Reformist Rohani on verge of Iran presidency, shocking country and Khamenei

Many Iranians assumed that a hard-line candidate favored by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would succeed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But moderate cleric Hassan Rohani is on the verge of a stunning upset.

By Scott Peterson,?Staff writer / June 15, 2013

Presidential candidate Hassan Rohani shows his ballot before casting it during the Iranian presidential election in Tehran, Friday. Millions of Iranians voted to choose a new president on Friday, urged by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to turn out in force to discredit suggestions by arch foe the United States that the election would be unfair.

Yalda Moayeri/Reuters

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Politically moderate cleric Hassan Rohani is on the path to winning Iran?s presidential election, a stunning result that upends predictions of a preordained hardline victory and heralds change ? both in tone, and almost certainly in substance ? for the Islamic Republic.

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Mr. Rohani, a former nuclear negotiator, has an almost unassailable lead with more than three times as many votes as his nearest rival with two-thirds of the votes counted and will likely avoid a runoff that many analysts had expected. He faced down a host of conservatives in Friday?s vote, stating at the ballot box that he had ?come to destroy extremism.?

Rohani built his campaign around promises to ease Iran?s tensions with the West, end international sanctions, allow greater freedom of the press and reduce government interference in private lives. Ahead of the vote many said that Rohani?s candidacy was little more than window dressing, permitted by Iran?s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to boost turnout among disillusioned Iranians and erase memories of the violent, fraud-tainted 2009 election.

But with the cleric on the brink of victory, capitalizing on discontent within the electorate and divisions in the conservative camp, Khamenei may be as surprised as anyone by Rohani's likely first round victory. The surge for Rohani began just 72 hours before the vote ? fueled by endorsements from former presidents Mohammad Khatami and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani ? and now looks set to shock Khamenei and the rest of the establishment.

There is shock, too, for all those Iranians who planned to boycott the election because they considered their votes ?useless? in a rigged system, yet voted anyway ? pushing turnout to nearly 80 percent ? and? found their choice accurately reflected in the result.

?The Climax of a Political Epic ? World was Stunned Again,? proclaimed the hardline Kayhan newspaper. One Iranian Tweet distilled the surprise: ?Four years ago today we were on the street in disbelief, chanting ?Where is my vote?? This is a different kind of disbelief.?

Khamenei had called for a large turnout to defeat Iran?s ?enemies,? and to restore legitimacy to an Islamic system tarnished by Iran's fraud-tainted 2009 election, which brought millions of Iranians to the streets in weeks of protest that were violently crushed amid chants of ?Death to the Dictator!?

Iranian pendulum

?What we are seeing is a swing of the pendulum, with a clear understanding of what happened before,? says Farideh Farhi, an Iran expert at the University of Hawaii. Critical was the ability of Mr. Khatami and Mr. Rafsanjani to work together, ?prodded by?the rank and file in the provinces? to do something ?no matter how flawed [the election] is."

?Once they became convinced that conservative forces have a stake in running an adequately fair election ? a proper election, in terms of its mechanism ? then the game became extremely political and strategic. It worked, and one has to give kudos to two former presidents who now are leaders of the country, because they have proven they can mobilize voters,? she says.

In the months prior to the vote, the regime insisted that the ?sedition? of 2009 would not be repeated. Journalists were arrested or harassed months ago. Revolutionary Guard commanders issued warnings against interference at home and abroad.

The 686 people who registered to run were whittled down to just eight candidates by the Guardian Council, which disqualified Rafsanjani as well as the chosen successor of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose second term ends in August.

Khamenei and other elements of the ruling system made clear their preference that one of the six hardline contenders should win. Among them are the popular Tehran mayor Mahammed Baqr Qalibaf and current nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili. Against such well-known opponents close to the Supreme Leader, Rohani was given little hope.

But events combined to provide the ?hope? and ?prudence? that were the catchwords of his campaign. Conservatives were divided, their votes split among themselves. And after a third televised debate ? in which Rohani claimed he had ?never lied? to the Iranian people ? fellow reformist candidate Mohammad Reza Aref withdrew from the race. High-profile endorsements began to pile-up and Rohani began to ride the crest of a popular surge.

?We are seeing again that the Islamic Republic is a wizard at turning the elections into an event, and always provides us with a surprise,? says a mother in Tehran, who had vowed not to cast a "worthless" vote before the election.

Today she marvels that the vote count was ?so measured and meticulous? compared to 2009, and quipped that her ?jaw is hurting from repeated falling motion, chest getting bruised... this election is merely an indication that maybe the Leader is feeling less bloody-minded after learning a hard lesson through his selection of Ahmadinejad [in 2005 and 2009] and is now ready to be more pragmatic to save the Islamic system."

Hardliners and blame

Hardliners did not blame Khamenei for the result, but in some cases themselves. An editorial today in Tabnak, which is run by candidate and former Revolutionary Guard commander Mohsen Rezaei, explained the loss under the headline: ?Why is defeat necessary?"?

?People of Iran said no to fundamentalists because they were unhappy about the way the country was being managed and were hurt because of it,? Tabnak said. Iranians wanted a president who ?does not only chant slogans inside and outside Iran and bring fundamentally negative changes to their lives.?

Votes were counted far more slowly than in 2009, when complete results were published by a semi-official news agency while the polls were still open, then taken down only to be re-posted with precisely the same numbers later.

The reformist candidates in that election, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, leaders of the so-called Green Movement who challenged the 2009 result and Khamenei, remain under house arrest in Tehran. The Supreme Leader said today?s result would help overcome the ghosts of 2009. Khamenei did not speak as ballots were being counted, but his office tweeted: ?In 2009 was same excitement but w/ insults; this election has no disrespect. It?s valuable that we?ve progressed so much in 4 years.?

In another tweet, Khamenei said: ?2009 unrests were all about to hurt [popular] base of Revolution while West propagandized 'people lost confidence.' No! People & System got mutual confidence.?

Rafsanjani appears to agree with him. Iranian media quoted the former president today saying it was the ?most democratic election in the world and there are not flaws in the election.?

