শনিবার, ৫ জানুয়ারি, ২০১৩

Movie review: Texas Chainsaw 3D | canada.com

Texas Chainsaw 3D

Starring: Alexandra Daddario, Dan Yeager, Trey Songz

Directed by: John Lussenhop

Written by: Adam Marcus, Debra Sullivan and Kirsten Elms

Parental guidance: Horror, violence, torture, not suitable for children

Running time: 92 minutes

Rating: 1? stars out of 5

This whole Texas chainsaw thing has started to go downhill, and you remember how good it used to be. The new film, Texas Chainsaw 3D, is a sequel to the classic 1974 horror movie ? very influential in its use of meat hooks and the iconography of the slaughterhouse ? whose main attributes is that it extends the story into a new generation (oh yay!) and that when people wave chainsaws at you, they appear to come right off the screen and into your popcorn.

In return, we must suffer the many tropes of the genre ? a group of attractive and oversexed young people heading for a deserted home in the woods for a par-tay, followed by a slau-ghter ? and graphic scenes of people being sliced in two. Special effects have really boomed in the intervening years, and while Texas Chainsaw 3D still falls back on the old standards (a guy impaled on a meat hook, a woman locked in a freezer), its now possible to show folks being sawed through the middle with alarming authenticity. Thus does cinematic technology march on.

The film starts with a recap of the first film, with the drooling, murderous and possible inbred family the Sawyers being burned alive by their neighbours. This is on account of Jed Sawyer (Dan Yeager), a hulk who lives in the basement and furnishes the house with the bones of people he hacks to death. Jed also cuts off their faces to form a skin mask for himself: the character, dubbed Leatherface, is based on the same serial killer, Ed Gein, who also inspired Psycho and Silence of the Lambs.

In this telling, all the Sawyers don?t die in the fire. Leatherface survives, of course, and so does a Sawyer infant, who is taken away and raised by another couple. She grows up to be Heather, played by Alexandra Daddario as a walking midriff with a pout on top. If my math is correct, Heather is 38, and she might be, too. Just not 38 years old.

Heather learns of her heritage when her grandmother dies and she inherits the old Sawyer mansion in Texas. Her adoptive parents confirm the news (?You are from a shit heap. There, now you know?) and she heads off on a road trip with three friends and a hunky hitchhiker. Among them is Ryan, her boyfriend, who is played by rapper Trey Songz in his screen debut and who distinguishes himself by being no worse than any of the other actors.

Mayhem eventually ensues, and those who grew up on Tobe Hooper?s innovative original ? he created a Southern Gothic of nightmarish creepiness ? will recognize the familiar scenes: big old Leatherface silhouetted against the sky as he chases this victim or that through the woods, the grisly sound of the chainsaw starting up, the ill-advised slow walk into dark basements to see what?s doing. ?Getting a bad feeling here,? says one policeman as he enters the place where people have had their fingers snipped off with clippers and bloodstains streak the floor. No kidding, Sherlock.

Director John Luessenhop (Takers) knows the beats of horror, but the story keeps pulling him away from it to a wider tale of the townsfolk who killed all those Sawyers so many years ago. They seem to be even worse, with the possible exception of Carl, a cute policeman played by Scott Eastwood, Clint?s boy, who takes over the role of love interest after the other candidates have been skewered.

He?s not very good at it, though, and Texas Chainsaw 3D isn?t very good at it either: a blood-soaked copycat that vacillates between unwatchable violence and unendurable clich?, and with the promise of more to come. Getting a bad feeling here.

CAPSULE _ Texas Chainsaw 3D: A sequel to the 1974 horror classic in which an infant cousin of Leatherface survives, grows up and inherits the old family property. She then returns, with predictable, and graphic results. The old horror clich?s are getting stale by now, but technology has given the bloodletting a new intensity. 1? stars out of 5 ? Jay Stone

Source: http://o.canada.com/2013/01/04/movie-review-texas-chainsaw-3d/

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শুক্রবার, ৪ জানুয়ারি, ২০১৩

Safety Survey Reveals Lab Risks

scientists An international poll provides a lens into lab workers' attitudes to workplace welfare. Image: Flickr/mars_discovery_district

Scientists may have a false sense of security about the safety of their laboratories, according to early results from the first international survey of researchers? workplace attitudes and practices.

