The La Vergne Police Department Criminal Investigations Division, along with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement?s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), arrested a murder suspect on Thursday, January 24, 2013. Mario Marraquin, age 41, is awaiting extradition to Houston, Texas to face homicide charges.
The charges stem from a cold case murder that occurred in 1994 in Houston. The name of the murder victim is not being released pending the Texas investigation. Marraquin was living at 826 LaVergne Lane for approximately 12 years under the assumed name of Cesar Cruz.
?HSI and its law enforcement partners will investigate and seek prosecution of criminals no matter how much time may have passed,? said Special Agent in Charge of HSI New Orleans Raymond R. Parmer Jr. ?Vigilance and persistence are the hallmarks of good investigative work, and criminals should be on notice through cases such as this that ?running out the clock? on justice simply isn?t an option.? Parmer oversees a five state area of operations to include Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
?This was a case of interstate and interagency cooperation,? said Detective Sergeant David Durham. ?Texas police and Homeland Security Investigations were able to identify Mr. Marraquin. La?Vergne detectives then obtained a fugitive from justice warrant to carry out the extradition process for him to be returned to Texas to face charges.?
Marraquin was booked through the Rutherford County Sheriff?s Office.? He faces an extradition hearing, scheduled January 30, through the Rutherford County court system.
On tonight?s WGN News at Five, we?re taking a trip to Ipsento Coffee House at 2035 N. Western. Every few weeks, they offer a two-hour Coffee 101 class that teaches you how to perfect your home brew. We talked to the shop?s owner Tim Taylor about what you?ll be learning should you decide to take the course. My feature will be posted here after it airs, for now, here?s more info about Ipsento?
Ipsento Coffee House | 2035 N. Western | 773-904-8177 | Mon-Fri 6:30am-9pm, Sat 7am-9pm, Sun 8am-9pm | Classes $80, Purchase Here | Facebook |?IpsentoCoffee.com
Lindsay Lohan lucked out again in her latest court hearing. The “Liz & Dick” actress, who previously said she was “too ill” to attend the hearing, decided to appear and avoided jail time. Judge Stephanie Sautner addressed Lindsay’s alleged illness, quipping, “I’m glad to see you’re feeling better”. Lohan had obtained a doctor’s note trying ...
Chevron U.S.A. has paid approximately $10 million in claims to compensate area hospitals, affected community members and local government agencies since its August fire at a refinery in Richmond, Calif., according to an update by the company released this week.
* On Aug. 6, 2012, a fire broke out due to a piping rupture at the oil refinery in Richmond, the report stated. Due to a high level of sulfur dioxide released with the emission, residents of Richmond, San Pablo and North Richmond were advised to stay indoors until the fire was controlled.
* Other materials released into the air from the fire include methane, non-methane hydrocarbon, hydrogen sulfide and nitric oxides.
* The Contra Costa Health Services website reported that a large number of people sought medical attention at local emergency rooms, mostly for minor complaints of nose, throat or eye irritation and respiratory issues. Three individuals were admitted to the hospital, Chevron stated.
* Some minor employee injuries were also reported with the incident, including burns, abdominal discomfort, respiratory irritation, blisters and bruises, the company stated.
* Air sampling in the surrounding area on Aug. 7-8 showed that the concentrations of hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide were below detection limits, the company stated.
* According to the company, a claims process was established in order to compensate community members for medical and property expenses that occurred because of the fire. As of Jan. 21, the company says about 23,900 claims have been initiated and it has paid $10 million in compensation.
* Chevron stated this week that its investigation of the incident is ongoing and that it is working with multiple governmental agencies to discover what caused the leak in the piping system that led to the fire.
* The Associated Press reported in early January that federal investigators believe that firefighters may have accidentally damaged the pipe while trying to put out a small flash fire that had been caused by a leak in the line. The larger damage in the pipe would have released more gas, and could have led to the larger fire.
* According to Reuters, Chevron -- the second-largest U.S. oil company -- is planning to bring the Richmond refinery back to full production this quarter. Even though it posted decreased refining input in the third quarter of last year because of the fire, the company's worldwide output was the was the highest it has been since mid-2011 at the end of the year.
