Casey Anthony is protected from the media by her attorney, Cheney Mason, as she arrives at the United States Courthouse for a bankruptcy hearing Monday.
?
By Craig Giammona, NBC News
Casey Anthony?appeared in public Monday for the first time since being acquitted of murdering her 2-year old daughter, Caylee, in 2011.
She arrived at a federal bankruptcy hearing in Tampa, Fla., early in the day to face her creditors. She is expected to be asked how she has been supporting herself.
Anthony filed for bankruptcy in late January, claiming she had $1,000 in assets and nearly $800,000 in debts, including $500,000 owed to her former attorney Jose Baez, ?NBC station WESH in Orlando reported.
Anyone who is?owed money by Anthony can attend the hearing and ask her questions, WESH reported.?
One of Anthony's lawyers, Charles Greene, told WESH in late?January?that Anthony had been "living on the kindness of friends for the most part."
"There are people that believe in her that will see her through this ordeal," Greene said after Anthony filed bankruptcy papers.
He said Anthony filed for bankruptcy to stop people from coming after her with lawsuits.?
"She wants people to just leave her alone," Greene said. "She's had multiple opportunities to do tell-all book deals, to do tell-all interviews for a lot of money. That's not what she's trying to do. She wants this over so she can finally have the time to mourn, not only about the the loss of her daughter, but the loss of her life."
Though she has largely stayed out of the public eye since her controversial?acquittal, Anthony appeared in a YouTube video that surfaced in January 2012 showing her with short, blonde hair, a departure from how she looked during her closely watched murder trial.
Related:?
Casey Anthony files for Chapter 7
Judge throws out Anthony charges
This story was originally published on Mon Mar 4, 2013 10:26 AM EST
The two richest people in advertising, according to Forbes new list of the world's billionaires, are Jean-Claude Decaux and his family, and Elisabeth Badinter.
The Decaux and Badinter names are well-known to adbiz insiders. Decaux is the huge outdoor/billboard conglomerate that competes with CBS Outdoor and Lamar Advertising. Jean-Claude is 233rd on the list of the world's most wealthy, with a fortune estimated at $5.2 billion.
Badinter is the French intellectual feminist heiress to the fortune of Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, founder of Publicis Groupe. She's currently the chairman of Publicis. She's 1,031st on the list, with a $1.4 billion fortune.
Mar. 3, 2013 ? An international group of investigators has identified seven new genetic regions associated with age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a common cause of blindness in older individuals. The findings, reported online March 3 in Nature Genetics, could point to new biological pathways and therapeutic targets for AMD.
The AMD Gene Consortium, a network of 18 research groups supported by the National Eye Institute, also confirmed 12 genetic loci identified in previous studies. The study represents the most comprehensive genome-wide analysis of genetic variations associated with AMD.
The consortium's efforts have now explained up to 65 percent of the genetics of AMD, said Jonathan Haines, Ph.D., director of the Vanderbilt Center for Human Genetics Research.
In addition to genetic causes, which may account for about half of all cases of AMD, risk factors include age, smoking, high blood pressure, obesity and diet.
"We're getting closer and closer to understanding the full list of risk factors for AMD," said Haines, one of the lead authors of the study and principal investigator of the coordinating center for the consortium.
AMD is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that kills photoreceptor cells in the macula -- the region of the retina responsible for sharp, detailed central vision. As AMD advances, it robs individuals of the central vision necessary for everyday activities like reading, driving, watching television and identifying faces. About 2 million people in the United States have advanced AMD, according to the National Eye Institute.
Haines and others discovered the first genetic risk factor for AMD in 2005 -- a gene called Complement Factor H, which is involved in inflammatory signaling pathways. Since then, researchers have identified a number of other genetic loci associated with AMD, but the studies usually involved small numbers of individuals.
"It was very clear that if we wanted to make real progress in understanding the genetics of AMD, we needed to pull all of these various datasets together -- which is what the AMD Gene Consortium has done," Haines said.
A strength of the AMD Gene Consortium, Haines noted, is the participation of groups from all over the world. The consortium combined existing genome-wide association scans (GWAS) and performed additional genotyping studies. The researchers examined genetic data from more than 17,000 patients with advanced AMD and more than 60,000 people without AMD.
The loci they identified include genes involved in immune system signaling, lipid metabolism, remodeling of the matrix that surrounds cells and blood vessel development. The researchers are continuing to study the genetic regions, Haines said.
"This paper is a global population look at genetic loci, and now we're drilling down to the details and discovering rare variants in genes that may suggest how they participate in causing AMD," Haines said.