Some 86% of the roughly 2,400 scientists who responded said that they believe their labs are safe places to work. Yet just under half had experienced injuries ranging from animal bites to chemical inhalation, and large fractions noted frequent lone working, unreported injuries and insufficient safety training on specific hazards (see ?A question of safety?).

?Understanding this disparity will be key to positively changing safety culture,? says James Gibson, head of environmental health and safety at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The university?s Center for Laboratory Safety, a research initiative set up in March 2011, commissioned the study as part of a wave of US-led efforts to examine safety culture following the shocking death of a 23-year-old research assistant, Sheharbano Sangji. She received horrific burns in a UCLA lab fire four years ago (see Nature http://doi.org/dnws3n; 2009), and her supervisor, organic chemist Patrick Harran, may face a criminal trial over her death. Other incidents, including a second lab death, at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, in 2011 (see Nature 472, 270?271; 2011), have added to the concerns.

The study ?is the most comprehensive attempt at gathering data on attitudes to safety that I?ve seen???and one more piece of information in a growing body of reports that point to the need to improve the culture around safety in our academic laboratories,? says Dorothy Zolandz, director of the US National Academies Board on Chemical Sciences and Technology. Nature Publishing Group,the publisher of Nature, helped to launch the survey, as did the firm BioRAFT, which provides software for safety compliance and receives investment from Digital Science, a sister company to Nature Publishing Group. UCLA?s Center for Laboratory Safety plans to analyze the data more closely later this year, but shared early results with Nature.

Part and parcel
Some of the anonymized survey participants ? who were mostly from the United States and United Kingdom, but also hailed from Europe, China and Japan ? felt that any injuries they sustained were just part of the job. ?Was scratched by a monkey,? one scientist wrote. ?It?s bound to happen in that line of work, no matter how careful you are.? Another was bitten while extracting venom from rattlesnakes; a third reported being sprayed on the face and hands with sulphuric acid, leading to US$3,000 of dermatology treatments. The most common injuries were minor???cuts, lacerations and needle pricks???but 30% of respondents said they had witnessed at least one ?major? lab injury, something that required attention from a medical professional. More than one-quarter of junior researchers said that they had experienced an injury that they hadn?t reported to their supervisor.

Yet the overwhelming majority of respondents asserted that their labs were safe places to work, that they had received sufficient safety training to minimize injury and that appropriate safety measures had been taken to protect employees. This level of comfort is similar to that found in other, smaller surveys, says Ralph Stuart, secretary of the American Chemical Society?s health and safety division (which has conducted its own surveys on the matter).

But more specific questions in the survey reveal that safety standards are often not adhered to. Only 60% said they had received safety training on specific hazards or agents they worked with, and around half agreed that lab safety could be improved, with chemists (60%) most likely to feel this, and neuroscientists (30%) significantly less so.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=6e730019870a4dba7a12c04c2fbafc8d

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Page Not Found - Yahoo!

Please check the URL for proper spelling and capitalization. If you're having trouble locating a destination on Yahoo!, try visiting the Yahoo! homepage or look through a list of Yahoo!'s online services.

Please try Yahoo Help Central if you need more assistance.

Source: http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/weightloss

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Best-Selling Video Game Consoles: 1972 to 2002 - Australian Retro ...

Atari2600? ? ???NES? ? ???SMD

Do you remember those?school-yard?arguments you used to have with your friends about which video game console was better: Atari vs Intellivision or Sega vs Nintendo ?
Finally, you can check out the best-selling video game consoles from 1972 to 2002 figures below and put an end to those endless?arguments?- or will this just?reopen old wounds ?

Best-Selling-Consoles_1972_to_2002

It is quite clear that Atari reined supreme in the early days with 30 million consoles being sold world-wide. After resurrecting the video games industry in the mid 80?s, Nintendo enjoyed massive sales of their NES (61.9 million) and SNES (49.1 million) consoles, while Sega played the bridesmaid with their Master System (13.1 million unit) and their better selling 16-bit machine, the Mega Drive / Genesis (41.9 million).

The early 90?s were still dominated by Nintendo, however, that all changed when Sony decided to enter the video games industry in 1994 by releasing their Playstation console. Sony?s dominance was clear with the first Playstation (102.9 million) selling exceedingly well, but its successor, the Playstation 2 (155.1 million) still remains the best-selling video games console of all time**

** as at 1 January 2013

?