Gracious in victory and defeat

Overnight all six candidates issued a joint statement calling on their supporters not to demonstrate or make celebrations until the results were out. By late afternoon, Rohani had called on his supporters not to ?gather against the law,? and that any gathering would only be after official announcements and with legal permission.

?If this result stands, the Western narrative stating that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the [Revolutionary Guard] are all-powerful needs to be revisited,? wrote Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, in an analysis from Washington. ?Though hardliners remain in control of key aspects of Iran?s political system, the centrists and reformists have proven that even when the cards are stacked against them, they can still prevail due to their support among the population."

Mr. Parsi wrote that ?Rohani will likely try to move to the middle now and be a unifying president.?

As voting was extended by five hours on Friday, there were noticeable differences compared to 2009. State TV channel IRIB broadcast that candidate representatives were allowed to stay in polling stations until the counting was done. The head of the election headquarters Seyed Solat Mortazavi last night said he would look into reports of Jalili campaign material being distributed at polling stations and ?we will confront such behavior.? Journalists were not kicked out of the Interior Ministry as results were coming in, as they were in 2009.

?Now because people are so shocked, they think that Mr. Khamenei has planned all these things to reinvent the Islamic system,? says Farhi in Hawaii. Instead, the results illustrate that there is ?real politics going on [across] contested political terrain? in Iran, which shows the limits of Khamenei?s ability to shape events. ?The Islamic Republic has developed so many competing institutions, and competing political forces? that the consolidation of conservatives since 2005 was not likely to last, says Farhi.

?The policies of the last eight years so clearly failed, in terms of improving the lot of the Iranian population, that now there is an adjustment. If it didn?t happen, then there was something wrong.?

Yet Khamenei would have been as surprised as any at the Rohani victory. ?[Khamenei] is the leader who made the decision in 2009 to come out and say publicly that his views are closer to Ahmadinejad. He identified himself not as the father of the nation, but as player in these things,? adds Farhi. ?So he is paying for that political mistake,? she says. ?Does this mean that he?s going to disappear, and the office of the Leader is not going to be powerful anymore? Absolutely not.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/EthSqM5k1-Y/Reformist-Rohani-on-verge-of-Iran-presidency-shocking-country-and-Khamenei

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Can you feel me now? New array measures vibrations across skin, may help engineers design tactile displays

June 14, 2013 ? In the near future, a buzz in your belt or a pulse from your jacket may give you instructions on how to navigate your surroundings.

Think of it as tactile Morse code: vibrations from a wearable, GPS-linked device that tell you to turn right or left, or stop, depending on the pattern of pulses you feel. Such a device could free drivers from having to look at maps, and could also serve as a tactile guide for the visually and hearing impaired.

Lynette Jones, a senior research scientist in MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering, designs wearable tactile displays. Through her work, she's observed that the skin is a sensitive -- though largely untapped -- medium for communication.

"If you compare the skin to the retina, you have about the same number of sensory receptors, you just have them over almost two square meters of space, unlike the eye where it's all concentrated in an extremely small area," Jones says. "The skin is generally as useful as a very acute area. It's just that you need to disperse the information that you're presenting."

Knowing just how to disperse tactile information across the skin is tricky. For instance, people may be much more sensitive to stimuli on areas like the hand, as opposed to the forearm, and may respond best to certain patterns of vibrations. Such information on skin responsiveness could help designers determine the best configuration of motors in a display, given where on the skin a device would be worn.

Now Jones has built an array that precisely tracks a motor's vibrations through skin in three dimensions. The array consists of eight miniature accelerometers and a single pancake motor -- a type of vibrating motor used in cellphones. She used the array to measure motor vibrations in three locations: the palm of the hand, the forearm and the thigh. From her studies with eight healthy participants, Jones found that a motor's mechanical vibrations through skin drop off quickly in all three locations, within 8 millimeters from where the vibrations originated.

Jones also gauged participants' perception of vibrations, fitting them with a 3-by-3 array of pancake motors in these three locations on the body. While skin generally stopped vibrating 8 millimeters from the source, most people continued to perceive the vibrations as far away as 24 millimeters.

When participants were asked to identify specific locations of motors within the array, they were much more sensitive on the palm than on the forearm or thigh. But in all three locations, people were better at picking out vibrations in the four corners of the array, versus the inner motors, leading Jones to posit that perhaps people use the edges of their limbs to localize vibrations and other stimuli.

"For a lot of sensory modalities, you have to work out what it is people can process, as one of the dictates for how you design," says Jones, whose results will appear in the journal IEEE Transactions on Haptics. "There's no point in making things much more compact, which may be a desirable feature from an engineering point of view, but from a human-use point of view, doesn't make a difference."

Mapping good vibrations

In addition to measuring skin's sensitivity to vibrations, Jones and co-author Katherine Sofia '12 found that skin has a strong effect on motor vibrations. The researchers compared a pancake motor's frequency of vibrations when mounted on a rigid structure or on more compliant skin. They found that in general, skin reduced a motor's vibrations by 28 percent, with the forearm and thigh having a slightly stronger dampening effect than the palm of the hand.

The skin's damping of motor vibrations is significant, Jones says, if engineers plan to build tactile displays that incorporate different frequencies of vibrations. For instance, the difference between two motors -- one slightly faster than the other -- may be indistinguishable in certain parts of the skin. Likewise, two motors spaced a certain distance apart may be differentiable in one area but not another.

"Should I have eight motors, or is four enough that 90 percent of the time, I'll know that when this one's on, it's this one and not that one?" Jones says. "We're answering those sorts of questions in the context of what information you want to present using a device."

Roberta Klatzky, a professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, says that measurements taken by Jones' arrays can be used to set up displays in which the location of a stimulus -- for example, a pattern to convey a letter -- is important.

"A major challenge is to enable people to tell the difference between patterns applied to the skin as, for example, blind people do when reading Braille," says Klatzky, who specializes in the study of spatial cognition. "Lynette's work sets up a methodology and potential guidelines for effective pattern displays."