The hope, Haines said, is that a full understanding of genetic and environmental risk factors will allow the computation of an AMD risk score. Several companies already offer tests that generate risk scores, but they are based on older information.
"If we can identify the people who are at greatly increased risk for AMD, perhaps we can begin to do clinical trials to test treatments that may prevent the disease," Haines said.
Current treatments for AMD help stabilize the disease, but they do not reverse its course. New treatments based on the genetic findings are in development, Haines said.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Vanderbilt University Medical Center, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Lars G Fritsche et al. Seven new loci associated with age-related macular degeneration. Nature Genetics, 03 March 2013 DOI: 10.1038/ng.2578
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
(Reuters) - "Jack the Giant Slayer," the first big-budget action film of the year, was anything but a killer at the weekend box office.
"Jack," a retelling of the "Jack and the Beanstalk" fairy tale, earned the No. 1 spot on domestic box office charts with $28 million in ticket sales in U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to studio estimates compiled by Reuters on Sunday.
But that was an underwhelming start for a 3D movie that cost $189 million to produce, plus tens of millions more to market.
"Jack the Giant Slayer" also grossed $13.7 million from 1,824 screens in 10 Asian markets.
Comedy "Identity Thief" took in $9.7 million to capture second place, and new adult comedy "21 and Over" finished in third place on domestic charts with $9 million in ticket sales from Friday through Sunday.
Low-budget horror sequel "The Last Exorcism Part II" took the No. 4 slot with $8 million, according to studio estimates.
"Jack" clearly was not a great opening by any means, said Phil Contrino, vice president/chief analyst with Boxoffice.com.
"But I wouldn't rush to call the film a financial flop just yet because overseas growth can really save a movie, and I feel that this is a movie that could do really well in other territories and make up for the fact that the North American haul was a little bit underwhelming."
The movie stars Nicholas Hoult as a young farmer who ventures into the land of the giants to save a kidnapped princess. The film received a mixed reception from critics. As of Friday, 49 percent of reviews recommended the movie on aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes.
Warner Bros. believes "Jack" will perform well in overseas markets as it opens in more countries in the coming weeks. International sales, particularly for action movies, can run twice as high or more.
"It was within the range of our expectations," Jeff Goldstein, vice president theatrical distributions at Warner Bros., said about the film's domestic weekend performance.
"We know that this is a global picture and the technology and the special effects will really drive this movie internationally," he added.
Global takings helped to push "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" over the billion dollar milestone at the worldwide box office during the weekend, making it only the 15th film in history to achieve the feat.
"We could not be more proud to have reached this amazing benchmark," Dan Fellman, president of domestic distribution of Warner Bros. Pictures, said in a statement on Sunday.
MAKING BACK ITS BUDGET
"Jack the Giant Slayer" was produced by Time Warner Inc-owned Warner Brothers and Legendary Entertainment, which partnered with Warner on hits including "The Dark Knight" trilogy and "The Hangover" series.
Two of last year's films with bigger budgets flopped - Walt Disney Co's $250 million Mars epic "John Carter" and the $209 million action movie "Battleship" from Comcast Corp's Universal Pictures - forcing the companies to acknowledge financial losses.
"John Carter," released in March last year, opened with $30.2 million, according to Box Office Mojo.
Janney Montgomery Scott analyst Tony Wible, who compiles a database to project film performance, had estimated "Jack" would need to open with at least $25 million at U.S. and Canadian theaters to make back its budget, not including marketing costs.
"21 and Over," produced for $13 million, is a college party comedy about three friends who celebrate a 21st birthday on the night before a big exam. It was written by the screenwriters of "The Hangover."
The "Last Exorcism" sequel follows the 2010 original about a minister who lets his demon-fighting be filmed by a documentary crew. In the new movie, the story resumes with the girl who was previously freed from an evil force running into more trouble. Distributor CBS Films, a unit of CBS Corp, acquired the sequel for about $3 million.
Rounding out the top five films was "Snitch," which brought in $7.7 million.
Another new release, "Phantom," failed to finish in the top 10 performing films. The movie stars Ed Harris and David Duchovny in the story of a Soviet submarine captain leading a secret mission.
"Identity Thief" was released by Universal Pictures, a unit of Comcast. "Snitch" was distributed by Summit Entertainment, a unit of Lions Gate Entertainment "Phantom" was released by privately held RCR Distribution.
(Reporting By Lisa Richwine and Patricia Reaney; Editing by Bill Trott and Philip Barbara)
>>for more on the budget impasse, we are joined tonight by cnbc's chief washington correspondent,
john harwood
. why don't i just put this question to you. why can't they get their act together?
