US computer graphics scientist wins Kyoto Prize

TOKYO (AP) — An American regarded as a father of computer graphics, an Indian literary critic and a Japanese molecular cell biologist have received the Kyoto Prize, Japan's highest private award for global achievement.

The Inamori Foundation awarded its advanced technology prize on Saturday to U.S. computer scientist Ivan Sutherland, who developed the graphic interface program Sketchpad in 1963.

Gayatri Chakrovoty Spivak , an Indian literary critic and professor at Columbia University, won the arts and philosophy prize.

Yoshinori Ohsumi, a molecular biologist at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, received the basic sciences prize for his work on autophagy, a cell-recycling system that could be used to help treat neurodegenerative and age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's and cancer.

The Kyoto-based Inamori Foundation was set up in 1984 by Kyocera Corp.'s founder, Kazuo Inamori.

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AP source: Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez break up

NEW YORK (AP) — A source confirms to The Associated Press that Justin Bieber is no longer Selena Gomez's "Boyfriend."

The source is not authorized to discuss the split with the press and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The breakup apparently happened last week. Distance and their busy schedules were cited as factors.

Eighteen-year-old Bieber is touring to promote his latest album, "Believe," which contains the hit "Boyfriend." Twenty-year-old Gomez is filming a "Wizards of Waverly Place" reunion for the Disney Channel.

The pair made their relationship public in February 2011.

E! News was the first to report the split.

Bieber seems to be doing OK, at least publicly. On the red carpet of Wednesday's Victoria's Secret fashion show he said, "I'd rather be here than anywhere in the world."

___

Online:

http://www.justinbiebermusic.com/

http://www.selenagomez.com/

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Malaria vaccine a letdown for infants

LONDON (AP) — An experimental malaria vaccine once thought promising is turning out to be a disappointment, with a new study showing it is only about 30 percent effective at protecting infants from the killer disease.

That is a significant drop from a study last year done in slightly older children, which suggested the vaccine cut the malaria risk by about half — though that is still far below the protection provided from most vaccines. According to details released on Friday, the three-shot regimen reduced malaria cases by about 30 percent in infants aged 6 to 12 weeks, the target age for immunization.

Dr. Jennifer Cohn, a medical coordinator at Doctors Without Borders, described the vaccine's protection levels as "unacceptably low." She was not linked to the study.

Scientists have been working for decades to develop a malaria vaccine, a complicated endeavor since the disease is caused by five different species of parasites. There has never been an effective vaccine against a parasite. Worldwide, there are several dozen malaria vaccine candidates being researched.

In 2006, a group of experts led by the World Health Organization said a malaria vaccine should cut the risk of severe disease and death by at least half and should last longer than one year. Malaria is spread by mosquitoes and kills more than 650,000 people every year, mostly young children and pregnant women in Africa. Without a vaccine, officials have focused on distributing insecticide-treated bed nets, spraying homes with pesticides and ensuring access to good medicines.

In the new study, scientists found babies who got three doses of the vaccine had about 30 percent fewer cases of malaria than those who didn't get immunized. The research included more than 6,500 infants in Africa. Experts also found the vaccine reduced the amount of severe malaria by about 26 percent, up to 14 months after the babies were immunized.

Scientists said they needed to analyze the data further to understand why the vaccine may be working differently in different regions. For example, babies born in areas with high levels of malaria might inherit some antibodies from their mothers which could interfere with any vaccination.

"Maybe we should be thinking of a first-generation vaccine that is targeted only for certain children," said Dr. Salim Abdulla of the Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania, one of the study investigators.

Results were presented at a conference in South Africa on Friday and released online by the New England Journal of Medicine. The study is scheduled to continue until 2014 and is being paid for by GlaxoSmithKline and the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative.

"The results look bad now, but they will probably be worse later," said Adrian Hill of Oxford University, who is developing a competing malaria vaccine. He noted the study showed the Glaxo vaccine lost its potency after several months. Hill said the vaccine might be a hard sell, compared to other vaccines like those for meningitis and pneumococcal disease — which are both effective and cheap.

"If it turns out to have a clear 30 percent efficacy, it is probably not worth it to implement this in Africa on a large scale," said Genton Blaise, a malaria expert at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in Basel, who also sits on a WHO advisory board.

Eleanor Riley of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the vaccine might be useful if used together with other strategies, like bed nets. She was involved in an earlier study of the vaccine and had hoped for better results. "We're all a bit frustrated that it has proven so hard to make a malaria vaccine," she said. "The question is how much money are the funders willing to keep throwing at it."

