Gaydar--the supposed ability to identify a person's sexual preference just by looking at them--may be more than just a bad pun. A couple of studies have been done on this recently, as part of broader research into the general ability of humans to very quickly make correct judgments about other humans' skills, personalities, age, etc.Turns out, people asked to guess whether a man is gay or a woman is a lesbian, just by looking at the subject's face, got it right at a rate higher than that which could be explained by mere chance. And the trick worked even when the images were cropped to remove all trace of tip-offs like hair style or fashion accessories.
So far, the studies have been very small and they certainly don't show that gaydar, if it does exist, is foolproof. The guessers did statistically significantly better than chance, but they weren't exactly sexual-orientation sniffing bloodhounds. There's also some open questions about whether the gender or sexual orientation of the guesser makes a difference on the rate of accuracy. What the research does do is add to considerable body of evidence showing that humans are evolutionarily programmed to pay extremely close attention to the facial features of other humans, and it tells us that we still have a lot to learn about what that programming means for ideas like "instinct".
Source: BoingBoing

Carnegie Mellon University scientists Timothy Keller and Marcel Just have uncovered the first evidence that intensive instruction to improve reading skills in young children causes the brain to physically rewire itself, creating new white matter that improves communication within the brain. As the researchers report today in the journal Neuron, brain imaging of children between the ages of 8 and 10 showed that the quality of white matter -- the brain tissue that carries signals between areas of grey matter, where information is processed -- improved substantially after the children received 100 hours of remedial training. After the training, imaging indicated that the capability of the white matter to transmit signals efficiently had increased, and testing showed the children could read better.
"Showing that it's possible to rewire a brain's white matter has important implications for treating reading disabilities and other developmental disorders, including autism," said Just, the D.O. Hebb Professor of Psychology and director of Carnegie Mellon's Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging (CCBI).
Dr. Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, agreed. "We have known that behavioral training can enhance brain function. The exciting breakthrough here is detecting changes in brain connectivity with behavioral treatment. This finding with reading deficits suggests an exciting new approach to be tested in the treatment of mental disorders, which increasingly appear to be due to problems in specific brain circuits," Insel said.
Keller and Just's study was designed to discover what physically changes in the brains of poor readers who make the transition to good reading. They scanned the brains of 72 children before and after they went through a six-month remedial instruction program. Using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), a new brain imaging technique that tracks water movement in order to reveal the microscopic structure of white matter, Keller and Just found a brain change involving the white matter cabling that wires different parts of the brain together.
"Water molecules that are inside nerve fibers tend to move or diffuse parallel to the nerve fibers," explained Keller, a CCBI research scientist and author of the first developmental study of compromised white matter in autism. "To track the nerve fibers, the scanner senses areas in which many water molecules are moving along in the same direction and produces a road-map of the brain's wiring."
Previous DTI studies had shown that both children and adults with reading difficulty displayed areas of compromised white matter. This new study shows that 100 hours of intensive reading instruction improved children's reading skills and also increased the quality of the compromised white matter to normal levels. More precisely, the DTI imaging illustrated that the consistency of water diffusion had increased in this region, indicating an improvement in the integrity of the white matter tracts.
"The improved integrity essentially increases communication bandwidth between the two brain areas that the white matter connects, by a factor of 10," Just said. "This opens a new era of being able to see the brain wiring change when an effective instructional treatment is applied. It lets us see educational interventions from a new perspective."
Out of the 72 children, 47 were poor readers and 25 were reading at a normal level. The good readers and a group of 12 poor readers did not receive the remedial instruction, and their brain scans did not show any changes. "The lack of change in the control groups demonstrates that the change in the treated group cannot be attributed to naturally occurring maturation during the study," Keller said.
Keller and Just also found that the amount of change in diffusion among the treated group was directly related to the amount of increase in phonological decoding ability. The children who showed the most white matter change also showed the most improvement in reading ability, confirming the link between the brain tissue alteration and reading progress.
Additional analyses indicated that the change resulted from a decrease in the movement of water perpendicular to the main axes of the underlying white matter fibers, a finding consistent with increased myelin content in the region. Although the authors caution that further research will be necessary to uncover the precise mechanism for the change in white matter, some previous findings indicate a role for electrical activity along axons in promoting the formation of myelin around them, providing a plausible physiological basis for intensive practice and instruction increasing the efficiency of communication among brain areas.
"We're excited about these results," Just said. "The indication that behavioral intervention can improve both cognitive performance and the microstructure of white matter tracts is a breakthrough for treating and understanding development problems."
The research was funded by grants from the Richard King Mellon Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health. For more information on Just, a pioneer in brain science discoveries, Keller and Carnegie Mellon's Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging, visit www.ccbi.cmu.edu.
Source: ScienceBlog

Bob Brooks is a 17-year veteran in the financial services and investment industry, the author of a new book about avoiding credit and debt traps, and a radio show host who counsels callers about financial issues "from a Christian perspective." One of his messages: When a debt collector is harassing you, it's not the time to turn the other cheek.
Brooks is the host of The Prudent Money Show, a radio program based in Texas, and the author of a new book called Deceptive Money: A step-by-step guide to take your life back from the credit trap.
I recently picked Brooks' brain about a number of topics. In regards to new credit card legislation, he's not impressed:

"It's been interesting to watch. The financial services industry is such a huge contributor to political campaigns, and Congress has really does as much as it can to protect that industry. They've turned their backs to a lot of the consumer abuses through the years."

What about reforms and new levels of consumer protection we've heard so much about?

"It's really nothing more than sound bites… Most of the laws written in this credit card act apply to fixed rates. And so what have the credit card companies done over the last nine months? They've changed all their fixed rate contracts to variable rate contracts. There's not a whole lot of protection in this plan."