>>underneath the partisan maneuvering,
lester
, thereville a deep philosophic divide u republicans want to shrink the size of government by more than the public supports right now but
president obama
can't force republicans to raise taxes to pay for government as it is and in that way, they reflect the contradictions of the
american people
, who collectively like receiving government benefits more than they like paying for it.
>>what's not going to get done while this standoff continues?
>>it may be that the two sides,
lester
,
blow the whistle
, take a timeout, work on things that they can agree on, like immigration. maybe even some gun control measures. but this fiscal debate could come back in the next few months, either because of the sequester backlash or because republicans decide they really do need to rein in spending on those big problgrams of medicare and
social security
and the only way they can make that happen is by accepting more tax increases,
lester
.
Getting around the Uncertainty PrinciplePublic release date: 3-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Leonor Sierra lsierra@ur.rochester.edu 585-276-6264 University of Rochester
Physicists make first direct measurements of polarization states of light
Researchers at the University of Rochester and the University of Ottawa have applied a recently developed technique to directly measure for the first time the polarization states of light. Their work both overcomes some important challenges of Heisenberg's famous Uncertainty Principle and also is applicable to qubits, the building blocks of quantum information theory.
They report their results in a paper published this week in Nature Photonics.
The direct measurement technique was first developed in 2011 by scientists at the National Research Council, Canada, to measure the wavefunction a way of determining the state of a quantum system.
Such direct measurements of the wavefunction had long seemed impossible because of a key tenet of the uncertainty principle the idea that certain properties of a quantum system could be known only poorly if certain other related properties were known with precision. The ability to make these measurements directly challenges the idea that full understanding of a quantum system could never come from direct observation.
The Rochester/Ottawa researchers, led by Robert Boyd, who has appointments at both universities, measured the polarization states of light - the directions in which the electric and magnetic fields of the light oscillate. Their key result, like that of the team that pioneered direct measurement, is that it is possible to measure key related variables, known as "conjugate" variables, of a quantum particle or state directly. The polarization states of light can be used to encode information, which is why they can be the basis of qubits in quantum information applications.
"The ability to perform direct measurement of the quantum wavefunction has important future implications for quantum information science," explained Boyd, Canada Excellence Research Chair in Quantum Nonlinear Optics at the University of Ottawa and Professor of Optics and Physics at the University of Rochester. "Ongoing work in our group involves applying this technique to other systems, for example, measuring the form of a "mixed" (as opposed to a pure) quantum state."
Previously, a technique called quantum tomography has allowed researchers to measure the information contained in these quantum states, but only indirectly. Quantum tomography requires intensive post-processing of the data, and this is a time-consuming process that is not required in the direct measurement technique. Thus, in principle, the new technique provides the same information as quantum tomography but in significantly less time.
"The key to characterizing any quantum system is gathering information about conjugate variables," said co-author Jonathan Leach, who is now a lecturer at Heriot-Watt University, UK. "The reason it wasn't thought possible to measure two conjugate variables directly was because measuring one would destroy the wavefunction before the other one could be measured."
The direct measurement technique employs a "trick" to measure the first property in such a way that the system is not disturbed significantly and information about the second property can still be obtained. This careful measurement relies on the "weak measurement" of the first property followed by a "strong measurement" of the second property.
First described 25 years ago, weak measurement requires that the coupling between the system and what is used to measure it be, as its name suggests, "weak", which means that the system is barely disturbed in the measurement process. The downside of this type of measurement is that a single measurement only provides a small amount of information, and to get an accurate readout, the process has to be repeated multiple times and the average taken.
Boyd and his colleagues used the position and momentum of the light as the indicator of the polarization state. To couple the polarization to the spatial degree of freedom they used birefringent crystals: when light goes through such a crystal, there is a spatial separation introduced for different polarizations. For example, if light is made of a combination of horizontally and vertically polarized component, the positions of the individual components will spread out when it goes through the crystal according to its polarization. The thickness of the crystal can control the strength of the measurement, weak or strong, and determine the degree of separation, correspondingly small or large.
In this experiment, Boyd and his colleagues passed polarized light through two crystals of differing thicknesses: the first, a very thin crystal that "weakly" measures the horizontal and vertical polarization state; the second, a much thicker crystal that "strongly" measures the diagonal and anti-diagonal polarization state. As the first measurement was performed weakly, the system is not significantly disturbed, and therefore, information gained from the second measurement was still valid. This process is repeated several times to build up accurate statistics. Putting all of this together gives a full, direct characterization of the polarization states of the light.