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As millions of Chinese make travel plans in anticipation of the Chinese New Year, Globe and Mail photographer John Lehmann catches some of the traffic at the Xi'an train station
Passengers arriving in Xi'an look up at the information board, January 28, 2013. (John Lehmann /The Globe and Mail)
Passengers make their way into the train station in Xi'an, January 28, 2013. (John Lehmann /The Globe and Mail)
A view of the Xi?an train station, January 28, 2013. (John Lehmann /The Globe and Mail)
A self-portrait at the train station in Xi'an, January 28, 2013. (John Lehmann /The Globe and Mail)
People wait for arriving friends and family members at the Xi'an train station, January 28, 2013. (John Lehmann /The Globe and Mail)
Train passengers wait for their boarding calls at the train station in Xi'an, January 28, 2013. (John Lehmann /The Globe and Mail)
A passengers wrestles with his luggage at the train station in Xi'an, January 28, 2013. (John Lehmann /The Globe and Mail)
Passengers make their way to the platform inside the train station in Xi'an, January 28, 2013. (John Lehmann /The Globe and Mail)
Passengers make their way to the train platform in Xi'an, January 28, 2013. (John Lehmann /The Globe and Mail)
Passengers prepare to board at the station in Xi'an, January 28, 2013. (John Lehmann /The Globe and Mail)
Passengers take a smoke break while waiting to board their train at the station in Xi'an, January 28, 2013. (John Lehmann /The Globe and Mail)
A traveller makes a phone call aboard a train at the station in Xi'an, January 28, 2013. (John Lehmann /The Globe and Mail)
Passengers make their way to their train at the station in Xi'an, January 28, 2013. (John Lehmann /The Globe and Mail)
An attendant waits for passengers at the train station in Xi'an, January 28, 2013. (John Lehmann /The Globe and Mail)
Travellers read the information board inside the train station in Xi'an, January 28, 2013. (John Lehmann /The Globe and Mail)
Campus as laboratory: U-M student biologists use Diag trees to help solve gypsy moth mysteryPublic release date: 30-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jim Erickson ericksn@umich.edu 734-647-1842 University of Michigan
ANN ARBORWorking beneath the towering oaks and maples on the University of Michigan's central campus Diag, undergraduate researchers and their faculty adviser helped explain an observation that had puzzled insect ecologists who study voracious leaf-munching gypsy moth caterpillars.
The caterpillars, which defoliate and sometimes kill stands of trees in the Upper Midwest and the Northeast, are especially fond of oaks, but sugar maple trees appear to be relatively resistant to the European pest.
Biologists wondered whether the caterpillars shun sugar maples in part because their leaves are less nutritious than the leaves of other trees. To find out, U-M biochemist Ray Barbehenn and several of his undergraduate research assistants compared the protein quality of red oak and sugar maple leaves from trees on the Diag.
What they found runs counter to conventional wisdom on the topic, which states that protein quality in leaves differs significantly from species to species. Instead, Barbehenn and his students found that the amino acid composition of the proteins in red oak and sugar maple leaves is strikingly similarso similar, in fact, that they could not be distinguished during the spring, when gypsy moths do most of their feeding.
However, the researchers found that protein is more abundant in oak leaves than in maple leaves.
"Instead of differences in protein quality, we showed that maple trees have lower quantities of protein than oak, partly explaining why they are less nutritious than oak leaves," said Barbehenn, an associate research scientist in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. The amount of essential amino acids in oak leaves was 30-42 percent higher than the EAA content of maple leaves in the spring and summer.
"These results help us understand the nutritional reasons why insects perform better or worse on different species of plants. This kind of information is needed in agriculture and forestry to improve the resistance of plants to insect pests," he said. "In the short term, though, this is basic research that is driven by the curiosity of ecologists to understand nature better."
The team's findings will be published in an upcoming edition of the journal Oecologia. Authors of the journal article are Barbehenn and two of his former undergraduate research assistants, Joseph Kochmanski and Julie Niewiadomski. Barbehenn has worked with more than 40 undergraduate research assistants since 2000.
Niewiadomski graduated from U-M with a bachelor's degree in biology in May 2010 and is now studying nutrition in a doctoral program at Cornell University. She said her work studying protein metabolism in gypsy moth caterpillars shaped her decision to pursue a doctorate in nutrition.
"My career in nutrition research began in Ray's lab," she said. "I am looking forward to seeing where it leads me."
Kochmanski is now a master's student at the U-M School of Public Health, focusing on toxicology. He said his time with Barbehenn instilled in him "a strong desire to continue doing research."
