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Wednesday, July 3, 2013

This week's round-up of Good Reads includes China's desire to become the world's main superpower, Edward Snowden's confessional video, the ease of making cyberweapons, eradicating global poverty, and the demise of Norwegian fishermen.

By Allison Terry,?Correspondent / June 26, 2013

Chinese President Xi Jinping visits with President Obama in California.

Evan Vucci/AP

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China's Worldview

China?s new president, Xi Jinping, has a bold vision for his country, inspired by its ancient prestige. In Time magazine, Hannah Beech describes how Mr. Xi intends for China to match US military capabilities, becoming the strongest country economically, politically, and culturally.

Skip to next paragraph Allison Terry

Correspondent

Allison Terry works on the national news desk for the Christian Science Monitor. She also contributes to the culture section and Global News blog.

Hero or traitor?

In a carefully executed leak, former National Security Administration contractor Edward Snowden unveiled documents showing how US government programs mine communication data including people?s e-mails, Facebook posts, and even Skype chats. Digital surveillance is not new, especially during this era of heightened national security awareness. Gathering electronic information is legal under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but Mr. Snowden said the government is redefining what is constitutional, creating ?architecture of oppression.?

In an identity-revealing video interview with Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian, Mr. Snowden explained why people should be worried about the government?s actions.?

?Even if you are not doing anything wrong, you are being watched and recorded. And the storage capabilities of these systems increases every year, consistently by orders of magnitude,? Snowden said, adding that just a wrong call could raise suspicion. ?Then they can use the system to go back in time and scrutinize every decision you?ve ever made, every friend you?ve ever discussed something with, and attack you on that basis to sort of derive suspicion from an innocent life and paint anyone in the context of a wrongdoer.?

The fallout of his actions is not yet known as the United States arranges to press charges against the whistle-blower. Whether he is a hero or a traitor depends on how one weighs the balance between civil liberties and national security.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/LvyQAB0oOes/Good-Reads-From-a-bold-vision-for-China-to-cyberwarfare-to-Norwegian-fishing

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Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Obama ends Africa trip by joining Bush at memorial

President Barack Obama toasts with Tanzanian first lady Salma Kikwete during an official dinner at the State House in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, Monday, July 1, 2013. The president is traveling in Tanzania on the final leg of his three-country tour in Africa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Barack Obama, followed by first lady Michelle Obama, does a dance upon his arrival ceremony with Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, right, Monday, July 1, 2013, at Julius Nyerere International Airport in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. The president is traveling in Tanzania on the final leg of his three-country tour in Africa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania (AP) ? Democratic President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush are proving that it's a small world after all, with an extraordinary chance encounter a long way from home.

Obama and his Republican predecessor plan to appear together briefly Tuesday, when by coincidence both will be in the same city on Africa's east coast promoting development on the continent. Obama is on the final day of a weeklong tour of the continent, while the George W. Bush Institute is hosting a two-day summit on African women.

Initially the two men had no plans to meet, but the White House announced Monday that they would gather at a memorial for Americans killed in the U.S. Embassy bombing here nearly 15 years ago. They plan to lay a wreath in honor of the 11 Americans who died in the attack masterminded by Osama bin Laden, along with a near-simultaneous bombing at the U.S. Embassy in neighboring Kenya.

Meanwhile, first lady Michelle Obama and Laura Bush planned to appear together on a panel at the conference on empowering African women. President Bush plans to deliver his own speech there Wednesday, after the Obamas have returned to Washington.

Obama has credited Bush with helping save millions of lives by funding AIDS treatment. "I'm looking forward to being able, on African soil, to once again thank him on behalf of the American people for showing how American generosity and foresight could end up making a real difference in people's lives," Obama said Monday.

But Obama also said he wants to change the approach the U.S. takes with Africa. "We are looking at a new model that's based not just on aid and assistance, but on trade and partnership," he said.

"Ultimately, the goal here is for Africa to build Africa for Africans," Obama said. "And our job is to be a partner in that process."

