Orb favored to take Preakness, set up Triple try

BALTIMORE (AP) ? Everything's a go for Orb.

The Kentucky Derby winner was in a playful mood the day before the Preakness, making faces for photographers between nibbles of grass outside his stall at Pimlico Race Course.

"He's really settled in well. He seems to be energetic about what he's doing so I couldn't be more pleased," trainer Shug McGaughey said on a warm and sunny Friday morning. "We're excited about giving him a whirl to see if we can get it done and go on to the next step."

Getting it done would mean defeating eight rivals in the 1 3-16-mile Preakness to set up a Triple Crown try in the Belmont Stakes three weeks from Saturday. Orb is the even-money favorite, and there's a growing feeling that this 3-year-old bay colt may be special enough to give thoroughbred racing its first Triple Crown champion since Affirmed in 1978.

"We'd sure love to have that opportunity," said McGaughey, seeming relaxed and confident. "Probably the racing world would love to see it, too. It brings a lot more attention to what we're doing from all standpoints."

Orb extended his winning streak to five with a thrilling victory in the Derby two weeks ago, when jockey Joel Rosario patiently guided the colt from 17th to first in the final half mile over a sloppy track.

In the Preakness, Orb will break from the No. 1 post, a spot that has seen only one winner ? Tabasco Cat in 1994 ? since 1961.

"Who knows how this race is going to go, but I don't think it will be a problem," Rosario said of the inside post. "He's a horse that comes from behind, so I really don't think it will affect him. I'm just excited to go into this with a horse who has a chance to win."

A chance?

While rival trainers aren't conceding the race, most agree Orb is the best of the bunch.

"Orb, he's a freak. Right now, everybody should be rooting for Orb, except for the connections of the other horses in the race," trainer Bob Baffert said ? and he's got a horse in the race, 12-1 choice Govenor Charlie. "Anybody who's not rooting for Orb, there's something mentally wrong with them."

Baffert has been there before. Three of his five Preakness winners had also won the Derby, but were unable to complete the Triple Crown with a win in the Belmont. He says the Preakness is the least stressful of the three races.

"There is absolutely no pressure, believe it or not because you've just won the Derby," he said. "You're flying high and everybody's excited. You don't think about it. The next one (the Belmont) is the pressure."

Getting to the next one may sound easy. It isn't. Six of the past eight Derby winners did not win the Preakness, and McGaughey is well aware of the pitfalls.

"There are a lot of ways you can lose. Freaky things can happen," he said. "You hope he doesn't get in any trouble, you hope he handles the track, you hope he handles the kickback of the dirt, you hope he handles the day. If he does all that, I would have to think it will take a pretty darn good horse to beat him."

Maybe it's Goldencents, who did not take to the slop at Churchill Downs and finished 17th after winning the Santa Anita Derby in April.

"Orb's not like a one-race hit. All year long he's been super impressive," said Goldencents trainer Doug O'Neill, who won the Derby and Preakness last year with I'll Have Another, only to scratch the colt the day before the Belmont because of a tendon injury. "But we've seen Goldencents do some brilliant things in the afternoon. If he does, I think he can beat him."

Maybe it's Itsmyluckyday, another top 3-year-old who did not handle the sloppy track and finished 15th in the Derby.

"He's given me every sign that he's ready for the war; he's ready for the race; he's ready for the battle," trainer Eddie Plesa Jr., said. "Let's just get it on."

Or maybe it's Departing, one of the three horses in the race who did not run in the Derby. Orb knows Departing well ? the two were pals growing up at Claiborne Farm in Paris, Ky., and ran around together in the same field. The gelding has won four of five starts, and comes into the Preakness off a win in the Illinois Derby.

And, of course, there's D. Wayne Lukas, who has three of the nine entries in Oxbow, Will Take Charge and Titletown Five, a colt owned by Green Bay Packer greats Paul Hornung and Willie Davis. Lukas, like Baffert, has five Preakness wins, and his next victory in a Triple Crown race would give him a record 14 ? one more than "Sunny Jim" Fitzsimmons.

Oxbow was sixth and Will Take Charge eighth in the Derby, while Titletown Five is a maiden winner who ran fourth in the Derby Trial.

"You have to be careful about that much emphasis on one race," Lukas said of Orb's Derby win. "You change the surface, you shorten the race, you put him in the one hole. These are things he'll have to overcome. He's the best horse. It's his race to lose. But it only takes one horse to spoil your day."

