Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/301893148?client_source=feed&format=rss
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Ideas For Doing Scrapbooking | Home and Family - Rwop ...
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Heritage recipe albums are a priceless treasure. Food often has strong ties to our emotions and memories. Certain foods may remind us of Thanksgiving at Grandma's, or goody baskets received at Christmas time. Most of us associate certain foods with particular events, people or traditions. Foods that remind us of home or family are often a comfort.
Heritage recipe albums are a priceless treasure. Food often has strong ties to our emotions and memories. Certain foods may remind us of Thanksgiving at Grandma's, or goody baskets received at Christmas time. Most of us associate certain foods with particular events, people or traditions. Foods that remind us of home or family are often a comfort.
Many of us have family recipes that have been passed down for generations. Memories and stories are often lost from one generation to the next. Recipe scrapbooks not only preserve the recipe itself, but also the tips and heart-felt stories that accompany them.
Gathering Recipes
Gathering the recipes and memories from family members is the biggest task in creating a heritage recipe album. Send out a letter or email asking them for several of their favorite family recipes. Have them include thoughts and memories about each recipe.
Include a list of questions to get the information you would like for each recipe. You may want to note that the person shouldn't feel obligated to answer every question for each recipe. Hopefully some will spark some great memories. Ask them to include a photo of an occasion where that recipe was served. Here are some possible questions:
Whose recipe is this?
Who in your family makes this most often, or is most strongly associated with this recipe?
Where did the recipe come from?
Whose favorite recipe is this and why?
Are there any memorable stories associated with this recipe?
Are there any special tips or suggestions in preparing this recipe?
Is there a special secret ingredient for this recipe?
Is there a certain time of year your family enjoys this recipe?
Was this recipe served at a memorable occasion or event?
Scrapbook Layout Suggestions
Now that you have gathered all your recipes and information, it's time to start the album. Here are a few things to consider before you start laying out pages.
Choose your album size and type
Make a list of recipe categories you want to include
Divide the recipes into the proper categories
Choose a color, pattern or some way to distinguish each category
You are ready to begin your recipe album. Some suggested pages may include:
Title page - This may include the name of the family the recipes are from.
Dedication page - This is a great place to describe the person or family and why the album was created.
Table of contents - List each category of food included in the book, ei:Entrees, side dishes, salads and desserts.
Subtitle page - List each recipe included in that category.
Recipe page - For larger albums (12 X 12) a single page per recipe may work. For smaller albums (8 X 8) a two page spread may work better.
Use photo corners to attach recipe card
Include a photo of people or event where recipe was served
Include information from questions sent out
Scrapbooking recipes is a fun creative way to preserve many treasured family traditions. A digital album is a great option that would allow those traditions to be shared with everyone in the family.
Melanie Hansen simply-stunning-scrapbooks.com [http://www.simply-stunning-scrapbooks.com/]
More information, please visit :
Source: http://rwopscrapbookrecipes.blogspot.com/2013/04/ideas-for-doing-scrapbooking-home-and.html
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Julianna Margulies and Paul Rudd to join onstage
NEW YORK (AP) ? Julianna Margulies and Paul Rudd will team up as lovers for a one-night only benefit reading of Neil LaBute's play "The Mercy Seat."
The off-Broadway company MCC Theater said Thursday the reading will be held June 17 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. Tickets are available from $75-$250 and go on sale to the general public May 7.
"The Mercy Seat" is set on the day after the 9/11 attacks in which a World Trade Center worker contemplates using the tragedy to run away and start a new life with his lover.
Margulies, the star of "The Good Wife," last appeared on an MCC stage in 2002's "Intrigue with Faye." Rudd, of "Anchorman" fame, was on Broadway this season in "Grace."
The event celebrates MCC's collaboration with LaBute, who has had seven plays produced there over the last decade, including this spring's "Reasons to Be Happy."
___
Online: http://www.mcctheater.org
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/julianna-margulies-paul-rudd-join-onstage-194057022.html
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Friday, April 26, 2013
Catholic World News - Catholic Culture
CWN - April 25, 2013
Access to the web site of the Southern Baptist Convention has been blocked on US military bases, because of an official judgment that the site carries "hostile content," Fox News has reported.