Creating a buzz

Jones sees promising applications for wearable tactile displays. In addition to helping drivers navigate, she says tactile stimuli may direct firefighters through burning buildings, or emergency workers through disaster sites. In more mundane scenarios, she says tactile displays may help joggers traverse an unfamiliar city, taking directions from a buzzing wristband, instead of having to look at a smartphone.

Using data from their mechanical and perceptual experiments, Jones' group is designing arrays that can be worn across the back and around the wrist, and is investigating various ways to present vibrations. For example, a row of vibrations activated sequentially from left to right may tell a driver to turn right; a single motor that buzzes with increasing frequency may be a warning to slow down.

"There's a lot of things you can do with these displays that are fairly intuitive in terms of how people respond," Jones says, "which is important because no one's going to spend hours and hours in any application, learning what a signal means."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/GkStDAspju8/130614082649.htm

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2 Chainz's Bodyguard Relives Robbery: 'We Thought It Was A Joke'

'Then all we heard was, '2 Chainz, give it up!' ' Harold 'Hammer Strength' Folsom says.
By Gil Kaufman

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1709052/2-chainz-robbery-details.jhtml

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Family honors father by raising $104000 for prostate cancer research

Historic Stella Plantation in Braithwaite, La., was the site of Gunning for a Cure, a sporting clays fundraiser that raised more than $104,000 for Dr. Oliver Sartor?s Prostate Cancer Research Fund at Tulane Cancer Center. The event, held on a Saturday in March, was planned and hosted by the family and associates of Sartor?s friend and former patient, Chalin Perez.

The Perez family home and site of Gunning for a Cure, Stella is a 1,500-acre event venue and working plantation in lower Plaquemines Parish that annually produces citrus fruit, pecans and crawfish.

Chalin Perez, who served as president of the Plaquemines Parish Council for many years, joined the Naval ROTC at Tulane University in 1940, and was commissioned as an ensign upon graduation in 1943. He returned to Tulane after the war and received his law degree in 1948.
?
?Following Dad?s prostate cancer diagnosis, Dr. Sartor spent countless hours with our family, answering questions, quelling fears, treating dad, and even attending a hunting trip or two,? says Chalyn Perez, Perez?s son. ?All of his efforts made us believe that there was a way to live with this disease without sacrificing all that you enjoy about life.?
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Chalyn and his siblings, Kathlyn, Cherielyn and Carlyn, say they hope to provide financial support to continue Sartor?s research and assist him in his efforts to help other patients and families.
?
?The Perez family, like many others in Louisiana, has been deeply impacted by prostate cancer,? Sartor says. ?Their loving father and my dear friend fought hard against this disease. Their experience has motivated them to continue his fight by raising funds to help find new treatment options and hopefully, one day, a cure. I am humbled by their faith and their passion to make a difference, and I will invest their hard-earned funds in research that will hopefully help us find answers.?
?
Sporting clays fundraisers called the One Man Shoot in Baton Rouge, La., and Shreveport/Bossier City, La., on Aug. 3 and on Oct. 4?5 also will support the research.

Melanie Cross is manager of communications at the Tulane Cancer Center.

Source: http://tulane.edu/news/newwave/061313_perez.cfm

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Penn Researchers design variant of main painkiller receptor

Public release date: 14-Jun-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Evan Lerner
elerner@upenn.edu
215-573-6604
University of Pennsylvania

Opioids, such as morphine, are still the most effective class of painkillers, but they come with unwanted side effects and can also be addictive and deadly at high doses. Designing new pain-killing drugs of this type involves testing them on their corresponding receptors, but access to meaningful quantities of these receptors that can work in experimental conditions has always been a limiting factor.

Now, an interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers at the University of Pennsylvania has developed a variant of the mu opioid receptor that has several advantages when it comes to experimentation. This variant can be grown in large quantities in bacteria and is also water-soluble, enabling experiments and applications that had previously been very challenging or impossible.

The study was led by Renyu Liu, an assistant professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care at Penn's Perelman School of Medicine, and Jeffery Saven, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry in the School of Arts and Sciences. Jose Manuel Perez-Aguilar, then a graduate student in the Department of Chemistry, and Jin Xi, Felipe Matsunaga and Xu Cui, lab members in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care, along with Bernard Selling of Impact Biologicals Inc., contributed significantly to this study.

Their research was published in the Journal PLOS ONE.

The mu opioid receptor belongs to a class of cellular membrane proteins called G protein-coupled receptors, or GPCRs. Involved in wide range of biological processes, these receptors bind to molecules in the environment, initiating cellular signaling pathways. In the case of this receptor, binding to opioid molecules leads to a profound reduction of pain but also to a variety of unpleasant and potentially fatal side-effects, a problem that researchers from multiple disciplines are attempting to address.

"There are two directions for solving this problem in basic science, either working on the opioid molecule or working on the receptor," Liu said. "We're doing the latter."

Experimenting on the mu opioid receptor has been challenging for several reasons. The human receptor itself is relatively scarce, appearing in small quantities on only a few types of cells, making harvesting appreciable amounts impractical. Researchers have also been unable to grow it recombinantly genetically engineering bacteria to express the protein en masse as some parts of the protein are toxic to E. coli. Hydrophobic, or water-hating, amino acid groups on the exterior of the receptor that help it sit in the cell's membrane also make it insoluble in water when isolated.

The researchers set out to address these challenges by computationally designing variants of the mu opioid receptor. This task had challenges of its own; their research was conducted long before the crystal structure of receptor was known.

"The problem with this receptor is that the native structure has only very recently been solved and only a significant re-engineered mouse model at that," Liu said. "When we started this project, we were blind."

Starting with only the gene sequence for the human version of the receptor, the researchers knew the order of the protein's amino acids but not how they were folded together. The structures for other GPCRs, such as rhodopsin and the beta-2 adrenergic receptor, were known at the time, however.