Weather could be a factor, too. The latest forecast for Saturday is calling for a 50 percent chance of rain with temperatures reaching the low 70s. Post time for the race on NBC is 6:20 p.m.

While Orb will take his shot at becoming the 34th horse with a chance at the Triple Crown ? 11 have done it, 19 failed and three others did not run in the Belmont ? several other historic milestones are in play. Rosie Napravnik will be aboard 5-1 second choice Mylute in an attempt to become the first female to the win the Preakness and Kevin Krigger, who rides Goldencents, looks to become the first black jockey to win since Willie Simms with Sly Fox in 1898.

Orb's rapid rise began with his win in the Fountain of Youth, followed by a solid victory in the Florida Derby before he ran off with the Kentucky Derby. The colt is co-owned by racing royalty ? Ogden Mills "Dinny" Phipps and his first cousin, Marylander Stuart Janney III. They run their racing operation the traditional way ? breeding and racing their own horses rather than attending sales and trying to buy champions.

McGaughey has been the Phipps' trainer for 28 years, and has campaigned such champions as Easy Goer, Inside Information and the undefeated Personal Ensign.

"This has kind of shown that with Stuart Janney's relationship with breeding that it can be done in a different way," McGaughey said. "There's a long line of pedigree that's been in their family for years and years and years and there's a lot of thought process in breeding horses to mares ? whether right or wrong. And we might have gotten a little lucky this time."

___

Follow Richard Rosenblatt on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/rosenblattap

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/orb-favored-preakness-set-triple-try-174610554.html

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How the Dow Jones industrial average fared

Signs of a slowing economy combined with comments from a Federal Reserve official helped pull the stock market down Thursday.

The news on the U.S. economy gave investors little to get excited about. Applications for unemployment benefits rose last week and manufacturing slowed in the mid-Atlantic region. Wal-Mart Stores sank after warning of weaker earnings ahead.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 42.47 points, or 0.3 percent, to close at 15,233.22.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 8.31 points, or 0.5 percent, to 1,650.47.

The Nasdaq composite index fell 6.37 points, or 0.2 percent, to 3,465.24.

For the week:

The Dow is up 114.73 points, or 0.8 percent.

The S&P 500 is up 16.77 points, or 1 percent.

The Nasdaq is up 28.66 points, or 0.8 percent.

For the year:

The Dow is up 2,129.08 points, or 16.2 percent.

The S&P 500 is up 224.28 points, or 15.7 percent.

The Nasdaq is up 445.73 points, or 14.8 percent.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/dow-jones-industrial-average-fared-211711235.html

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Can math models of gaming strategies be used to detect terrorism networks?

May 16, 2013 ? The answer is yes, according to a paper in the SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics.

In a paper published in the journal last month, authors Anthony Bonato, Dieter Mitsche, and Pawel Pralat describe a mathematical model to disrupt flow of information in a complex real-world network, such as a terrorist organization, using minimal resources.

Terror networks are comparable in their structure to hierarchical organization in companies and certain online social networks, where information flows in one direction from a source, which produces the information or data, downwards to sinks, which consume it. Such networks are called hierarchical social networks.

"In such networks, the flow of information is often one way," explains author Pawel Pralat. "For example, a celebrity such as Justin Bieber sends out a tweet, which is sent to millions of his followers. These followers send out their own retweets, and so on. We may therefore view hierarchical social networks as directed networks without cycles, or directed acyclic graphs (DAGs)."

Here, there is no requirement for reciprocity (the celebrity does not necessarily follow his or her followers). Similarly, in a terrorist network, the leaders pass plans down to the foot soldiers, and usually only one messenger needs to receive the message for the plan to be executed.

Disruption of the flow of information would correspond to halting the spread of news in an online social network or intercepting messages in a terror network.

The authors propose a generalized stochastic model for the flow and disruption of information based on a two-player outdoor game called "Seepage," where players who depict agents attempt to block the movement of another player, an intruder, from a source node to a sink. "The game -- motivated by the 1973 eruption of the Eldfell volcano in Iceland -- displays some similarities to an approach used in mathematical counterterrorism, where special kinds of DAGs are used to model the disruption of terrorist cells," says Pralat.

