Freedom's Phoenix Top Stories

Iran Exile Group Nears US Rebirth

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:58:12 GMT

Virtual World Takes on Childhood Obesity

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:56:05 GMT

Read more on this subject: Health and Physical Fitness
News Story Source: http://www.technologyreview.com, By Mya Frazier
Malica Astin, 11, never paid much attention to how much physical activity she got. But one day she played basketball while wearing a small activity tracker called a Zamzee on her waist. Later, she plugged it into a computer's USB port and uploaded the data captured by the device's accelerometers. Unlike a FitBit, a popular pedometer geared to adults, Malica's Zamzee didn't tell her how many steps she took or calories she burned. Instead, it gave her points for the movements she made. Even months later, she recalls the details of that first windfall: 758 points. And why not? The points are a currency that she can spend in the virtual world of Zamzee.com, where she created an avatar and outfitted it with braces, a necklace, and a hula skirt. Malica has since earned 3,612 "Zamz," and could eventually save enough to get real items like an iPod Nano (16,000 Zamz) or Wii console (18,000 Zamz). "At first, I didn't know what it was all about," she says. "Then
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Humanoid Robot Swarm Synchronised Using Quorum Sensing

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:52:35 GMT

Read more on this subject: Robots and Artificial Intelligence
News Story Source: http://www.technologyreview.com
In recent years, various companies and labs have developed impressive humanoid robots that walk, shuffle and even run. Some even dance in groups of up to 20, performing sophisticated choreographed routines. This kind of synchronisation is no easy task. One way to do it is have one robot as the leader, broadcasting details of its movement and position over a network that the other robots all follow. The trouble is that network dynamics are not as predictable as choreographers would like. Small delays of half a second or so are common while some messages can be delayed by several seconds. That's clearly not good enough for a dance routine or any other type of synchronised behaviour. So the approach preferred by roboticists is to program each robot with the dance routine, synchronise their internal clocks at the start of the performance and then leave them to it. The advantage is that If the performance is reasonably short, the chances of the clocks becoming desynchronised ca
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Documents Show that Goldman Sachs Engaged in Naked Short Selling

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:50:49 GMT

Does Sugar Make You Stupid?

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:50:02 GMT

Read more on this subject: Food
News Story Source: http://www.livescience.com, Staff
"Our findings illustrate that what you eat affects how you think," study researcher Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, of the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a statement. "Eating a high-fructose diet over the long term alters your brain's ability to learn and remember information. But adding omega-3 fatty acids to your meals can help minimize the damage." The study was published in the May 15 issue of the Journal of Physiology. The research was done on rats, but the researchers believe their brain chemistry is similar enough to humans to extend the findings. The researchers zeroed in on high-fructose corn syrup, an inexpensive liquid six times sweeter than cane sugar, that is commonly added to processed foods, including soft drinks, condiments, applesauce and baby food. The average American consumes more than 40 pounds of high-fructose corn syrup per year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Some scientists even think sugar
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Why Arizona Gets Scorched by Severe Wildfires

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:46:19 GMT

Read more on this subject: Environment
News Story Source: http://www.livescience.com, Wynne Parry
But the real culprits behind the devastation increasingly wrought by unnaturally devastating wildfires in western North America are changes to forests, aggravated by the effects of global warming, including increasingly severe droughts, like the one Arizona is currently experiencing, said an expert in forest restoration. The core problem is too much fuel -- trees -- resulting from a lack of more frequent, less devastating surface fires. The ponderosa pine forests of Arizona's Mogollon Rim, which form the southern limit of the Colorado Plateau, are the poster child for this phenomenon, Wally Covington, a regents' professor in forest ecology and executive director of The Ecological Restoration Institute at Northern Arizona University, told LiveScience. The Mogollun Rim is where the worst of the current fires are burning, as well as the two largest fires in the state's history. Throughout nearly all of their 70-million-year evolutionary history, the ponderosa forests wer
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20% 'Fat Tax' Needed to Fight Obesity