"I am currently working in a toxicology laboratory at the School of Public Health, doing research into the human health effects of environmental exposures," he said. "I can trace my interest in this subject back to my time working in Ray's lab."
"Our research involves a true partnership," Barbehenn said. "I teach students to work and think like biologists, and they help me get publication-quality data," he said. "For almost all of them, it's the first time they've had this opportunity and the first publication they've co-authored."
In the gypsy moth study, the students used a long-pole pruner to reach into the crowns of Diag oaks and maples and collect leaves. The field work was done in 2010, with permission from U-M Grounds Services.
In the nearby Natural Sciences Building, the research team used high-performance liquid chromatography to separate and quantify the amino acids that make up proteins. The whole-body essential amino acid composition of gypsy moth caterpillars was measured to estimate their optimum dietary protein composition, which was compared with the EAA compositions of oak and maple leaves.
"The ability to literally walk out the door to work on tree defenses against pests like the gypsy moth, coupled with an abundance of undergraduate talent, makes the U-M campus an ideal location for studies in insect chemical ecology," Barbehenn said.
The protein study showed that gypsy moths would have to devour more maple leaves than oak leaves to achieve the same amount of nourishment. But earlier work by Barbehenn and his students showed that the toxicity of maple leaves may prevent this strategy from working.
Studies conducted on the U-M campus between 2005 and 2009 showed that sugar maple leaves produce much higher levels and more types of toxic chemicals called tannins for their defense than do red oak leaves. Tannins and other toxic chemicals provide the major strategy that plants have evolved to defend themselves against attack by insects.
###
Read the Oecologia paper at
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00442-012-2574-7/fulltext.html.
[ | 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.
Campus as laboratory: U-M student biologists use Diag trees to help solve gypsy moth mysteryPublic release date: 30-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jim Erickson ericksn@umich.edu 734-647-1842 University of Michigan
ANN ARBORWorking beneath the towering oaks and maples on the University of Michigan's central campus Diag, undergraduate researchers and their faculty adviser helped explain an observation that had puzzled insect ecologists who study voracious leaf-munching gypsy moth caterpillars.
The caterpillars, which defoliate and sometimes kill stands of trees in the Upper Midwest and the Northeast, are especially fond of oaks, but sugar maple trees appear to be relatively resistant to the European pest.
Biologists wondered whether the caterpillars shun sugar maples in part because their leaves are less nutritious than the leaves of other trees. To find out, U-M biochemist Ray Barbehenn and several of his undergraduate research assistants compared the protein quality of red oak and sugar maple leaves from trees on the Diag.
What they found runs counter to conventional wisdom on the topic, which states that protein quality in leaves differs significantly from species to species. Instead, Barbehenn and his students found that the amino acid composition of the proteins in red oak and sugar maple leaves is strikingly similarso similar, in fact, that they could not be distinguished during the spring, when gypsy moths do most of their feeding.
However, the researchers found that protein is more abundant in oak leaves than in maple leaves.
"Instead of differences in protein quality, we showed that maple trees have lower quantities of protein than oak, partly explaining why they are less nutritious than oak leaves," said Barbehenn, an associate research scientist in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. The amount of essential amino acids in oak leaves was 30-42 percent higher than the EAA content of maple leaves in the spring and summer.
"These results help us understand the nutritional reasons why insects perform better or worse on different species of plants. This kind of information is needed in agriculture and forestry to improve the resistance of plants to insect pests," he said. "In the short term, though, this is basic research that is driven by the curiosity of ecologists to understand nature better."
The team's findings will be published in an upcoming edition of the journal Oecologia. Authors of the journal article are Barbehenn and two of his former undergraduate research assistants, Joseph Kochmanski and Julie Niewiadomski. Barbehenn has worked with more than 40 undergraduate research assistants since 2000.
Niewiadomski graduated from U-M with a bachelor's degree in biology in May 2010 and is now studying nutrition in a doctoral program at Cornell University. She said her work studying protein metabolism in gypsy moth caterpillars shaped her decision to pursue a doctorate in nutrition.
"My career in nutrition research began in Ray's lab," she said. "I am looking forward to seeing where it leads me."
Kochmanski is now a master's student at the U-M School of Public Health, focusing on toxicology. He said his time with Barbehenn instilled in him "a strong desire to continue doing research."