This entry was posted in Fun Facts, Retrospective and tagged Atari, Commodore, consoles, nec, nintendo, Retro Gaming, sega, SNK by ausretrogamer. Bookmark the permalink.

Source: http://www.ausretrogamer.com/best-selling-video-game-consoles-1972-to-2002?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=best-selling-video-game-consoles-1972-to-2002

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It's that time again ? The Ultimate Blog Challenge | My Local ...

With a few days to go till the end of 2012, an email about the first blog challenge of the year dropped into my mail box.? Blink and all of a sudden, it?s 1st January 2013 already.? How did it get here so fast??

I dutifully signed up?

Ultimate blog challenge - stressed!

Blogging shouldn?t make you feel like this?

Now I?m sat here thinking once again ? I don?t have time for 1 post a day for 31 days.? I?ve not planned enough posts, my diary is full for the next few of weeks?

Excuses, excuses, excuses!

Get a grip woman!

Breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth?

Now I really understand the wild-eyed fear when I mention blogs to my local business clients!? Those thoughts were racing through my head and my heart rate increased a hundred fold.

All totally unnecessary reactions of course!

/

For those of you who haven?t taken part before, this is not some form of modern torture.? I promise!

Every quarter, bloggers of all shapes, sizes and interests come together and rise to the challenge of creating a blog post daily for a month.? Don?t worry, there?s no hard and fast rules.? No one is standing over you with a stick to make sure you?re posting.

The idea is to get you into the habit of regularly updating your blog.?

Regularly updating your blog helps to form that initial relationship with potential customers, show off your expertise and personality, increase the likelihood of getting found in search, increase email sign ups, and more.

By tweeting and posting to Facebook you?ll expand your reach and drive traffic to your blog.? Commenting on other peoples blogs helps you form relationships, increase your reach, and drive traffic back to your blog too.

And, if you can?t commit to 31 posts in 31 days, that?s fine.? There are no failures ? blogging regularly, whether it?s once a day or once a week brings it?s own rewards.? ??

It?s quite simple to join in.? Pop over to the UBC website and sign up.? You?ll receive an email with details of how to join the Facebook group, how to add your details to the UBC website and some useful links and downloads all about blogging.? You?ll also receive a daily email containing blogging ideas.

If you need more ideas about what to write, check out these previous posts:

A Month of Blog Ideas For Your Business Blog
Blog Brainstorming With Free Keyword Suggestion Tools

I already have a post planned out to give you more ideas, so do keep an eye open for that!

Local Business Blogging?

If you are a local business, I really do encourage you to dive in and give blogging a go.? Over the holidays, I was doing some research for a couple of local businesses and I am seeing more and more ?local business blog posts? ranking.? I use the term lightly, because they?re written for search and not readers.?

I know you can do better and make those posts work for you.? Local ranking isn?t difficult, I?ll show you exactly how to do it later in the week.? Ranking is pointless though if people don?t stick around to read!

Over to you?

Are you taking part in the Ultimate Blog Challenge this time around?? I?d love to hear from you in the comments!

Enjoy this Post? Please Share:

Source: http://www.mylocalbusinessonline.co.uk/time-ultimate-blog-challenge/

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মঙ্গলবার, ১ জানুয়ারি, ২০১৩

Bird watching brings new discoveries

Bird watching brings new discoveries [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 31-Dec-2012
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Yan Bei
yanbei@scichina.org
86-106-400-8316
Science China Press

A recent study used bird watching records to build up the first bird watching database in China, which found a batch of new records of national level and a trend of of species moving to higher latitude and higher elevation regions.

The study named "Bird Watching in China Reveals Bird Distribution Changes", published in 2012 (31) issue of Chinese Science Bulletin, was senior-authored by LI Xueyan and led by Professor GONG Peng from Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modeling, Center for Earth System Science, Tsinghua University.

In recent years, bird watching becomes more and more popular in China. Besides enjoying the fun of bird watching, recording information about species and population can bring new data for scientific research.