###
The other authors of the paper are Jeff Z. Salvail, Megan Agnew and Allan S. Johnson, all of whom were undergraduates at Ottawa when the research was carried out, and Ottawa graduate student Eliot Bolduc.
This work was supported by the Canada Excellence Research Chairs (CERC) Program and Boyd also acknowledges support from the DARPA InPho program.
About the University of Rochester
The University of Rochester is one of the nation's leading private universities. Located in Rochester, N.Y., the University gives students exceptional opportunities for interdisciplinary study and close collaboration with faculty through its unique cluster-based curriculum. Its College, School of Arts and Sciences, and Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences are complemented by its Eastman School of Music, Simon School of Business, Warner School of Education, Laboratory for Laser Energetics, School of Medicine and Dentistry, School of Nursing, Eastman Institute for Oral Health, and the Memorial Art Gallery.
[ | 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.
Getting around the Uncertainty PrinciplePublic release date: 3-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Leonor Sierra lsierra@ur.rochester.edu 585-276-6264 University of Rochester
Physicists make first direct measurements of polarization states of light
Researchers at the University of Rochester and the University of Ottawa have applied a recently developed technique to directly measure for the first time the polarization states of light. Their work both overcomes some important challenges of Heisenberg's famous Uncertainty Principle and also is applicable to qubits, the building blocks of quantum information theory.
They report their results in a paper published this week in Nature Photonics.
The direct measurement technique was first developed in 2011 by scientists at the National Research Council, Canada, to measure the wavefunction a way of determining the state of a quantum system.
Such direct measurements of the wavefunction had long seemed impossible because of a key tenet of the uncertainty principle the idea that certain properties of a quantum system could be known only poorly if certain other related properties were known with precision. The ability to make these measurements directly challenges the idea that full understanding of a quantum system could never come from direct observation.
The Rochester/Ottawa researchers, led by Robert Boyd, who has appointments at both universities, measured the polarization states of light - the directions in which the electric and magnetic fields of the light oscillate. Their key result, like that of the team that pioneered direct measurement, is that it is possible to measure key related variables, known as "conjugate" variables, of a quantum particle or state directly. The polarization states of light can be used to encode information, which is why they can be the basis of qubits in quantum information applications.
"The ability to perform direct measurement of the quantum wavefunction has important future implications for quantum information science," explained Boyd, Canada Excellence Research Chair in Quantum Nonlinear Optics at the University of Ottawa and Professor of Optics and Physics at the University of Rochester. "Ongoing work in our group involves applying this technique to other systems, for example, measuring the form of a "mixed" (as opposed to a pure) quantum state."
Previously, a technique called quantum tomography has allowed researchers to measure the information contained in these quantum states, but only indirectly. Quantum tomography requires intensive post-processing of the data, and this is a time-consuming process that is not required in the direct measurement technique. Thus, in principle, the new technique provides the same information as quantum tomography but in significantly less time.
"The key to characterizing any quantum system is gathering information about conjugate variables," said co-author Jonathan Leach, who is now a lecturer at Heriot-Watt University, UK. "The reason it wasn't thought possible to measure two conjugate variables directly was because measuring one would destroy the wavefunction before the other one could be measured."
The direct measurement technique employs a "trick" to measure the first property in such a way that the system is not disturbed significantly and information about the second property can still be obtained. This careful measurement relies on the "weak measurement" of the first property followed by a "strong measurement" of the second property.
First described 25 years ago, weak measurement requires that the coupling between the system and what is used to measure it be, as its name suggests, "weak", which means that the system is barely disturbed in the measurement process. The downside of this type of measurement is that a single measurement only provides a small amount of information, and to get an accurate readout, the process has to be repeated multiple times and the average taken.
Boyd and his colleagues used the position and momentum of the light as the indicator of the polarization state. To couple the polarization to the spatial degree of freedom they used birefringent crystals: when light goes through such a crystal, there is a spatial separation introduced for different polarizations. For example, if light is made of a combination of horizontally and vertically polarized component, the positions of the individual components will spread out when it goes through the crystal according to its polarization. The thickness of the crystal can control the strength of the measurement, weak or strong, and determine the degree of separation, correspondingly small or large.
In this experiment, Boyd and his colleagues passed polarized light through two crystals of differing thicknesses: the first, a very thin crystal that "weakly" measures the horizontal and vertical polarization state; the second, a much thicker crystal that "strongly" measures the diagonal and anti-diagonal polarization state. As the first measurement was performed weakly, the system is not significantly disturbed, and therefore, information gained from the second measurement was still valid. This process is repeated several times to build up accurate statistics. Putting all of this together gives a full, direct characterization of the polarization states of the light.
