HTC Rhyme review

The HTC Rhyme is one of the newest additions to the Verizon wireless line-up, setting itself apart from the rest of the family since it's specifically for women -- or hipsters who like purple. This time around, the company decided to focus on the accessories, leading its marketing campaign with a glowing purse charm to avoid missing calls -- a fate all too familiar for gals whose phone is oftentimes buried at the bottom of a Louis Vuitton.

Unfortunately, we've been skipped over when it comes to some of the features popular with higher-end, more macho phones like the Droid RAZR or the Galaxy Nexus. Sorry, ladies, no 4- or 4.3-inch touchscreen, no 4G LTE and certainly no dual-core processor. Instead, this phone is pretty run-of-the-mill, with a 3.7-inch capacitive touchscreen, single-core, 1GHz processor, a WVGA display, a 5MP rear-facing and VGA front-facing camera, as well as an 8GB microSD card. Running the newest Sense 3.5 UI atop Gingerbread, the Rhyme offers a unique user experience for those who like HTC's custom UI and, of course, the color purple. But is this phone powerful enough to keep up with the multitasking mayhem that is a day in the life of a modern woman? Jump past the break to find out.

Continue reading HTC Rhyme review

Filed under:

HTC Rhyme review originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments


Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/CljEIbr1x38/

big east expansion big east expansion michigan football michigan football google buzz trace cyrus hilary duff pregnant

Hurricane Rina gaining strength on path to Yucatan (AP)

MIAMI ? Hurricane Rina is getting stronger as a Category 2 storm off Central America's Caribbean coast.

Mexico issued a hurricane warning for Yucatan's east coast, including the tourist destinations of Cancun and the island of Cozumel.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Tuesday that Rina's forecast track shows it possibly curving toward Cuba in the next few days, but senior hurricane specialist Michael Brennan says it could also move toward southern Florida.

Rina's maximum sustained winds are near 105 mph (165 kph). Additional strengthening is forecast and Rina is expected to become a major hurricane Tuesday night.

The hurricane is centered about 300 miles (480 kilometers) east-southeast of Chetumal and is moving west-northwest near 3 mph (6 kph).

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/weather/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111025/ap_on_re_us/tropical_weather

knowshon moreno knowshon moreno oklahoma state boxing news manny pacquiao dennis hopper florida state

Lab-made skin cells will aid transplantation, cancer, drug discovery research

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

The pigmented cells called melanocytes aren't just for making freckles and tans. Melanocytes absorb ultraviolet light, protecting the skin from the harmful effects of the sun. They also are the cells that go haywire in melanoma, as well as in more common conditions as vitiligo and albinism.

Naturally, researchers would love to study melanocytes in the laboratory. There's just one problem -- melanocytes from adult skin don't grow very well in the lab. Now, researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have found a way to create melanocytes from mouse tail cells using embryonic stem cell-like intermediates called inducible pluripotent (iPS) cells.

Xiaowei Xu, MD, PhD, associate professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, is senior author the study, which appears online in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology ahead of the December print issue. Xu and his team converted mouse tail-tip fibroblasts into iPS cells using four genes, which were first described by Shinya Yamanaka in 2006, producing pluripotent cells similar to embryonic stem cells, but without the concomitant ethical issues.

According to Xu, these lab-made melanocytes promise benefits in areas from tissue transplantation to drug discovery. "This method really has lots of clinical implications," says Xu. "We are not quite there yet, but this is an early step."

For example, by collecting a tissue sample from patients with, say, vitiligo, and converting it to iPS cells, researchers can study what goes wrong as those cells differentiate into melanocytes. Or, they can study the development and possible treatment of melanoma.

Xu's new study is the first to report creating melanocytes from iPS cells in mice, and builds on his previous work. Xu's lab was involved in the first study to work out the conditions for differentiating human embryonic stem cells to melanocytes in 2006. Earlier this year, a Japanese team became the first to differentiate human iPS cells to melanocytes.

Transformation of Cells

Initially, the researchers from Xu's lab introduced the four Yamanaka genes into mouse cells by infecting the cells with transgenic viruses. Between 0.5% to 0.8% of fibroblasts treated in this way converted to iPS cells in Xu's lab ? a rate that is consistent with other researchers' findings, he says. But his team also could achieve the same result (albeit at lower efficiency, 0.01%) using a non-viral "transposon" called piggyBac. Finally, the researchers showed they could differentiate both iPS cell populations into melanocytes in about two weeks by feeding the cells a defined cocktail of growth factors.

