Missoni scion on small plane missing in Venezuela

ROME (AP) ? Italian state radio says a son of the Missoni fashion family is among six passengers on a small plane that has gone missing over islands off the Venezuelan coast.

Venezuela's Interior Minister Nestor Reverol said the plane was declared missing hours after taking off Friday from Los Roques, a string of islands, cays and islets that is popular for scuba diving, white beaches and coral reefs. He said the plane was expected at Simon Bolivar International Airport in Caracas but didn't arrive and that the four Italian tourists aboard had spent their Christmas and New Year at the resort. The plane had two Venezuelan crew members.

The Italian radio report Saturday says among those on board are Vittorio Missoni and his wife, and two of their friends from northern Italy.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-01-05-Italy-Venezuela-Missing%20Plane/id-71496dd2c00041b1ab159f1d9631ceb0

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Venezuela lawmakers elect Chavez ally as Assembly chief

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan lawmakers re-elected a staunch ally of Hugo Chavez to head the National Assembly on Saturday, putting him in line to be caretaker president if the socialist leader does not recover from cancer surgery.

By choosing the incumbent, Diosdado Cabello, the "Chavista"-dominated legislature cemented the combative ex-soldier's position as the third most powerful figure in the government, after Chavez and Vice President Nicolas Maduro.

"As a patriot ... I swear to be supremely loyal in everything I do, to defend the fatherland, its institutions, and this beautiful revolution led by our Comandante Hugo Chavez," Cabello said as he took the oath, his hand on the constitution.

He had earlier warned opposition politicians against attempting to use the National Assembly to "conspire" against the people, saying they would be "destroyed" if they tried.

Thousands of the president's red-clad supporters gathered outside parliament hours before the vote, many chanting: "We are all Chavez! Our comandante will be well! He will return!"

If Chavez had to step down, or died, Cabello would take over the running of the country as Assembly president and a new election would be organized within 30 days. Chavez's heir apparent, Maduro, would be the ruling Socialist Party candidate.

Chavez, who was diagnosed with an undisclosed form of cancer in his pelvic area in mid-2011, has not been seen in public nor heard from in more than three weeks.

Officials say the 58-year-old is in delicate condition and has suffered multiple complications since the December 11 surgery, including unexpected bleeding and severe respiratory problems.

Late on Friday, Maduro gave the clearest indication yet that the government was preparing to delay Chavez's inauguration for a new six-year term, which is scheduled for Thursday.

'CHAVEZ IS PRESIDENT'

Maduro said the ceremony was a "formality" and that Chavez could be sworn in by the Supreme Court at a later date.

The opposition says Chavez's absence would be just the latest sign that he is no longer fit to govern, and that new elections should be held in the South American OPEC nation.

Brandishing a copy of the constitution after his win in the Assembly, Cabello slammed opposition leaders for writing a letter to foreign embassies in which they accused the government of employing a "twisted reading" of the charter.

"Get this into your heads: Hugo Chavez was elected president and he will continue to be president beyond January 10. No one should have any doubt ... this is the constitutional route," he said as fellow Socialist Party lawmakers cheered.

The opposition sat stony-faced. One of their legislators had earlier told the session that it was not just the head of state who was ill, "the republic is sick."

Last year, Chavez staged what appeared to be a remarkable comeback from the disease to win re-election in October, despite being weakened by radiation therapy. He returned to Cuba for more treatment within weeks of his victory.

Should the president have to step down after 14 years in office, a new vote would probably pit Maduro, a 50-year-old former bus driver and union leader, against opposition leader Henrique Capriles, the 40-year-old governor of Miranda state.

Capriles lost to Chavez in October's presidential election.

"I don't think Maduro would last many rounds in a presidential race. He's not fit for the responsibility they have given him," Capriles said after the vice president's appearance on state television.

Chavez's condition is being watched closely by leftist allies around Latin American who have benefited from his oil-funded generosity, as well as investors attracted by Venezuela's lucrative and widely traded debt.

The country boasts the world's biggest crude reserves. Despite the huge political upheaval Chavez's exit would cause, the oil industry is not likely to be affected much in the short term, with an extension of "Chavismo" keeping projects on track, while a change in parties could usher in more foreign capital.