Later in my talk with Brooks, we discussed debt collection, a process that's confusing and intimidating to consumers who feel trapped by a debt they may or may not owe.
"People react to a debt collector much like they react to the I.R.S., and in reality, debt collectors don't have that much power over you, and that's what people need to realize," says Brooks. "They also need to realize there's a set of laws out there to protect them."
Obviously, it's always best to settle a debt and pay off what you owe. But sometimes, there are situations when it's not clear what to do, like when a debt collector calls and the debt belongs to your ex-spouse; when the debt is old enough to be out of the statute of limitations for filing a lawsuit; or when the debt is not yours for whatever reason—mistaken identity, perhaps, in which a debt collector has gotten hold of the wrong phone number or address.
If the debt is not yours, Brooks says you need to fight it—in the right manner. Arguing with a debt collector over the phone, or even saying much of anything to a debt collector, probably won't help your cause. Know your rights, as spelled out in the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, which is intended to protect consumers from "abusive and deceptive" conduct by debt collectors.
Debt collectors are not government agents. They're not lawyers, and they're not the police. Debt collectors are tunnel-vision businesspeople driven, Terminator-like, to collect debts by whatever means possible—and yes, sometimes their tactics are less than ethical. They've been known to tell debtors that they owe more than they actually do, contact debtors' employers (debts are not supposed to be discussed with third parties), and threaten that they're going to send the police to a debtor's home to arrest him (debt collectors have no such power).
In his book and in the conversation that follows, Brooks spells out what to do when a debt collector calls. First, ask for the collection agency's name and address, and the amount of the debt—simple things that some people forget to gather during what can be an angry, scary, and confusing phone call. Next, wait for a letter in the mail stating the describing the debt, which the collector is required to send. Don't bother speaking to the debt collector until after the letter arrives. After a validation letter arrives, send a letter either disputing the debt or requesting for a verification—at the very least, "the debt collector must cease collections until he responds back to you and verifies the debt," writes Brooks.
If you can't reach an agreement with the debt collector and it appears like you are going to be taken to court, Brooks says you really should get a lawyer, even though you'll understandably be reluctant to take on the potential costs of doing so. Says Brooks:

"If you do get sued, one thing people don't realize: You've got to get an attorney to represent you. I've seen a high percentage of the time, that when people get an attorney, the case gets dropped—because the vast majority of people don't get an attorney. So if I'm a debt collector, am I going to go after the guy who's got the attorney, or am I going to go after the guy who doesn't?"

Click here for audio and more at from Time.

Neurological changes in child abuse victims may be passed on to offspring, research shows.

Physical and chemical changes in the body caused by abuse early in life can be passed down from mother to child, a recent study shows.
The research by behavioral scientists at Emory University in Atlanta was based on studies that show how early life stress (ELS), such as physical and emotional abuse and neglect, leads to observable changes in the brain's hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis.
This system, which is responsible for controlling the "fight or flight" response in humans, can be physically altered by abuse.
While these changes can happen when abuse occurs at any point in life, the Emory study shows that abuse during pre-teen and adolescent years are most damaging, resulting in mood and anxiety disorders like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and depression.
What's more, the functional and physical changes caused by ELS can be passed along from female victims to their children. One of these means of transmission is through epigenetic changes.
Epigenetics is a new field of study that examines how the function of DNA can change without any change to the DNA sequence itself. Through a process known as methylation, protein tags that enhance or thwart the function of a gene can be attached to an individual's DNA.
Even after a cell divides, the DNA can still carry the new tags.
"This means that once a methyl mark has been placed on the DNA, it may be passed along to subsequent generations," said Cynthia Wolberger, an epigenetics specialist at Johns Hopkins Medical Institute, who is unaffiliated with the Emory Study.
Wolberger said that DNA methylation can be caused by a number of things, including stress. Since epigenetic changes can be brought on by stresses like abuse and those changes can be passed from mother to child, the symptoms of early abuse can be passed along years later from the original victim to her child -- even if the child has never been exposed to any traumatic stresses.
Gretchen Neigh, who led the Emory study, said the clearest evidence of transmission of HPA axis alterations was seen in expectant mothers who suffer a mood disorder from an early life stress or who are abused during pregnancy.
"That's the worst case scenario," Neigh said.
In addition to showing that brain dysfunction can be transmitted from mother to offspring epigenetically, studies using rodent models have proven these changes can be passed along both before and after giving birth.
Mothers with a history of early life stress are less attentive to their offspring; during pregnancy, cortisol can seep through the placenta, directly exposing the fetus to a flood of the stress hormone. Each of these scenarios can cause the newborn's brain's fight-or-flight response to malfunction.
Neigh believes her team's research should inform policy-makers about the challenges that abused children face.
"Research has shown that early intervention can reverse the effects of (early life stress)," she told Discovery News. "Anything we can do to prevent it from happening or get them back on track as soon as possible will help address the problem."
Source: Discovery News

Loneliness, like a bad cold, can spread among groups of people, new research finds.
While a runny nose might spread through handshakes, people likely catch the loneliness bug through negative interactions. A lonely person will be less trusting of others, essentially "making a mountain out of a molehill," said study researcher John Cacioppo, a psychologist at the University of Chicago. An odd look or phrasing by a friend that wouldn't even be noticed by a chipper person could be seen as an affront to the lonely, triggering a cycle of negative interactions that cause people to lose friends.

The upshot: A lonely person is likely to lose touch with another person, who in turn gets cut off from others, and both end up on the fringes of a social group.

"A lonely person who anticipates others are going to act negatively toward them finds evidence in their environment for that, partly because they anticipate it and partly because they elicit it," Cacioppo told LiveScience.

The finding, published in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, suggests that loneliness is not a character trait, as in "that person is such a loner," but more of a state such as hunger, which evolved as a cue to motivate our ancestors to go find food.

"We're fundamentally a social species so we need others with whom we can cooperate and work," Cacioppo said. As such, loneliness may have been a cue to look out for anyone who might ostracize you, he added.

Counting friends

The results come from a study of more than 5,000 individuals who took part in the Framingham Heart Study between 1991 and 2001. Every two to four years, subjects completed questionnaires that measured depression and loneliness, gave their medical history and underwent a physical examination.

For instance, participants indicated how often during the previous week they had experienced a particular feeling, including loneliness, with four possible answers: 0–1 days, 1-2 days, 3-4 days and 5-7 days.

Participants also indicated friends and relatives, many of whom also took part in the study.

From this information, the researchers pieced together social networks showing connections between each individual and the average number of lonely days for the participant and that person's links.

Loneliness spreads

They found loneliness is catchy with three degrees of separation. So a person's loneliness depended not just on his friend's loneliness but also on his friend's friend and his friend's friend's friend. Participants were 52 percent more likely to be lonely if a person to whom they were directly connected (one degree of separation) was lonely. For two degrees of separation, the number drops to 25 percent and 15 percent for three degrees.