In that spirit, Obama has announced a new trade agreement with eastern African nations and a program to bring more power to Africans who don't have access to electricity. His final event Tuesday is a speech at Tanzania's Ubungo Power Plant, which was funded by a U.S. grant and built by American corporations Symbion and General Electric.

"There's enormous potential here in Tanzania to start getting electricity out into villages in rural areas, more reliable service that can then power manufacturing, power new businesses which creates more jobs, creates more demand," Obama explained.

___

Follow Nedra Pickler on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/nedrapickler

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-07-02-Obama/id-019a25fe9b724a088943919dcedf4f71

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ClinkleLeaks: Secrets Behind 22-Year-Old's $25 Million App Revealed

Josh Duplan, age 22, just banked $25 million for an app no one really knows much about. Well, a few do: his investors, and a tipster who leaked us some very interesting details about the clandestine wallet app. Does the world need a new way for Yale kids to buy things?

Our source says he, like Duplan, is a young Stanford grad who remembers Dunlap for a notorious class presentation in which he channeled Steve Jobs to a T?even capping off with a one more thing reveal. But the Stanford tipster says he's got Clinkle revelations of his own after downloading a pre-release copy of the app when it was temporarily available online?a download he says shows how Clinkle works and where it might be headed.

So what the hell does it do, besides something vaguely PayPally?

Based on what?s in the app, the following features seem to be a lock for Clinkle

"Wallet" feature - this looks approximately like a paypal balance (will let you pay your friends, etc)
"Credit Card" feature - scan a credit card with your phone (it uses card.io to do this)
A Scott Forstall-esque, completely useless bound leather wallet look to polish it off
Ability to pay stores (who they are partnering with)

Like I said last time, this sounds, at best, like a composite of Other Apps That Already Exist and Do Just Fine.

But what about that secret method of transferring money with high-frequency sound? The one TechCrunch willingly redacted from its post because Clinkle didn't want people to read about it? Maybe that's the $25 million feature?

Our tipster thinks he knows:

Clinkle lets you do phone to phone payments via ultrasound exchanged on the phone. This is branded as "Aerolink"

My additional suspicions:

Clinkle may be partnering with Verifone to get the terminals to emit / receive the same audio signals that they're using for payment information. Looking up specs on Verifone terminals , it seems to indicate that they support audio output. Clinkle may be using this to localize the phone to the point of sale terminal. Then, they would send money to Verifone ... I'm basing this on Lucas's past discussions of working with Verifone on SMS based payments (this is before Clinkle was doing the whole ultrasound thing, they initially were a sms based payments system for dumb phones).

Translation: Clinkle would make your phone beep like a dog whistle that only special cash registers could hear?encoded in this whistle signal would be MONEY, so you could buy a bag of chips or textbook without ever touching a debit card. Partnering with VeriFone would make sense, as they're already in the business of outfitting stores with wireless purchase gear. Aerolink! At the very least that's a fun word to say. So is "Yale": more buried code in the app leak show a Facebook-esque plan to launch at top tier schools, and maybe expand to the proles from there:

Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. Based on our understanding of their tech, they would probably outfit campus retailers with Clinkle and then drive student adoption through incentives...It seems pretty clear Clinkle is going to try to target itself as a pay-ahead-skip-the-line type operation.

Kids love digital exclusion. So an app premised on the appeal of Ivy League kids cutting the line to buy things ahead of everyone else?that might just be a $25 million hit.

Source: http://valleywag.gawker.com/clinkleleaks-secrets-behind-22-year-olds-25-million-646294646

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Monday, July 1, 2013

Texas Longhorns football: Austin is the best

The president of DBU has a message for the world.

This isn't a newsflash to fans of the Texas Longhorns, and particularly those who have lived in Austin or went to school at UT, but the city is pretty awesome:

Just another built-in advantage for a school that puts out defensive backs at a rate that only LSU can currently match. And over the course of the last 30 years, only Miami can contend with Texas in terms of defensive backs taken in the first round, with 12.

So, there's DBU. And the lakes. And the music. And 6th Street. And on and on.

Yeah, Austin is pretty awesome.