(Additional reporting by Deisy Buitrago; Editing by Vicki Allen)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/venezuela-vp-says-chavez-swearing-delayed-011654991.html

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?The Paperback Quest For Joy? ? A Self-Help Roundup | Mockingbird

Why do self-help books keep selling? Lots of reasons we could say on here, but their commercial success is entirely predicated on the fact that no single one of them tends to help the problem. Different forms of Law survive mainly because of our predilection for control and self-justification, but its inner irony is that our continued ?love affair? with it depends directly on the fact that it does us no good.

There?s no better sociological parable of the Law that the still-growing American self-help industry, a frequently snide subject for Mockingbird but one that, it helps to remember, is inveterately there in all of us, which is why it provokes such nervously self-conscious derision. The?City Journal?recently did a piece on??America?s Unique Love Affair with Self-Help?, pointing out national attitudes underlying the self-help obsession and some its social consequences. All the same, if you think reading a simple article can end your love affair with self-help?but it does go to show some good, presumably secular wisdom on the demand for happiness in practice:

There is much to mock about titles like the?Chicken Soup for the Soul?series, which has so many constituent books for teens, preteens, dog lovers, and so forth that it occupies its own shelf in Barnes & Noble. There are serious criticisms, too: that self-help distracts Americans from a fraying social safety net and disintegrating communities, or that an obsession with self-actualization breeds people unwilling to sacrifice for the greater good. But at its best, self-help captures something uniquely American: the belief that anyone can pursue happiness?

Then there?s the question of whether self-help works at all. ?To be frank, most self-help books are disappointing,? says [sociologist Christine] Whelan. ?They often blame the victim with the implied message that the advice in the book works, and if it doesn?t work for you, you didn?t try hard enough. They often seek to solve problems that can?t really be solved by reading a book on your own. They use composite stories to create idealized examples of how the advice works, which only leads real people to wonder why they keep failing.?

Micki McGee, a professor of sociology at Fordham University and author of?Self-Help, Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life, notes that, since the 1970s, the growth in self-help has paralleled the destabilization of the labor market and of families. ?In place of a social safety net, Americans have been offered row upon row of self-help books,? she says. A declining number of people have a lifelong profession or a lifelong marriage, and so ?it is no longer sufficient to be married or employed; rather, it is imperative that one remains marriageable and employable.???Taking issue with the ?empowerment? school, she points out that ?the idea that you?re completely in charge of your own destiny has as its inverse that if anything happens to you, you are to blame.? And if things go well? Self-help is steeped in ?that painful, self-congratulatory aspect that American success has. It?s not enough to be successful, you get to take full individual credit for it,? as if no one had helped you along the way. ?Our indebtedness to each other is erased in this literature,? McGee says?.

This final insight has a deep relation to Christianity ? the indebtedness of judgment and the gratitude once that judgment is paid have little to no meaning in the ?painful, self-congratulatory? way of looking at things.

This viewpoint is of course evenly distributed among partisan lines, part of the intrinsic human condition. ?Yes We Can!? and ?We Built It? look remarkably similar from a Law/Grace standpoint, and perhaps that?s because this obsession with progress, both personal and communal, is articulated with unusual directness in the roots of America itself:

The fact that we choose our gurus according to who seems most compelling is also very American. We have no state religion, and few of us do things just because our great-grandparents did. We don?t listen to a village elder who tells us what the good life looks like. Instead, we construct it ourselves, from what we see of the world around us?and what we find at the bookstore.

That reflects the philosophy of our Founding, says Indiana University folklorist Sandra K. Dolby, whose treatise?Self-Help Books: Why Americans Keep Reading Them?takes an anthropological look at these mixtures of case studies and morals?.

And so, living out the Founders? expectations, we undertake our happiness projects, trusting that with hard work?and perhaps a few positive thought vibrations?we can succeed. ?Americans think they can find a way to fix anything,? says Dolby, ?including themselves.?

Source: http://www.mbird.com/2013/01/the-paperback-quest-for-joy-a-self-help-roundup/

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New search engine tailors its results for tablets

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Are tablet users looking for an alternative to Google and other search engines designed primarily for PCs?

That's the hope that led to Friday's release of Izik, which is billed as the first search engine tailored especially for iPads and increasingly popular tablet computers running on Google's Android software.

