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শুক্রবার, ৫ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩

Official: Obama proposes cuts to Social Security

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama's proposed budget will call for reductions in the growth of Social Security and other benefit programs by including a proposal to lower cost-of-living adjustments to government social safety net spending, a senior administration official says.

The proposal attempts to strike a compromise with congressional Republicans on the Fiscal 2014 budget by combining the president's demand for higher taxes with GOP insistence on reductions in entitlement programs.

The official, who spoke on a condition of anonymity to describe a budget that has yet to be released, said Obama would reduce the federal government deficit by $1.8 trillion over 10 years.

A key feature of the plan Obama is proposing for the federal budget year beginning Oct. 1 is a revised inflation adjustment called "chained CPI." This new formula would effectively curb annual annual increases in a broad swath of government programs, but would have its biggest impact on Social Security.

Obama's budget proposal also calls for additional tax revenue, including a proposal to place limits on tax-preferred retirement accounts for wealthy taxpayers. Obama has also called for limits on tax deductions by the wealthy, a proposal that could generate about $580 billion in revenue over ten years.

The inflation adjustment would reduce federal spending over 10 years by about $130 billion, according to past White House estimates. Because it also affects how tax brackets are adjusted, it would also generate about $100 in higher taxes and affect even middle income taxpayers.

Obama's budget, to be released next week, comes after the Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-run Senate passed separate and markedly different budget proposals. House Republicans achieved long-term deficit reductions by targeting safety net programs; Democrats instead protected those programs and called for $1 trillion in tax increases.

Obama's budget proposal includes features from an offer he made to House Speaker John Boehner during fiscal negotiations last year. Those talks ultimately failed but Congress did agree to increase tax rates on the wealthiest Americans.

The reductions in growth of benefit programs, which would affect veterans, the poor and the older Americans, is sure to anger many Democrats. Labor groups and liberals have long been critical of Obama's offer to Boehner for including such a plan.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-04-05-US-Obama-Budget/id-cc9a3ae3f7ef455e80eef1a6c650f3f5

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Beyonce BFF The-Dream Denies Keyshia Cole For 'Family'

Dream tells Power 105 he'll no longer write for Cole after the R&B singer has been openly critical of Bey.
By Rob Markman

The-Dream
Photo: Alberto E. Rodriguez/ Getty Images

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1704998/the-dream-keyshia-cole-beyonce.jhtml

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How to Automate Anything with Alfred Workflows (Then Show Us Your Best)

How to Automate Anything with Alfred Workflows (Then Show Us Your Best) Last month, the Mac application launcher Alfred updated with a ton of improvements, but the most interesting feature is the new Workflows system that makes it easy for anyone to create their own speed-boosting shortcuts. We want to see yours, but if you haven't played around with Workflows yet we've got you covered there too.

The addition of Workflows into Alfred seems minor at a glance, but they allow you to do all sorts of productive things (note: while Alfred is free, workflows require the powerpack for about $21) easily with hardly any coding skills at all. The best part is they're not stuck on your computer, you can share them with people, and download other people's workflows to use for yourself. One of my favorites is a set of Spotify controls that allows you to quickly search for and play tracks without ever actually opening the Spotify window.

So, let's take a look at how to get started with your own workflows before we do a little show and tell.

How to Make Your Own Alfred Workflows

How to Automate Anything with Alfred Workflows (Then Show Us Your Best) Workflows are a little confusing at a glance, but they're actually very simple when you start messing around with them. A workflow is broken down into four parts:

Triggers: Usually a system-wide hotkey, but this can also include when you access a file or folder.
Inputs: These are the keywords you type into Alfred. They can also include file filters.
Actions: Actions are the scripts that run after you type in the input. This can include loading an AppleScript, launching an application, opening a web site, and more.
Outputs: Outputs are exactly what you'd expect. These include something getting copied to the clipboard, a notification posting, or a script running.

Alfred includes a bunch of sample workflows that are worth looking at to get an idea of how they work, but lets go ahead and make a very simple workflow to temporarily pause iTunes:

Open Alfred's preferences and click on "Workflows."
Create a new workflow by clicking the "+" sign, and select "Blank workflow."
Name the workflow iTunes Pause (or whatever you want) and click Ok.
Click the "+" in the workflows upper right corner, and select "Triggers," and then "Hotkey."
Enter whatever hotkey you want (I did Shift+Command+P) and click Ok.
Click the plus arrow and again, select "Actions" and select "Run NSAppleScript."

Paste this code into the AppleScript box:

 on alfred_script(q) tell application "iTunes" pause delay 180 play end tell end alfred_script

and click "Ok."

Now, mouse over the hotkey, and click on the tab on the right. Drag the arrow over to the AppleScript box.

