'DWTS' pro Val Chmerkovskiy: I want that trophy

9 hours ago

Steffen Thalemann

"Dancing With the Stars" pro Val Chmerkovskiy.

"Dancing With the Stars" pro Valentin Chmerkovskiy will be blogging about his experiences and thoughts on his fourth quest for the mirror ball trophy on TODAY.com throughout the season. The 14-time US champion in dance is paired with 16-year-old Disney star Zendaya, who plays Rocky Blue on "Shake It Up!"

I'd like to start by saying thank you to all the fans for all of your support.

This week we're doing the salsa with Gleb Savchenko. Zendaya and I felt that he has a very good energy about him, an energy that would be appropriate for Zendaya as well. I think about these things. I felt like he was a perfect fit for salsa, for the choreography that I came up with. I just feel like he'll be a great addition.

I think it will also be a great opportunity for him to shine a little bit as well, and I'm excited to dance with him. I've known him for a long time. I know him from competition years, and he's a great, great guy. So at the end of the day, when it came down to it and it was our choice to pick, we chose Gleb.

The other dance we're doing is the foxtrot. I love our song, and I love our dance. We started working on our foxtrot Wednesday, so I'm really enjoying it.

The package -- our practice package -- is going to be intense, as always. But that's me, that's how I do things.

There's a time and place for everything. When I come to work and it's a Wednesday and we've got things to do, I look at it as: "Did you enjoy that Monday?" "Yes." ? "You liked all the applause?" "Yes." ? "You like the standing ovation?" "Yeah." ? "Great! Well, now we've got to earn the one for next Monday. If you want it again, let's work to get it."

And so that's my mentality. Thursday is the same thing. Friday, it loosens up because Zendaya is amazing and she starts to kind of sink into the choreography. Saturday, we start cleaning it up and working on execution. Sunday is camera blocking -- how it looks on camera. (That's a very stressful day for me because I'm making sure every detail is perfect and lined up the way I envisioned it in my head.) And then Monday is show time, and show time is what you see.

So for that Monday, for you guys to see what you see, it's not, "Hey let's come into rehearsal and laugh the entire time." I mean, it's just unrealistic. When you see those training packages that are full of laughter, you shouldn't believe them.

There's got to be a level of intensity. There's a big difference between being intense and kind of motivating somebody to go beyond their comfort zone and just ego tripping on somebody because you're in a bad mood. All in all, there needs to be focus. There needs to be work done for the type of performances you see Mondays.

It's my choice. I could either look good on camera or look good dancing. I'd rather look bad on camera but good performing, because at the end of the day, that's what I'm here to do, my profession, and that's what I do best. I'm not a reality star. I'm a professional dancer.

Winning this competition is a choice. I want to win. I want to earn that trophy. I feel like there have been a lot of people who have earned it; there's been a couple that maybe haven't earned it. I think this is a pretty competitive season. I think there's incredible talent -- both from Zendaya's peer celebrities competing and my peer professionals. There's incredible talent. But I want to earn it. I want to outwork them. I want to out-create them.

So I'm just focused on that. I want to make sure that we work really hard for the next three weeks, and hopefully we'll get it.

Source: http://www.today.com/entertainment/dancing-stars-pro-val-chmerkovskiy-i-want-earn-trophy-6C9801255

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Report: GameStop no longer accepting PS2 trade-ins as of June 1st

Now that the PS2's started taking steps toward retirement with Sony ceasing its production in Japan, it seems GameStop doesn't plan to keep the console under its roof for much longer. According to a leaked in-store display posted to Reddit by eGORapTure, the gaming retailer will no longer accept the 12-year-old system for trade-ins as, effective June 1st. Our friends at Joystiq contacted multiple stores to confirm the news and many said the policy is indeed set to go into effect. Unsurprisingly, PS2-related accessories and titles will also be refused for trade-ins once the date rolls around. We've reached out to GameStop's corporate representatives for comment and will let you know what we hear back. For now, you can find more info at the via and source links. Well, they gotta make room for those PS4 boxes -- however they end up looking, right?

Filed under: Gaming, Sony

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Via: Joystiq, Destructoid

Source: Reddit

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/06/gamestop-ps2-trade-in-not-accepted/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Research reveals consequences of a lifetime of sexual competition

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Research published today in the journal Evolution reveals how fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) that are subjected to continual competition from mating rivals, mate for longer and produce more offspring in early life.

But they pay a high price ? a shorter lifespan and reduced mating ability later in life.