"I am currently working in a toxicology laboratory at the School of Public Health, doing research into the human health effects of environmental exposures," he said. "I can trace my interest in this subject back to my time working in Ray's lab."
"Our research involves a true partnership," Barbehenn said. "I teach students to work and think like biologists, and they help me get publication-quality data," he said. "For almost all of them, it's the first time they've had this opportunity and the first publication they've co-authored."
In the gypsy moth study, the students used a long-pole pruner to reach into the crowns of Diag oaks and maples and collect leaves. The field work was done in 2010, with permission from U-M Grounds Services.
In the nearby Natural Sciences Building, the research team used high-performance liquid chromatography to separate and quantify the amino acids that make up proteins. The whole-body essential amino acid composition of gypsy moth caterpillars was measured to estimate their optimum dietary protein composition, which was compared with the EAA compositions of oak and maple leaves.
"The ability to literally walk out the door to work on tree defenses against pests like the gypsy moth, coupled with an abundance of undergraduate talent, makes the U-M campus an ideal location for studies in insect chemical ecology," Barbehenn said.
The protein study showed that gypsy moths would have to devour more maple leaves than oak leaves to achieve the same amount of nourishment. But earlier work by Barbehenn and his students showed that the toxicity of maple leaves may prevent this strategy from working.
Studies conducted on the U-M campus between 2005 and 2009 showed that sugar maple leaves produce much higher levels and more types of toxic chemicals called tannins for their defense than do red oak leaves. Tannins and other toxic chemicals provide the major strategy that plants have evolved to defend themselves against attack by insects.
###
Read the Oecologia paper at
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00442-012-2574-7/fulltext.html.
[ | 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.
New social network Vine launched last week ? here are some of the earliest marketing posts shared by brands online, one week in?.
Twitter?s new video sharing app, Vine, was launched last week.? There aren?t many like it: simple apps, released with very little fanfare and publicity, that generate buzz.
But Vine is one such innovation.
Likened to Instagram but for video, it offers a simple way to give others an insight into your business, your life and your world through 6 second looping videos.? It?s not complicated, but does it offer potential for marketing your business?
The following short vids have been shared on Vine this morning:
someone taking an early flight and going through security
a little boy colouring in his homework
a coffee machine creating a delicious brew
a cat running around someone?s living room
None of them ground-breaking, none of them designed to promote anything.? But for business, there may be more to it.
Here are some of our favourite
NBC gives a sneak peek inside its building:
Gap tells a story with a look back at its advertising over the years:
General Electric gets back to basics with its creative process:
Tech magazine uses the new service to demonstrate its latest issue:
Chris Brogan invites his followers to join the fun by sharing a short of the contents of their desks:
And at Perfect Balance Marketing we?ve had a play with animation to create an advert:
How could you use the new app?
Create an ad
Drive engagement by inviting others to share their Vines
Tell the story of your business
Demonstrate a product
Show how to do something
Share your ideas in the comments below, and share your Vines on twitter, tagging them with #vine (and also tagging me @thorntonlucy so I can share them too!)
Welcome, Lifehackers, to our next Hacker Challenge! Each week, we issue a new challenge. You get until Sunday to prepare your submission and send it to us. That gives you a few days to think about it and a whole weekend to work it up. Our editors pick the best submissions and our favorite will win an autographed copy of the Lifehacker book!
Let's get started!
This Week's Hacker Challenge: Share Your Best Space-Saving Office Hack
No matter the size of our office, most of us have a tendency toward clutter if we don't take the time to organize our space and keep it that way. We've shown you how to make the most of a small workspace. We've shown you how to get your cables under control and how to make the contents of drawers organized. We've even talked about ways you can upgrade your home office.
Now, it's your turn. We want to see your best space-saving hack for your office. Whether it's a clever storage solution, a way to get stuff off your desk, or some way of making things easier to find, show us what you've come up with.
How to Submit Your Entry
Make sure to follow these instructions when you submit your entry:
Post your entry below or send it to challenge@lifehacker.com with the subject Hacker Challenge: Space Saving Office Hack. If you post your entry below and need to include more than one image, just reply to your own comment or host your extra pics on a free, quick image-hosting site like imgur and link out to your gallery.
We will accept entries up through Sunday night, February 3 at 11:59pm Pacific Standard Time
We will showcase the best submissions and announce our favorite Monday, February 4.
Break out your tools and get to work! And don't forget to check back for new challenges every week.