It was not clear how many military bases had blocked the Southern Baptist site. A member of the military reported that he had been unable to reach the site, and had been warned that his attempt to access material from the Southern Baptist Convention had been recorded.
The Southern Baptist Convention represents the largest single Protestant group in the US, and generally takes conservative positions on issues such as homosexuality and abortion.
The report of blocking of the Southern Baptist site comes shortly after a report that a Pentagon official had classified Catholicism as a form of extremism.
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Source: http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=17699
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Politics on hold at the dedication of Bush library
DALLAS (AP) ? George W. Bush shed a sentimental tear. Barack Obama mused about the burdens of the office. Bill Clinton dished out wisecracks. Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush chimed in, too, on a rare day of harmony at the dedication of the younger Bush's presidential library that glossed over the hard edges and partisan divides of five presidencies spanning more than three tumultuous decades.
"To know the man is to like the man," Obama declared of his Republican predecessor, speaking Thursday before a crowd of 10,000 at an event that had the feel of a class reunion for the partisans who had powered the Bush administration from 2001 to 2009. Dick Cheney was there in a white cowboy hat. Condoleezza Rice gave shout-outs to visiting dignitaries. Colin Powell and Karl Rove were prominent faces in the crowd.
On this day, there was no mention of Iraq or Afghanistan, the wars that dominated Bush's presidency and so divided the nation. There were only gentle references to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. And praise aplenty for the resolve that Bush showed in responding to the 9/11 terror attacks.
Clinton joked that the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Center was "the latest, grandest example of the eternal struggle of former presidents to rewrite history." But he also praised Bush for including interactive exhibits at the center that invite visitors to make their own choices on major decisions that he faced.
Bush, 66, made indirect reference to the polarizing decision points of his presidency, drawing a knowing laugh as he told the crowd: "One of the benefits of freedom is that people can disagree. It's fair to say I created plenty of opportunities to exercise that right."
He said he was guided throughout his presidency by a determination "to expand the reach of freedom."
"It wasn't always easy, and it certainly wasn't always popular."
It was a day for family and sentimentality, Bush choking up with emotion at the conclusion of his remarks.
The 43rd president singled out his 88-year-old father, another ex-president, to tell him: "41, it is awesome that you are here today."
The elder Bush, wearing jaunty pink socks, spoke for less than a minute from his wheelchair, then turned to his son and quipped, "Too long?" He has a form of Parkinson's disease and has been hospitalized recently for bronchitis.
Just as the public tends to view presidents more kindly once they've left office, ex-presidents, too, tend to soften their judgments ? or at least their public comments ? with time.
Obama once excoriated Bush for his "failed policies" and "disastrous" handling of the economy, for expanding budget deficits, and for drawing the nation into war in Iraq.
On Thursday, he took a detour around those matters and instead praised Bush for his strength after 9/11, compassion in fighting HIV/AIDS in Africa, bipartisanship in pursuing education reforms and restarting "an important conversation by speaking with the American people about our history as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants."
If the country is eventually able to enact immigration changes this year, Obama added, "it will be, in large part, thanks to the hard work of President George W. Bush."
Obama said the living presidents make up an exclusive club ? but it's more like a support group for the men who have held the position.
"No matter how much you may think you are ready to assume the office of the presidency, it's impossible to truly understand the nature of the job until it's yours," Obama said. "And that's why every president gains a greater appreciation for all of those who served before them."
The other presidents struck a similar tone.
Clinton praised Bush for his efforts to combat AIDS in Africa, his work on global health and even for the paintings he's doing in retirement. And he said he'd gotten so close to the Bush family that there were jokes that "I had become the black sheep son."
Carter praised Bush for his role in helping secure peace between North and South Sudan in 2005 and the "great contributions you've made to the most needy people on earth."
Bush has kept a decidedly low profile since leaving office four years ago with an approval rating of just 33 percent. That figure has been gradually climbing and now is at 47 percent ? about equal to Obama's own approval rating, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released ahead of the library opening.
If politics was absent from the podium on Thursday, it was still a prominent subtext.
Those in attendance included a number of potential candidates for president in 2016 ? another Clinton (Hillary) and Bush (Jeb) among them.