According to Xu, the growth factor cocktail used in the present study differs somewhat from the formulation his lab worked out several years ago for human embryonic stem cells. Among other things, it works in the absence of the growth factor Wnt3a and the carcinogen TPA, both of which are required for human melanocyte differentiation. TPA, especially, could be problematic for possible cell-based therapies, in that it is tumorigenic. It remains to be seen, however, whether human iPS cells can also be differentiated in the absence of this compound, Xu notes.

His study's implementation of piggyBac in creating the iPS cells (a technique first published by Canadian researchers in 2009) could possibly extend the technique's clinical value, he adds. Unlike viruses, which insert their genetic cargo into the host genome, thereby raising concerns of genetic alterations in the infected cells, piggyBac delivers genes without permanently altering the host genome.

###

University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine: http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/

Thanks to University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine 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.

This press release has been viewed 55 time(s).

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/114649/Lab_made_skin_cells_will_aid_transplantation__cancer__drug_discovery_research

andy kaufman october 21 2011 ohio ohio john beck john beck mariska hargitay

How Apple?s A5 Chip and iOS 5 Will Change Mobile Gaming

If the last two weeks of mainstream press coverage are to be believed, the only relevant features in Apple’s new iPhone 4S are?Siri, the phone’s remarkable digital assistant, and the new?8-megapixel camera, which delivers near point-and-shoot image quality to Apple’s mobile platform. But there’s one other feature that’s largely been ignored, even though it too was [...]

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GearFactor/~3/yktxCq4tFQk/

empire state building amazing grace wtc united 93 united 93 loose change pearl harbor

Big Mother Is Watching: Statue of Liberty Gets Panoramic Webcams [Cameras]

Soon you'll be able to see the world from Lady Liberty's vantage without ever visiting New York. The Statue of Liberty is getting a sweet 125th birthday gift: five webcams that will broadcast sweeping panoramas 24 hours a day. More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/anNOrvTjfIs/big-mother-is-watching-statue-of-liberty-gets-panoramic-webcams

gazelle gazelle pumpkin carving patterns pumpkin carving patterns lsu lizzie borden lizzie borden

US insists operation in Africa a limited mission (AP)

WASHINGTON ? The U.S. military operation against a ruthless guerrilla group accused of widespread atrocities is a short-term deployment with the specific goal of ending the threat of the Lord's Resistance Army in Africa, Obama administration officials insisted on Tuesday.

Facing skeptical members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, administration officials said the roughly 100 American troops ? mostly U.S. Army Special Forces ? had been dispatched to central Africa as advisers to regional forces pursuing leader Joseph Kony and top commanders of the Lord's Resistance Army.

The U.S. designated the group a terrorist organization in 2001.

Alexander Vershbow, the assistant secretary of Defense for international security affairs, said the guerrilla group had been reduced to about 200 core fighters spread across vast jungle terrain in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic and South Sudan. However, Kony and other commanders remain at large and continue to order atrocities. Combating this requires U.S. help with intelligence and coordination of operations.

"There are no doubt significant long-term challenges associated with building partner capacity in Africa, but this is a short-term deployment with specific goals and objectives," Vershbow told the committee. He later added: "If we think adjustments to the mission are warranted over time, we will consider them. If we do not believe our collective efforts are resulting in significant progress, we will not continue this deployment."

Pressed by lawmakers for a timetable, Vershbow said he couldn't offer any specifics, but "we're talking months. We will review in a few months."

Asked to define success, the Pentagon official said it was "capturing or killing Kony and other commanders." He also included defections from the guerrilla group.

Long considered one of Africa's most brutal rebel groups, the Lord's Resistance Army began its attacks in Uganda more than 20 years ago but has been pushing westward. The Obama administration and human rights groups say its atrocities have left thousands dead and have forced as many as 300,000 Africans to flee. They have charged the group with seizing children to bolster its ranks of soldiers and sometimes forcing them to become sex slaves.

Kony is wanted by the International Criminal Court for heinous attacks in multiple countries.

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama notified Congress that he was sending about 100 U.S. troops to central Africa to advise in the fight against the guerrilla group. Vershbow said they are carrying small arms for protection and communication systems as they operate in an advisory role.

Asked if the United States was authorized to use Predator drones, Vershbow said the use of drones was not being considered.

Republicans and Democrats largely backed Obama's decision, seeing it as the next step after congressional passage in 2010 of the Lord's Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, which had strong bipartisan support. Congressional outrage over the guerrilla group and Kony also remains strong.

"We are not here to determine whether Joseph Kony is evil," said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., chairwoman of the committee. "We know that he is."