Since bird is one of the most sensitive indicators of ecosystem health, both habitat range and migration route of birds could be affected by global climate change and the most direct impacts come from human activities and global warming. Nowadays the status and trend of bird distribution have drawn a great amount of attention in the field of global change. Using bird watching data, recent studies have highlighted the impact of human activities, response of climate change, identification of biodiversity hotspots, development of natural conservations and evaluation of protective effect. However, to date there has been no geographic distribution database of birds that is convenient for spatial-temporal analysis in China. Actually, how to obtain accurate location of geographic names on different scales has been a bottleneck problem of many databases in the field of history, ecology and environmental science.

A spherical GIS software "Global Analyst" (GA) was developed in Peng Gong's group that has been used in establishing China Bird Watching Database (CBWD). Using Google Earth remote sensing images which have high resolution and timely as base map, GA can support place name-querying and also provide abundant information about habitats and geographic ranges for mappers. The first bird watching database with geographic coordination uses points to represent the data, makes it convenient for update and maintenance, and provides an open platform for crowdsourcing.

Xueyan Li and her collaborators analyzed 30936 records from 2003 to 2007 in CBWD, including 17 Orders, 70 Families and 1078 Species. In terms of globally-threatened species on the IUCN red list, the current database includes four Critically-endangered species, 11 Endangered species, and 44 Vulnerable species (Birdlife International, 2008), whilst also highlighting 27 species in the under Protection Class I (Figure 1). CBWD includes 14 species which are additions to the national checklist, these new records occur either border on other countries (Yunnan, Sinkiang and Tibet) or are coastal areas (Tianjin and Hebei). 109 species appeared outside their original distributions from 2003 to 2007, show a trend of moving to high latitude and high elevation regions, which provide evidence for researches about ecological response to climate change.

The study could broaden minds of using bird watching data in scientific research, and lead the future bird watching activities.

###

This work is supported by the Major Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.30590370), National High-tech Research and Development Projects (Grant No.2009AA122000) and The China Conservation Fund of Hong Kong Bird Watching Society.

GONG Peng
gong@irsa.ac.cn

Li X Y, Liang L, Gong P, et al. Bird watching in China reveals bird distribution changes. Chin Sci Bull, 2012, 57, doi: 10.10 07/s11434-012-5458-7.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Bird watching brings new discoveries [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 31-Dec-2012
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Yan Bei
yanbei@scichina.org
86-106-400-8316
Science China Press

A recent study used bird watching records to build up the first bird watching database in China, which found a batch of new records of national level and a trend of of species moving to higher latitude and higher elevation regions.

The study named "Bird Watching in China Reveals Bird Distribution Changes", published in 2012 (31) issue of Chinese Science Bulletin, was senior-authored by LI Xueyan and led by Professor GONG Peng from Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modeling, Center for Earth System Science, Tsinghua University.

In recent years, bird watching becomes more and more popular in China. Besides enjoying the fun of bird watching, recording information about species and population can bring new data for scientific research.

Since bird is one of the most sensitive indicators of ecosystem health, both habitat range and migration route of birds could be affected by global climate change and the most direct impacts come from human activities and global warming. Nowadays the status and trend of bird distribution have drawn a great amount of attention in the field of global change. Using bird watching data, recent studies have highlighted the impact of human activities, response of climate change, identification of biodiversity hotspots, development of natural conservations and evaluation of protective effect. However, to date there has been no geographic distribution database of birds that is convenient for spatial-temporal analysis in China. Actually, how to obtain accurate location of geographic names on different scales has been a bottleneck problem of many databases in the field of history, ecology and environmental science.

A spherical GIS software "Global Analyst" (GA) was developed in Peng Gong's group that has been used in establishing China Bird Watching Database (CBWD). Using Google Earth remote sensing images which have high resolution and timely as base map, GA can support place name-querying and also provide abundant information about habitats and geographic ranges for mappers. The first bird watching database with geographic coordination uses points to represent the data, makes it convenient for update and maintenance, and provides an open platform for crowdsourcing.

Xueyan Li and her collaborators analyzed 30936 records from 2003 to 2007 in CBWD, including 17 Orders, 70 Families and 1078 Species. In terms of globally-threatened species on the IUCN red list, the current database includes four Critically-endangered species, 11 Endangered species, and 44 Vulnerable species (Birdlife International, 2008), whilst also highlighting 27 species in the under Protection Class I (Figure 1). CBWD includes 14 species which are additions to the national checklist, these new records occur either border on other countries (Yunnan, Sinkiang and Tibet) or are coastal areas (Tianjin and Hebei). 109 species appeared outside their original distributions from 2003 to 2007, show a trend of moving to high latitude and high elevation regions, which provide evidence for researches about ecological response to climate change.