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Source: http://www.burntorangenation.com/football/2013/6/30/4480500/texas-longhorns-football-duane-akina-austin-is-awesome

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Egypt erupts with protests demanding Morsi ouster

CAIRO (AP) ? Hundreds of thousands thronged the streets of Cairo and cities around the country Sunday and marched on the presidential palace, filling a broad avenue for blocks, in an attempt to force out the Islamist president with the most massive protests Egypt has seen in 2? years of turmoil.

In a sign of the explosive volatility of the country's divisions, a hard core of young opponents broke away from the rallies and attacked the main headquarters of President Mohammed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, pelting it with stones and firebombs until a raging fire erupted in the walled villa. During clashes, Brotherhood supporters opened fire with birdshot on the attackers, who swelled to a crowd of hundreds.

Fears were widespread that the two sides could be heading to a violent collision in coming days. Morsi made clear through a spokesman that he would not step down and his Islamist supporters vowed not to allow protesters to remove one of their own, brought to office in a legitimate vote. Thousands of Islamists massed not far from the presidential palace in support of Morsi, some of them prepared for a fight with makeshift armor and sticks.

At least four people were killed Sunday in shootings at anti-Morsi protesters in southern Egypt.

The protesters aimed to show by sheer numbers that the country has irrevocably turned against Morsi, a year to the day after he was inaugurated as Egypt's first freely elected president. But throughout the day and even up to midnight at the main rallying sites, fears of rampant violence did not materialize.

Instead the mood was largely festive as protesters at giant anti-Morsi rallies in Cairo's central Tahrir Square and outside the Ittihadiya palace spilled into side streets and across boulevards, waving flags, blowing whistles and chanting.

Fireworks went off overhead. Men and women, some with small children on their shoulders, beat drums, danced and sang, "By hook or by crook, we will bring Morsi down." Residents in nearby homes showered water on marchers below ? some carrying tents in preparation to camp outside the palace ? to cool them in the summer heat, and blew whistles and waved flags in support.

"Mubarak took only 18 days although he had behind him the security, intelligence and a large sector of Egyptians," said Amr Tawfeeq, an oil company employee marching toward Ittihadiya with a Christian friend. Morsi "won't take long. We want him out and we are ready to pay the price."

The massive outpouring against Morsi, culminating a year of growing polarization, raises the question of what is next. Protesters have vowed to stay on the streets until he steps down, and organizers called for widespread labor strikes starting Monday. The president, in turn, appears to be hoping protests wane.

For weeks, Morsi's supporters have depicted the planned protest as a plot by Mubarak loyalists. But their claims were undermined by the extent of Sunday's rallies. In Cairo and a string of cities in the Nile Delta and on the Mediterranean coast, the protests topped even the biggest protests of the 2011's 18-day uprising, including the day Mubarak quit, Feb. 11, when giant crowds marched on Ittihadiya.

It is unclear now whether the opposition, which for months has demanded Morsi form a national unity government, would now accept any concessions short of his removal. The anticipated deadlock raises the question of whether the army, already deployed on the outskirts of cities, will intervene. Protesters believe the military would throw its significant weight behind them, tipping the balance against Morsi. The country's police, meanwhile, were hardly to be seen Sunday.

"If the Brothers think that we will give up and leave, they are mistaken," said lawyer Hossam Muhareb as he sat with a friend on a sidewalk near the presidential palace. "They will give up and leave after seeing our numbers."

Violence could send the situation spinning into explosive directions.

In a potentially volatile confrontation after nightfall, several dozen youths attacked the Muslim Brotherhood's headquarters on a plateau overlooking the capital. They threw rocks and firebombs at the walled villa, and people inside fired at the attackers with birdshot, according to an Associated Press Television News cameraman at the scene.

Southern Egypt saw deadly attacks on anti-Morsi protests, and four people were killed. A protester was shot to death in Beni Suef outside the offices of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party. In the city of Assiut, gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on a protest, killing one person and wounding four others.

The enraged protesters then marched on the nearby Freedom and Justice offices, where gunmen inside opened fire, killing two more, security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk to the press. Clashes erupted, with protesters and security forces fighting side by side against Morsi's supporters.