The number of family members had no effect on loneliness scores.

Over time, lonely individuals become lonelier and transmit such feelings to others before severing ties. "People with few friends are more likely to become lonelier over time, which then makes it less likely that they will attract or try to form new social ties," they write. Such friendless individuals ended up on the outskirts of their social networks.

Loneliness has been linked with various mental and physical illnesses, including depression. And so the findings could have practical implications. "Society may benefit by aggressively targeting the people in the periphery to help repair their social networks and to create a protective barrier against loneliness that can keep the whole network from unraveling," Cacioppo said.

Source: LiveScience

Vampires are everywhere these days. Last weekend, the new vampire film "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" broke box office records, taking in over $70 million and may end up being one of the largest openings in history. The film is based on the best-selling "Twilight" series, which of course joins a long list of other vampire-themed best-sellers dating back decades.
The public's thirst for vampires seems as endless as vampires' thirst for blood.
Modern writers of vampire fiction, including Stephenie Meyer, Anne Rice, Stephen King and countless others, have a rich vein of vampire lore to draw from. But where did the modern idea of vampires come from? The answer lies in the gap between science and superstition.
Impaling enemies
Some sources incorrectly trace vampires back to Romanian prince Vlad Tepes (1431-1476), who fought for independence against the Ottoman Empire. Though by most accounts his methods were brutal and sadistic (for example, slowly impaling his enemies on stakes, drawing and quartering them, burning them to death, etc.), in reality they were not particularly cruel or unusual for the time. Similar techniques were used by the Catholic Church and other powerful entities and rulers during the Middle Ages to torture and kill enemies.
Bram Stoker is said to have modeled some aspects of his Count Dracula character on Vlad Tepes.
While Tepes (partly) inspired fictional modern vampires, the roots of "real" vampires have very different origins. As a cultural entity, vampires are a worldwide phenomenon. According to anthropologist Paul Barber, author of "Vampires, Burial, and Death," stories from nearly every culture have some localized version of the vampire, and "bear a surprising resemblance to the European vampire."
The belief in real vampires stems from superstition and mistaken assumptions about post-mortem decay.
The first recorded accounts of vampires circulated in Europe in the Middle Ages. The stories follow a consistent pattern: Some unexplained misfortune would befall a person, family, or town—perhaps a drought dried up crops, or an infectious disease struck.
Before science could explain weather patterns and germ theory, any bad event for which there was not an obvious cause might be blamed on a vampire. Vampires were one easy answer to the age-old question of why bad things happen to good people.
Dead but not decomposed
Villagers combined their belief that something had cursed them with their fear of the dead, and concluded that perhaps recently- buried people might be responsible, having come back from the graves with evil intent.
Graves were unearthed, and surprised villagers often mistook ordinary decomposition processes for supernatural phenomenon.
For example, though laypeople might assume that a body would decompose immediately, if the coffin is well sealed and buried in winter, putrefaction might be delayed by weeks or months; intestinal decomposition creates bloating which can force blood up into the mouth, making it look like a dead body has recently sucked blood. These processes are well understood by modern doctors and morticians, but in Medieval Europe were taken as unmistakable signs that vampires were real and existed among them.
Though the "original" vampires are long since gone, their legacy remains and vampires continue to fascinate the world. It seems likely that neither science nor wooden stakes will ever kill vampires.
Source: LiveScience

Missed the Black Friday dealzmodo rush, or nothing really catch your eye? You might still be in luck. Cyber Monday is when online retailers are supposed to shine. Here's a linktastic list of big-brand deal pages. Updated! I've noted some of the more interesting deals that caught my eye, but it's by no means a complete list. Click on the retailer name to go through to their Cyber Monday page. And don't forget that most of the specials are either time bombed or limited to a small amount of stock. You can also find more deals over at LogicBuy.

Amazon
• Sennheiser RS 130 Wireless Surround Sound Headphones - $60 (save $140)
• Garmin nüvi 260W 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator - $115 (save $115)
• Logitech Harmony 890 Advanced Universal Remote Control - $290 (save $110)
• Flip UltraHD Camcorder, 120 Minutes (Black) - $152 (save $48)
• Panasonic VIERA G10 Series TC-P42G10 42-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV - $948 (usually up to $1200)
• Panasonic VIERA G10 Series TC-P46G10 46-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV - $1150 (save $350)
• Panasonic VIERA S1 Series TC-P42S1 42-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV - $798 (save $202)

Best Buy
• Free shipping on all orders over $25 (big ass TVs excluded)
• 15.6-inch Acer Aspire (1.2GHz AMD Athlon, 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD) - $400 (save $100)
• Panasonic - VIERA / 58" Class / 1080p / 600Hz / Plasma HDTV - $1500 (save $800)
• Panasonic - VIERA / 50" Class / 1080p / 600Hz / Plasma HDTV - $898 (save $502)
• 2 Days Only

Dell
• HTC Droid Eris – Free with new Verizon contract ($450 off-contract)
• Motorola Droid - $120 with new Verizon contract ($560 off-contract)
• Dell Mini 10v netbook - $279 (save $119)
• Inspiron 17 notebook (17-inch screen, Core 2 Duo processor, 3GB memory, Windows 7) - $549 (save $269)
• Sharp 47-inch 120Hz 1080p HDTV - $799 (save $400)
• Sony Bravia 55-inch 120Hz LCD 1080p HDTV - $1769 (save $530)

HP
• HP dv4t 14-inch Laptop $549.99 (save $469 in upgrades & discounts)
• HP p6270z Quad Core desktop w/4GB RAM $429.99 (lowest ever)
• HP TouchSmart 600t $999.99 (save $325)
• HP OfficeJet 6000 Wireless Printer $59.99 (50% off)
• HP Photosmart Plus All-in-One $74.99 (50% off)
• HP Photosmart Premium All-in-One $99.99 (50% off)