"Based on the comparison of our sequence to the sequences of those GPCRs, we built a computer model of the protein," Saven said. "When the structure of the mouse version of this receptor appeared, we were able to compare our model to that structure, and they matched up really well."

From that comparison, the researchers were able to identify the hydrophobic amino acids on the exterior of the structure, as well as some of those that were potentially toxic to E. coli.

"The objective then was to redesign those exterior amino acids," Saven said. "Based on the physical and chemical interactions these amino acids have with each other and with water, we were able to identify sequence combinations that are consistent with the model where atoms don't overlap in space and preferentially occupy the exterior surface with ones that are water soluble."

Replacing 53 of the protein's 288 amino acids, the research team introduced the new gene sequence into E. coli, which were able to produce large quantities of the variant. Beyond looking like the now-available mouse mu opioid receptor, the researchers were able to show its value to future studies by performing functional tests.

"We showed that this water-soluble form of the protein can compete with the native, membrane-based form when binding with antagonists that are fluorescently labeled," Saven said. "You can watch the fluorescence shift as more of these water-soluble variants are floating around in the solution."

The team's computational approach enables further iterations of the variant to be more easily designed, meaning it can be tweaked alongside experimental conditions.

"This is a great product that can do a lot of things," Liu said. "You can use this variant to look at the structure-function relationship for the receptor, or even potentially use it as a screening tool."

###

The research was supported by the Foundation for Anesthesia Education and Research, Perelman School of Medicine's Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care, Mary Elizabeth Groff Foundation, National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation through Penn's Nano/Bio Interface Center and Penn's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center. Jose Manuel Perez-Aguilar is now a research associate at the Weill Cornell Medical College. Xu Cui is now an anesthesiologist at Beijing Tongren Hospital.

---

[ | E-mail | 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.

Public release date: 14-Jun-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Evan Lerner
elerner@upenn.edu
215-573-6604
University of Pennsylvania

Opioids, such as morphine, are still the most effective class of painkillers, but they come with unwanted side effects and can also be addictive and deadly at high doses. Designing new pain-killing drugs of this type involves testing them on their corresponding receptors, but access to meaningful quantities of these receptors that can work in experimental conditions has always been a limiting factor.

Now, an interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers at the University of Pennsylvania has developed a variant of the mu opioid receptor that has several advantages when it comes to experimentation. This variant can be grown in large quantities in bacteria and is also water-soluble, enabling experiments and applications that had previously been very challenging or impossible.

The study was led by Renyu Liu, an assistant professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care at Penn's Perelman School of Medicine, and Jeffery Saven, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry in the School of Arts and Sciences. Jose Manuel Perez-Aguilar, then a graduate student in the Department of Chemistry, and Jin Xi, Felipe Matsunaga and Xu Cui, lab members in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care, along with Bernard Selling of Impact Biologicals Inc., contributed significantly to this study.

Their research was published in the Journal PLOS ONE.

The mu opioid receptor belongs to a class of cellular membrane proteins called G protein-coupled receptors, or GPCRs. Involved in wide range of biological processes, these receptors bind to molecules in the environment, initiating cellular signaling pathways. In the case of this receptor, binding to opioid molecules leads to a profound reduction of pain but also to a variety of unpleasant and potentially fatal side-effects, a problem that researchers from multiple disciplines are attempting to address.

"There are two directions for solving this problem in basic science, either working on the opioid molecule or working on the receptor," Liu said. "We're doing the latter."

Experimenting on the mu opioid receptor has been challenging for several reasons. The human receptor itself is relatively scarce, appearing in small quantities on only a few types of cells, making harvesting appreciable amounts impractical. Researchers have also been unable to grow it recombinantly genetically engineering bacteria to express the protein en masse as some parts of the protein are toxic to E. coli. Hydrophobic, or water-hating, amino acid groups on the exterior of the receptor that help it sit in the cell's membrane also make it insoluble in water when isolated.

The researchers set out to address these challenges by computationally designing variants of the mu opioid receptor. This task had challenges of its own; their research was conducted long before the crystal structure of receptor was known.

"The problem with this receptor is that the native structure has only very recently been solved and only a significant re-engineered mouse model at that," Liu said. "When we started this project, we were blind."

Starting with only the gene sequence for the human version of the receptor, the researchers knew the order of the protein's amino acids but not how they were folded together. The structures for other GPCRs, such as rhodopsin and the beta-2 adrenergic receptor, were known at the time, however.

"Based on the comparison of our sequence to the sequences of those GPCRs, we built a computer model of the protein," Saven said. "When the structure of the mouse version of this receptor appeared, we were able to compare our model to that structure, and they matched up really well."

From that comparison, the researchers were able to identify the hydrophobic amino acids on the exterior of the structure, as well as some of those that were potentially toxic to E. coli.

"The objective then was to redesign those exterior amino acids," Saven said. "Based on the physical and chemical interactions these amino acids have with each other and with water, we were able to identify sequence combinations that are consistent with the model where atoms don't overlap in space and preferentially occupy the exterior surface with ones that are water soluble."

Replacing 53 of the protein's 288 amino acids, the research team introduced the new gene sequence into E. coli, which were able to produce large quantities of the variant. Beyond looking like the now-available mouse mu opioid receptor, the researchers were able to show its value to future studies by performing functional tests.

"We showed that this water-soluble form of the protein can compete with the native, membrane-based form when binding with antagonists that are fluorescently labeled," Saven said. "You can watch the fluorescence shift as more of these water-soluble variants are floating around in the solution."

The team's computational approach enables further iterations of the variant to be more easily designed, meaning it can be tweaked alongside experimental conditions.

"This is a great product that can do a lot of things," Liu said. "You can use this variant to look at the structure-function relationship for the receptor, or even potentially use it as a screening tool."

###

The research was supported by the Foundation for Anesthesia Education and Research, Perelman School of Medicine's Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care, Mary Elizabeth Groff Foundation, National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation through Penn's Nano/Bio Interface Center and Penn's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center. Jose Manuel Perez-Aguilar is now a research associate at the Weill Cornell Medical College. Xu Cui is now an anesthesiologist at Beijing Tongren Hospital.