Standard Gawker contest rules apply, so be sure to check them out before submitting your entry.
Images by Tina Mailhot-Roberge and Brian A Jackson (Shutterstock).
I hardly knew which of the arts to highlight in the title of this post, as the man we?re remembering today had roles in so many facets of the performing arts, hence the blanket term used.
On January 30, 1982, Stanley Holloway died in Littlehampton, England. He was best known for his role as Alfred P. Doolittle in Lerner and Loewe?s My Fair Lady.?He originated the role on Broadway in 1956, reprised it in London?s West End a couple of years later, and finally on film in 1964. For his Broadway appearance, he garnered a Tony nomination, while his film depiction of the character yielded an Oscar nom.
There was far more to his career than Doolittle, Alfred P., however?
Stanley Holloway was born on October 1, 1890 (yes, he was 91 when he died) and his career spanned a time of great change in the entertainment world. He first made a name for himself in England as part of a troupe doing concert parties. In Julie Andrews? memoir Home, she says that ?A concert party was much like a vaudeville show, usually performed in an open-air theater on a seaside pier, or sometimes on the beach itself.? (p. 21)
Later, Holloway appeared in musical theatre, films ? even wartime morale-booster type films ? and journeyed across the pond to the United States to appear on stage and in films. He also spent some time in Canada, in roles at Niagara-on-the-Lake?s Shaw Festival.
I absorbed some of his concert party routine by osmosis, through hearing my mother sing (for her own amusement and mine) Holloway?s deliciously gruesome ? and funny ? ?With ?Er ?Ead Tucked Underneath ?Er Arm? about Anne Boleyn, and through hearing a dear family friend, George Todd, recite one of Holloway?s famous ?Albert? monologues ? Young Albert and the Lion. You can delight to Holloway?s renditions of both on YouTube.
His voice, his manner, his characterizations, are indelibly etched on my memory.
We're pretty fond of unicorns white phones here at Engadget, especially rare ones like the white Nokia N9. So you can imagine our excitement when we came across this photo of a white Nexus 4 over at Phone Arena. While rumors of a white Nexus 4 have been swirling around the intertubes for some time, a picture speaks a thousand words, right? We took a long, eagle-eyed look at this image and didn't see any signs of trickery. Obviously this doesn't mean a white Nexus 4 is on the way -- it could just be a dummy handset and / or a one-off prototype. Still, if last year's white Galaxy Nexus is any indication, there's a chance this is the real deal. We've reached out to Google and LG for comment, so stay tuned -- it sure would be lovely to add this beast to our stable.
Update: The folks over at Tinhte managed to grab a closer look at the device. Hit the second source link for a full photo tour -- we've added another shot of the back (in full glittering glory) after the break.
A laptop screen shows a video view of the borehole drilled through Antarctica's ice down to Lake Whillans.
By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News
The first signs of potentially exotic life have been spotted in a sample of water drawn from Antarctica's hidden Lake Whillans, a half-mile beneath the surface, according to reports from the scene.
The telltale green glow of cells stained with a DNA-sensitive dye could be seen when water from the lake was put under the microscope on Monday, Discover Magazine's Crux blog reported. "It was the first evidence of life in an Antarctic subglacial lake," science journalist Douglas Fox reported for The Crux. Fox is an embedded journalist reporting from Lake Whillans under the auspices of a National Science Foundation program.
The U.S. scientists in charge of the project to drill into Lake Whillans ??known as the Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling, or WISSARD ??will be more circumspect: They'll have to demonstrate that the green-glowing cells are truly alive and capable of growing in culture. They'll also conduct tests to make sure that the microbes are indigenous to the lake, rather than the result of contamination from the drilling operation.
Last year, Russian scientists analyzed water from Lake Vostok, an even deeper and bigger subglacial lake beneath Antarctica's Vostok Station, but the only microbes they found in the sample were surface-dwelling species that may have come from contaminated drilling chemicals rather than the lake itself.
During the current Antarctic research season, the Russians resumed their drilling at Vostok. They said earlier this month that they had reached transparent lake ice at a depth of 3.4 kilometers (2.1 miles). Since then, they've reported retrieving "fresh frozen" ice cores from slightly deeper levels.
The Russian and U.S. teams are drilling into the lakes in hopes of finding evidence of life forms that could have been living in the dark for thousands of years, or even millions of years. Theoretically, such organisms could live off the minerals in deep-buried rock, plus oxygen dissolved in the lake water.