SonyStyle
• VAIO FW VGNFW550F/B Laptop $829.99 (list $1079) - use $250 Coupon Code: BLACKFRIDAYFW250 (ends 11/30 or after 500 uses)
• Buy a PS3 and get two free games: Infamous and Uncharted Drakes Fortune
• 32" Sony BRAVIA HDTV (KDL32L504) $379.99 (list: $479.99)
• Sony Blu-ray Disc Player (BDP-S360) $129.99 (list $199.99)
• 40" Sony BRAVIA HDTV (KDL40S504) $664.99 (list:$999.99)
• 46" Sony BRAVIA HDTV (KDL46S504) $854.99 (list: $1299)

NewEgg
• ASUS P50IJ-X1 Intel Pentium dual-core 15.6" Intel GMA 4500M NoteBook – Retail - $450 (save $100)
• OCZ Agility Series OCZSSD2-1AGT120G 2.5" MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD) – Retail - $289 (save $50; $30 of which comes from a mail-in rebate)

Staples
• TomTom® One130 GPS - $80 (save $50 instantly)
• Norton 360 v3.0 (1–3 User) - $10 (save $70 after combined savings)

Walmart
• Sony Bravia 32" Class LCD HDTV, KDL-32L504 - $398 (usually about $450)

AT&T
• Purchase for only one penny the Nokia e71x, Sony Cybershot, Curve 8900, Pantech Reveal, or Samsung Jack. Device offers rotate every three hours. Two-year service agreement required.
Waived activiation fee and free overnight shipping, too.

Mimoco
• Everything in the Mimoco shop will be 25% off until 11:59pm PST.

Source: Gizmodo

In Soviet Bulgaria, we don't have Cyber Mondays, but from what we've been told this is a pretty bargainous time of the year. HP starts us off with a pair of coupons on its dv8 Core i7 notebook, one of which drops the 18.4-inch laptop to just $899. There are also deep 50 percent discounts on its printers, but only the Photosmart Premium All-in-One remains after the two cheaper models sold out. Click the Logic Buy link below to get in on the action. Amazon has the older Modern Warfare at $29.95 and Uncharted 2 at $40 flat for the PS3, Garmin's nuvi 260W at a cent under $115 (or half price), and plenty of discounts on DVDs, gadgetry and even clothing. Best Buy keeps pace by offering the same price on the Garmin nav unit, as well as 10 percent discounts on Apple's iPod range. Walmart is kicking off a whole Cyber Week with a Sony Bravia 32-inch HDTV priced at $398 and a $249 Nintendo Wii Value Bundle, which includes Wii Sports, sporting peripherals, and a choice of free game. If you're more interested in computer components, Newegg's $30 mail-in rebate on the 120GB OCZ Agility SSD will net you the drive for $289, our favorite of a plethora of deals at the online store. And finally, Dell is offering the Droid Eris for free when taking out a new Verizon Wireless account, which is at least $30 cheaper than you can get it anywhere else. Time to get clicking!

Read - Amazon
Read - Best Buy
Read - Dell
Read - Logic Buy
Read - Newegg
Read - Walmart

Source: Engadget

The Commercial Spaceflight Federation is pleased to announce the creation and initial membership of the Spaceports Council, composed of spaceports worldwide who seek to cooperate on issues of common interest such as airspace access, legal and regulatory frameworks, infrastructure, international policy migration, liability, and voluntary common operating standards.

The Spaceports Council, which will operate under the aegis of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF), was officially created following the conclusion of the second CSF Spaceports Executive Summit held on October 20, 2009 in Las Cruces, New Mexico to coincide with the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight. This summit built on the success of an earlier CSF spaceports summit held on May 27, 2009, hosted by Space Florida as part of the International Space Development Conference in Orlando, Florida.

Initial member spaceports and spaceport principals of the CSF Spaceports Council include:
• Spaceport America, represented by Executive Director Steve Landeene (Chairman)
• Aeroports de Catalunya, represented by Executive Director Jordi Candela
• Cecil Field Spaceport, represented by Administrator of Planning and Development Todd Lindner
• Mojave Air and Space Port, represented by General Manager Stuart Witt
• Oklahoma Spaceport, represented by Executive Director Bill Khourie
• Space Florida, represented by President Frank DiBello
• Spaceport Indiana, represented by President Brian Tanner
• Spaceport Scotland, represented by Chairman Howie Firth
• Spaceport Sweden, represented by Vice President Bengt Jaegtnes
• Wisconsin Aerospace Authority, represented by Chairman Tom Crabb

Steve Landeene, Executive Director of Spaceport America, has been selected as the first chair of the CSF Spaceports Council. Landeene stated, “I am deeply honored and humbled to take up the first chairmanship of the Spaceports Council. Collecting and sharing the knowledge and experience base of spaceports worldwide will be beneficial to us all as commercial space vehicles begin to push the envelope toward more and more flights. And when working with policymakers, spaceports will benefit by formulating and presenting common positions.”

The Spaceports Council will convene regular meetings of spaceports principals, as well as coordinate additional cooperation between spaceports on the staff level, in order to address common problems affecting spaceports, work toward voluntary uniform standards for development of common use equipment and operational procedures, and advise vehicle operators, developers, and other members of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, on issues of concern to the spaceport community.

Bretton Alexander, President of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, stated, “The formation of the Spaceports Council marks another milestone in the growth of the commercial spaceflight industry. By deepening the cooperation among both domestic and international spaceports in this new industry, we can help ensure that the industry continues to grow and flourish. Congratulations to Steve Landeene on his selection as the first chairman of this group, as well as all the spaceports that have chosen to form the initial membership of the Council.”

Stuart O. Witt, General Manager of Mojave Air and Space Port and an Officer of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, added, “We are excited to welcome this great group of spaceports, both domestic and international, as we join together to share our lessons learned. As we look toward a new generation of suborbital and orbital launch vehicles, I know that a strong spaceport network, armed with the latest in operational ‘lessons learned,’ will be critical.”

Source: CSF

You can blame it on Chris Anderson's book Free. After reading his book, I started kicking around the idea of what we can do that's 'free'. Sure, we have free bits (open-source hardware designs, available code, etc.), but we don't have free physical widgets. Now combine that with our love of creating shear havoc (AVC, C&D letter, Portable Rotary Phone), and you get Free Day.

Nobody gives away a free physical thing. There's always a catch. So up front: you have to pay shipping. Other than that, it's open season.