Glaxo first developed the vaccine in 1987 and has invested $300 million in it so far.

WHO said it couldn't comment on the incomplete results and would wait until the trial was finished before drawing any conclusions.

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Four days later, Obama wins Florida

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - President Barack Obama was declared the winner of Florida's 29 electoral votes Saturday, ending a four-day count with a razor-thin margin that narrowly avoided an automatic recount that would have brought back memories of 2000.

No matter the outcome, Obama had already clinched re-election and now has 332 electoral votes to Romney's 206.

The Florida Secretary of State's Office said that with almost 100 per cent of the vote counted, Obama led Republican challenger Mitt Romney 50 per cent to 49.1 per cent, a difference of about 74,000 votes. That was over the half-per cent margin where a computer recount would have been automatically ordered unless Romney had waived it.

There is a Nov. 16 deadline for overseas and military ballots, but under Florida law, recounts are based on Saturday's results. Only a handful of overseas and military ballots are believed to remain outstanding.

It's normal for election supervisors in Florida and other states to spend days after any election counting absentee, provisional, military and overseas ballots. Usually, though, the election has already been called on election night or soon after because the winner's margin is beyond reach.

But on election night this year, it was difficult for officials — and the media — to call the presidential race here, in part because the margin was so close and the voting stretched into the evening.

In Miami-Dade, for instance, so many people were in line at 7 p.m. in certain precincts that some people didn't vote until after midnight.

The hours-long wait at the polls in some areas, a lengthy ballot and the fact that Gov. Rick Scott refused to extend early voting hours has led some to criticize Florida's voting process. Some officials have vowed to investigate why there were problems at the polls and how that led to a lengthy vote count.

If there had been a recount, it would not be as difficult as the lengthy one in 2000. The state no longer uses punch-card ballots, which became known for their hanging chads. All 67 counties now use optical scan ballots where voters mark their selections manually.

Republican George W. Bush won the 2000 contest after the Supreme Court declared him the winner over Democrat Al Gore by a scant 537 votes.

The win gave Obama victories in eight of the nine swing states, losing only North Carolina. In addition to Florida, he won Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Virginia, Colorado and Nevada.

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Transgender Pakistanis face society's scorn

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (AP) — Dressed up in elaborate, feminine outfits and artfully applied makeup, they are showered with money while dancing at all-male wedding parties. But the lives of transgender people in Pakistan are also marked by harassment, rejection and poverty.

Transgender people live in a tenuous position in conservative Pakistan, where the roles of the sexes are traditionally starkly drawn. Families often push them out of the home when they're young, forcing many to prostitute themselves to earn a living.

One role where they are tolerated is as dancers at weddings and other celebrations at which men and women are strictly segregated. In between the dancing and showers of rupee notes, they must fend off groping from drunken guests.

"I don't understand why people feel it is their duty to tease and taunt us," said one transgender Pakistani who goes by the name Symbal. Many in the transgender community pick a name for themselves and do not use their last name to protect their family.

Others beg on the streets or earn money by blessing newborn babies. The blessings reflect a widespread belief in Pakistan and other South Asian nations that God answers the prayers of someone who was born underprivileged, said Iqbal Hussain, a Pakistani researcher who has studied the transgender community. But he cautioned that didn't mean people were ready to give them equal rights.

In recent years the community has gained some government protection. A Supreme Court ruling in 2011 allowed them to get national identity cards recognizing them as a separate identity — neither male or female — and allowing them to vote. In neighboring India, the election commission ruled in 2009 that transgender people could register to vote as "other," rather than male or female.

In other parts of the region and Muslim world, the attitude toward transgenders is also complex. In Thailand, the community is very visible and broadly tolerated. Transgender people are regularly seen on TV soap operas, working at department store cosmetics counters or popular restaurants and walking the runways in numerous transgender beauty pageants.

Many transgender Indonesians publicly wear women's clothes and makeup and work as singers. But societal disdain still runs deep. They have taken a much lower profile in recent years, following a series of attacks by Muslim hard-liners.

In Malaysia, Muslim men who wear women's clothes can be prosecuted in Islamic courts.

In the Arab world, there is little opportunity for transgender people to openly show their identity in public. In 2007, Kuwait made "imitating members of the opposite sex" a crime, leading to the arrest of hundreds of transgender women, Human Rights Watch said. In Iraq, extremists have targeted and killed people perceived of being gay or effeminate.

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‘NBA 2K13′ tops video games titles in October

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. retail sales of new video game hardware, software and accessories fell 25 percent in October, marking the 11th straight month of declining sales for physical game products, according to a report from NPD Group.