George W. Bush in recent days played up the idea of his younger brother, the former governor of Florida, seeking the White House, telling C-SPAN, "My first advice is: Run."
Their mother, former first lady Barbara Bush, did the opposite.
"We've had enough Bushes," she said Thursday on NBC's "Today" show.
The presidential center at Southern Methodist University includes a library, museum and policy institute. It contains more than 70 million pages of paper records, 200 million emails, 4 million digital photos and 43,000 artifacts. Bush's library will feature the largest digital holdings of any of the 13 presidential libraries under the auspices of the National Archives and Records Administration.
A full-scale replica of the Oval Office as it looked during Bush's tenure sits on the campus, as does a piece of steel from the World Trade Center and the bullhorn that Bush used to punctuate the chaos at ground zero three days after 9/11. In the museum, visitors can gaze at a container of chads ? the remnants of the famous Florida punch card ballots that played a pivotal role in the contested 2000 election that sent Bush to Washington.
Laura Bush led the library's design committee, officials said, with a keen eye toward ensuring that the family's Texas roots were conspicuously reflected. Architects used local materials, including Texas Cordova cream limestone and trees from the central part of the state, in its construction.
___
Follow Josh Lederman on Twitter: http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP .
___
Associated Press writer Nancy Benac contributed from Washington.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/politics-hold-dedication-bush-library-200154350.html
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Build a better business through online presence | PMA Newsline
Today?s Business Success is from a new contributor, Kevin McNally, CEO and founder of Interactive Palette, and focuses on a topic we can?t learn enough about: marketing online.
Build a Better Business through Online Presence ?
Effective marketing is at the heart of a successful business with a prevailing online presence perhaps the most straightforward route to achieving commercial goals.
In fact, a company?s website is the first thing many potential clients check out before deciding where to take their business, so it pays to maintain one that provides consistent up-to-date information, is easy to navigate and in general positively reflects what your company has to offer.
A powerful website should focus on your specific industry and help to build your brand. Those in the photography trade already know that a picture is indeed worth a thousand words; as such current content is critical to a business website.? Here is where a Content Management System (CMS) can keep your website fresh and inviting.? All too often, businesses rarely alter their website, in large part due to the misconception that it will be a costly endeavor.? While it?s true that a complete overhaul of a website comes with a considerable price tag, adding a CMS is quite cost-effective and typically pays for itself in short time.
For the uninitiated, a CMS is a web-based interface that allows business owners and specified staff the ability to add pages, edit content, upload images and PDFs and make other changes to a website as needed.? This allows a business to maintain the most up-to-date information on projects, services and price information. It enables the capacity to post press releases, special offers, testimonials and useful links.? And perhaps most importantly for the photography industry, a CMS allows inclusion of a dynamic photo gallery of completed projects.
A website becomes much more search engine friendly with the use of a CMS, allowing for increased traffic and potentially increased business. Building wide awareness of a website is essential to the success of a business and with a few fundamental SEO (Search Engine Optimization) measures you can increase ?hits.?
In much the same way that real estate is defined by ?location, location, location,? in the world of websites a top ranking on search engines ?such as Google or Yahoo ? is king.
One of the best methods to increase search engine ranking is through the optimal use of keywords; that is, knowing what specific words or phrases people are searching for and then targeting those phrases on your site.? A website designer can conduct the appropriate research to determine and target those keywords and also provide further analysis to pinpoint the most important terms ? or terms ?with opportunity? ? that might help bring the right visitors to your site.
Website linking is another technique used by professional website designers to attract traffic to a site.? In brief, this mechanism interlinks words or phrases key to a business website to other relevant pages on the site.? In addition, consider linking images from your website to other important pages in the same way; this can attract traffic through ?image search? results.
While ?less is more? in terms of a company?s home page or contact page, a website?s news section is where content rules.? Instead of short paragraphs or brief press releases, it?s wise to include blogs or articles of about 500 words.? This approach not only allows for comprehensive information about your services or other newsworthy information, it also adds to that all important keyword total.? In fact, search engines are always on the look-out for expanded website content, so use it to your best advantage.