* $100 max per household
* You pay shipping
* Limit of $100,000 in giveaways for the day
* Starts 9AM MST January 7th, 2010
* Ends 11PM MST January 7th, 2010 (or when we hit $100k, whichever comes first)
* Rainchecks for popular items will be allowed

Why are we doing this? It's not that I want to create hell for the shipping, production, and the IT teams at SparkFun. There's a multitude of reasons.

First and foremost, we want to give back. We've had a stellar year in 2009, and it's all because of you. So please, have a beer (or a Stepper Motor Driver) on us.

Second: We wish we could sponsor more groups but we don't have a sound way of selecting appropriate projects. Because we can't afford to say yes to everyone, we have to say no to everyone. It pains us every time we have to do it. So this is a way for us to evenly enable all the students and great minds of the world to pickup a $100 worth of free gear. Go for it!

Third: Free Day will possibly create a maelstrom of site traffic, the likes of which our servers have not seen. At the beginning of December, 2009, SparkFun will be graduating out of its high-chair and moving into a server cluster. We are excited to have the breathing room, and Free Day will help us evaluate just how much breathing room we're getting. We'll do everything in our power to keep the site up but please understand that the site may go down.

Fourth: We turn 7 years old! SparkFun is now over 70 employees and is the ripe old age of 49 (in business and dog years). We'd like to celebrate our birthday with a party.

More nitty gritty details:

* There is no special code to type in. But you get only one order on Free Day, so spend it well!
* Only one $100 credit per household. We ask that you respect this limit and don't try to abuse this gift.
* There is no minimum or maximum order. You can spend more than $100, the balance of which will be charged to your method of payment.
* Only Credit Card and Paypal orders will be eligible for the $100 credit. We don't want to have people tying up inventory with POs, wire transfers, checks in the mail, or lost faxes.
* You will see whether or not your order qualifies for a credit in the checkout process.
* Free Day does not apply to our distributors. Sorry!
* Every order isn't going to ship on Free Day, or for a few days after. We've got extra tape guns on hand, but please be patient and give us some time to catch up!
* We are ratcheting up inventory for Free Day, but backorders (a.k.a. rainchecks) are allowed on most items (some items we simply can't get anymore). We'll get you your goodies just as soon as we can get them back in stock.

As we usually do things here at SparkFun, these rules are open for revision. We may need to tweak them as our astute users point out how silly we are. If we have to make any changes to the rules, we'll let you all know here on our homepage. So mark January 7th, 2010 on your calendars - it's Free Day!

Source: SparkFun

Report Finds About 5% Of Federal Spending In Fiscal 2009 To Be Improper

More than $98 billion in taxpayer dollars spent by government agencies was wasted, much of it on questionable claims for tax credits and Medicare benefits, representing an increase of $26 billion from the previous year.

In all, about 5 percent of spending in federal programs in fiscal year 2009 was improper, according to new details of a government financial report that were released Tuesday. Saying the overall error rate was similar in 2008, officials attributed the $26 billion jump to some changes in how to define improper spending as well as an increase in overall spending due to the recession.

President Barack Obama is expected to sign an executive order within the next week aimed at cracking down on government waste and fraud, particularly in Medicare and other benefit programs. In the 2009 report, the government officially reported questionable Medicare payments of roughly $36 billion, but that amount will be revised upward to about $48 billion next year as the Health and Human Services Department fully converts to a new methodology that imposes stricter documentation requirements.

"We need to protect taxpayer dollars," Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, told reporters. "Every dollar that goes to the wrong recipient or in the wrong amount is a dollar not available to help an unemployed worker, or to invest in education or key priorities of the administration."

Under the executive order, every federal agency would have to maintain a Web site that tracks improper payments, error rates and outstanding payments. If an agency doesn't meet targets for reducing error rates for two years in a row, the agency director and responsible official will have to directly report to OMB to explain the delinquency and new actions they will take.

The Obama administration will also seek to impose penalties on government contractors that receive improper payments so they have incentives to return the money, Orszag said.
Among the reported waste:

Agriculture: $4.3 billion in improper payments, or 5.9 percent of total department spending. Much of it was in the food stamp, federal crop insurance and school meals programs.

Defense: $849 million, or 0.5 percent.

Education: $599 million, or 2.1 percent.

Health and Human Services: $55.1 billion, or 9.4 percent. That included improper payment rates of 7.8 percent and 15.4 percent in the Medicare fee for service and Advantage programs, respectively.

Homeland Security: $644.5 million, or 3.7 percent. Much of it was in the Homeland Security grant program as well as Disaster Relief Fund Vendor Payments.

Housing and Urban Development: $1 billion, or 3.5 percent. All of it was attributed to public housing and rental assistance.

Labor: $12.3 billion, or 9.9 percent. Almost all of the improper payments were in the unemployment insurance program.

Treasury: $12.3 billion, or 25.5 percent. All of it was attributed to improper payments in the earned income tax credit.

Transportation: $1.5 billion, or 3 percent. Much of it was in the Federal Highway Administration planning and construction program.

Veterans Affairs: $1.2 billion, or 2.7 percent. That included improper payments in the pension and other compensation programs.

Social Security Administration: $8.0 billion, or 1.2 percent.

Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., who chairs a Senate panel on federal financial management, said he worried that the latest numbers "may still be just the tip of the iceberg'' since they don't include estimates for several programs such as the Medicare prescription drug plan.

"It goes without saying that these results would be completely unacceptable in the private sector, as they should be in government, especially at a time of record deficits,'' Carper said.

Source: CBS News

Women should wear clothes that bare 40 per cent of their flesh to maximise their chances of attracting men, new scientific research indicates.