Said Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif.: "Sometimes just getting rid of one person does make a difference." Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J., talked of a "madman."

Yet lawmakers are weary of war after a decade of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, concerned about costs in a time of budget cuts and suspicious of a slippery slope when combat troops are used as military advisers. The long Vietnam War and the disastrous U.S. involvement in Somalia in the 1990s still weigh heavily.

Rep. Donald Manzullo, R-Ill., said there were concerns and anxiousness among lawmakers that the operation could expand, requiring more troops.

Don Yamamoto, deputy assistant secretary of State for African Affairs, said the short-term deployment was part of a larger strategy in partnership with the United Nations, African Union and other partners.

"The protection of civilians continues to be central to that strategy," he said.

Frustration with Obama's use of the military in Libya without congressional approval also concerned some lawmakers, particularly Republicans. However, one of the strongest statements of support came from a conservative GOP senator who didn't attend the hearing but provided a statement.

"This is not a Libya,' said Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., who later added: "It is time to end Kony's reign of terror."

Attending the hearing was 22-year-old Evelyn Apoko, who was abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army and maimed during years of captivity.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111025/ap_on_re_us/us_congress_africa

nina dobrev michael turner tom brady emmy nominations desean jackson monsters vs aliens jeremy maclin

Mexico's Drug War: Confessions of a Narco Killer (Time.com)

In his comprehensive and compelling new book, El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency, British correspondent Ioan Grillo, who also reports for TIME, narrates the Mexican underworld's "radical transformation from drug smugglers into paramilitary death squads ... a criminal insurgency that poses the biggest armed threat to Mexico since its 1910 revolution." Grillo outlines both the Mexican and American policy failures that fostered the crisis, which has produced 40,000 murders south of the border since 2006. More important, he offers a rare and unsettling look into the lives of ordinary Mexicans and other Latin Americans "sucked into [the drug war] or victimized by it." An excerpt:

It all seemed like a bad dream.

It may have been vivid and raw. But it felt somehow surreal, like Gonzalo was watching these terrible acts from above. Like it was someone else who had firefights with ski-masked federal police in broad daylight. Someone else who stormed into homes and dragged away men from crying wives and mothers. Someone else who duct-taped victims to chairs and starved and beat them for days. Someone else who clasped a machete and began to hack off their craniums while they were still living.(See photos of a siege in Cuidad Ju[a {a}]rez.)

But it was all real.

He was a different man when he did those things, Gonzalo tells me. He had smoked crack cocaine and drunk whisky every day, had enjoyed power in a country where the poor are so powerless, had a latest model truck and could pay for houses in cash, had four wives and children scattered all over ... had no God.

"In those days, I had no fear. I felt nothing. I had no compassion for anybody," he says, speaking slowly, swallowing some words.

His voice is high and nasal after police smashed his teeth out until he confessed. His face betrays little emotion. I can't really take in the gravity of what he is saying ? until I play back a video of the interview later and transcribe his words. And then as I wallow over the things he told me, I have to pause and shudder inside.(Read about how Mexico's drug war may become its Iraq.)

I talk to Gonzalo in a prison cell he shares with eight others on a sunny Tuesday morning in Ciudad Ju?rez, the most murderous city on the planet. We are less than seven miles from the U.S. and the Rio Grande that slices through North America like a line dividing a palm. Gonzalo sits on his bed in the corner clasping his hands together on his lap. He wears a simple white T-shirt that reveals a protruding belly under broad shoulders and bulging muscles that he built as a teenage American football star and are still in shape at his 38 years. Standing 6 ft. 2 in., he cuts an imposing figure and exhibits an air of authority over his cellmates. But as he talks to me, he is modest and forthcoming. He bears a goatee, divided between a curved black moustache and gray hairs on his chin. His eyes are focused and intense, looking ruthless and intimidating but also revealing an inner pain.

Gonzalo spent 17 years working as a soldier, kidnapper and murderer for Mexican drug gangs. In that time he took the lives of many, many more people than he can count. In most countries, he would be viewed as a dangerous serial killer and locked up in a top security prison. But Mexico today has thousands of serial murderers. Overwhelmed jails have themselves become scenes of bloody massacres: 20 slain in one riot; 21 murdered in another; 23 in yet another: all in penitentiaries close to this same cursed border.

Within these sanguine pens, we are in a kind of sanctuary ? an entire wing of born-again Christians. This is the realm of Jesus, they tell me, a place where they abide by laws of their own "ecclesiastical government." Other wings in this jail are segregated between gangs: one controlled by the Barrio Azteca, which works for the Ju?rez Cartel; another controlled by their sworn enemies the Artist Assassins, who murder for the Sinaloa Cartel.