So, how can you gauge whether your website is doing your business justice? Google Analytics is a service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about a website?s traffic and traffic sources.? It allows you to measure sales and conversions and also provides insights into how visitors arrived at your site, how they use it and how you can keep them staying on it longer and returning more often.
Also, sure your company is included in Google Local listings ? think of it a modern day Yellow Pages.
The ?must have? list for better business is a website that loads quickly; that?s the best way to optimize traffic.? Keep in mind that if your website?s home page overdoes content, you may be in jeopardy of scaring off potential clients, so word to the wise ? pare content on the home page down to the essentials to allow visitors continued navigation on the website.
Speaking of navigation, make sure that information is never more than a click or two away; providing a variety of navigational routes will go a long way toward ensuring customer satisfaction.? Think image maps, hyperlinks and drop-down menus in addition to search engines?all say ?user friendly.?
Maintaining a few social networking profiles (such as LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook) can be a great way to promote your company to new clients, while at the same time keeping past and current clients in the know about what?s going on.
While a static website that provides comprehensive and consistently updated information is of great value, site owners can leverage their knowledge, add another dimension to their site and directly target audiences through podcasts.
In short a podcast is a digital media file, downloaded directly from a streaming Internet source.? Podcasts are distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds and are hosted by individuals, businesses or organizations that want to share information. Podcast files are streamed and/or downloaded onto a computer, mobile device, MP3 player or iPod, etc.
Think of podcasting as having the ability to broadcast a personalized radio and/or video show directly from your website, thereby lending a ?voice? to your business. Podcasting is a way to showcase your expertise and can enhance your reputation as an authority in your field.? It is also a means of communicating in a much more personal manner than via a blanket email, e-newsletter or attached written document. Another plus to podcasting is its minimal cost; all that is needed is a microphone and Internet connection with RSS, a format for delivering regularly changing web content.
Essentially, podcasts are recorded and then distributed over the Internet, allowing you to reach new and wider audiences through your website.? Once listeners subscribe to a podcast feed, new podcasts are automatically downloaded to their computer or mobile device as soon as they are available, enabling your audience to listen at their convenience.? Since podcasting is an on-demand subscription technology, you can monitor your subscribers and have confidence that they are receiving the information you?re providing.
As a bonus, guests can be invited to participate in your podcast, providing an interactive and engaging element.
Podcasting not only showcases your expertise, it also shines a media light on your personality, giving your audience a sense of who you are and what your business can provide.? Moreover, podcasting allows subscribers access to information at their convenience.? They can listen when they want, starting and stopping content at will.
Having and maintaining an up-to-date website is essential to conducting business these days, but optimizing its potential should also be a priority. Through the use of proven mechanisms, traffic can be drawn to the right destination? your website.
?
Source: http://pmanewsline.com/2013/04/24/build-a-better-business-through-online-presence/
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SKorea demands talks with NKorea on closed factory
FILE - In this June 22, 2006 file photo, North Koreans work at a factory of South Korean apparel maker Shinwon company in the inter-Korean industrial park in Kaesong, North Korea. South Korea on Thursday, April 25, 2013 warned of an unspecified "grave measure" if North Korea rejects talks on the jointly run factory park shuttered for nearly a month - setting up the possible end of the last remaining major symbol of inter-Korean cooperation.(AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File)
FILE - In this June 22, 2006 file photo, North Koreans work at a factory of South Korean apparel maker Shinwon company in the inter-Korean industrial park in Kaesong, North Korea. South Korea on Thursday, April 25, 2013 warned of an unspecified "grave measure" if North Korea rejects talks on the jointly run factory park shuttered for nearly a month - setting up the possible end of the last remaining major symbol of inter-Korean cooperation.(AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File)
U.S. Army soldiers ride an armored vehicle during their military exercise near the border village of Panmunjom, that separates the two Koreas, in Paju, north of Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, April 24, 2013. For weeks, North Korea has threatened to attack the U.S. and South Korea for holding joint military drills and for supporting U.N. sanctions. Washington and Seoul said they've seen no evidence that Pyongyang is actually preparing for a major conflict, though South Korean defense officials said the North appears prepared to test-fire a medium-range missile capable of reaching the American territory of Guam. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
North Korean soldiers salute in front of Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, the mausoleum where the bodies of the late leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il lie embalmed, in Pyongyang on Thursday, April 25, 2013. North Korea on Thursday marked the 81st anniversary of the founding of its military, which began as an anti-Japanese militia and now has an estimated 1.2-million troops. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) ? After weeks of threatening rhetoric from the North, South Korea on Thursday promised its own unspecified "grave measures" if Pyongyang rejects talks on a jointly run factory park shuttered for nearly a month.
