowed to handle them.

The apes were then taken to a room next door, allowed to take whatever tools they chose, and left alone in the room for at least one hour, while a researcher removed all other tools from the first room. The apes then returned to the first room (where the food was), but the food was not accessible unless they had the right tool to retrieve it.

After repeating the same test several times with each ape, researchers began to see that most apes would begin to use the right tool for the job. Researchers also received similar results even when the apes were left alone in a room overnight where they would sleep.

To make sure that the apes were not associating the tools with the food, they removed the food from the room, but would still give it to the apes if they used the right tool to retrieve it. After this change, most of them did not bring the proper tools, which researchers say confirm that the retrieval is a way of planning for the job.

In experiments using scrub jays (found mostly in the western United States), at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, psychologists have shown that the birds, who usually hide their food to eat later, will hide it again if an enemy bird saw them do it the first time, unless the bird is dominant. The subordinate jay could however, fight the other for the food.

“These results suggest scrub jays remember who observed them make specific caches,” said Joanna Dally who was involved in the study with the scrub jays.

“Together with recent evidence from scrub jays, our results suggest that future planning is not a uniquely human ability, thus contradicting the notion that it emerged in hominids only with the past 2.5 to 1.6 million years,” said Mulcahy and Call in the study.