Congratulations, you just made your first (admittedly rudimentary) workflow! You can now click the "Share" button in the bottom left corner to export the file, and send it over to anyone you want.

Share Your Workflows

The process can be as simple as above for a quick hotkey to trigger an AppleScript, or you can make it much more complicated by creating your own search structures with PHP. Of course, the best part is that you can benefit from other people's hard work easily, and you can browse through a lot of what's been created so far over on the Alfred forums. If you're ever curious how a workflow works, you can ask in the forums, or just install it in Alfred and double click any of the nodes to see the code.

With that in mind, we're going to turn it over to you: show us some of the workflows you've made, or the ones you're using.

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/0Cbs4Ll1lh4/how-to-put-together-and-share-your-alfred-workflows-and-show-us-yours

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বৃহস্পতিবার, ৪ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩

'Arrested Development' sets premiere date

Netflix

Ad for "Arrested Development" posted on Facebook.

By Randee Dawn, TODAY contributor

In case "Arrested Development" fans needed more reasons to get excited, the re-booted show has confirmed two more details?on its Facebook page.

First, six years after Fox canceled the series, Netflix is now bringing it back on May 26. Second, there are to be 15 -- not 14, as previously announced -- new episodes. That last one is a bump up from the original announcement of a mere 10 episodes, which creator Mitch Hurwitz said was thrown out initially as kind of a joke.

"We always knew there were going to be 14 (episodes)," creator Mitch Hurwitz told reporters in January at the Television Critics Association's winter press tour. "The idea was: Let?s say there?s 10, and then the fans will be so happy when we say there?s even more!"

For now, fans will just have to sit and wait quietly until May 26. As the Facebook page post (of a large orange shipping container) suggested, "Try to contain yourself."

Like that's going to work!

More in The Clicker:

Source: http://theclicker.today.com/_news/2013/04/04/17599272-arrested-development-sets-netflix-premiere-date-of-may-26?lite

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Kate Middleton Trademarks Her Name For Charity

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/04/kate-middleton-trademarks-her-name-for-charity/

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Invasive crabs help Cape Cod marshes

Apr. 3, 2013 ? Ecologists are wary of non-native species, but along the shores of Cape Cod where grass-eating crabs have been running amok and destroying the marsh, an invasion of a predatory green crabs has helped turn back the tide in favor of the grass. The counter-intuitive conclusions appear in a new paper in the journal Ecology.

Long vilified, invasive species can sometimes become an ecosystem asset. New Brown University research published online in the journal Ecology reports exactly such a situation in the distressed salt marshes of Cape Cod. There, the invasive green crab Carcinus maenas is helping to restore the marsh by driving away the Sesarma reticulatum crabs that have been depleting the marsh grasses.

The observations and experiments of the research show that the green crab has filled the void left by the decline of native predators of sesarma crabs, the authors said. In previous research they showed that predator decline has come about because of recreational fishing.

"Humans have had far-reaching impacts on ecosystems," said author Tyler Coverdale, a researcher in the lab of lead author Mark Bertness, chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. "Some of those impacts, like overfishing, cause species to decline in their native ranges. Others, like shipping and trade, cause species to become more common outside of their native ranges. Most of the time these opposing types of impacts have negative results. In this case, an invasive species is potentially restoring a lost ecological function."

Bertness and his group have been working on the marshes for years to trace the extent and cause of the damage, which includes grass die-offs and subsequent erosion. A few years ago, they started noticing that where there was still soil, grasses were sometimes growing back somewhat, although far short of full recovery.

"When we started seeing the marshes recover, we were baffled," Bertness said. "To see very quickly the marshes start to come back, at least this veneer of cordgrass, it seemed pretty impressive. When we started seeing this recovery we started seeing loads of green crabs at the marshes that were recovering. We went out and quantified that."

Crab vs. Crab

The most elementary finding of the paper is that the green crabs are much more abundant (as many as 2.8 green crabs per square meter) in distressed-but-healing marsh areas where can they take over sesarma burrows. In healthy marsh areas with few sesarma burrows, the green crabs found no quarter (there were only 0.2 per square meter).

Bertness and Coverdale's measurements of cordgrass regrowth also showed that locations with high green crab density correlated positively with locations of grass regrowth.

The next steps were experiments to test whether all this was a mere coincidence of coexistence or whether there was a dynamic between the green crabs and the sesarma crabs that would plausibly defend the grass.

At select sites, Bertness and Coverdale enclosed the two crabs together within a wire cage at a burrow. After a set period of time they came back to observe the results and always found the same story. Green crabs won the struggle for the burrows. In fact sesarma crabs survived the tussle only 15 percent of the time. As a control they caged in other sesarma crabs without green crabs, and those sesarma crabs always survived.