The Whillans Ice Stream is a glacial river that pushes ice from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet into the Ross Ice Shelf. Lake Whillans lies about 800 meters (0.5 miles) beneath the ice, less than 400 miles (640 kilometers) from the South Pole. Just this past weekend, the WISSARD team reported that their borehole connected with the lake after several days of drilling.?
Fox quoted scientists?as saying that Lake Whillans is just 5 to 6 feet (1.5 to 2 meters) deep, as opposed to the 20 to 30 feet (6 to 9 meters) that was expected. The first water samples that were brought up contained the ancient fossils of dead diatoms?? tiny marine creatures that are thought to have been pushed down into the lake from West Antarctica.
The study of Lake Whillans and other subglacial lakes should shed light on Antarctica's climate history, as well as the long-term interaction between the continent's ice and the water and rocks that lie beneath. The discovery of novel life forms could open up an entirely new frontier for biologists. And even if the organisms found in the lakes aren't all that unusual, the drilling operations could set the stage for future missions to the ice-covered moons of Jupiter and Saturn, where similarly challenging conditions for subsurface life are thought to exist.
More about the mysteries beneath the ice:
For more about the WISSARD project at Lake Whillans, check out this report from The Antarctic Sun.
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's?Facebook page, following?@b0yle on Twitter?and adding the?Cosmic Log page?to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out?"The Case for Pluto,"?my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
One thing your iPhone could be better at: sending secret encrypted messages (aka for sexting and/or illicit relationships). The regular messages app leaves everything hanging out in the open! Text Fortress is an app that encrypts the messages you send and locks them down so only the person you sent it to, can see it. More »
Prayer was banned from official proceedings in the State Senate two years ago after the Hawaii Citizens for the Separation of State and Church and the American Civil Liberties Union threatened to sue the legislature.
For decades, Hawaii Senators took turns offering prayers, poems, songs or thoughts for the day at the beginning of each floor session, or they invited guests to do the same in their place, and there was never an issue.
However, in January 2011, the Hawaii State Senate ended its practice because of the legal threats.
The House Speaker, who was faced with the same threat, continued on with daily prayer -- and was never was sued.
Now under new leadership of Senate President Donna Mercado Kim, the Senate will once again allow prayer before the floor session opens.
The first prayer will be offered on Thursday and participation by Senators will continue to be optional.
?
Tide Turns for?Public Land Development Corporation
The creation of the Public Land Development Corporation or the PLDC in 2011 has been one of the most controversial issues among Hawaii activists.
The PLDC, which operates under the Department of Land and Natural Resources, is charged with the task of developing state land to generate revenue and the board was given the ability to fast track development with minimal public input.
Many concerned environmental groups and activists have called on the legislature and the governor to dissolve the organization. In his opening day remarks, Senate Minority Leader Sam Slom also called for PLDC?s repeal.
But there has been strong resistance from Gov. Neil Abercrombie and some legislative leaders.
However, with the protesters getting louder and more effective, key legislators who once supported the PLDC will work to nix the agency.
Legislators say it is likely that by the end of the 2013 session, the controversial Public Land Development Corporation will be just a memory.
?
House GOP Leaderships' Surprising Response?
Republicans in the Hawaii State House have annually pledged to oppose all new tax increases.?But this year under newly elected Rep. Aaron Ling Johnason, the House?s seven Republicans have softened that position.
In response to a Hawaii Reporter inquiry, Johanson said the House Republicans would not take a unified stance against all new tax hikes.
Instead he said the House GOP will thoughtfully consider the real impact that any tax burden would place on low-income residents, working families and small businesses.
House Republicans helped put House Speaker Joe Souki in power this year, and have been assigned three vice chairmanships in exchange. They also supported the considerably more liberal faction of the House Democrats over the more fiscally conservative Democrats who were previously in power.
Despite the GOP's low numbers (7 of 51 House seats), their decision to support or oppose tax increases could make a difference for the taxpayers.
?
Short URL: http://www.hawaiireporter.com/?p=269669
Author: Hawaii Reporter
Hawaii Reporter is an award-winning, independent Hawaii-based news and opinion journal founded in 2001 and launched in February 2002. The journal's staff have won a number of top awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, including the top investigative news reporting awards, business reporting awards, government reporting awards, and online news reporting awards. Hawaii Reporter has a weekly television news show, News Behind the News, which airs on Mondays at 1:30 p.m. and Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m.
