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Saturday, October 20, 2012

Luxembourg royals tie knot in religious ceremony

LUXEMBOURG (AP) ? Under a canopy of soldiers' drawn swords as church bells tolled, Prince Guillaume of Luxembourg and Belgian Countess Stephanie de Lannoy emerged smiling Saturday from the tiny duchy's Notre Dame Cathedral after wrapping up a two-day wedding gala with a religious ceremony.

With a celebratory fireworks show still to come, onlookers and well-wishers lined the super-scrubbed streets near the cathedral and roared with joy as the newlyweds looked down from a red velvet-covered palace balcony, and haltingly ? but deeply ? kissed for the crowd.

The church wedding of Prince Guillaume ? the 30-year-old heir to the throne and Luxembourg's grand duke-to-be ? and the Belgian countess drew top-drawer guest list. It came a day after a civil ceremony at Luxembourg City Hall.

The bearded groom and his 28-year-old blonde bride were trailed by a procession of well-known royals, including Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel of Sweden, Prince Naruhito of Japan, and Britain's Prince Edward ? Queen Elizabeth's youngest child ? and his wife, Sophie.

For the wedding banquet attended by 800 people, Bocuse d'Or-winning chef Lea Linster ? herself from Luxembourg ? whipped up a buffet medley including Riesling-marinated pork and veal pate, lobster in gelee consomme, and sea bass in salted crust and thyme stuffing; dessert included Madeleine cakes, choux a la creme pastries, and creme brulee.

Stephanie plans to renounce her Belgian citizenship in order to ? one day ? become Luxembourg's grand duchess. The tiny country wedged between France, Belgium and Germany is an important financial center and continues to prosper despite Europe's economic trouble.

Stephanie wore a lace Elie Saab dress with a 5-meter-long wedding train during the ceremony, which was conducted in a mixture of French, German and Luxembourgish. It began with a minute's silence to honor her late mother, Countess Alix de Lannoy.

The nuptials gave tiny Luxembourg ? a founding member of the predecessor of the European Union ? a rare moment in the international media spotlight. With a population of just over 500,000, the trilingual duchy punches above its weight: Besides being an important financial center, it's home to the world's largest steel manufacturer and it boasts the second-highest gross domestic product per capita in the world, more than $80,000.

Luxembourg began as a Roman fortress. It has, at one time or another, fallen under the control of Spain, France and Austria. In 1839, it gained its independence from the Netherlands, but lost more than half its territory to Belgium. Germany overran Luxembourg twice in the 20th century despite its protests of neutrality.

The current grand duke, Henri, who is 57, is popular. People can greet him on the street without bowing down before him. His 31-year marriage to Grand Duchess Maria Teresa appears to be very happy.

The newlyweds seem to be happy too: In public appearances, including at the London Olympics, they have appeared besotted with each other.

After watching the ceremony on a big-screen on a public square near the cathedral, royal-gazing fans sensed the joy and historical importance.

"It was a really big moment ? a really beautiful moment," said Claudine Als, clutching a glass of Champagne, seemingly awaiting a toast. "It is a historic day for Luxembourg, the country shines throughout the world."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/luxembourg-royals-tie-knot-religious-ceremony-172613663.html

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Not From The Onion: Minnesota Bans Stanford's ... - Education

Gregory Ferenstein This story of government overreach is so outrageous that we have to re-iterate that it is, in fact, real: the State of Minnesota has banned popular free online education site, Coursera, and has sent warning notices to its institutional partners, such as Stanford and Princeton, for providing high-quality instruction without paying a registration fee. According to Slate, Minnesota manager of institutional registration, George Roedler, says the law is meant to protect students from substandard online education, and that top-tier universities would have no problem obtaining permission (after paying a $ 1,200 registration fee). The issue, as Slate correctly points out, is that no organization could provide free education if they had to pay off every city, state, and federal agency aiming to cash in on the permission granting process.

Coursera Co-founder, Daphne Koller, says that most Coursera students are simply looking to brush up on their skills without obtaining a degree, so Minnesota officials shouldn?t be worried. ?The law?s focus is on degree-granting programs as opposed to free, open courseware,? she told The Chronicle of Higher Education. Nonetheless, she has updated their site with a warning

Notice for Minnesota Users: Coursera has been informed by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education that under Minnesota Statutes (136A.61 to 136A.71), a university cannot offer online courses to Minnesota residents unless the university has received authorization from the State of Minnesota to do so. If you are a resident of Minnesota, you agree that either (1) you will not take courses on Coursera, or (2) for each class that you take, the majority of work you do for the class will be done from outside the State of Minnesota.