Finally they tested whether green crabs had to eat the sesarma crabs to protect the grass or whether their mere presence had a deterrent effect. They did this by fencing in some sesarma crabs by themselves, some with a free roaming green crab (a clear and present danger) and some with a caged green crab (physically harmless but still plainly evident).

Sesarma left alone ate lots of grass in their fenced in area. Sesarma who faced a free-roaming or a caged green crab both ate far less grass. In other words, the presence of a green crab was as effective a deterrent to sesarma herbivory as actual attacks by green crabs.

Bertness likened the green crabs to scarecrows, which model what ecologists have recently begun to account for as "non-consumptive effects." Lay people already call that effect "scaring things away."

"Non-consumptive effects can be much more powerful because whereas a consumptive effect is one crab eats another crab, a non-consumptive effect is one crab scares dozens of crabs," Bertness said. "The ecological effect can be much greater much quicker."

In two ways, therefore, the new study provides evidence for two newer views in ecology, Bertness said. One is that invasive species can sometimes turn out to be helpful. The other is that ecologists should account for the power of a predator's threat, not just its actual attacks.

As for the marshes, however, Bertness said they need more help than the green crab alone can deliver.

"The marshes are slowly coming back but they were destroyed much faster than they are going to be able to rebuild," he said.

The National Science Foundation funded the research (grant OCE-0927090).

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Brown University.

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

Journal Reference:

Mark D. Bertness, Tyler Clarke Coverdale. An invasive species facilitates the recovery of salt marsh ecosystems on Cape Cod. Ecology, 2013; : 130402142357000 DOI: 10.1890/12-2150.1

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/XEQlIKl6Dyc/130403122015.htm

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Pedestrians at serious risk when drivers are 'permitted' to turn left

Apr. 2, 2013 ? A study to examine driver behavior in permitted left turns has identified what researchers call an "alarming" level of risk to pedestrians crossing the street -- about 4-9 percent of the time, drivers don't even bother to look and see if there are pedestrians in their way.

As opposed to a "protected" left turn, in which a solid green arrow gives a driver the complete right of way in a left-turn lane, a "permitted" left turn is often allowed by a confusing hodgepodge of signals, and drivers may have to pick their way through narrow windows of oncoming traffic.

This difficult driving maneuver, which is played out millions of times a day around the world, is fraught with risk for unwary pedestrians, who too often appear to be an afterthought.

The danger is much higher than had been realized, experts say.

"There are far more pedestrian crashes in marked crosswalks than anywhere else on roads, and pedestrians already have a false sense of security," said David Hurwitz, an assistant professor of transportation engineering at Oregon State University. "This study found that one key concern is permitted left turns."

As they wait to turn left, sometimes taking a narrow opportunity to lunge into a stream of oncoming traffic, drivers focus most of their attention on the vehicular traffic and the traffic signal, rather than any pedestrians crossing the street, the research showed. The heavier the traffic, the less attention paid to pedestrians.

In a controlled analysis in a full-scale driving simulator that monitored specific eye movements, the engineers found that about one time in 10 or 20, the driver didn't even look to see if a pedestrian was there before moving into the intersection. This suggests a major level of risk to pedestrians, researchers said, if they assume that drivers not only will look for them, but will allow them to cross the street.

The problem is aggravated by "permitted" left turn signals that vary widely, from state to state and sometimes even from one city to the next. Such turns might be allowed by a circular green light, a flashing circular yellow light, a flashing circular red light, or even a flashing yellow arrow. More consistent national standards regarding the flashing yellow arrow were recommended as recently as 2009, but the process of upgrading signals across the nation takes time.

The danger is sufficiently high, the researchers concluded, that more states and cities should consider prohibiting permitted left turns while pedestrians are allowed to be in the crosswalk. In Washington County, Ore., traffic managers recently did just that, after receiving a high number of complaints about pedestrian-vehicle conflicts.

"In traffic management you always have multiple goals, which sometimes conflict," Hurwitz said. "You want to move traffic as efficiently as possible, because there's a cost to making vehicles wait. You use more fuel, increase emissions and waste people's time. The permitted left turn can help with efficiency.

"But the safety of the traveling public is also critical," he said. "Sometimes the goal of safety has to override the goal of efficiency, and we think this is one of those times."

Also of some interest, the study found preliminary evidence to suggest that the currently-mandated type of signal, which uses four heads instead of three, offers no change in driver behavior. However, the cost to implement a four-head signal is about $800 more than retrofitting the three-head version, which is widely used around the nation. Many millions of dollars might be saved nationally by using the simpler signal.

The findings of these studies have been compiled in a report by OSU and Portland State University researchers to the Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium, which funded the research. They will also be presented this year at the Driving Assessment Conference in New York and the Western District ITE meeting in Arizona.

Report: http://otrec.us/project/484