Chicago Police First Deputy Superintendent Alfonsa Wysinger, second from left, accompanied by Deputy Chief Wayne Gulliford, left, speaks at a news conference Monday, Jan. 28, 2013, in Chicago. The pair joined other officers, elected officials, clergy, and community members, with a display of recently recovered firearms from the 574 seized to date beginning Jan. 1, 2013. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)
Chicago Police First Deputy Superintendent Alfonsa Wysinger, second from left, accompanied by Deputy Chief Wayne Gulliford, left, speaks at a news conference Monday, Jan. 28, 2013, in Chicago. The pair joined other officers, elected officials, clergy, and community members, with a display of recently recovered firearms from the 574 seized to date beginning Jan. 1, 2013. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)
Chicago Police First Deputy Superintendent Alfonsa Wysinger, right, accompanied by Deputy Chief Wayne Gulliford speaks at a news conference Monday, Jan. 28, 2013, in Chicago. The pair joined other officers, elected officials, clergy, and community members, with a display of recently recovered firearms from the 574 seized to date beginning Jan. 1, 2013. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)
CHICAGO (AP) ? A bloody weekend in which seven people were killed and six wounded has put an abrupt end ? at least for now ? to hopes that Chicago was at least putting a lid on its frightening homicide rate.
With a few days left in the month, the nation's third-largest city now finds itself on the cusp of its deadliest January in more than a decade. The news comes just after Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy had announced that after several violent months, Chicago had seen a drop in homicides at the end of 2012 and for the first few weeks of 2013.
Police say the homicide rate is a reflection of the city's gang problem and a proliferation of guns. Chicago has for years tried to cut off the flow of guns. It has what city officials have called the strictest handgun ordinance in the U.S. But police officials say more needs to be done and that penalties for violating gun laws should be stiffer.
Among those killed over the weekend was 34-year-old Ronnie Chambers, who was shot in the head with what police believe was an assault weapon. Such guns are banned in Chicago but can be purchased legally in the suburbs or nearby states. Chambers is the fourth child of Shirley Chambers to fall victim to gun violence.
"I'd pray for God to protect Ronnie and keep him safe day and night," Shirley Chambers told the Chicago Sun-Times.
With the weekend shootings, Chicago now has 40 homicides ? the exact same number as last January. With a few days left in the year, the city could reach its deadliest January since 2002, when it had 45 homicides in the first month.
Chicago's homicide count eclipsed 500 last year for the first time since 2008, but last week, McCarthy announced recent figures showing homicides had dropped. The city saw a 16 percent decline in the fourth quarter of 2012 and a 22 percent drop in the first weeks of January.
McCarthy wants lawmakers to increase jail time for those who are caught with illegal weapons, including for felons who aren't allowed to have them and for so-called straw purchases, in which people buy guns for others who aren't supposed to have them.
Chicago's handgun ordinance bans gun shops in the city and prohibits gun owners from stepping outside their homes with a handgun. The city passed the restrictions in July 2010 after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an outright ban that Chicago had for 28 years.
Chicago leads the nation in guns seized by police, and recently police have started displaying the guns each week to offer a visual reminder of the awesome firepower that is on the city's streets as they push for tougher gun laws. First Deputy Superintendent Al Wysinger said Monday that last year's total of 7,400 is nine times as high as the number seized in the nation's largest city, New York, and three times as high as in its second-largest, Los Angeles.
So far this year, Chicago officers have taken 574 firearms, Wysinger said Monday.
Wysinger called the spate of shootings "frustrating" for the department. But he said the number does not mean there are problems with changes the department has made to combat crime, particularly a strategy to focus on gang members and gang activity.
"Without this gang violence reduction strategy this weekend could have been a lot worse than it was," he told reporters.
McCarthy last week noted that New York finished 2012 with 418 homicides, a record low. He said New York's stiffer penalties for gun violations help. McCarthy has repeatedly mentioned Plaxico Burress, the NFL football player who spent 20 months in prison on a gun charge after accidentally shot himself, as an example of New York's tough gun laws.
"We are doing the same exact things New York is doing," said McCarthy, a former high ranking member of that city's police department. "What is different is the reasonability of the New York gun laws."