---

[ | E-mail | 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/2013-06/uop-prd061313.php

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Nicaragua canal project is approved despite few details

MEXICO CITY ? The project is of mind-boggling proportions: It would cost $40 billion, take a decade to complete and be more than twice the length of the mighty Panama Canal.

Yet on Thursday, the Nicaraguan legislature controlled by President Daniel Ortega approved just such a plan, for a sea-to-sea canal from the Pacific to the Caribbean, with a little-known Chinese firm footing much of the bill.

Proponents say the canal megaproject could bring to Nicaragua and the region a major share of the expanding global maritime trade business, especially from U.S. and Asian markets, worth trillions of dollars.

By creating competition for Panama Canal traffic, it could lower the cost of shipping for major American importers such as Wal-Mart and could become a tourism destination for cruise lines. It also could siphon off some business from West Coast ports in the United States by making it easier for Asian companies to reach the East Coast.

Despite the grandiose scale, Ortega revealed few details to the public and fast-tracked a bill granting the concession to build and manage the canal. The measure sailed through the legislature with little debate or scrutiny and was approved by a 61-25 vote and one abstention, with one Ortega supporter arguing in the National Assembly that failure to approve the project would be unpatriotic.

Ortega has said the project will provide tens of thousands of jobs for Nicaraguans and dramatically improve the economy in one of the hemisphere's poorest nations, perhaps even doubling the GDP by 2020.

But the lack of transparency, which critics say is typical of Ortega's secretive way of governing, has raised innumerable doubts about the canal, its real benefits, its potential environmental toll and whether another such waterway is really necessary so close to Panama's.

Many Nicaraguans suspect that the project, which grants a 100-year concession to the newly formed Hong Kong-based HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co. (HKND Group) to operate the canal, is another example of Ortega cutting a deal to earn millions of dollars for his family and inner circle.

"He is selling off the national patrimony, without firing a single shot," said Carlos Langrand, an opposition congressman who opposes the deal.

Not that many in Nicaragua don't relish the idea of a canal.

In fact, for a couple of centuries, through the brazen eras of exploration and exploitation by the likes of Cornelius Vanderbilt and the filibusterers, 19th century adventurers who periodically invaded Nicaragua, Nicaraguans have nursed the dream (some would say fantasy) of carving a land-and-water route across their section of the Central American isthmus.

The dream was raised and dashed time and again. The opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 seemed to relegate the idea to the realm of fanciful musings. Nicaraguan politicians started floating the idea again in the 1990s but the last serious set of studies was shelved in 2006.

Now, Ortega, taking advantage of his steady takeover of nearly all the decision-making institutions in the country, has revived the dream in hope, perhaps, of sealing what he sees as his legacy.

Opponents are not convinced and staged a small protest outside the National Assembly building Thursday as legislators discussed the project.

"Despite this having been the dream of Nicaraguans for more than 150 years, the way this is being approved without consultation is unacceptable," Langrand, the legislator, said by telephone from Managua, the Nicaraguan capital. "Without taking into consideration environmental issues, without taking into consideration the impact on towns along the route, nor the impact on indigenous communities and protected biospheres."

In fact, a lot of behind-the-scenes work has gone on in preparing the project that ordinary Nicaraguans are not aware of. The Chinese firm, HKND Group, says it is assembling a team of world-class consultants and engineers to work on plans. It is standard practice in a developing country such as Nicaragua for the concession for such an enormous project to be granted before the multimillion-dollar feasibility and environmental studies are conducted, they said.

"In Nicaragua, they don't have the funding available to do all the upfront work before they've chosen a concessionaire," HKND senior project advisor Bill Wild said in an interview from Managua. So HKND assumes the risk, he said, "but no one can do it without the certainty of [the] concession."

Several routes for the canal are under consideration. HKND officials say the one route that has been eliminated is a highly controversial previous proposal that would have taken the canal along the San Juan River bordering Costa Rica. Nicaragua and Costa Rica maintain a dispute over that border.

Any route is likely to incorporate the great Lake Nicaragua, the vast, ecologically sensitive inland water body that dominates the western half of the country.

Wild said the changing nature of maritime trade ? including the increasing volume, expanding customer base in Asian markets, and the size of ships ? makes the Nicaragua canal an important, bigger alternative to the Panama Canal, currently undergoing a $5.25-billion expansion. Especially as the United States eventually moves toward becoming an exporter of oil, the kinds of supertankers it and other suppliers would use would not fit in the Panama Canal, he said.

Source: http://feeds.latimes.com/~r/latimes/news/science/~3/NqRJ1OLQbbw/la-fg-nicaragua-canal-20130614,0,7671217.story

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Journalist Dismisses GOP Rep's Claim, Jabs At Former Cheney Adviser

The Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald denounced Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) again on Wednesday, dismissing his claim that the journalist should be prosecuted over his involvement in the NSA's surveillance program going public.

Appearing on "All In With Chris Hayes," Greenwald accused King of creating an "outright fabrication," invoking a memorable name from the George W. Bush-Dick Cheney era in the process.

"What I thought was most remarkable was that the entire framework that he offered, the ground on which he made his call for my arrest and prosecution was an outright fabrication," Greenwald said. "Really, a lie. He went on national television and accused me of having threatened to uncover and expose and publish the identities of covert CIA agents, as though I was Lewis Libby or something."

Back in February, the Associated Press noted how Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) restored Lewis "Scooter" Libby's voting rights six years after he was convicted on criminal charges in a memorable CIA incident. The former Cheney chief of staff was found guilty of perjury, obstruction of justice and false statements that contributed to the compromised identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Libby's two-and-a-half-year prison sentence was commuted by Bush, who told NBC News in 2010 that Cheney wanted him to pardon the former staffer.