The motivating eruption caused a major crisis at the time, as lava flow threatened to close off the harbor, the island's main source of income. In the game, inhabitants attempt to protect the harbor by pouring water on the volcanic lava to halt its progress. A mathematical model of the game pits two opponents against each other -- the sludge, or intruder, against the greens, or agents -- forming a directed acyclic graph, with one source (the top of the volcano) and many sinks representing the lake. The parameter, "seepage," represents the amount of contamination, and the "green number" corresponds to the number of agents required to halt it.

A previous study modeled terrorist cells as partially ordered sets (a special kind of DAG), which are often used in mathematics to analyze an ordering, sequencing, or arrangement of distinct objects. In such a system, terrorist plans are formulated by nodes at the top of the hierarchy, which represent the leaders or maximal nodes of the set. The plans are transmitted down to the nodes at the bottom: these represent foot soldiers in a terror network or minimal nodes in the set who would be presumed to carry out these plans. The assumption is that one messenger is sufficient for reception and execution of the plan. Thus, if the partially ordered set represents a courier network for a terrorist organization, the intention would be to block all routes from the maximal node to the minimal nodes by capturing or killing a subset of agents.

In this paper, the authors utilize the similarities in the previous terrorist cell model to Seepage, where greens try to prevent the sludge from moving to the sinks by blocking nodes. A number of different winning strategies employed by both players are explored when played on a DAG. The seepage and green number for disrupting a given hierarchical social network are analyzed.

The primary difference from the previous study's model is that the Seepage model is dynamic: greens can move and choose new sets of nodes over time. The authors determine that Seepage is a more realistic model of counterterrorism, as the agents do not necessarily act all at once, but over time.

The analysis is made in two types of terrorist network structures, as Pralat explains, "We consider two extreme profiles: one where the network is regular, where every agent has about the same number of connections. The second profile is power law, where some agents have many connections, but most have very few." This is analyzed by considering the total degree distribution of nodes in the DAG. In regular DAGs, each level of the DAG would have nodes with about the same out-degree (number of outgoing edges emanating from a node), while power law DAGs would have many more low-degree nodes and a few with high degrees.

Mathematical analysis allows the authors to determine what point in a network would be most effective for disrupting messages. "Our mathematical results reinforce the view that intercepting the information or message in a hierarchical social network following a power law is more difficult close to levels near the source. For regular networks, it does not matter as much where the message is disrupted," says Pralat. "Future work could look at more complex profiles of networks, along with developing effective algorithms for disrupting the flow of information in a DAG using our game-theoretic approach."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/Adpbt4Zmc_4/130516142656.htm

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New craters abound: Mars camera reveals hundreds of impacts each year

May 15, 2013 ? Taking before and after pictures of Martian terrain, researchers of the UA-led HiRISE imaging experiment have identified almost 250 fresh impact craters on the Red Planet. The results suggest Mars gets pummeled by space rocks less frequently than previously thought, as scientists relied on cratering rates of the moon for their estimates.

Scientists using images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or MRO, have estimated that the planet is bombarded by more than 200 small asteroids or bits of comets per year forming craters at least 12.8 feet (3.9 meters) across.

Researchers have identified 248 new impact sites on parts of the Martian surface in the past decade, using images from the spacecraft to determine when the craters appeared. The 200-per-year planetwide estimate is a calculation based on the number found in a systematic survey of a portion of the planet.

The University of Arizona's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE camera, took pictures of the fresh craters at sites where before and after images had been taken. This combination provided a new way to make direct measurements of the impact rate on Mars and will lead to better age estimates of recent features on Mars, some of which may have been the result of climate change.

"It's exciting to find these new craters right after they form," said Ingrid Daubar of the UA, lead author of the paper published online this month by the journal Icarus. "It reminds you Mars is an active planet, and we can study processes that are happening today."

These asteroids or comet fragments typically are no more than 3 to 6 feet (1 to 2 meters) in diameter. Space rocks too small to reach the ground on Earth cause craters on Mars because the Red Planet has a much thinner atmosphere.

HiRISE targeted places where dark spots had appeared during the time between images taken by the spacecraft's Context Camera, or CTX, or cameras on other orbiters. The new estimate of cratering rate is based on a portion of the 248 new craters detected. If comes from a systematic check of a dusty fraction of the planet with CTX since late 2006.