Jan. 29, 2013 ? Trying to find just the right balance of time spent in meetings and time performing tasks is a tough problem for managers, but a Wayne State University researcher believes the behavior of ants may provide a useful lesson on how to do it.
Using computer simulations derived from the characteristics of ants seeking food, Kai Yang, Ph.D., professor of industrial and systems engineering in the College of Engineering, has developed a mathematical model-based methodology to estimate the optimal amount of time spent to develop a product, as well as the cost, in overlapped product development. It is the latest in a series of projects he has worked on for Siemens North America.
"Non-discrete Ant Colony Optimisation (NdACO) to Optimise the Development Cycle Time and Cost in Overlapped Product Development," published recently in the International Journal of Production Research, utilizes the concept of concurrent engineering (CE), a systematic approach to product development based on parallel execution of tasks. The approach integrates several functions to reduce the development time and cost of a product while maintaining its quality. Co-authors include Satish Tyagi, Wayne State research assistant, and Anoop Verma, Ph.D., of the University of Iowa.
In CE, cross-functional teams communicate through several meetings, some before the beginning of project, categorized as precommunication, and some during execution of the project, called communication policy.
Because significant cost is incurred through those meetings, Yang said, it is necessary to investigate the cost-time trade-offs involved in the concurrent product development process to enhance work performance. Otherwise, applying the process can result in a larger number of iterations, or rework, adding to both time and cost.
"Currently, there is a lack of communication flow within organizations due to their large size, time differences, etc.," Yang said. "Therefore, the amount of precommunication and communication policy and the extent of overlapping stages should be meticulously determined to achieve the desired goals."
As product development moves forward, lack of communication from upstream decision-makers to downstream workers can leave the latter to operate without the latest available information to complete their task efficiently, he said.
Researchers studying ants' food-foraging behavior have noticed that changes in the pheromone trails left behind by the insects communicate the best ways for those that come after them to proceed. That led to the development of ant colony optimization (ACO) models, which Yang and his team are using.
Researchers believe their simulation model could reduce product definition time by as much as 50 percent, and lead to best practices that improve critical thinking and remove communication barriers. Such practices can be applied to large-sector manufacturing, health care and service companies, Yang said.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Wayne State University - Office of the Vice President for Research.
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Journal Reference:
S.K. Tyagi, Kai Yang, A. Verma. Non-discrete ant colony optimisation (NdACO) to optimise the development cycle time and cost in overlapped product development. International Journal of Production Research, 2013; 51 (2): 346 DOI: 10.1080/00207543.2011.633120
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A Secret Service dog fell to its death in New Orleans over the weekend while performing a sweep of a six-story parking garage. The garage was next to a Ritz Carlton where Vice President Joe Biden was speaking.
The bomb-sniffing dog, a Belgian Malinois, fell from the roof of the parking deck next to the hotel at approximately 6 p.m., New Orleans police told WWL-TV.
Biden was attending a fundraiser for Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu's re-election campaign.
Federal agents rushed the black and brown shepherd to a Metairie Veterinary hospital via motorcade, but veterinarians were unable to revive the dog, WWL reported.
According to CNN, the agency began using canines to detect explosives in 1975:
It uses Belgian Malinois because they are small and have short hair?making it easy for them to work in the heat. They are also very sociable. Each dog and its handler has to complete 20 weeks of training before beginning work, the agency said. When it's time for a dog to retire?usually after about 10 years?it is retired to its handler.
Secret Service spokesman Max Milien told the network the dog's death was a "tragic accident."
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Lindsay Lohan lucked out again in her latest court hearing. The “Liz & Dick” actress, who previously said she was “too ill” to attend the hearing, decided to appear and avoided jail time. Judge Stephanie Sautner addressed Lindsay’s alleged illness, quipping, “I’m glad to see you’re feeling better”. Lohan had obtained a doctor’s note trying ...
to get it and come back to see the ad in front of this gallery.
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Public release date: 30-Jan-2013
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Welcome, Lifehackers, to our next Hacker Challenge! Each week, we issue a new challenge. You get until Sunday to prepare your submission and send it to us. That gives you a few days to think about it and a whole weekend to work it up. Our editors pick the best submissions and our favorite will win an autographed copy of the Lifehacker book! 
I hardly knew which of the arts to highlight in the title of this post, as the man we?re remembering today had roles in so many facets of the performing arts, hence the blanket term used.
Prayer Back in Style at Hawaii Senate