The park in the North Korean border town of Kaesong is the most significant casualty so far in the recent deterioration of relations between the Koreas. Pyongyang barred South Korean managers and cargo from entering North Korea earlier this month, then recalled the 53,000 North Koreans who worked on the assembly lines.
South Korea's Unification Ministry on Thursday proposed working-level talks on Kaesong and urged the North to respond by noon Friday, warning that Seoul will take "grave measures" if Pyongyang rebuffs the call for dialogue.
In a televised news conference, spokesman Kim Hyung-suk refused to say what those measures might be. Some analysts said Seoul would likely pull out the roughly 175 South Korean managers who remain at the complex.
Kim said South Korea set a Friday deadline because the remaining workers at Kaesong are running short of food and medicine. He said the companies there are suffering economically because of the shutdown.
To resolve deadlocked operations at Kaesong, Kim said North Korea should first allow some South Koreans to cross the border to hand over food and medicine to the managers.
North Korea didn't immediately respond Thursday, according to the Unification Ministry. North Korean state television showed fighter jets screeching across the sky and goose-stepping soldiers parading in front of leader Kim Jong Un at a ceremony in Pyongyang marking the 81st anniversary of the founding of the military. Tens of thousands of people visited Pyongyang's Kumsusan Palace to celebrate the anniversary.
The demand for talks follows a lull in what had been a period of rising hostility between the Koreas. Pyongyang has recently eased its threats of nuclear war and expressed some tentative signs of interest in dialogue. Its demands, including dismantling all U.S. nuclear weapons, go far beyond what its adversaries will accept, but Washington, Seoul and Beijing have also pushed for an easing of animosity.
The Kaesong complex is the last major symbol of cooperation remaining from an earlier era that saw the Koreas set up various projects to facilitate better ties.
The factory park has operated with South Korean know-how and technology and with cheap labor from North Korea since 2004. It has weathered past cycles of hostility between the rivals, including two attacks blamed on North Korea in 2010 that killed 50 South Koreans.
More than 120 South Korean companies, mostly small and medium-sized apparel and electronics firms, operated at Kaesong before North Korean workers stopped showing up on April 9. Raw material came from South Korea, with finished goods later sent back south. Last year, the factories produced goods worth $470 million.
Impoverished North Korea objects to views in South Korea that the park is a source of badly needed hard currency. South Korean companies paid salaries to North Korean workers averaging $127 a month, according to South Korea's government. That is less than one-sixteenth of the average salary of South Korean manufacturer workers.
Pyongyang also has complained about alleged South Korean military plans in the event the North held the Kaesong managers hostage.
South Koreans remaining at Kaesong are free to leave, but have been staying to protect their companies' equipment and products. Their food, which had been brought in before North Korea closed the border, is dwindling, and there has been a daily trickle of managers returning home.
On Wednesday, South Korean President Park Geun-hye said the country won't seek to resolve the Kaesong standoff by making concessions to the North. That was a reference to past liberal governments that were accused of providing the North with almost unconditional financial assistance to promote reconciliation.
"How the Kaesong issue is handled will be a touchstone for whether South-North relations will be predictable and sustainable," Park told South Korean journalists, according to her office. "I want the issue to be resolved quickly, but I would say there should not be a solution like funneling" aid, as has happened in the past.
Kim, the spokesman, said: "It's very regrettable for North Korea to reject (taking) the minimum humanitarian measures for our workers at the Kaesong industrial complex."
___
Associated Press writer Jean H. Lee in Pyongyang, North Korea, contributed to this report.
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Thursday, April 25, 2013
Just what makes that little old ant change a flower's nectar content?