At least 400 people were injured nationwide, the Health Ministry said.

Morsi, who has three years left in his term, said street protests cannot be used to overturn the results of a free election.

"There is no room for any talk against this constitutional legitimacy," he told Britain's The Guardian newspaper in an interview published Sunday, rejecting early elections.

If an elected president is forced out, "there will (be) people or opponents opposing the new president too, and a week or a month later, they will ask him to step down," he said.

Morsi was not at Ittihadiya as Sunday's rally took place ? he had moved to another nearby palace.

As the crowds massed, Morsi's spokesman Ihab Fahmi repeated the president's longstanding offer of dialogue with the opposition to resolve the nation's political crisis, calling it "the only framework through which we can reach understandings."

The opposition has repeatedly turned down his offers for dialogue, arguing that they were for show.

Near Ittihadiya palace, thousands of Islamists gathered in a show of support for Morsi outside the Rabia al-Adawiya mosque. Some Morsi backers wore homemade body armor and construction helmets and carried shields and clubs ? precautions, they said, against possible violence.

The demonstrations are the culmination of polarization and instability that have been building since Morsi's June 30, 2012, inauguration. The past year has seen multiple political crises, bouts of bloody clashes and a steadily worsening economy, with power outages, fuel shortages, rising prices and persistent lawlessness and crime.

In one camp are the president and his Islamist allies, including the Muslim Brotherhood and more hard-line groups. Morsi supporters accuse Mubarak loyalists of being behind the protests, aiming to overturn last year's election results, just as they argue that remnants of the old regime have sabotaged Morsi's attempts to deal with the nation's woes and bring reforms.

Hard-liners among them have also given the confrontation a sharply religious tone, denouncing Morsi's opponents as "enemies of God" and infidels.

On the other side is an array of secular and liberal Egyptians, moderate Muslims, Christians ? and what the opposition says is a broad sector of the general public that has turned against the Islamists. They say the Islamists have negated their election mandate by trying to monopolize power, infusing government with their supporters, forcing through a constitution they largely wrote and giving religious extremists a free hand, all while failing to manage the country.

"The country is only going backward. He's embarrassing us and making people hate Islam," said Donia Rashad, a 24-year-old unemployed woman who wears the conservative Islamic headscarf. "We need someone who can feel the people and is agreeable to the majority."

As they marched toward the presidential palace, some chanted, "You lied to us in the name of religion," and others raised a banner proclaiming, "Morsi=Mubarak. Early presidential elections." The crowds, including women, children and elderly people, hoisted long banners in the colors of the Egyptian flag and raised red cards ? a sign of expulsion in soccer.

In Tahrir, chants of "erhal!", or "leave!" thundered around the square. The crowd, which appeared to number some 300,000, waved Egyptian flags and posters of Morsi with a red X over his face. They whistled and waved when military helicopters swooped close overhead, reflecting their belief that the army favors them over Morsi.

A week ago, with the public sense of worry growing over the upcoming confrontation, Defense Minister Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi demanded the president and his opponents reach a compromise. He warned that the military would intervene to prevent the nation from entering a "dark tunnel."

Army troops backed by armored vehicles were deployed Sunday in some of Cairo's suburbs, with soldiers at traffic lights and major intersections. In the evening, they deployed near the international airport, state TV said.

Similarly sized crowds turned out in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta cities of Mansoura, Tanta and Damanhour, with sizeable rallies in cities nationwide.

"Today is the Brotherhood's last day in power," Suliman Mohammed, a manager of a seafood company, said in Tahrir.

The opposition protests emerge from a petition campaign by a youth activist group known as Tamarod, Arabic for "Rebel." For several months, the group has been collecting signatures on a call for Morsi to step down.

On Saturday, the group announced it had more than 22 million signatures ? proof, it claims, that a broad sector of the public no longer wants Morsi in office.

It was not possible to verify the claim. If true, it would be nearly twice the some 13 million people who voted for Morsi in last year's presidential run-off election, which he won with around 52 percent of the vote. Tamarod organizers said they discarded about 100,000 signed forms because they were duplicates.