###
The other authors of the paper are Jeff Z. Salvail, Megan Agnew and Allan S. Johnson, all of whom were undergraduates at Ottawa when the research was carried out, and Ottawa graduate student Eliot Bolduc.
This work was supported by the Canada Excellence Research Chairs (CERC) Program and Boyd also acknowledges support from the DARPA InPho program.
About the University of Rochester
The University of Rochester is one of the nation's leading private universities. Located in Rochester, N.Y., the University gives students exceptional opportunities for interdisciplinary study and close collaboration with faculty through its unique cluster-based curriculum. Its College, School of Arts and Sciences, and Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences are complemented by its Eastman School of Music, Simon School of Business, Warner School of Education, Laboratory for Laser Energetics, School of Medicine and Dentistry, School of Nursing, Eastman Institute for Oral Health, and the Memorial Art Gallery.
[ | 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.
First lady Michelle Obama exercises with children from Chicago Public Schools, in her hometown of Chicago, Thursday, Feb. 28, 2013, as she makes a major announcement helping to bring back physical activity to area schools, while celebrating the third anniversary of her 'Lets Move' program. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)
First lady Michelle Obama exercises with children from Chicago Public Schools, in her hometown of Chicago, Thursday, Feb. 28, 2013, as she makes a major announcement helping to bring back physical activity to area schools, while celebrating the third anniversary of her 'Lets Move' program. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)
First lady Michelle Obama exercises with children from Chicago Public Schools, in her hometown of Chicago, Thursday, Feb. 28, 2013, as she makes a major announcement helping to bring back physical activity to area schools, while celebrating the third anniversary of her 'Lets Move' program. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)
First lady Michelle Obama exercises with children from Chicago Public Schools, in her hometown of Chicago, Thursday, Feb. 28, 2013, as she makes a major announcement helping to bring back physical activity to area schools, while celebrating the third anniversary of her 'Lets Move' program. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)
CHICAGO (AP) ? Michelle Obama says people worried about youth gun violence have to do more than simply tell children they care about the problem and then wind up "going to these funerals and mourning with these kids when there's still work to do."
"They're looking to us to make the hard choices for them," the first lady said Thursday. She suggested there are better ways for her to help than becoming publicly involved in Congress' debate over gun laws that the president seeks.
Providing more creative outlets for children can help, she said in an interview with reporters who accompanied her on a three-city tour for the third anniversary of "Let's Move," the anti-obesity program
"Kids need to be engaged, not just intellectually. They need more than just to do well on test scores. They need to have something else in life to look forward to," the first lady said, adding that opportunities to draw, sing, dance, act and play a sport can help them channel negative energy in a more positive direction.
On a two-day trip to highlight her national campaign to combat childhood obesity, Mrs. Obama changed out of a dark-colored business suit and into a coral-and-black workout outfit to jump up and down with thousands of Chicago middle school students who were brought to the McCormick Place convention center for what amounted to one very large aerobics class.
Mrs. Obama had announced a new public-private partnership, called "Let's Move Active Schools," to help schools find low- or no-cost ways to help students get the recommended hour of daily exercise. The line-up included such star athletes as Bo Jackson and Colin Kaepernick, as well as Olympians Dominique Dawes, Gabby Douglas, Serena Williams, Allyson Felix and Ashton Eaton.
She took a few minutes to talk seriously with the kids before she joined the fun, urging them to do their homework and make good life choices. She recalled her upbringing in a Chicago family of four that wasn't rich and having to share a bedroom with her older brother.
"If you guys remember just one thing from our time today, it's this: Although I am the first lady of the United States of America ... I am no different from you," she said.
Mrs. Obama hinted in the interview with reporters she'll do more to encourage schools and other organizations to provide opportunities for children in a time of declining budgets.
"More and more of our schools are having to eliminate the things that give kids passion and a reason to be in school," she said. Mrs. Obama added that kids are sharp enough to know when teachers, public officials others are just talking the talk.
"We have to stop telling our kids that we care. They're looking to us to make the hard choices for them," she said. "And going to these funerals and mourning with these kids when there's still work to do that we haven't done, it can be frustrating."
Mrs. Obama came home to Chicago earlier this month to attend the funeral of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, who was killed by gunfire near the Obama home after returning from performing for President Barack Obama's inauguration. Pendleton's parents later sat with the first lady for Obama's president's State of the Union address.
A month after the December slaying of 20 elementary school pupils in Connecticut, Obama asked Congress to send him legislation banning assault-style weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, and requiring criminal background checks for all gun purchases.
Congress has held hearings on the issue, but lawmakers have not taken any action on gun legislation.
___
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