Coursera is one of many new large-scale online education organizations aiming to provide universal access to the world?s most exclusive universities (otherwise known as Massive Open Online courses, MOOC). Building off the mega-success of MIT?s groundbreaking experiment in free online lectures, MIT OpenCourseWare (with 125 million lifetime views), an increasing number of high-profile educational establishments began offering similar services. Earlier this year, MIT partnered with Harvard for its EdX project, to expand its online course roster and augment lectures with Interactive quizzes and peer-support communities.

Recognizing the limits of the nonprofit sector, two Stanford professors launched Coursera, a for-profit venture of online learning, with the aim of using its capital to expand the reach and sophistication of online services. Coursera has seen over 1.5 million users, continues to add more partners (most recently Duke and Caltech), and raised $ 22 million in venture capital. Eventually, Coursera plans to monetize with services like certificates so that it can continue to grow its offerings.

Under Minnesota law, university partners of EdX, Coursera, or any other MOOC are education vigilantes. While it?s unlikely that Stanford or Harvard will bow to legal threats, or that Minnesota could enforce the law, the silly incident underscores a widespread problem between government regulators and startups: 20th century consumer and worker rights laws are hindering innovation. Just this week, on-demand driver service, Uber, had to shutter its smartphone app for NYC cabs, since it violated taxi unions? rules

Stanford Creates New Post: Vice Provost for Online Learning
Why America?s Top Colleges Offer Free Classes Online
Free knowledge: Online classes and the future of higher education
Plan Your Free Online Education at Lifehacker U: Fall Semester 2012
Stanford Creates New Office Designed To ?Fundamentally Reshape Education

Source: http://www.earic.com/school-education/university-education/not-from-the-onion-minnesota-bans-stanfords-unauthorized-free-online-education.html

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Friday, October 19, 2012

Video: Springtail bugs may have travelled on the wings of mayflies

Thursday, October 18, 2012

A mayfly trapped in 16-million-year-old-amber reveals a hitchhiking springtail, a wingless arthropod that is amongst the most commonly found bugs all over the world. The new research, published Oct 17 in the open access journal PLOS ONE led by David Penney from the University of Manchester, UK, is the first to show that springtails travelled on winged insects like mayflies, and only the second example of this mode of travel by springtails in the past or present.

Springtails are among the most abundant group of arthropods, found in large numbers in soil all over the world. Previous research suggests that they may have spread via ocean currents or by wind as part of the aerial plankton, but traveling on another insect of a different species has not been observed in present-day springtails. Only one previous fossil preserved in amber suggests that ancient springtails may have travelled in this fashion (on a harvestman).

This is a rotating CT reconstruction of the mayfly and phoretic springtail, including a close-up 'region of interest' scan. Credit: Penney D, McNeil A, Green DI, Bradley RS, Jepson JE, et al. (2012) Ancient Ephemeroptera?Collembola Symbiosis Fossilized in Amber Predicts Contemporary Phoretic Associations. PLoS ONE 7(10): e47651. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0047651

Mayflies can fly for no more than a few hours to a few days of their lives, and have not been seen to transport other bugs, either in fossils or in present-day studies. According to the authors, this is the first observation of such an interaction between adult mayflies and any hitchhiking organism, and the first example of springtails hitching rides on flying insects.

Lead author on the study Penney says, "This is a truly remarkable specimen. It highlights the potential for such fossils which provide snapshots of behaviours 'frozen in time' to provide clues to ecological associations occurring right under our noses today, but which may have gone unnoticed to date."

###

Penney D, McNeil A, Green DI, Bradley RS, Jepson JE, et al. (2012) Ancient Ephemeroptera?Collembola Symbiosis Fossilized in Amber Predicts Contemporary Phoretic Associations. PLoS ONE 7(10): e47651. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0047651

Public Library of Science: http://www.plos.org

Thanks to Public Library of Science for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/124607/Video__Springtail_bugs_may_have_travelled_on_the_wings_of_mayflies

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What women want: Fujitsu's Floral Kiss Ultrabook with pre-installed horoscope app

Fujitsu has just revealed its Windows 8 lineup for the Japanese market, and top billing goes to the new "Floral Kiss" Ultrabook, which the manufacturer claims was built "under the direction" of its female employees in order to an entice an equally female audience. At heart, it's just a regular Core i5 notebook with a 500GB hard drive, but the womanliness is all in the presentation. There are subtle color schemes like "feminine pink" and "luxury brown" to choose from and every laptop comes with pre-installed Windows 8 apps including a digital scrapbook for collecting website bookmarks, a diary and a daily horoscope checker. This almost oppressively enticing bundle will hit stores on November 2nd, with some sort of premium designer version arriving a few weeks later. As for the exact price, that'll be determined by retailers in Japan and by how good your husband is at haggling.