Morsi's supporters have questioned the authenticity and validity of the signatures, but have produced no evidence of fraud.

At the pro-Morsi rally at the Rabia al-Adawiya mosque, the crowd chanted, "God is great," and some held up copies of Islam's holy book, the Quran.

"The people hold the legitimacy and we support Dr. Mohamed Morsi," said Ahmed Ramadan, one of the rally participants. "We would like to tell him not to be affected by the opponents' protests and not to give up his rights. We are here to support and protect him."

One of the world's most prominent Muslim clerics, Sheik Yousef El-Qaradawi, who is close to the Brotherhood, appealed to Egyptians to give Morsi a chance, saying if Morsi goes, "someone who's worse than Morsi" would replace him.

"It's not easy to change a president with another one, but it's better to correct him," el-Qaradawi, an Egyptian who has lived in Qatar for many years, said on Al-Jazeera Mubasher Misr TV.

Ibrahim Ahmed, a 59-year-old retired civil servant who was at Tahrir with his 5-year-old grandson, Yassin, snorted at the idea.

"He wants us to be patient with Morsi? No, thank you. Look at what happened in one year. The Egyptian pound is going down and the country is being Brotherhood-ized," he said.

____

AP reporters Tony G. Gabriel and Mariam Rizk contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/egypt-erupts-protests-demanding-morsi-ouster-215829657.html

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Futurity.org ? Protein helps colon cancer move and invade

Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer in the United States. Tumors spreading to other parts of the body are the greatest threat to a patient's survival. (Credit: Annie Cavanagh/Wellcome Images/Flickr)

PENN STATE (US) ? Understanding how a specific protein encourages colon cancer to spread may lead to new treatments for the disease, researchers say.

Previous studies show that the km23-1 protein is involved in the movement of cancer cells and in the control of specific proteins at the leading edge of moving cells. A new study shows that km23-1 is used in the cancer cell?s ability to move out of a tumor in the early stages of invasion.

?Km23-1 may be able to help in this process due to its role in the assembly of large groups of proteins favorable to cancer invasion,? says Kathleen Mulder, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State.

The researchers limited the amount of km23-1 available in the cells they studied, which allowed them to see how it affects cell behavior.

A reduction in km23-1 caused a decrease in the production of transforming growth factor beta (TGF-beta). In healthy cells, TGF-beta helps prevent cancer growth. However, in cancer cells, the protein actually aids in the spread of tumors. Limiting the protein also blocks the activity of proteins previously shown to lead to TGF-beta production.

In the study, reported in the journal PLOS ONE, the researchers also show that cells with less km23-1 have reduced amounts of a protein that forms a framework structure associated with the spread of cancer. This scaffolding holds together key factors that help the cancer cells move and invade to form secondary tumors.

By decreasing km23-1, colon cancer cells do not spread as much. This also affects several proteins known to make a cancer cell invasive, demonstrating that the protein is an important potential target for cancer therapies.

The researchers also looked at another protein that influences cell survival, migration, and invasion, called ERK, which has higher activity in cancer cells. Lowering the levels of km23-1, reduced ERK activation. Decreased ERK activity relates to the production of TGF-beta and cell movement.

?If we can block km23-1, we can stop the spread of colon cancer earlier,? Mulder says. ?But we would also affect other important functions of the protein. In order to address this issue, we are now trying to find the specific partners of km23-1 that contribute to the invasion of the cancer cells. Then we can design more precise therapeutic agents that target critical regions of km23-1 rather than eliminating the entire protein.?

Researchers used a cell model that represents a unique class of colon cancer that needs further study. The model features cells that move as groups, and not singularly.

?The type of cell movement, or migration, has important implications with respect to the detection of tumor cells in the blood of cancer patients, as well as for the development of new treatments,? Mulder says.

The National Institutes of Health and, in part, a Pennsylvania Department of Health CURE grant supported this study.

Source: Penn State

Source: http://www.futurity.org/health-medicine/protein-helps-colon-cancer-move-and-invade/

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