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Ants play a variety of important roles in many ecosystems. As frequent visitors to flowers, they can benefit plants in their role as pollinators when they forage on sugar-rich nectar. However, a new study reveals that this mutualistic relationship may actually have some hidden costs. By transmitting sugar-eating yeasts to the nectar on which they feed, ants may be indirectly altering the nectar-chemistry and thus affecting subsequent pollinator visitations.
Many species of plants benefit from interacting with ants, and some even secrete special sugary substances to attract ants. Plants produce sugar, in the form of nectar, and in exchange ants provide services such as pollination or protection from herbivores.
The main components of nectar that attract pollinators include three dominant sugars?sucrose, fructose, and glucose?and amino acids (or proteins). The chemical composition of nectar differs among plant species and has been thought to be a conservative trait linked to pollinator type. For example, plants pollinated by hummingbirds tend to have nectar with high amounts of sucrose. In addition, nectar composition is thought to be regulated by the plant.
"When people think about how flowers are pollinated, they probably think about bees," notes Clara de Vega, a postdoctoral researcher at the Estaci?n Biol?gica de Do?ana, Spain. "But ants also pollinate flowers, and I am interested in the role ants play in pollination since it is still poorly understood."
De Vega joined forces with Carlos M. Herrera, an evolutionary ecologist at the Estaci?n Biol?gica de Do?ana, to investigate the relationship between ant pollinators and nectarivorous yeasts. Nectar-dwelling yeasts, which consume sugars, have recently been discovered in the flowers of many temperate and tropical plant species. De Vega and Herrera have already discovered that some ant species not only carry certain types of sugar-metabolizing yeasts on their bodies, but they also effectively transmit these yeasts to the nectar of flowers they visit.
In their most recent work, published in the American Journal of Botany, De Vega and Herrera investigated whether flowers visited by these ants differed from flowers that were not visited by ants in their sugar chemistry, and whether sugar-chemistry was correlated with the abundance of ant-transmitted yeasts found in the nectar.
By excluding ants from visiting inflorescences of a perennial, parasitic plant, Cytinus hypocistis, and comparing the nectar chemistry to inflorescences that were visited by ants, the authors tested these ideas experimentally.
When the authors compared the sugar content in the nectar of flowers visited by ants versus those enclosed in nylon mesh bags to exclude ants, they found that nectar of flowers exposed to ants had higher levels of fructose and glucose, but lower levels of sucrose compared with the ant-excluded flowers.
Interestingly, in flowers visited by ants, there was a high correlation between yeast cell density and sugar content. Nectar that had higher densities of yeast had more fructose and less sucrose, suggesting that the types of yeasts change the sugar content of the nectar. Flowers that were excluded from ants did not have any yeast in their nectar.
"Our study has revealed that ants can actually change the nectar characteristics of the flowers they are pollinating," says de Vega. "The microorganisms, specifically yeasts, that are present on the surface of ants change the composition of sugar in the flower?s nectar."
"This means that nectar composition is not completely controlled by the flower?it is something created in cooperation with the ants that visit the flower," she notes. "We also think that these ant-transported yeasts might have the potential to affect plant reproduction."
Indeed, if a plant cannot control the sugar content of its nectar, then it may lose some of its target pollinators, which would potentially affect overall seed set and plant fitness.
Moreover, if introducing these yeasts to nectar changes the chemistry of the very components that serve to attract pollinators, then perhaps ants are indirectly changing the foraging behavior of subsequent flower visitors and thereby affecting seed dispersal patterns.
This study has revealed an additional layer in the complex association between ants and flowering plants, as pollinating ants alter sugar-nectar chemistry in flowers via sugar-consuming yeasts. But the story does not end here. De Vega plans to continue researching the role that these nectarivorous yeasts play on the reproduction of plants.
"I plan to study the whole interaction of plants, yeasts, and pollinators?how are they interrelated and what mechanisms shape these relations?"
###
Article: http://www.amjbot.org/content/100/4/792.full.pdf+html
American Journal of Botany: http://www.amjbot.org/
Thanks to American Journal of Botany for this article.
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Czech Republic to donate $200,000 to West, Texas
PRAGUE (AP) ? The Czech Republic plans to donate 4 million koruna (some $200,000) to help the Texas town of West recover from a devastating fertilizer plant explosion.