Many gamers are waiting for big holiday releases such as Activision‘s “Call of Duty: Black Ops II.”

NPD said sales fell to $ 755.5 million from $ 1 billion a year earlier. Sales of video games themselves, excluding PC titles, fell 25 percent to $ 432.6 million. Sales of hardware such as Microsoft‘s Xbox 360 fell 37 percent to $ 187.3 million. Sales of accessories, meanwhile, grew 5 percent to $ 135.6 million.

Thursday’s study from NPD Group tracks sales of new physical products — about 50 percent of the total spending. Excluded are sales of used games and rentals as well as digital and social-network spending.

NPD also listed the top-selling games in October:

1. “NBA 2K13,” Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.

2. “Resident Evil 6,” Capcom USA

3. “Pokemon Black Version 2,” Nintendo Co.

4. “Dishonored,” Bethesda Softworks

5. “Pokemon White Version 2,” Nintendo Co.

6. “Madden NFL 13,” Electronic Arts Inc.

7. “FIFA Soccer 13,” Electronic Arts Inc.

8. “Medal of Honor: Warfighter,” Electronic Arts Inc.

9. “Borderlands 2,” Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.

10. “Skylander Giants,” Activision Blizzard Inc.

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Obama, Palin and Jobs join Bartlett's club

NEW YPRK (AP) — So much has changed since we last heard from "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations," a decade ago.

Barack Obama was a state legislator. Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla. Steve Jobs had just introduced a portable music player called the iPod.

And digital books were a relic from the dot-com bubble.

The 18th edition of the venerable reference work has just been released, the first for the electronic age and a chance to take in some of the new faces, events and catchphrases of the past 10 years. General editor Geoffrey O'Brien says he has expanded upon the trend set by his predecessor, Justin Kaplan, of incorporating popular culture into an anthology once known for classical citations. Shakespeare and the Bible still reign, but room also has been made for Madonna and Michael Moore, Justin Timberlake and Jon Stewart.

"I also added a great many quotes that originated in other languages. So I would say the new edition has a more international scope," says O'Brien, an author and critic and editor in chief of the Library of America, which publishes hardcover volumes of canonical American authors.

Little, Brown and Company hopes the new Bartlett's will appeal both as an old-fashioned coffee table hardcover, some 1,400 pages, and as an ultra-portable digital reference guide. Instead of releasing an e-book edition, the publisher has developed an app that does not simply replicate the printed book, but makes it ideal for digital devices and easy to share on Facebook or Twitter.

Dozens of employees spent months working on the app, according to Brian Singh, mobile analyst for Little, Brown's parent company, Hachette Book Group. Some 20,000 quotations were categorized so those looking for a quick quote — say a love poem for a wedding speech — could simply search the word "love." The app costs $3.95 and does not include any extra material, but it does have a digital feature, Quoto, which allows users to take a favorite citation, set it against a backdrop of choice and post it online.

For the hardcover, O'Brien said he removed some old poetry and forgotten phrases to make room for about 2,500 new quotes, including several from the Iraq War. Among them are President George W. Bush's call to "Bring 'em on" in response to possible uprisings from insurgents and his declaration that he was the "the decider." The Dixie Chicks' Natalie Maines is mentioned for her on-stage remark that she was "ashamed" Bush was from Texas, as is Moore's Academy Award acceptance speech when he criticized the war and called Bush a "fictitious president."

Seven Obama quotations are listed, from his campaign slogan "Yes, we can!" to his announcement that U.S. special forces had killed Osama bin Laden. Palin's entry includes the quip from her speech at the 2008 Republican convention that the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull was "lipstick." Job's dying words, "Wow, oh wow," are among four citations for the late Apple CEO, including a 1987 comment that "It's more fun to be a pirate than to join the Navy."

Others in Bartlett's for the first time: Christopher Hitchens ("Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake"); David Foster Wallace ("Make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us"), Stewart (his nightly signoff, "Here it is ... your moment of Zen"), Timberlake (his apology for Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show).

Barlett's is home to polished aphorisms and unintentional history: Bill Clinton's "I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky"; Oscar winner's Sally Field's cry that "You like me!"; Obama's comments at a private fundraiser that some rural residents "cling to guns or religion." Some quotes originate from tragedy: Rodney King's plea, "Can we all get along?", as Los Angeles burned during the 1992 riots; Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer calling out "Let's roll" as he led an uprising against Sept. 11, 2011 hijackers.