The study could broaden minds of using bird watching data in scientific research, and lead the future bird watching activities.

###

This work is supported by the Major Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.30590370), National High-tech Research and Development Projects (Grant No.2009AA122000) and The China Conservation Fund of Hong Kong Bird Watching Society.

GONG Peng
gong@irsa.ac.cn

Li X Y, Liang L, Gong P, et al. Bird watching in China reveals bird distribution changes. Chin Sci Bull, 2012, 57, doi: 10.10 07/s11434-012-5458-7.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-12/scp-bwb122812.php

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Egypt's pound slips further against dollar

Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil talks during a press conference in Cairo, Egypt, Sunday, Dec. 30, 2012. Kandil says his country will resume talks in January with the International Monetary Fund over a $4.8 billion loan, after they were suspended during this month's political turmoil over the now-adopted constitution. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil talks during a press conference in Cairo, Egypt, Sunday, Dec. 30, 2012. Kandil says his country will resume talks in January with the International Monetary Fund over a $4.8 billion loan, after they were suspended during this month's political turmoil over the now-adopted constitution. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

CAIRO (AP) ? The Egyptian pound slipped further against the dollar on Monday, a downward plunge on the first two days of trading under a new system, as the president tried to assure a worried public that the crisis atmosphere will end soon.

The pound slid nearly 1 percent on Monday from the previous day, bringing the exchange rate at banks to 6.42 pounds to the dollar. It marked a cumulative loss of nearly 4 percent this week, after Egypt's central bank took steps in what bankers believe is an attempt to control the devaluation of the currency.

In an effort to instill confidence among people who have been rushing to sell Egyptian pounds for dollars, President Mohammed Morsi said the pound's fall "does not worry or scare us, and matters will balance out within a matter of days."

His remarks to Arab journalists, carried by the official news agency MENA, come as Egypt grapples with a crippling deficit that the planning minister said Monday is likely to reach 200 billion Egyptian pounds ($31.5 billion) by mid-2013.

Monday's slide of the Egyptian pound came on the second day of trading under a new dollar auction system aimed at regulating the devaluation.

The Central Bank of Egypt sold $75 million on Monday for the second straight day under the new system, according to state news media.

Under the auction, banks bid for dollars and know how much the central bank is selling that day. In the past, the banks used to buy through two private intermediary banks, according to a banker familiar with the trades.

He said that not all of the banks that submitted requests to trade were approved. Banks that joined the auction received just 66 percent of what they were bidding on, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters ? indicating continued pressure on the pound.

The bank appears to be trying to avert a sharp devaluation of the Egyptian currency in a nation where half of its 85 million people live just at or below the poverty line of $2 per person a day.

Foreign reserves have fallen to around $15 billion from $36 billion in January 2011, before the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak and the political turmoil that followed, which battered key foreign currency earners such as tourism and foreign investment.

To boost investor confidence and the country's foreign reserves, Egypt is negotiating a series of large loans.

Egypt has requested a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. The loan has been delayed because of political turmoil over Egypt's new constitution, approved in a referendum this month.

Egypt is also in talks for a $900 million loan from the European Union, $500 million from the African Development Bank and $450 million from the United States. It has already received transfers from Qatar that have propped up its reserves and is expecting another $2 billion from the oil-rich Gulf country. It is finalizing talks for $1 billion from Turkey, according to Planning Minister Ashraf el-Arabi.

Economists estimate that the Egyptian pound is overvalued. They believe the current devaluation and planned austerity measures to cut subsidies and raise taxes are part of a package of conditions put forth by the IMF. Neither party has confirmed the contents of the proposed deal.

Now that the new constitution has been approved, the government has again turned its attention to economic reforms that are likely to include wide-ranging tax hikes.

An IMF official told The Associated Press in an email that they are in "continuous contact" with Egyptian authorities and "look forward to learn about the status of the government's economic program." The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with the organization's regulations.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2012-12-31-Egypt-Economy/id-41d745712565471a806b4387980a03c7

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