Related on HuffPost:

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/13/glenn-greenwald-scooter-libby-peter-king_n_3432386.html?utm_hp_ref=crime&ir=Crime

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Shining a light on cool pools of gas in the galaxy

June 11, 2013 ? Newly formed stars shine brightly, practically crying out, "Hey, look at me!" But not everything in our Milky Way galaxy is easy to see. The bulk of material between the stars in the galaxy -- the cool hydrogen gas from which stars spring -- is nearly impossible to find.

A new study from the Hershel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency mission with important NASA participation, is shining a light on these hidden pools of gas, revealing their whereabouts and quantities. In the same way that dyes are used to visualize swirling motions of transparent fluids, the Herschel team has used a new tracer to map the invisible hydrogen gas.

The discovery reveals that the reservoir of raw material for making stars had been underestimated before -- almost by one third -- and extends farther out from our galaxy's center than known before.

"There is an enormous additional reservoir of material available to form new stars that we couldn't identify before," said Jorge Pineda of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., lead author of a new paper on the findings published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

"We had to go to space to solve this mystery because our atmosphere absorbs the specific radiation we wanted to detect," said William Langer of JPL, principal investigator of the Herschel project to map the gas. "We also needed to see far-infrared light to pinpoint the location of the gas. For both these reasons, Herschel was the only telescope for the job."

Stars are created from clouds of gas, made of hydrogen molecules. The first step in making a star is to squeeze gas together enough that atoms fuse into molecules. The gas starts out sparse but, through the pull of gravity and sometimes other constricting forces, it collects and becomes denser. When the hydrogen gets dense enough, nuclear fusion takes place and a star is born, shining with starlight.

Astronomers studying stars want to follow this journey, from a star's humble beginnings as a cloud of molecules to a full-blown blazing orb. To do so requires mapping the distribution of the stellar hydrogen fuel across the galaxy. Unfortunately, most hydrogen molecules in space are too cold to give off any visible light. They lurk unseen by most telescopes.

For decades, researchers have turned to a tracer molecule called carbon monoxide, which goes hand-in-hand with the hydrogen molecules, revealing their location. But this method has limitations. In regions where the gas is just beginning to pool -- the earliest stage of cloud formation -- there is no carbon monoxide.

"Ultraviolet light destroys the carbon monoxide," said Langer. "In the space between stars, where the gas is very thin, there is not enough dust to shield molecules from destruction by ultraviolet light."

A different tracer -- ionized carbon -- does, however, linger in these large but relatively empty spaces, and can be used to pin down the hydrogen molecules. Researchers have observed ionized carbon from space before, but Herschel has, for the first time, provided a dramatically improved geographic map of its location and abundance in the galaxy.

"Thanks to Herschel's incredible sensitivity, we can separate material moving at different speeds," said Paul Goldsmith, a co-author and the NASA Herschel Project Scientist at JPL. "We finally can get the whole picture of what's available to make future generations of stars."

Read a more in-depth story about this research from the European Space Agency at http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=51909 . The technical paper is online at http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.7770 .

Herschel is a European Space Agency mission, with science instruments provided by consortia of European institutes and with important participation by NASA. NASA's Herschel Project Office is based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for two of Herschel's three science instruments. The NASA Herschel Science Center, part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, supports the United States astronomical community. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information is online at http://www.herschel.caltech.edu , http://www.nasa.gov/herschel and http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel .

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/space_time/nasa/~3/UP4jftFGDXU/130611144802.htm

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Khamenei is erasing Iran's presidency, Bani-Sadr says

By John Irish

VERSAILLES, France (Reuters) - Exiled former Iranian president Abolhassan Bani-Sadr accused Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday of using this week's presidential election to weaken the office and cement his own power.

Bani-Sadr, a sworn opponent of Tehran's clerical rulers ever since being driven from office and fleeing in 1981, told Reuters in an interview that the six remaining candidates in Friday's poll were separated by only shades of difference on policy.

"Any one of these men picked by Khamenei will execute his orders," the 80-year-old said in an interview in his house near Paris, where he has been exiled since 1981.

"The Republic is erasing itself in the face of the Leader."

Most key Iranian policies that concern the world, such as an uranium enrichment program that has prompted international economic sanctions, and Iran's support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his war with rebels, are decided by Khamenei.

Although the Iranian president generally runs domestic affairs, especially the economy of the oil producer, and is Iran's highest-ranking public face, outgoing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been increasingly at loggerheads with Khamenei in his second term, and begun to seem like a marginal figure.

Bani-Sadr said all his potential successors had shown in pre-election debates that they were out of touch with the economic difficulties of ordinary Iranians.

"The presidency is finished. Even under (ex-president) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Republic resisted. He had a say, but that's over. They dare not say that we have reached an impasse," said Bani-Sadr, a veteran of the protest movement of the 1970s that overthrew Iran's shah.

NUCLEAR SIGNALS

He said the main significance of the election would be in signaling to the United States which direction Iran wished to pursue in the long-running and so far fruitless negotiations with major powers on its nuclear program. Western powers fear Iran may be trying to develop the capacity to build atomic weapons, but Iran says the program is entirely peaceful.

Khamenei has not publicly endorsed any candidate, and insists he has only one vote.

Bani-Sadr said the Iranian people were fully aware that the election meant very little, but that Western sanctions and the veiled threat of war to prevent it acquiring nuclear weapons had helped to strengthen Khamenei's hand.

"His strategy is to see how much fear can paralyze the people," Bani-Sadr said. "These elections are telling them that there is the choice of the ballot box or hell," he said, pointing to the conflicts in Afghanistan to the east, Iraq to the west, and in Syria.

Bani-Sadr accompanied revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini home from exile in 1979 and was elected president in 1980, only to be impeached by parliament the following year.

Ever since Khomeini, he said there had been a drive to create a "Shi'ite belt" taking in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to span a large part of the Muslim world.

"That way, it (Iran) ... can play a role as a guide to the Muslim world," Bani-Sadr said.

That policy had already cost Iran dear during its eight-year war with Iraq's Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, and subsequently in its support for the Shi'ite militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon, and for Assad, whose Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shi'ism.

"A good portion of the regime's weakness is down to these crises, and (the desire) to have that belt at all costs," he said. "Khamenei wants to help Assad at all costs."

(Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/khamenei-erasing-irans-presidency-bani-sadr-says-072057004.html

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Samsung announces the Galaxy Ace 3, its new entry-level Android smartphone with an LTE option

Sidestepping the fanfare and press events typically associated with Samsung product launches, Samsung's revealed another addition to its Galaxy family. As we saw teased just hours ago, it's the Galaxy Ace 3, Samsung's latest (humbly specced) smartphone, arriving in 3G (1GHz dual-core processor) and LTE (1.2 GHz dual-core processor) options. Both devices house a 4-inch (480 x 800) LCD display, placing the new device just beneath the Galaxy S4 Mini in Samsung's 2013 smartphone pecking order. Despite those pretty underwhelming technical points, the company's has managed to cram in some of its latest software additions like S Translator, S Voice, and Smart Stay into its diminutive new phone.

There's Android 4.2 underneath, while a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash resides on the back. 8GB of built-in storage rounds out the device, with user-accessible storage of around 4GB on the 3G model and 5GB on the LTE one. Don't worry, there's also storage expansion up to 64GB through microSD. We've added it to our to-do list for Samsung's incoming London event -- it's going to be a busy evening.

Gallery: Samsung Galaxy Ace 3

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung

Comments

Source: Samsung Mobile Press

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/fAzwUAy1j-g/

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Israel official: No Palestinian state in '67 lines

JERUSALEM (AP) ? A senior Israeli official says the government will not agree to the borders that the Palestinians are demanding for an independent state.

Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon said Israel would not let such a state be established within the regional boundaries that existed prior to the 1967 Mideast war. Palestinians want east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza ? territories captured by Israel in that war. Danon's remarks were broadcast on Israel Radio Sunday.

His remarks came ahead of another visit by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to the region this week.

The government has distanced itself from similar comments made by Danon last week.

Israel's chief negotiator Tzipi Livni told the station Sunday she was hopeful talks will resume with the Palestinians despite "elements" within the Israeli government.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/israel-official-no-palestinian-state-67-lines-065515863.html

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How to change archive and delete actions in the new Gmail

Don't worry, your ability to delete emails hasn't gone away

With the latest update to the new Gmail interface, Google has moved things around a bit -- unfortunately, it didn't give users much indication of how things changed. One of the big headaches that re-surfaced after the latest update was Google's differentiation between archiving and deleting emails, and what options are chosen to be available. We went through this with the last couple large updates to Gmail that introduced swipe-to-delete and actionable notifications, and we wanted to provide a quick refresher on how to manage your archive and delete options in the new Gmail interface.

read more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/afKDgAqv7Mw/story01.htm

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3 Types of People Who Might Benefit From Personal Training | Penn ...

A personal trainer is a certified professional who can help you define your weight-loss goals, design a program to meet those goals, and motivate you to work out during one-on-one sessions. While personal training is not for everyone, for those individuals who have never worked out or are not sure how they should work out, a few sessions with a professional might help pave the way to fitness success.

If you fit into one of these descriptions, you might want to consider hiring a personal trainer.

You Are New To Exercise

If you?ve never set foot in a gym, it can be overwhelming. There are free weights, weight machines, fitness classes and pieces of cardio equipment. All the ?pros? can be intimidating and you probably don?t know where to start.

If you are an absolute beginner, a personal trainer is your ultimate gym buddy. A personal trainer helps you set goals and builds a routine for you, so you make the best use of your time in the gym. Also, he or she shows you the proper way to exercise, helps you with your form and shows you the best cardio machines to help you reach your weight-loss goals.

You may not need to meet with a personal trainer every week, but meeting with one a few times in the beginning, and then every few months to tweak your routine, can get you on the right path.

You Have an Injury or Health Condition

Just because you have a bad knee or an old shoulder injury that flares up on occasion doesn?t mean you shouldn?t ? or can?t ? exercise. A good personal trainer helps you identify your weaknesses and designs a program that strengthens your body without putting too much pressure or strain on any one area.

Your trainer also shows you how to safely exercise and look for signs of muscle overuse.

You Need Extra Motivation

Even a seasoned gym rat needs some extra motivation every now and then. Meeting with a personal trainer at a designated time each week can help you stick with a consistent exercise program. Certified personal trainers can provide structure and accountability, and help you develop a lifestyle that encourages health.

Remember, not all personal trainers are created equal. Ask if they are certified by the American Council of Exercise (ACE) or Aerobics and Fitness Association of America (AFAA) or other licensing organization. He or she should also be certified in CPR and have liability insurance.

Finally, find a trainer you like. This is a hired professional, and if it?s not working out with one, find someone else you can feel comfortable with.

Have you used a personal trainer at a gym? What was your experience?

Penn can help you lose weight.

Learn about medical weight loss in Philadelphia, and the Penn Bariatric and Metabolic Surgery Program at a free information session about weight-loss surgery in Philadelphia.

There, you will hear about your weight-loss surgery options, and how Penn can help you lose weight and get healthy for good.

Register for a free information session today.
?

Source: http://penn-bariatric-weight-loss-surgery.blogspot.com/2013/06/Who-needs-personal-training.html

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NASA Launches Second Robot Challenge

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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/TcDenrsRIMc/story01.htm

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Tornado emergency declared for part of hard-hit Oklahoma town of Moore

Winning?Wheel of Fortune's million-dollar prize is the no-hitter of game shows ? a near impossible feat, a long slog made even less possible by the lineup in front of you, not to mention the luck of the spin. Last night Autumn?Erhard pretty much walked the bases loaded then struck out the side in the bottom of the ninth.?

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/tornado-emergency-declared-part-hard-hit-oklahoma-town-005337571.html

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Barclays pulled into U.S. money laundering investigation

LONDON (Reuters) - Barclays has been dragged into an international money laundering investigation after U.S. prosecutors discovered that Arthur Budovsky, the founder of digital currency exchange Liberty Reserve, held an account with the British bank.