The credentials for Bartlett's are admittedly arbitrary: Space concerns, individual tastes and the uncertain definition of the word "familiar" make the book an invaluable excuse for an argument.

Larry David is in, but not Aaron Sorkin; P.J. O'Rourke, not Maureen Dowd; Jerry Seinfeld and Steve Martin, not George Carlin or Richard Pryor. The many expressions coined on "Saturday Night Live," from "Talk amongst yourselves" to "Well, excuuuuuse me!" were not mentioned. Among novelists, Richard Powers is in, but not Jonathan Franzen; Colson Whitehead, not Michael Chabon.

"I am sure that twelve different well-informed people would come up with twelve different lists of people (and more importantly of specific quotations) left out, and I am sure some of these will be strong candidates for inclusion in the next edition," O'Brien said.

Among songwriting entries, excerpts appear from Lou Reed's lyrics for "All Tomorrow's Parties" and "Heroin," but not from the more famous "Walk On the Wild Side." The Beach Boys' "Carolina, No" gets a mention, but not such anthems as "Surfin' U.S.A." and "Good Vibrations." Kurt Cobain's entry omits "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in favor of "Stay Away" and "Serve the Servants."

For movies, two quotes are included from Robert Towne's "Chinatown" screenplay, but not the immortal closing line, "Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown." One of just two entries for Nora Ephron is "I'll have what she's having," the joke from "When Harry Met Sally ..." that is widely credited to Billy Crystal. Among the favorites left out: "Well, nobody's perfect," the kicker from "Some Like it Hot"; Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Terminator" catchphrase "I'll be back"; the courtroom explosion "You can't handle the truth!" from "A Few Good Men."

"Certain lines strike me as 'familiar for being familiar' — 'You can't handle the truth' being one of them, as I can see little originality or singularity in it," O'Brien said. "The price of compactness is a certain amount of arbitrary exclusion."

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Malaria vaccine a letdown for infants

LONDON (AP) — An experimental malaria vaccine once thought promising is turning out to be a disappointment, with a new study showing it is only about 30 percent effective at protecting infants from the killer disease.

That is a significant drop from a study last year done in slightly older children, which suggested the vaccine cut the malaria risk by about half — though that is still far below the protection provided from most vaccines. According to details released on Friday, the three-shot regimen reduced malaria cases by about 30 percent in infants aged 6 to 12 weeks, the target age for immunization.

Dr. Jennifer Cohn, a medical coordinator at Doctors Without Borders, described the vaccine's protection levels as "unacceptably low." She was not linked to the study.

Scientists have been working for decades to develop a malaria vaccine, a complicated endeavor since the disease is caused by five different species of parasites. There has never been an effective vaccine against a parasite. Worldwide, there are several dozen malaria vaccine candidates being researched.

In 2006, a group of experts led by the World Health Organization said a malaria vaccine should cut the risk of severe disease and death by at least half and should last longer than one year. Malaria is spread by mosquitoes and kills more than 650,000 people every year, mostly young children and pregnant women in Africa. Without a vaccine, officials have focused on distributing insecticide-treated bed nets, spraying homes with pesticides and ensuring access to good medicines.

In the new study, scientists found babies who got three doses of the vaccine had about 30 percent fewer cases of malaria than those who didn't get immunized. The research included more than 6,500 infants in Africa. Experts also found the vaccine reduced the amount of severe malaria by about 26 percent, up to 14 months after the babies were immunized.

Scientists said they needed to analyze the data further to understand why the vaccine may be working differently in different regions. For example, babies born in areas with high levels of malaria might inherit some antibodies from their mothers which could interfere with any vaccination.

"Maybe we should be thinking of a first-generation vaccine that is targeted only for certain children," said Dr. Salim Abdulla of the Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania, one of the study investigators.

Results were presented at a conference in South Africa on Friday and released online by the New England Journal of Medicine. The study is scheduled to continue until 2014 and is being paid for by GlaxoSmithKline and the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative.

"The results look bad now, but they will probably be worse later," said Adrian Hill of Oxford University, who is developing a competing malaria vaccine. He noted the study showed the Glaxo vaccine lost its potency after several months. Hill said the vaccine might be a hard sell, compared to other vaccines like those for meningitis and pneumococcal disease — which are both effective and cheap.

"If it turns out to have a clear 30 percent efficacy, it is probably not worth it to implement this in Africa on a large scale," said Genton Blaise, a malaria expert at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in Basel, who also sits on a WHO advisory board.