It is the first study to quantify the consequences of lifetime exposure to rivals. Researchers say that 'trade-offs' between reproduction and lifespan are common across the whole animal kingdom, so in principle the findings could be applicable more generally.

The study was led by Prof Tracey Chapman from UEA's School of Biological Sciences and Dr Amanda Bretman, now at the University of Leeds.

Prof Chapman said: "We exposed males to rivals throughout their lifetimes and found that while this caused them to mate for longer and have a higher reproductive output ? these benefits disappeared early, after the third mating.

"The males took significantly fewer mating opportunities in later life and had significantly shorter lifespans than flies which had not been exposed to rivals. Meanwhile those which had been kept on their own continued to mate into old age, accumulating more matings overall.

"In general, trade-offs between different aspects of reproduction and lifespan are very common and can be found in almost every organism in which we can measure them - including humans," she added. "We don't know whether this specific set of circumstances occurs in humans, but trade-offs in general certainly do. It could be something that researchers studying human life histories could look for."

Researchers compared flies that had been exposed to rivals with those which had not. They gave both sets of flies the opportunity to mate regularly throughout their lives.

They recorded the length and frequency of mating for both groups, as well as the number of offspring sired by both groups.

At the end of the 78-day project, all of the male flies which had been exposed to rivals had been dead for at least four days. But more than a quarter of those which had not been exposed to rivals were still alive.

"If males die sooner in the wild, the early mating benefits seen in males exposed to competition may be more important than the benefits of living and mating for longer," added Dr Bretman. "There is a great scope for further investigations into how relevant our experiment might be in representing the natural lifespan and potential trade-offs between early and late survival and reproduction."

###

University of East Anglia: http://comm.uea.ac.uk/press

Thanks to University of East Anglia 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/128098/Research_reveals_consequences_of_a_lifetime_of_sexual_competition

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Six Things the Phone Book's Actually Still Good For

The phone book. There's perhaps no more outmoded, unnecessary, downright wasteful collection of printed information in the known universe. But Doghouse Diaries has a few suggestions that might make them useful after all.

Read more...

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/l2xuu93PVWI/six-things-the-phone-books-actually-still-good-for-486207893

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Don't blame Canada: Former ambassador to Iran on Argo, America, and nukes

Canada's envoy to Tehran at the time of the Islamic revolution and the US hostage crisis, says Argo disappointed him and that he's worried about where Iran's nuclear program might lead.

By Ariel Zirulnick,?Staff writer / April 26, 2013

Former Canadian Ambassador to Iran Ken Taylor and his wife Pat, pose for photographers at the premiere of the film Argo in Washington, Oct. 2012. Taylor, who protected Americans at great personal risk during the Iran hostage crisis of 1979, has achieved some name recognition in the US since the 2012 movie 'Argo' swept theaters and the Academy Awards.

Cliff Owen/AP/File

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Former Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor is neither the James Bond lookalike he hoped might portray him in the Hollywood blockbuster "Argo" nor is he quite the Austin Powers double he says might have been a more accurate choice.

Skip to next paragraph Ariel Zirulnick

Middle East Editor

Ariel Zirulnick is the Monitor's Middle East editor, overseeing regional coverage both for CSMonitor.com and the weekly magazine. She is also a contributor to the international desk's terrorism and security blog.?

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But he's achieved some name recognition in the US since the 2012 movie swept theaters and the Academy Awards, and he has plenty to say about Iran in 1979 and the country it has become since.?

Mr. Taylor was Canada's ambassador to Tehran in 1979 when the US embassy there was stormed and dozens of Americans were taken hostage. Six Americans escaped and spent months holed up with him, waiting for their extraction.

Those months are the premise of the Ben Affleck-directed movie, which Taylor mildly says took ?a bit of poetic license.?

Speaking before a gathering of the New England Canada Business Council in Boston yesterday, Taylor, who now lives in New York, joked that after friends saw "Argo" at the 2012 Toronto Film Festival, they called him and said, ?I thought Canada was involved.?

According to Taylor, he replied, ?That?s odd, So did I.?

As the tense months of being trapped inside the embassy wore on, Taylor tried to reassure the Americans that they would be home by Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then the Super Bowl. He warned the US that ?they?re going to wonder if Washington forgot about them.?

Taylor revealed little about the actual operation that got the six men and women safely back to the United States. But, he joked, at least the movie showed that he ?opened the front door of the embassy with great dexterity.?