Striking the right balance between revealing too much and being too conservative in how much skin is on show has long been a dilemma for women when choosing the right outfit for a night out.
However, a study by experts at the University of Leeds has come to the rescue by calculating the exact proportion of the body that should be exposed for optimum allure.
The findings were based on work by four female researchers, who discreetly observed women at one of the city’s biggest nightclubs from a balcony above the dance floor.
Using tape recorders hidden in their handbags, the researchers took note of what female clubbers were wearing and how many times they were approached by men asking them to dance.
For the purposes of the study, each arm accounted for 10 per cent of the body, each leg for 15 per cent and the torso for 50 per cent.
Women who revealed around 40 per cent of their skin attracted twice as many men as those who covered up.
However, those who exposed any more than this also fared worse. Experts believe that showing too much flesh puts men off because it suggests they might be unfaithful.
Psychologist Dr Colin Hendrie, who led the study, told the Daily Mail: “Any more than 40 per cent and the signal changes from ‘allure’ to one indicating general availability and future infidelity.
“Show some leg, show some arm, but not any more than that.”
The study, published in the journal Behaviour, found that the most popular women combined the 40 per cent rule with tight clothing and provocative dancing. The 15 per cent that combined all three criteria were approached by 40 men each.
However, the 40 per cent rule would rule out several celebrity wardrobe choices, including actress Liz Hurley's famous safety pin dress, designed by Gianni Versace.
Source: Telegraph

Most of us have read the works of Charles Darwin, but it's a powerful, more personal experience to see them in his own handwriting. Be sure to check out the Darwin Manuscripts Project site, mentioned in the following American Museum of Natural History press release. The site goes live on November 24, so please keep the provided link in mind.

When Charles Darwin labored over word choice while writing On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, he could not have known that one day any student of the humanities and sciences could peer over his shoulder to see him pen the words, “difficulty of highly perfect organs.” On November 24, 2009—to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Origin’s publication—Darwin is going digital. The Darwin Manuscripts Project will place online about 10,000 high-quality images of Darwin’s scientific manuscripts and notes. These pages include 34 of the 36 known and located draft leaves of Origin, gathered together for the first time since Darwin wrote his seminal book.

“These rare manuscript leaves from Origin are the crown jewels of our project and show Darwin in the process of writing,” says David Kohn, Director and General Editor of the Darwin Manuscripts Project at the American Museum of Natural History. Kohn has been editing Darwin for decades, beginning with Darwin’s correspondence and now continuing with the other half of his archive, his scientific papers. This project began in 2005. “I’ve sat in the Cambridge University Library since 1974, touching these documents, but this is the first time that anyone can do this—online in this quantity and with this quality.” His co-editor for the Origin leaves is Randal Keynes, great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin.

The Darwin Manuscripts Project (darwin.amnh.org) is a digital scholarly edition of Darwin’s scientific manuscripts based at the Museum and is carried out in collaboration with Cambridge University Library and the Biodiversity Heritage Library, represented by the Natural History Museum in London. The rare draft sheets from Origin are owned by a number of institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution, the American Philosophical Society, and Cambridge University Library. The Museum also owns one sheet from Chapter 6 of Origin that Kohn finds particularly interesting because this is “where Darwin deals with the difficulties of the theory.”

In addition to the rare Origin drafts, the Darwin Manuscripts Project will also put online about 10,000 additional images of Darwin’s material. Notebooks and scientific writing from the Beagle period through the Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, published in 1871, will be available with transcriptions and curatorial notations. Examples include the notebooks that chronicle Darwin’s discovery of natural selection, the only extant fair copy sheet of Origin, and drafts from his botanical books, among other items.

The Darwin Manuscripts Project also includes a key to all things Darwin. This is DARBASE (Darwin Union Manuscripts Catalogue), a new, massive, searchable database that tracks the network of knowledge about Darwin’s scientific papers. Developed together with Cambridge University Library, whose collection is the backbone of the database, this new tool will also include the Darwin holdings from all other libraries in the world. Over 60,000 Darwin items and closely-related Darwin material are described in the database in accurate detail.

“This is an extraordinary resource,” says Michael Novacek, Provost of Science at the Museum. “The Darwin Manuscripts Project takes advantage of new technology to bring the fruits of Darwin’s extraordinary mind to a much broader audience, much like the Museum’s 2005 exhibition on Darwin that brought his theory, life, and science to the general public.”

Future projects for the Darwin Manuscripts Project include compiling and digitizing additional Darwin manuscripts as well as reconstructing his library. Darwin was famous for reading widely on a variety of subjects ranging from insect-eating plants to pigeon breeding to the immorality of slavery. He would fill margins and inside covers of his books with copious annotations and passionate marks. For example, he wrote on the margin of one of Charles Lyell’s books, in which Lyell proposes that species don’t change beyond a definite limit, “if this be true, adios theory.” Over 700 of his most heavily annotated books are held at Cambridge University Library and will now be reproduced as high-resolution images, and his transcribed marginalia will be digitally available.

“The extensive marginalia preserved in his library reveals Darwin as not simply a curious reader, but an active interrogator, questioning and commenting on the works of Humboldt, Lyell, Spencer, and Agassiz,” says Kohn. “Now with this digitalization project, readers can follow the conversational thread that changed our thinking on the origins of species and gave birth to modern evolutionary science.”

The Darwin Manuscripts Project is funded by two grants from the National Science Foundation, and a new grant from JISC/NEH Transatlantic Digitization Collaboration program will fund the work to digitally reconstruct Darwin’s working library as it stood at the time of his death in 1882.

Source: Discovery News

Though their long teeth look fearsome, male sabertooth cats may have actually been less aggressive than their feline cousins, a new study finds.
Commonly called the sabertoothed tiger, Smilodon fatalis was a large predatory cat that roamed North and South America about 1.6 million to 10,000 years ago, when there was also a prehistoric cat called the American lion. The study examined size differences between sexes of these large felines using clues from bones and teeth.
The researchers report that while male American lions were considerably larger than females, male and female sabertoothed cats were indistinguishable in size. Since size differences between the sexes tend to be more impressive in species where male aggression is more intense, the findings suggest that male sabertooths may have been less aggressive than male American lions.
In species where males fight for mates, bigger, heavier males have a better chance of winning fights, fending off their rivals and gaining access to females. After generations of male-male competition, the males of some species evolve to be much larger than their mates.
Judging size from the fossil record can be tricky since the cats grow as they age, and it's easy to get a younger, smaller male confused with an older, larger female, said study co-author Julie Meachen-Samuels, a biologist at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, N.C. So the researchers turned to fossilized teeth to help them account for the continued growth.
"Teeth fill in over time," said Wendy Binder of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA. "In young animals the tooth cavity is basically hollow, but as they get older it fills in with dentin. It won't give you an exact age, but it can give you a relative age in terms of young, middle-aged or old."
Meachen-Samuels and Binder X-rayed the lower teeth and jaws of 13 American lions and 19 sabertoothed cats recovered from the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, a spot known for preserving prehistoric fossils. They measured tooth cavity diameter and plotted it against jaw length for each species to account for growth. Plotted this way, the data for the American lion fell easily into two groups, regardless of age.
In contrast, sabertoothed cat sizes seemed to be governed solely by age. It would appear that the males were indistinguishable from their mates. "Even by incorporating a measure of age, you can't distinguish males and females," said Meachen-Samuels.
This isn't the first time the ferociousness of sabertooths has been called into question. A 2007 study found that the large cat's bite was relatively wimpy when compared to that of a lion.
Based on their findings, the researchers think the American lion probably lived in male-dominated groups, where one to two males monopolized and mated with multiple females. But with sabertooths, the living situation may have been different. "Rather than males having harems of females, the males and females in a group might have been more equal," Binder said.
The study was published in the Nov. 5 issue of the Journal of Zoology.
Source: LiveScience