The impacts disturb the dust, creating noticeable blast zones. In this part of the research, 44 fresh impact sites were identified.

The meteor over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February was about 10 times bigger than the objects that dug the fresh Martian craters.

Estimates of the rate at which new craters appear serve as scientists' best yardstick for estimating the ages of exposed landscape surfaces on Mars and other worlds.

Daubar and co-authors calculated a rate for how frequently new craters at least 12.8 feet (3.9 meters) in diameter are excavated. The rate is equivalent to an average of one each year on each area of the Martian surface roughly the size of the U.S. state of Texas. Earlier estimates pegged the cratering rate at three to 10 times more craters per year. They were based on studies of craters on the moon and the ages of lunar rocks collected during NASA's Apollo missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

"Mars now has the best-known current rate of cratering in the solar system," said UA's HiRISE Principal Investigator Alfred McEwen, a co-author on the paper.

MRO has been examining Mars with six instruments since 2006. Daubar is an imaging targeting specialist who has been on the HiRISE uplink operation s team from the very beginning. She is also a graduate student in the UA's department of planetary science and plans on graduating with her doctorate in spring 2014.

"There are five of us who help plan the images that HiRISE will take over a two-week cycle," she explained. "We work with science team members across the world to understand their science goals, help select the image targets and compile the commands for the spacecraft and the camera."

"The longevity of this mission is providing wonderful opportunities for investigating changes on Mars," said MRO Deputy Project Scientist Leslie Tamppari of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/mFjMtBuwz-8/130515165025.htm

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First prospective trial shows molecular profiling timely for tailoring therapy

May 15, 2013 ? A clinical trial has shown that patients, and their physicians, are eager to jump into next-era cancer care -- analysis of an individual's tumor to find and target genetic mutations that drive the cancer. Results of the study, CUSTOM, are being presented at the 2013 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology years before investigators thought they would be ready.

CUSTOM is the first completed prospective clinical trial that used genetic analysis alone to assign cancer treatment for patients with one of three different cancers.

"We expected it would take five years to enroll 600 patients into CUSTOM. But in less than two years, 668 patients were recruited," says the study's lead investigator, Giuseppe Giaccone, MD, PhD, associate director for clinical research at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center.

"This was a surprise to all of us, especially since patients with advanced cancer who already had biopsies needed to undergo an additional biopsy for the study. But we found patients and their doctors are quite interested in this type of personalized medicine. They know that the molecular profile of the tumor is important," says Giaconne, who is also director of clinical research for the MedStar Georgetown Cancer Network, a regional oncology affiliation between MedStar Health and Georgetown Lombardi.

CUSTOM has proved to be a model for more efficient clinical trials, he adds. It showed that patients want to participate in this kind of research, and that it is feasible to do extensive genetic testing on a tumor biopsy in a timely manner -- in this case, taking only two weeks to complete. It also demonstrated that it is safe to take new biopsy from patients with advanced cancer to provide the tissue needed for the analysis.

One of the other endpoints of the study, however, was not achieved. Researchers discovered that, in many cases, they did not have enough patients with rare cancer mutations to provide an accurate statistical analysis of response to novel drugs, says Giaccone.

Giaccone led the clinical trial while at the National Cancer Institute where he was the Chief of the Medical Oncology Branch, before he joined Georgetown in January. Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University also participated.

CUSTOM enrolled patients diagnosed with advanced stage non-small cell lung cancer, small cell lung cancer or thymic cancer. Researchers used next-generation sequencing, which was novel at the time, to look at almost 200 genes. From this, patients were assigned to different treatment groups based on genetic mutations or amplification.

Results from the largest group -- patients with non-small cell lung cancer -- had either an EGFR or a KRAS mutation, and results showed that those with EGFR mutations had a very high response to the drug erlotinib. "This is nothing new; we essentially confirmed what was already known," Giaccone says. But they also discovered that patients with KRAS mutations did not benefit from the single agent investigational drug selumetinib, which is being studied for use in a number of cancers, including non-small cell lung cancer.

Results for the patients with small cell lung or thymic cancers were inconclusive, primarily because the investigated mutations were rare -- not enough patients had specific mutations to adequately test response to therapy. "When we started the study, we didn't know how frequently the mutations occurred," Giaccone says. "Now we know that many mutations represent only 1 to 2 percent of patients and to do this right, you need to screen thousands of patients. That is only possible with a global study that involves, potentially, hundreds of institutions.