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:41:57 GMT

Read more on this subject: Food
News Story Source: http://www.livescience.com,Christopher Wanjek
Yet such a tax -- spread across the food chain from manufacturer to consumer, coupled with changes in food policy to spur production of healthier food -- is needed to reverse the pandemic of obesity and chronic diseases, researchers say. Two articles published online today (May 15) in the British Medical Journal describe this course of action. These opinion pieces come one week before the 65th World Health Assembly, to convene on May 21 to 26 in Geneva, where diet-related diseases will be the primary topic. One article, led by Oliver Mytton of Oxford University's Department of Public Health, looked at tax schemes worldwide to see what has worked, however marginally. Many countries are now using such "sin" taxes, which have curbed tobacco and alcohol use, to limit the consumption of unhealthy food, Mytton said. These taxes are based on the basic economic theory that, as the price of an item rises, the consumption of that item will fall. But this theo
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The Benefits of Being Bilingual

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:38:16 GMT

Read more on this subject: General Opinion
News Story Source: http://www.wired.com, By Jonah Lehrer
This difficult constraint - forcing himself to consciously unpack his own sentences - led to a burst of genius, as many of Beckett's most famous works (Malloy, Malone Dies, Waiting for Godot, etc.) were written during this period. When asked why he wrote first in French, Beckett said it made it easier for him to "write without style." Beckett would later expand on these comments, noting that his use of French prevented him from slipping into his usual writerly habits, those crutches of style that snuck into his English prose. Instead of relying on the first word that leapt into consciousness - that most automatic of associations - he was forced by his second language to reflect on what he actually wanted to express. His diction became more intentional. There's now some neat experimental proof of this Beckettian strategy. In a recent paper published in Psychological Science, a team of psychologists led by Boaz Keysar at the University of Chicago found that forcing people to rely
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Theoretical Physicist Brian Greene Thinks You Might Be a Hologram

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:35:00 GMT

Read more on this subject: Science, Medicine and Technology
News Story Source: http://www.wired.com,By Geek's Guide to the Ga
"A hologram is a thin 2-D piece of plastic which, when illuminated correctly, yields a realistic three-dimensional image," says Greene in this week's episode of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "The idea is, we may be that three-dimensional image of this more fundamental information on the 2-D surface that surrounds us." This notion, known as the holographic principle, came out of the study of black holes. Scientist Stephen Hawking believes information that enters a black hole is lost forever, but this seems to violate fundamental laws of physics, which led researchers such as Leonard Susskind and Gerard 't Hooft to consider alternatives. "Over the course of many years," says Greene, "they developed an idea that when an object falls into a black hole, yes indeed, it falls in, but a copy of all of its information content gets in some sense 'smeared out' on the surface of the black hole, on the horizon of the black hole. Smeared out in some sense like a series of 0′s
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Banned PlayStation Hacker Sees Hope of Return in Jailbreaking Deliberations

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:31:51 GMT

Read more on this subject: Hacking, Cyber Security
News Story Source: http://www.wired.com, By David Kravets
Geohot settled a civil suit filed against him by Sony for figuring out how to let people play homebrew games on the popular console -- in violation of a federal law that prohibits getting around encryption in hardware and software, even if the reason to do it is perfectly legal. He settled the suit last year by agreeing never to tinker again with a Sony product, but his hacker itch has him awaiting a looming decision by federal copyright regulators that, for the first time, could legalize videogame-console jailbreaking. That, Geohot thinks, might let him "jailbreak" the PlayStation again, freeing it for the world of tinkerers to use as they wish, the same way that a decision in 2010 to allow mobile phone users to liberate their smartphones to run whatever programs they like bolstered a vibrant alternative to the tightly constrained and capriciously run Apple App Store. "I would really like to get back into that scene," Hotz said in a recent telephone interview.
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Can Anything Take Down the Facebook Juggernaut?