U.S. prosecutors have filed an indictment against the operators of Liberty Reserve, accusing the Costa Rica-based company of helping criminals around the world launder more than $6 billion in illicit funds linked to everything from child pornography to software for hacking into banks.

"Barclays can confirm it is co-operating with the investigation, following the notification it received from the authorities," a spokesman for the bank said on Sunday.

The 119-page indictment from U.S. authorities unsealed on Tuesday says on page 45 that Budovsky held an account with Barclays Bank in Spain (http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/May13/LibertyReserveetalDocuments/Liberty%20Reserve,%20et%20al.%20Redacted%20AUSA%20Appln%20with%20exhibits.pdf).

Budovsky, who was arrested in Spain last Friday, opened the personal account in 2009, a source familiar with the situation said on Sunday.

The source added that Barclays has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

(Reporting By Christine Murray; Editing by Greg Mahlich)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/barclays-pulled-u-money-laundering-investigation-112341064.html

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Paul: GOP needs to become a 'bigger' party

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said Friday that Republicans could appeal to a broader electorate in blue states like California by connecting with voters who have shunned the party in the past and by being big enough to agree to disagree on some issues.

Paul, who is considering a presidential campaign in 2016, said the path to victory needs both principle and pragmatism, noting that the GOP is consistently losing campaigns on the West Coast, in New England and in Midwest states like Illinois. Invoking President Ronald Reagan during his speech, Paul said Republicans need to become a "bigger, more inclusive party" to restore their fortunes.

"I think the party can be big enough to allow people who don't all agree on every issue. It's not going to change who I am or what I talk about but I think we can be a big enough party to include people," Paul said at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. "It's like when you talk to your family ? do you agree on every issue?"

Paul, the son of former Texas Rep. Ron Paul, said the party should not "dilute" its message of limiting government's reach and curtailing spending but said it needs to put together a broader coalition that includes Hispanic and black voters. He urged Republicans to appeal to voters on issues like the environment and education that have been more associated with Democrats.

"If we want to win in bluish-getting-bluer states like California, we have to change the current perceptions of who we are," he said.

The libertarian senator has challenged Republicans to confront the results of the 2012 election, saying it requires outreach to new voters and a willingness to reform government. He won applause at the California speech when he pointed to a bill he has introduced that would require the Senate to hold off voting on a measure for one day for every 20 pages of legislation it considers. He quipped that President Barack Obama's health care reform law would have required a long wait.

The speech honoring Reagan, who remains revered within the party, capped a month that took Paul to the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire. He held fundraisers in Silicon Valley earlier in the week and met with executives and employees representing technology companies such as Google, Facebook and eBay.

In June, Paul is scheduled to headline fundraisers in South Carolina and make another trip to Iowa, giving him more visibility among Republicans searching for someone to help it rebound from two terms under Obama.

"When the Republican Party looks like the rest of America, we'll win again," Paul said.

___

Follow Ken Thomas on Twitter: http://twitter.com/AP_Ken_Thomas

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/paul-gop-needs-become-bigger-party-022722728.html

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DARPA's Crazy Mind-Controlled Prosthetics Have Gotten Even Better

We've known for a few years now that DARPA-funded prosthetics research is yielding some pretty incredible technology. We're not talking incredible in the robotic cheetah sense. We're talking incredible in The Incredibles sense of the term. Specifically, DARPA is literally building superheroic technology that enables amputees to control prosthetic limbs with their minds, and it's getting pretty darn good.

In science fiction terminology, you might say DARPA is building cyborgs, bionic men and women who for one unfortunate reason or another have lost a part of their body. Thanks to science?and a research project that's years in the making?they can now have it back and will soon be able to live completely normal lives.

This initiative has been around around for a while, but this just-released video of a man using a technique called Targeted Muscle Re-innveration (TMR) for Advanced Prosthetic Control shows how tantalizingly close we've come to prosthetic perfection:

Notice how he handles that cup of coffee with relative ease? There's no Wi-Fi connection making that happen, just his brain and muscles.

The brilliant devices comes out of DARPA?s Reliable Neural-Interface Technology (RE-NET) program. ?Although the current generation of brain, or cortical, interfaces have been used to control many degrees of freedom in an advanced prosthesis," explains Jack Judy, DARPA program manager, "researchers are still working on improving their long-term viability and performance."

Judy explains that the new prosthetic technology doesn't plug directly into the brain as some mind-controlled limbs do. Instead, it reads the brain signals that are already pulsing through local nerves and muscles. Indeed, these signals are the some of the same interrupted signals that cause the phantom limb effect. Reconnecting those nerves to a robotic wires seems like a great way forward, and in fact, the military is already moving in that direction. "RE-NET program advances are already being made available to injured warfighters in clinical settings," said Judy.

DARPA's not the only one working on this kind of technology. Robotics departments across the country are scrambling to become the first to make the perfect Luke Skywalker cyborg hand or the best robo-arm. Amputee Zac Vawter managed to climb the 103-floors of the Sears Tower last year using a mind-controlled leg:

From here on out, we start to approach Star Trek-scale technology. One step up in sophistication from limbs that connect to nerves and muscles are devices that plug directly into the ol' grey matter creating what's called a brain-to-computer interface. A team of researchers built a bulky but functional setup that enabled a paraplegic woman to give herself a drink of water for the first time in nearly a decade. Can you even imagine? Probably not but you can watch one more time! Watch 'til the end for the full mind-blowing effect:

This is only the beginning. We've seen bionic eyes help blind people see again. We've seen scientists 3D-print livers, blood vessels, jaw bones and stem cells ? to name only a few ways we're printing human parts. There's even a crazy neuroscientist, Miguel Nicolelis, who's building an exoskeleton that will enable a paralyzed person walk just like a normal person. He plans to unveil it at the next World Cup in Brazil, where he wants the device to help a patient walk out onto the field in front of billions of people. It's an amazingly brazen idea. But all of these projects are also just plain amazing. [DARPA]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/darpas-crazy-mind-controlled-prosthetics-have-gotten-e-510649096

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