Russian police have arrested three homeless people suspected of eating a 25-year-old man they had butchered and selling other bits of the corpse to a local kebab house.

Suspicions were raised when dismembered parts of a human body were found near a bus stop in the outskirts of the Russian city of Perm, 1,150 km (720 miles) east of Moscow.

Three homeless men with previous criminal records have been arrested on suspicion of setting upon a foe with knives and a hammer before chopping up his corpse to eat, local investigators said in a statement on their www.susk.perm.ru Web site.

"After carrying out the crime, the corpse was divided up: part was eaten and part was also sold to a kiosk selling kebabs and pies," the Prosecutor-General's main investigative unit for the Perm region said in a statement issued Friday.

It was not immediately clear from the statement if any of the corpse had been sold to customers.

Source: Reuters

This week's news meme appears to be a series of discussions about poor little dwarf planet Pluto. Or at least it is on Wired. Here are three stories on the dwarf planet including a contest:

• The Fight for the Ninth Planet - The skirmishes over the definition of planethood that took place in Prague weren’t so much about poor little Pluto, but about two different ways of seeing the solar system.
• Underdog Planet: Why We Love Pluto - How did it inspire so much support from so many corners?
• Dwarf-Planet Rebranding Contest - There’s no reason that Pluto and its four merry friends have to be just also-ran planets. They just need renaming...

Wikipedia is under a censorship attack by a convicted murderer who is invoking Germany’s privacy laws in a bid to remove references to his killing of a Bavarian actor in 1990.

Lawyers for Wolfgang Werle, of Erding, Germany, sent a cease-and-desist letter (.pdf) demanding removal of Werle’s name from the Wikipedia entry on actor Walter Sedlmayr. The lawyers cite German court rulings that “have held that our client’s name and likeness cannot be used anymore in publication regarding Mr. Sedlmayr’s death.”

German media have already ceased using Werle’s full name regarding the attack. Jennifer Granick, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says German publications must also alter their online archives in a bid to comport with laws designed to provide offenders an avenue to “reintegrate back into society.”

“It’s not just censorship going forward. It’s asking outlets to go back and change what is already being written,” Granick said in a telephone interview.

It’s not the first time Wikipedia, the world’s most popular online, public-driven encyclopedia, has been targeted by would-be censors. And it likely won’t be the last.

The site went offline overseas for a day in December, as British censors blacklisted it over an entry on the German rock band Scorpions. The entry included the cover art of the Scorpions’ 1976 Virgin Killer album, which depicts a nude young girl.

Werle is suing Wikipedia in a Hamburg court to try and get it to comply with the German law.

“Our client has served 15 years of his life sentence for murdering Mr. Sedlmayr in 1990. He has been released on parole [sic] in August 2007. His rehabilitation and his future life outside the prison system is severely impacted by your unwillingness to anonymize any articles dealing with the murder of Mr. Sedlmayr with regard to our client’s involvement,” according to the Oct. 27 cease-and-desist letter, which demands legal fees and compensation for “emotional suffering.”

Wikipedia did not respond for comment.

Granick said the First Amendment protects San Francisco-based Wikipedia. But it could find itself in the same position as Yahoo, which has been fined millions by a French court for allowing users to auction Nazi paraphernalia, which is illegal in France.

In that case, Yahoo asked the American courts to intervene. So far, the U.S. courts have refrained, because France has not moved to collect the fine.

Source: Wired

Axion International Holdings has won a $957,000 contract to provide the U.S. Army with two bridges made from a thermoplastic composite and recycled plastic, the company announced Wednesday evening.
The two bridges, which are replacing old wooden ones, will be constructed at Fort Eustis in Virginia from a proprietary Recycled Structural Composite (RSC) developed by Axion in conjunction with scientists at Rutgers University.
The railroad cross-ties will be made entirely of a plastic composed of recycled materials from both consumer and industrial plastic waste. Axion asserts that its recycled plastic railroad ties are actually longer-lasting that typical creosote-treated wood railroad ties.
Both the 40-foot and 80-foot bridges to be built will each have a high-loading rating of 130 tons, and be used to transport both locomotives and freight traffic, according to Axion.
The location is significant. Fort Eustis is home to the U.S. Army Transportation Corps, the branch of the Army responsible for coordinating the movement of personnel and cargo. The Fort Eustis motto is Einstein's famous quote "Nothing happens, until something moves." It's also the location of the U.S. Army Transportation Museum.
But this is not the first military bridge to be made out of plastic by Axion for the military. The Army has previously built plastic bridges for Fort Bragg and Camp Mackall in North Carolina using materials and structural design that allowed for a bearing load of 73 tons for tracked vehicles and 88 tons for cars and trucks. To demonstrate its strength a 70-ton M1A1 Abrams tank was driven across the bridge at its official unveiling in September.
The design and engineering of the bridges is being be done by Parsons Brinckerhoff and Centennial Contractors Enterprises.
Source: CNET

Source: Discovery News

A new spacecraft is being launched in about a year, one designed to travel across the solar system. But instead of using rockets to propel itself, it uses sails. Sails pushed by light.

Starlight carries not only energy but momentum. Comet tails, for example, are the result of light blowing dust off the comet's core. It's not a lot of juice, but it's enough.

The force on a solar sail is gentle, if not feeble, but unlike a rocket, which fires for a few minutes at most, it is constant. Over days and years a big enough sail, say a mile on a side, could reach speeds of hundreds of thousands of miles an hour, fast enough to traverse the solar system in 5 years. Riding the beam from a powerful laser, a sail could even make the journey to another star system in 100 years, that is to say, a human lifespan.