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:29:03 GMT

Read more on this subject: Internet
News Story Source: http://www.wired.com, By Steven Johnson
The exact birthdate of the Internet is difficult to pin down, but it's fair to say that it took at least three decades for the net to reach a population of that size. Today, after just eight years in existence, Facebook now has more than 750 million users all by itself. At that astonishing rate of growth, the company is on track to accomplish much more than just a multibillion-dollar IPO. Facebook is on the cusp of becoming a medium unto itself--more akin to television as a whole than a single network, and more like the entire web than just one online destination. The evidence for that transformation goes well beyond the sheer number of users. Many businesses now bypass the traditional web altogether, limiting their online presence to Facebook. Already the platform has spawned one billion-dollar company (the social gaming giant Zynga) and swallowed another (the photo network Instagram). The average time people spend on the site has increased from four and a half hours per month
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This Man Is A Shining Example Of What To Do If You Win The Lottery

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:18:48 GMT

Read more on this subject: General Opinion
News Story Source: http://www.businessinsider.com, Jill Krasny
Rather than blow it on coke and hookers, he actually put it toward paying off debt and saving up for retirement. Stoked to see a lottery winner not serve as a cautionary tale for a change, we highlighted his smart money moves and what they can teach us about managing windfalls. He paid off debt first. Rather than live it up, Ididwinit decided to end his debt cycle for good to free up his money to save and invest. When he won, he had around $400,000 in debt from car loans and a mortgage. Today, he's completely debt-free and has money to spare. He kept the same lifestyle. Some workers are tempted to upgrade their lifestyle with every pay raise, but Ididwinit knew the only way he'd stay afloat was if he maintained the modest lifestyle he'd had prior to winning. "We do have nice holidays," he wrote on Reddit, "but most of the remaining money is now invested." He invested the rest. Anyone with a $1,000 lying around can start investing, even if they don't have
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Verizon Is Going To Kill Your Unlimited Data Plan When You Get A 4G Phone

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:13:50 GMT

Read more on this subject: Communications
News Story Source: http://www.businessinsider.com, Steve Kovach
Verizon's CFO Fran Shammo said today that the carrier will eliminate unlimited data plans when customers make the switch to a 4G phone. Shammo made the comment at a JPMorgan conference, according to Fierce Wireless. We're reaching out to Verizon now for comment and will update when we hear back. Although Verizon doesn't offer unlimited data plans for new customers and phone lines, users who had an unlimited plan have the same benefits "grandfathered" into their contract. But almost all of those unlimited data customers are using 3G devices. When and if they make the move to a 4G phone, Verizon will force them to sign up for a shared family data plan or a tiered individual data plans. Unlimited users are paying $30 for their data. But that'll only get them 2 GB of data when they switch to a 4G phone.
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If History Is A Guide, Obama Is Heading For A Loss In November

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:08:02 GMT

Read more on this subject: History
News Story Source: http://www.businessinsider.com, Brett LoGiurato
Gallup is out with a look today at some key indicators that look troublesome for Barack Obama's re-election prospects this fall. There are three main indicators, which Gallup looks at from historical perspective to judge Obama's prospects this year. They are his approval rating, economic factors and Americans' view of the direction in which the country is headed. So, first is Obama's job approval. At 47 percent in May, it compares with other presidents that have lost their bids for re-election in recent history. At this point in 2004, George W. Bush had a 49 percent approval rating. That's the lowest for a president to win re-election since 1964. The key here is whether the number improves as we head closer to November. Bush was back up to 50 percent by October. Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush -- three presidents that lost re-election -- plummeted down to the 30s.
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Greeks Rush the Banks; Lines Form at ATMs; Nearly $1 Billion Withdrawn in Past Week

Wed, 16 May 2012 17:53:14 GMT

Read more on this subject: Economy - International
News Story Source: www.prisonplanet.com
Mac Slavo SHTFPlan.com Wednesday, May 16, 2012 Without a government for the last eleven days, and amid mainstream discussion of a Euro Zone exit, the Greek people are realizing that the economic and political system as they know it is rapidly descending into chaos. With massive jobless rates that have forced many into bartering to survive, and facing credit destruction across the entirety of the country that has led to shortages of critical supplies like life saving medicines, those with any money left at national banks are taking the desperate step of withdrawing as much of their savings as they can from a banking system on its last leg. This is what it looks like when a populace plagued with uncertainty finally loses trust in the credibility of their country's leadership and financial system. Anxious Greeks have withdrawn as much as 700 million euros ($893 million) from the nation's banks since the inconclusive May 6 election, President Karolos Papoul
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