Izik's free app can be downloaded on the iPad or Android tablets.

To cater to the more visual format of tablets, Izik displays search results in rows of tiles that can be easily scrolled with a swipe of a finger. That contrasts with Google Inc.'s emphasis on mostly static links accompanied by snippets of text.

The tablet-driven search engine is the creation of a 5-year-old startup called Blekko.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-01-04-Tablet%20Search%20Engine/id-a1faf69087474b38abe1fd06444acc07

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Agenda for Android: The iOS calendar favorite makes the leap

Looks like I just found my new calendar app. Agenda -- long a favorite on iOS -- has made its way to Android. (It's currently $1.99.) It ties into your Google calendars, of course, but it's the interface that's much improved over what Google's given us. The basic UI is much cleaner in black-and-white (the colors you see here are my custom label colors) and moreover you can swipe left and right to change from a year-at-a-glance view, to monthly, to daily and agenda, to single events.  There's a clear button for adding events, the bullseye takes you to the current day, and you can pick and choose which calendars to display.

It's still slightly rough around the edges -- the odd crash, and vertical scrolling could be a little smoother. But for form and function, Agenda's among the best we've seen, though we'd love to see some sort of agenda widget to go along with it.

We've got more screenies after the break. Hit the link above to give it a go for yourself.

read more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/3RERRwOzWxE/story01.htm

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We're Hiring: Business Development Manager | Codeboxr Web ...

Source: http://codeboxr.com/blogs/were-hiring-business-development-manager

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Risk genes for Alzheimer's and mental illness linked to brain changes at birth

Jan. 2, 2013 ? Some brain changes that are found in adults with common gene variants linked to disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, and autism can also be seen in the brain scans of newborns.

"These results suggest that prenatal brain development may be a very important influence on psychiatric risk later in life," said Rebecca C. Knickmeyer, PhD, lead author of the study and assistant professor of psychiatry in the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. The study was published by the journal Cerebral Cortex on Jan. 3, 2013.

The study included 272 infants who received MRI scans at UNC Hospitals shortly after birth. The DNA of each was tested for 10 common variations in 7 genes that have been linked to brain structure in adults. These genes have also been implicated in conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism, Alzheimer's disease, anxiety disorders and depression.

For some polymorphisms -- such as a variation in the APOE gene which is associated with Alzheimer's disease -- the brain changes in infants looked very similar to brain changes found in adults with the same variants, Knickmeyer said. "This could stimulate an exciting new line of research focused on preventing onset of illness through very early intervention in at-risk individuals."

But this was not true for every polymorphism included in the study, said John H. Gilmore, MD, senior author of the study and Thad & Alice Eure Distinguished Professor and Vice Chair for Research and Scientific Affairs in the UNC Department of Psychiatry.

For example, the study included two variants in the DISC1 gene. For one of these variants, known as rs821616, the infant brains looked very similar to the brains of adults with this variant. But there was no such similarity between infant brains and adult brains for the other variant, rs6675281.

"This suggests that the brain changes associated with this gene variant aren't present at birth but develop later in life, perhaps during puberty," Gilmore said.

"It's fascinating that different variants in the same gene have such unique effects in terms of when they affect brain development," said Knickmeyer.

In addition to Knickmeyer and Gilmore, authors of the study were Jiaping Wang, PhD; Hongtu Zhu, PhD; Xiujuan Geng, PhD; Sandra Woolson, MPh; Robert M. Hamer, PhD; Thomas Konneker, BA; Weili Lin, PhD; and Martin Styner, PhD. All are at UNC except Konneker, who was at UNC but is now a PhD student at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

The study was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of North Carolina School of Medicine, via Newswise.

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Journal Reference:

1. Rebecca C. Knickmeyer, Jiaping Wang, Hongtu Zhu, Xiujuan Geng, Sandra Woolson, Robert M. Hamer, Thomas Konneker, Weili Lin, Martin Styner, and John H. Gilmore. Common Variants in Psychiatric Risk Genes Predict Brain Structure at Birth. Cereb. Cortex, January 2, 2013 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhs401

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/mind_brain/child_development/~3/WiZE7k7QE28/130102205459.htm

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