"The CUSTOM trial demonstrates both the feasibility of the approach for common mutations -- that it is possible to have a real-time genetic analysis that guides treatment -- as well as the difficulty of studying treatment for rare mutations," he says.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/aoeMV8xq6FU/130515203044.htm

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90% Beyond The Hills

All Critics (80) | Top Critics (30) | Fresh (72) | Rotten (8)

The final shot, with windshield wipers struggling to clean away a torrent of muddy water, suggests that no human agency is great enough to handle this world's misery.

"Beyond the Hills" seethes with astonishment and rage at a broken society marooned between the 21st century and the 16th.

It is a haunting movie, dealing with superstitions, possession, even exorcism, one in which Mungiu poses no easy answers, because there are none to be found.

If you long for the bleak intelligence of an Ingmar Bergman film, where humankind is deeply flawed and God is indifferently silent and the landscape is cloaked in perpetual winter, then Beyond the Hills promises to be your cup of despair.

There are no easy villains or heroes in this sad and slow but forcefully told tale, which exhibits the same humanity Mungiu brought to 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, his abortion drama that won the 2007 Palme d'Or.

A film that asks its viewer to consider the nature of good and evil, love and trust - and trust that turns into something like blind faith.

You'd swear Mungiu has inherited the spirit of Ingmar Bergman. All that's missing is the stark black-and-white photography.

Beyond the Hills' undercurrents prove more interesting than its storyline or characters.

Strikingly shot and punishingly long ...

(Writer-director Christian) Mungiu balances his film's more disturbing content with peaceful shots of the idyllic, surrounding countryside and of intimacy between the two women while slowly building to an inevitable conclusion.

When the ill and unstable Alina returns to the monastery, just so she can be with her beloved, Beyond the Hills becomes a species of those exorcism movies that audiences gorge on, only done with a realism and ambiguity usually missing from the genre.

What makes this movie unique is that it holds literally everyone in the film accountable for the unfortunate goings on.

It's an exorcism movie for everyone who thought, after Mungiu's gruelling abortion buddy-movie 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, that this guy should do an exorcism movie

It's an enigmatic and austere film from a region where political, sexual and religious repression are as stifling as the sooty air.

Mungui's rigorous approach to filmmaking isn't a ton of fun to watch, but his ideas stick with you.

It delivers an emotional punch, in what its director has called a story about the sin of indifference.

Such is the rigorous and high-minded nature of Romanian cinema that even a real-life exorcism story can inspire something loftier than a horror movie.

Heartbreak at a Romanian convent

...Cristian Mungiu has taken a real life event...to consider deeply human philosophies such as freedom vs. discipline, love vs. security, the choices facing those without financial recourse and the hypocrisies of organized religions.

I found it riveting to watch and fascinating to think about afterwards.

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/beyond_the_hills_2012/

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PayPal Targets Small Businesses in Offline Rollout - Digits - WSJ

By Greg Bensinger

EBay Inc. has been pushing for acceptance of PayPal in some of the largest U.S. retail stores, like Home Depot. Now it is targeting the smallest businesses.

PayPal on Tuesday unveiled a new program to compel small merchants to throw away their cash registers in favor of iPads, card swipers and modern printers.

PayPal President David Marcus said the company will in exchange cover the merchants? credit card bills for the remainder of the year. A typical transformation from to the more modern system costs between $1,200 and $1,500, he said.

?We are accelerating the inevitable acceptance of payment systems like PayPal,? Mr. Marcus said in an interview.

Merchants won?t be required to use PayPal for all their transactions, though the program applies only to those switching to a system with PayPal already integrated, such as Erply, Leaf and Vend.

To qualify, companies have to be primarily using more old-fashioned systems like a cash register. PayPal may send out employees to retrieve the register and verify the system upgrade, said Mr. Marcus.

Of course, there will be limits on PayPal?s payout and the size of the business that qualify, though Mr. Marcus said those details are forthcoming. ?It?s not limitless, otherwise there will be companies that try to abuse it,? he said.

PayPal has been working to build its business in the bricks-and-mortar world to complement its online payments, particularly on eBay.com.

Last year it announced a partnership with Discover that will take PayPal to most stores where Discover is accepted.

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/05/14/paypal-targets-small-businesses-in-offline-rollout/

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