Eleanor Riley of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the vaccine might be useful if used together with other strategies, like bed nets. She was involved in an earlier study of the vaccine and had hoped for better results. "We're all a bit frustrated that it has proven so hard to make a malaria vaccine," she said. "The question is how much money are the funders willing to keep throwing at it."

Glaxo first developed the vaccine in 1987 and has invested $300 million in it so far.

WHO said it couldn't comment on the incomplete results and would wait until the trial was finished before drawing any conclusions.

Read More..

Boehner: GOP has 'some work to do'

House Speaker John Boehner (Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images)

Reflecting on this week's election, in which Democratic President Barack Obama won re-election and Democrats made gains in Congress, House Speaker John Boehner said the GOP has "some work to do" in how it presents the party's ideas.

"It's clear that as a political party we've got some work to do," Boehner, an Ohio Republican, told reporters during a press conference on Capitol Hill on Friday. "I think the principles of our party are sound. We believe in individual responsibility, we believe in empowering our citizens. We believe in the American Dream. We want that dream for everyone. But how we talk about who we are as a party is clearly—clearly conversations are underway and will continue."

Congress faces a busy lame-duck session, as leaders from both chambers plan to work with the White House to reach a deal that will avoid automatic tax increases and spending cuts set to begin Jan. 1, 2013. Boehner said he's looking to Obama "to lead" and that he had a short, "cordial" conversation with the president earlier this week about ways to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff.

"I think we both understand that trying to find a way to avert the fiscal cliff is important for this country," Boehner said. "And I'm hopeful that productive conversations can begin soon so we can forge an agreement that can pass the Congress."

Boehner reiterated his opposition to raising taxes as part of that deal, even on high-income earners, and says he sees the negotiations as a way to overhaul the tax code and the way the federal government pays for entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.

The president, who will deliver a statement about the negotiations on Friday afternoon, has said that he remains committed to increasing taxes on the wealthy as part of his plan.

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Myanmar says Obama to visit later this month

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — President Barack Obama will make a groundbreaking visit later this month to Myanmar, an official said Thursday, following through with his policy of rapprochement to encourage democracy in the Southeast Asian nation.

The Myanmar official speaking from the capital, Naypyitaw, said Thursday that security for a visit on Nov. 18 or 19 had been prepared, but the schedule was not final. He asked not to be named because he was not authorized to give information to the media.

The official said Obama would meet with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi as well as government officials including reformist President Thein Sein.

It would be the first-ever visit to Myanmar by an American president. U.S. officials have not yet announced any plans for a visit, which would come less than two weeks after Obama's election to a second term.

Obama's administration has sought to encourage the recent democratic progress under Thein Sein by easing sanctions applied against Myanmar's previous military regime.

Officials in nearby Thailand and Cambodia have already informally announced plans for visits by Obama that same week. Cambodia is hosting a summit meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and Thailand is a longtime close U.S. ally.

The visit to Myanmar, also known as Burma, would be the culmination of a dramatic turnaround in relations with Washington as the country has shifted from five decades of ruinous military rule and shaken off the pariah status it had earned through its bloody suppression of democracy.

Obama's ending of the long-standing U.S. isolation of Myanmar's generals has played a part in coaxing them into political reforms that have unfolded with surprising speed in the past year. The U.S. has appointed a full ambassador and suspended sanctions to reward Myanmar for political prisoner releases and the election of Nobel laureate Suu Kyi to parliament.

From Myanmar's point of view, the lifting of sanctions is essential for boosting a lagging economy that was hurt not only by sanctions that curbed exports and foreign investment, but also by what had been a protectionist, centralized approach. Thein Sein's government has initiated major economic reforms in addition to political ones.

A procession of senior diplomats and world leaders have traveled to Myanmar, stopping both in the remote, opulent capital city, which was built by the former ruling junta, and at Suu Kyi's dilapidated lakeside villa in the main city of Yangon, where she spent 15 years under house arrest. New Zealand announced Thursday that Prime Minister John Key would visit Myanmar after attending the regional meetings in Cambodia.

The most senior U.S. official to visit was Hillary Rodham Clinton, who last December became the first U.S. secretary of state to travel to Myanmar in 56 years.

The Obama administration regards the political changes in Myanmar as a marquee achievement in its foreign policy, and one that could dilute the influence of China in a country that has a strategic location between South and Southeast Asia, regions of growing economic importance.

But exiled Myanmar activists and human rights groups are likely to criticize an Obama visit as premature, rewarding Thein Sein before his political and economic reforms have truly taken root. The military — still dominant and implicated in rights abuses — has failed to prevent vicious outbreaks of communal violence in the west of the country that have left scores dead.

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