Iran then

When Taylor arrived in Tehran in 1977, ?the country was booming.?

There were rumors that Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi ? more commonly referred to as simply ?the Shah? ? was preparing to buy Pan American Airways. It did not seem like the ?stalwart of the West? was going anywhere.

For all the blame heaped on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for not predicting the Islamic Revolution, almost nobody saw it coming, he said. Afterward, the Ayatollah?s secular advisers told Taylor that even they didn?t expect the Shah?s government to fall like it did. ?

Revolutionary fervor did not sweep up the whole country the way it seemed to be portrayed in "Argo." And Taylor said a great disappointment for him was the way the movie portrayed Iranians, some of whom became ?marvelous friends? with him during his posting in Tehran.

?The movie was too heavy handed,? he said. ?It gave no idea that there is another side to the Iranian character. Everybody isn?t on the street. Everybody isn?t part of the revolution.?

Too many sanctions, too little talking

He is on board with the growing chorus of voices in Washington urging the Obama administration to ease up on its sanctions-heavy approach to negotiations with Iran although he acknowledges that Iran needs to give ground too.

Sometimes sanctions work, he says, citing South Africa during the apartheid era, but ?sometimes they strengthen resolve.?

When asked his opinion of whether Tehran has nuclear weapon ambitions, he cautions that ?Iran is an opaque society,? and there?s too little information to guess.

?I think they?ve got some military use in the back of their mind,? he says. ?But they don?t want to destroy themselves ? Maybe they are working at capabilities, but not necessarily producing [a nuclear weapon].?

That the military option for halting Iran?s nuclear development is ?on the table? worries Taylor, who points to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as cautionary for anyone considering going to war with Iran.

"A bombing mission would be a fatal error. It would solve nothing,? he says. ?It would postpone [Iran?s nuclear program] for two to three years,? but nothing more, because Iran?s nuclear facilities are too dispersed.

He says, ?I wake up every morning hoping [the military option] is still on the table? ? instead of being used.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/hjWdZ6cfd7U/Don-t-blame-Canada-Former-ambassador-to-Iran-on-Argo-America-and-nukes

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US variants of Galaxy S4 ship with locked bootloaders CyanogenMod developed Ste...

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'White graphene' to clean up spills

1 May 2013 Last updated at 02:48 ET By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

A next-generation material first earmarked for use in electronics has proven itself a capable clean-up agent for polluted waters.

Boron nitride, or "white graphene", is similar to its namesake: sheets of atoms laid out like a chain-link fence.

A report in Nature Communications shows the material can preferentially absorb organic pollutants such as industrial chemicals or engine oil.

However, it is easier to clean and re-use than other such "nanomaterials".

The family of these materials includes much-touted, carbon-based members such as graphene and nanotubes, and are notable in part for their surface area-to-weight ratio.

That allows them to absorb an incredible amount for their size, making them attractive for the clean-up of pollutants.

The new work suggests that a preparation of boron nitride could outperform many nanomaterials and more traditional approaches.

A team from the Institute for Frontier Materials at Deakin University in Australia and the Pierre and Marie Curie University in France started by making porous boron nitride "nanosheets" - wavy, single-atom layers of the material with holes in them.

These porous sheets, which together form a coarse white powder, vastly outperformed sheets that did not have the pores, and commercially available chunks of boron nitride that is not made up of the tiny sheets.

The porous version exhibited high "selective absorption" - preferentially picking up organic pollutants and dyes out of water.

The powder absorbed up to 33 times its own weight in the chemical ethylene glycol and 29 times its own weight of engine oil. Even still, the saturated powder floats on water.

The absorbed pollutants could then be driven out of the nooks and crannies of the material by heating it in a commercial furnace, or by simply igniting it - a trick that other, more established materials could only survive a few times before becoming completely clogged up.

"All these features make these porous nanosheets suitable for a wide range of applications in water purification and treatment," the authors wrote.

Francesco Stellacci of EPFL in Switzerland called the work "an excellent paper in a booming field".

"The data reported are indeed excellent and impressive," he told BBC News. "The key question is if this is the material that at the end will be used for remediation."

Prof Stellacci said that a market for such materials does not yet exist, and boron nitride's striking powers of absorption may or may not be enough to establish it as a leading contender, even among nanomaterials.

"I think that at the end it will not be performance that will determine the final material used, but more costs and scalability. I really hope that one of these materials, and maybe this one, will make it."

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22351056#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

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