We're pretty damned far off from a person riding the light to whatever planet Avatar is set on, but it's still a pretty neat idea. [NY Times]

Source: Gizmodo

This week there seems to be quite a bit related to the FBI in the media. Here's a few stories to show our love for the Bureau:

• 1,600 are suggested daily for FBI's list
• Woman Loses Job Due to Error in FBI Criminal Database
• Cheney Failed to Answer 72 FBI Questions
• Murdered Imam's Followers Deny FBI Radical Claims
• FBI documents reveal secret CIA prisoners ‘manacled to the ceiling

I feel safer already.

The estate of legendary science fiction author Isaac Asimov, who passed away in 1992, has authorised a trilogy of sequels to his seminal I, Robot short story series, to be written by fantasy author Mickey Zucker Reichert.

There are nine I, Robot stories, first published in the 1940’s and then in compendiums after that date, They feature quirks of robot behaviour that often lead to ethical or philosophical questions about the existence and treatment of robots, especially revolving around three central laws that all robots must follow, known as Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics.

Several of the stories also feature Dr Susan Calvin, the fictional chief robopsychologist at U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc, who is involved in troubleshooting problems that crop up with the robots.

The official press release about the move doesn’t appear to be available online, but UK newspaper The Guardian reports the first book will be called Robots and Chaos, and will follow Calvin’s medical internship. Further information at Entertainment Weekly.

 

Reichert has written a number of fantasy series and novels, including the Renshai trilogy, which focuses on a world governed by Norse mythology, as well as a continuation, the Renshai Chronicles, and the Nightfall series. Her latest novel appears to be Flight of the Renshai, published in 2009.

Commentary
I am totally and utterly opposed to the idea of someone publishing “official” sequels to Isaac Asimov’s classic I, Robot stories, for several distinct reasons.

Firstly, who the hell is Mickey Zucker Reichert? I’ve been reading science fiction and fantasy novels for the past three decades and I’ve never heard her name mentioned. To think that a low-profile author could do justice to some of the best-loved work by one of science fiction’s grand masters is simply preposterous.

Secondly, these books are absolute classics of the genre and stand on their own. As some of the first fiction to explore the possible ethical implications of relationships between robots and humans, they should be left on their own as a signpost in the genre. They should not be followed up and continued. Isaac Asimoc died forty years after they were first written. If he had wanted to follow them up, he would have. The author’s intentions need to be respected here.

This is one of the most ridiculous attempts I have yet seen in the speculative fiction genre to cash in on some of a dead author’s most famous work.

The Asimov estate should be ashamed of this naked cash grab. I don’t know whether the estate is governed by descendants of the great writer, but I assume it is. In that case, I have to say that they obviously have no understanding that their famous relative’s work wasn’t simply a money making venture.

Isaac Asimov’s writing was art and should be treated as such. You wouldn’t try to follow up Rembrant or Picasso’s paintings with “authorised” sequels.

So leave Asimov’s beloved I, Robot stories alone.

And yes, the dodgy movie tie-in featuring Will Smith was just frakking terrible as well.

Jesus. I am so mad about this, if there was a protest march about this, I would think about flying to the goddamn United States to march in it. How dare they?

Source: Keeping the Door

Today is National Chocolate Day, an occasion to commemorate all things chocolate.

Chocolate is more than simply an indulgence. This tasty treat has been around for more than two millennia, originating in Central America. The Mayans revered the cocoa bean, dubbing it "the food of the gods."

Chocolate was introduced to the Western world in the 16th century following the arrival of Spanish explorers. During that time, chocolate was used not only as a food, but also as a currency.

The first chocolate factory in the United States was founded in 1765. These humble beginnings have spawned the multi-billion dollar industry we know today.

Celebrate National Chocolate Day by taking a closer look at the history, the culture, the health benefits and certainly the taste of chocolate.

Continued at Discovery Channel.

Four years ago, we reported on the FBI backlog in translating critical documents, noting an Inspector General’s audit that showed an increasing shortfall in reviewing counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism audio intercepts, and its difficulty in hiring linguists. Yesterday, news of an updated report from the Inspector General (I.G.) from the Department of Justice found that these language issues still hobble the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

According to the I.G.’s report, the FBI suffers from technology and staffing problems:

• On the technical front, the study found that the agency lacks a consolidated collection and statistical reporting system, making it difficult to determine exactly what it is doing with these documents.
• On the personnel side, the I.G. found that it lost three percent of its linguists since March 2005, thus complicating its longstanding challenges in hiring language specialists. The agency now takes 19 months — instead of the previous timeline of 16 months — to hire and train a linguist. Gaining security clearances accounts for 14 of those 19 months. The report also found that 70 percent of new linguists do not attend required training in their first year, and that the FBI did not meet its fiscal 2008 hiring targets for 12 of 14 languages.

The result of these problems is that the agency’s backlog of unexamined documents and audio files relating to terrorism continues to grow. The I.G. noted that “Failing to hire an adequate number of linguists in a timely manner adversely affects the FBI’s ability to manage the growing translation workload and reduce the current backlog of unreviewed material.” For example, from fiscal 2006 to 2008, the agency collected 46 million files but examined only 32 million, leaving nearly one-third of the documents untouched.

The FBI isn’t alone in its linguistic travails. In May 2009, the Central Intelligence Agency announced its own push to improve its ability to review and act on foreign-language information that it collects. Currently, just 13 percent of CIA staffers are fluent in a second language, while 30 percent of field officers in the National Clandestine Service claim another tongue. Language has been the poor stepchild of foreign policy for too many U.S. Presidents, but things could change with a Bahasa-conversant president.

The solution depends on a long-term government strategy that recognizes the importance of language in diplomacy, spycraft, and commerce; training and recruiting of individuals who speak languages of limited demand; a measured balance between security clearances and language needs; more training in critical languages; technology to manage projects, including machine translation to fill in the gaps and triage information; increased leverage across agencies via groups such as the Interagency Language Roundtable; and continued investment to keep it all going. Without active work on these initiatives, the next Inspector General’s report in 2013 will likely point to an even greater language gap than the last two uncovered.

Source: Global Watch Tower