The 300 Christians try to live outside of this war. Baptized Libres en Cristo, or "Free Through Christ," the sect founded in the prison borrows some of the radical and rowdy elements of Southern U.S. Evangelicalism to save these souls. I visit a jail-block mass before I sit down with Gonzalo. The pastor, a convicted drug trafficker, mixes stories of ancient Jerusalem with his hard-core street experiences, using slang and addressing the flock as the "homies from the barrio." A live band blends rock, rap and norte?o music into their hymns. And the sinners let it all out, slam-dancing wildly to the chorus, praying with eyes closed tight, teeth gritted, sweat pouring from foreheads, hands raised to the heavens ? using all their spiritual power to exorcise their heinous demons.

Gonzalo has more demons than most. He was incarcerated in the prison a year before I met him, and bought his way into the Christian wing hoping it was a quiet place where he could escape the war. But when I listen carefully to his interview, he sounds like he really has given his heart to Christ, really does pray for redemption. And when he talks to me ? a nosy British journalist prying into his past ? he is really confessing to Jesus.

"You meet Christ and it is a totally different thing. You feel horror, and start thinking about the things you have done. Because it was bad. You think about the people. It could have been a brother of mine I was doing these things to. I did bad things to a lot of people. A lot of parents suffered."

Read about activists marching against Mexico's drug war.

"When you belong to organized crime you have to change. You could be the best person in the world, but the people you live with change you completely. You become somebody else. And then the drugs and liquor change you."

I have watched too many videos of the pain caused by killers like Gonzalo. I have seen a sobbing teenager tortured on a tape sent to his family; a bloodied old man confessing that he had talked to a rival cartel; a line of kneeling victims with bags over their heads being shot in the brain one by one. Does someone who has committed such crimes deserve redemption? Do they deserve a place in heaven?(Read about Mexico bracing for a deadlier drug war after a bombing.)

Yet, I see a human side to Gonzalo. He is friendly and well mannered. We chat about lighter issues. Perhaps in another time and place, he could have been a stand-up guy who worked hard and cared for his family ? like his father, who, he says, was a lifelong electrician and union man.

I have known angry, violent men in my home country; hooligans who smash bottles into people's faces or stab people at soccer games. And on the surface, those men seem more hateful and intimidating than Gonzalo as he talks to me in the prison cell. Yet they have killed nobody. Gonzalo has helped turn Mexico at the dawn of the 21st century into a bloodbath that has shocked the world.

In his 17 years in the service of the mafia, Gonzalo witnessed extraordinary changes in the Mexican drug industry.

He began his career in Durango, the mountainous northern state that is the proud birthplace of Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa. It is also near the heartland of smugglers who have taken drugs to America since Washington first made them illegal. After dropping out of high school and abandoning his hopes of becoming an NFL quarterback, Gonzalo did what many young tough nuts in his town did: he joined the police force. It was here he learned the highly marketable skills of kidnapping and torture.(Read to see if Mexico's narcos are fighting scared.)

The path from policeman to villain is alarmingly common in Mexico. Major drug lords, such as the 1980's "Boss of Bosses" Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, began as officers of the law, as did notorious kidnapper Daniel Arizmendi, alias the Ear Lopper. Like them, Gonzalo left the police after a reasonably short stint, deserting when he was 20 years old to pursue a full-time criminal career.

He arrived in Ciudad Ju?rez and did dirty work for an empire of traffickers who smuggled drugs along a thousand miles of border from east of Ju?rez to the Pacific Ocean. The year was 1992, glorious days for Mexico's drug mafias. A year earlier, the Soviet Union had collapsed and governments across the world were globalizing their economies. A year later, Colombian police shot dead cocaine king Pablo Escobar, signaling the beginning of the demise of that country's cartels. As the 1990s went on, Mexican traffickers flourished, moving tons of narcotics north and pumping back billions of dollars amid the surge in free trade created by NAFTA. They replaced Colombians as the dominant mafia in the Americas. Gonzalo provided muscle for these gangster entrepreneurs, pressuring (or kidnapping and murdering) anyone who didn't pay their bills. And he became a rich man, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But by the time of his arrest 17 years later, his job and his industry had changed drastically. He was leading heavily armed troops in urban warfare against rival gangs. He was carrying out mass kidnappings and controlling safe houses with dozens of victims bound and gagged. He was working with high-ranking city police officers, but fighting pitched battles against federal agents. And he was carrying out brutal terror, including countless decapitations. He had become, he tells me, a man he did not recognize when he stared in the mirror.