The government decided to the provide aid in solidarity because a significant number of people in the town of 2,700 have Czech roots. The blast damaged numerous homes in the town.
The Foreign Ministry says Czech Ambassador to the U.S. Petr Gandalovic visited West last week and talked to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, West Mayor Tommy Muska and other officials about how to help.
A ministry statement Wednesday said the money will go toward repairing property in the town.
Thousands of Czechs, mostly from the eastern part known of Moravia, settled in Texas more than 100 years ago.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/czechs-send-funds-blast-hit-texas-town-181551812.html
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Foursquare Redesigns Its Venue Pages For The Web To Capitalize On Its 50M Monthly Unique Visitors
Foursquare recently raised another round of funding, with the announcement coming just a few days after it released its latest iOS app redesign. Today, the company has launched redesigned venue pages, to fit in with what they did last year on the web with its homepage, focusing on explore and discover functionality. The changes are to capitalize on the traffic that Foursquare gets from its now #1 referrer on the web, Google, which traffic has doubled from over the past year. This is an important play for Foursquare, as its competing with Google’s own Local product, Yelp….and it seems like Facebook too, after its redesign today for local business pages. Foursquare’s lead engineer for the web, Mike Singleton, told me that the site now gets over 50M unique visitors on the web, which is 17M more than actually use its app. That means that Foursquare is quietly breaking through as a place for information about venues, its most prized asset: People are coming from Google for different reasons, we needed to give them the information they needed at a glance, which was difficult. Since focusing on its Explore functionality, Singleton says that its usage has doubled, especially on the website. The new venue page has all of the information that people need in a quick glance, the pages are more visually appealing and owners of the venues should be proud to show them off, perhaps by linking to them on their website over competitors like Yelp. Here’s a look at what a venue page looked like before today’s launch: You’ll notice that some of the more attractive content, such as photos, are pushed way down, giving more focus to the map. Additionally, information like when the venue is open was shoved to the right-hand side, requiring a scroll, as well as the someone’s eyes actually finding them. This redesign solves that: The new design is cleaner, and brings all of the information that Google searchers would want to see immediately, such as photos of the venue and a way more attractive map. Since some of the people visiting from the web might not be app users, Foursquare wants to give them a better first impression of the service, by populating the page with the info that’s needed to make quick decisions, like whether to actually go to a place for dinner or not. By being able to search through tips,Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/eKHDLnZcK1o/
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WHO: New flu passes more easily from bird to human
BEIJING (AP) ? A new strain of bird flu that emerged in China over the past month is one of the "most lethal" flu viruses so far, worrying health officials because it can jump more easily from birds to humans than the one that started killing people a decade ago, World Health Organization officials said Wednesday.
Scientists are watching the virus closely to see if it could spark a global pandemic but say there is little evidence so far that it can spread easily from human to human.
WHO's top influenza expert, Dr. Keiji Fukuda, told reporters at a briefing in Beijing that people seem to catch the H7N9 virus from birds more easily than the H5N1 strain that began ravaging poultry across Asia in 2003. The H5N1 strain has since killed 360 people worldwide, mostly after contact with infected fowl.
Health experts are concerned about H7N9's ability to jump to humans, and about the strain's capacity to infect birds without causing noticeable symptoms, which makes it difficult to monitor its spread.
"This is definitely one of the most lethal influenza viruses we have seen so far," Fukuda said. But he added that experts are still trying to understand the virus, and that there might be a large number of mild infections that are going undetected.
The H7N9 bird flu virus has infected more than 100 people in China, seriously sickening most of them and killing more than 20, mostly near the eastern coast around Shanghai. Taiwan on Wednesday confirmed its first case, a 53-year-old man who became sick after returning from a visit to the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu.
In comparison, the earlier bird flu strain, H5N1, is known to kill up to 60 of every 100 people it infects.
Wednesday's briefing came at the end of a weeklong joint investigation by WHO and Chinese authorities in Beijing and Shanghai.
Experts said they still aren't sure how people are getting infected but said evidence points to infections at live poultry markets, particularly through ducks and chickens. They said it was encouraging that reported infections appeared to slow down after the closure of live poultry markets in affected areas.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/flu-passes-more-easily-bird-human-073635353.html
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