Filed under: Laptops

What women want: Fujitsu's Floral Kiss Ultrabook with pre-installed horoscope app originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Oct 2012 03:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/19/fujitsu-floral-kiss/

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Obama, Romney trade (mostly) friendly barbs at charity dinner

President Barack Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney mocked themselves ? and each other, and Joe Biden, and others ? late Thursday during a joke-filled annual dinner that served as a truce of sorts in their hard-fought war for the White House.

Speaking first, Romney repeatedly underlined that he doesn't drink alcohol, quipping that he's usually invited to functions to be "the designated driver," and that Catholic Cardinal Dolan would signal his displeasure by turning Obama's wine into water ? or the former Massachusetts governor's water into wine.

Addressing the crowd in the customary black tuxedo and white bow tie, Romney joked that "it's nice to finally relax and wear what Ann and I wear around the house."

Two of the Republican's best lines came at the expense of the press, which many of his supporters see as biased in Obama's favor. Romney denied accusing reporters of bias and observed each side has its role to play: "My job is to lay out a positive vision for the future of the country. And their job is to make sure nobody else finds about it." He also quipped that early headlines from the dinner read: "Obama embraced by Catholics; Romney dines with rich people."

Taking aim at New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Romney noted that the Democrat was "impressive" and already being floated as a? possible future presidential nominee.

"He may be getting a little ahead of himself," Romney said. "I mean let me get this straight, the man has put in one term as a governor, he has a father who happened to be a governor, and he thinks that's enough to run for president?" That drew laughs from an audience familiar with Romney's r?sum?.

Campaigns are hard, Romney said, and he and Obama "are each very lucky to have one person who's always in our corner, someone who we can lean on, and someone who's a comforting presence without whom we wouldn't be able to go another day. I have my beautiful wife, Ann. He has Bill Clinton."

"I was actually hoping the president would bring Joe Biden along this evening -- 'cause he will laugh at anything," Romney said, referring to the vice president's debate performance against Paul Ryan. Looking at his own first debate with Obama, Romney offered to detail how he had prepared.

"First, refrain from alcohol for 65 years before the debate. Second, find the biggest available straw man, and then just mercilessly attack him. Big Bird didn't even see it coming."

Romney took more than a few shots at Obama. He joked that the president, eyeing their wealthy audience at the post Waldorf-Astoria hotel, was probably thinking "so little time, so much to redistribute." And he mocked Obama's "you didn't built that" campaign flub, saying that St Peter defied "so many skeptics and scoffers at the time who were heard to say, 'If you got a church, you didn't build that.'?"

Obama opened by urging "Everyone, please take your seats -- otherwise Clint Eastwood will yell at them." His routine was more self-deprecating than Romney's, but he gave as good as he got.

"As some of you may have noticed, I had a lot more energy at our second debate.?I felt really well rested after the nice, long nap I had in the first debate," Obama said. "Although it turns out millions of Americans focused in on the second debate who didn't focus in on the first debate -- and I happened to be one of them."

"I learned that there are worse things that can happen to you on your anniversary than forgetting to buy a gift," said the president, a reference to the first debate falling on his wedding anniversary.

Obama turned a different Cuomo joke, saying that he was glad to be "with a man whose father was a popular governor, and who knows what it's like to run a major Northeastern state, and who could very well be president someday -- and I'm hoping it is Andrew Cuomo."

"Earlier today, I went shopping at some stores in Midtown.? I understand Governor Romney went shopping for some stores in Midtown," Obama said.

Making his own "you didn't build that" reference, Obama joked that while in college at Columbia University he "loved to go to old Yankee Stadium, the house that Ruth built -- although he really did not build that."

Looking back at his history-making 2008 run for the White House, Obama said: "I have to admit some things have changed since then."

"I've heard some people say, "Barack, you're not as young as you used to be.? Where's that golden smile?? Where's that pep in your step?"? And I say, 'Settle down, Joe, I'm trying to run a Cabinet meeting,'" the president joked.

"Sometimes it feels like this race has dragged on forever.?But Paul Ryan assured me that we've only been running for two hours and 50-something minutes," the president said, in a reference to Ryan misstating his marathon time.

"Of course, the economy is on everybody's minds.? The unemployment rate is at its lowest level since I took office.? I don't have a joke here.? I just thought it would be useful to remind everybody that the unemployment rate is at the lowest it's been since I took office," the president said.

And he got in a shot at Romney's gaffe-plagued overseas trip earlier this year.

"Some of you guys remember, after my foreign trip in 2008, I was attacked as a celebrity because I was so popular with our allies overseas.? And I have to say, I'm impressed with how well Governor Romney has avoided that problem," Obama said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-romney-mostly-friendly-duel-wits-054510278--election.html

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