"You learn a lot of forms of torture. To a point you enjoy carrying them out. We laughed at people's pain ? at the way we tortured them. There are many forms of torture. Cutting off arms, decapitating. This is a very strong thing. You decapitate someone and have no feeling, no fear."

Understanding the Mexican drug war is crucial not only because of morbid curiosity at heaps of severed-brain cases ? but because the problems in Mexico are being played out across the world. We hear little about communist guerrillas in the Americas these days, but criminal uprisings are spreading like bushfire. In El Salvador, the Mara Salvatrucha forced bus drivers into a national strike over anti-gang laws; in Brazil, the First Command torched 82 buses, 17 banks and killed 42 policemen in one coordinated offensive; in Jamaica, police clashed with supporters of Christopher "Dudus" Coke, leaving 70 dead. Are pundits going to insist this is just cops and robbers? The Mexican drug war is a frightening warning of how bad things could get in these other countries; it is a case study in criminal insurgency.

Many Salvadoran gang bangers are the sons of communist guerrillas ? and call themselves combatants just like their fathers. But they don't care about Che Guevara and socialism, just money and power. In a globalized world, mafia capitalists and criminal insurgents have become the new dictators and the new rebels. Welcome to the 21st century.

From El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency. Copyright (c) 2011 by Ioan Grillo. Published by Bloomsbury Press.

See photos about coming to age in Ciudad Juarez.

Read about Mexico's lost generation.

View this article on Time.com

Most Popular on Time.com:

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mexico/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/time/20111025/wl_time/08599209759400

seal beach seal beach bhutan zip code finder zip code finder blackhawks daylight savings time 2011

Insomnia could moderately raise your heart attack risk, study suggests

ScienceDaily (Oct. 24, 2011) ? Having trouble sleeping? If so, you could have a moderately higher risk of having a heart attack, according to research reported in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

In a recent study, the risk of heart attack in people with insomnia ranged from 27 percent to 45 percent greater than for people who rarely experienced trouble sleeping.

Researchers related heart attack risks to three major insomnia symptoms. Compared to people who reported never or almost never having these problems, people who:

  • had trouble falling asleep almost daily in the last month had a 45 percent higher heart attack risk;
  • had problems staying asleep almost every night in the last month had a 30 percent higher heart attack risk; and
  • didn't wake up feeling refreshed in the morning more than once a week had a 27 percent higher heart attack risk.

"Sleep problems are common and fairly easy to treat," said Lars Erik Laugsand, M.D., lead researcher and internist from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology Department of Public Health in Trondheim. "So it's important that people are aware of this connection between insomnia and heart attack and talk to their doctor if they're having symptoms."

Heart attack risk also increases with each additional insomnia symptom, researchers said.

The study was based on 52,610 Norwegian adults who answered questions about insomnia as part of a national health survey in 1995-97. Researchers examined hospital records and Norway's National Cause of Death Registry to identify 2,368 people who had first-time heart attacks during the following 11 years.

The researchers used survival analysis to adjust for factors that could influence the results such as age, sex, marital status, education level, blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, weight, exercise and shift work. They also considered depression and anxiety, both of which can cause insomnia.

Up to 33 percent of people in the general population experience at least one insomnia symptom, according to researchers. Previous smaller studies have linked insomnia to heart disease, including high blood pressure and heart attacks. Every year, about 785,000 Americans have a first-time heart attack.

It's unclear why insomnia is linked to higher heart attack risk. Some suggest sleep problems affect heart attack risk factors such as high blood pressure and inflammation.

Researchers didn't adjust for obstructive sleep apnea, and results may not apply to Americans because their daylight hours and sleep patterns differ from Norwegians, said Laugsand, noting that further study is needed.

Co-authors are Lars J. Vatten, M.D., Ph.D.; Carl Platou, M.D. and Imre Janszky, M.D., Ph.D. Individual author disclosures are on the manuscript.

Recommend this story on Facebook, Twitter,
and Google +1:

Other bookmarking and sharing tools:


Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Heart Association.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. Lars E. Laugsand, Lars J. Vatten, Carl Platou, Imre Janszky. Insomnia and the Risk of Acute Myocardial Infarction: A Population Study. Circulation, 2011; DOI: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.111.025858

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/~3/tgsRSNpTeT4/111024164706.htm

world series tickets world series tickets nelson cruz nelson cruz michael young war of the worlds detroit lions