Obama embarks on trip to Africa, Mandela's health a question

By Mark Felsenthal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama set out on an eight-day trip to Africa on Wednesday that is aimed at reviving U.S. engagement with the continent but that will be overshadowed by the uncertain health of South Africa hero Nelson Mandela.

Obama's trip, his second to the continent as president, will take him to Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania. While the president hopes to spotlight trade and economic development themes, his visit would be dwarfed if Mandela's condition takes a turn for the worse.

The 94-year old former South African president remained hospitalized in critical condition after being admitted more than two weeks ago with a lung infection, the government said on Tuesday.

Air Force One carried Obama, his wife Michelle, their daughters Sasha and Malia, as well as the first lady's mother, Marian Robinson, and an Obama niece, Leslie Robinson.

Africans feel a special bond with Obama, the first African American U.S. president, and have been impatient for him to make an extended visit to the continent. Africans are also disappointed that the Obama administration has not engaged with the continent as much as the administrations of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Administration officials say the trip is an opportunity to jump-start the relationship. Obama's first stop will be Senegal, where he will visit Goree Island, the site of a monument to Africans who were sent to slavery in the Americas.

His next stop will be in South Africa, where aides say he will be available to visit Mandela but will defer to the wishes of the Mandela family to determine whether the former South African leader is up to such an encounter.

In South Africa, Obama is due to make a speech outlining his Africa policy at the University of Cape Town, where Robert F. Kennedy gave his famous 1966 address comparing the struggle against apartheid in South Africa with the struggle for civil rights in the United States.

The president will also visit Robben Island, where Mandela and other political prisoners were held, and visit a health clinic.

Obama's last stop will be in the East African nation of Tanzania, where he will take part in events with business leaders and visit a power plant.

(Reporting by Mark Felsenthal; Editing by Vicki Allen)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-embarks-trip-africa-mandelas-health-133056090.html

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Coding camps for kids rise in popularity ? Artesia News

In this Wednesday, June 19, 2013 photo, instructor Thaddeus Owings, left, helps camper Nicholas Sanchez work on creating a video game while at an iD Tech Camp at the Emory University campus, in Atlanta. So-called coding camps for kids are becoming more popular amid a growing effort to expand access to computer programming and inspire more youths to seek computer science degrees and later careers in technology. (AP Photo/Jaime Henry-White)

ATLANTA (AP) ? The video game Jacob Asofsky is creating is simple: ?Someone who is trying to take over the world and you try to stop them.?

The 12-year-old from Florida is spending two weeks at a summer camp in a program that teaches programming skills to young people.

?It?s about having fun, but it also gives them the tools to be able to do this at home because they don?t have this in school,? said Taylor Jones, director of the iD Tech Camp at Atlanta?s Emory University.

So-called coding camps for children are becoming more popular amid a growing effort to expand access to computer programming and inspire more youths to seek computer science degrees and careers in technology. Their rise underscores a seeming mismatch in the U.S. economy: people like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Tumblr founder David Karp illustrate the opportunities programming skills can create, yet universities are not graduating enough code-savvy students to meet employers? demands.

The iD Tech Camps, which have grown from 200 students in 1999 to 28,000 enrolled this year in courses at dozens of locations nationwide, use interest in gaming to build bridges to computer programming and hopefully careers in Web developing, film animation and app creation for smart phones. Courses start at $829 for a one-week course during the day with overnight students paying $1,348.

On a recent weekday, Asofsky was attending an iD Tech Camp on the campus with some 95 other youths under the age of 17. He was using the gaming software RPG Maker to create a video game in which the main character travels around the world, buys animals and armor and interacts with others along the way.

?I have to say the interface of actually making a game is just as fun as playing a game,? Asofsky said. ?It?s a lot like playing a game inside a game.?

Early courses for children starting at age 7 use the photo and illustration software Adobe Photoshop and the gaming software Multimedia Fusion to create a simple arcade-style game.

?We sit down and talk about what makes games fun,? said instructor Melissa Andrews, who was working with the youngest group of campers. ?We get it down to the basics so they can make their own game.?

Courses for older children include designing apps, creating sophisticated, 3-D, first-person shooter games using the Unreal Developer?s Kit ? also known as UDK ? and learning programming languages like Java and C++. The idea is to build self-confidence and spark interest in learning how computers work, all to perhaps plant the seed of a future career in programming.

There will be 1.4 million computing jobs by 2020 but only 400,000 computer science students by that time, according to Code.org, a nonprofit with a list of who?s who in the tech world on its advisory board including Twitter creator Jack Dorsey and Dropbox CEO Drew Houston.

And the jobs pay well. The median annual wage for a computer programmer, for instance, was $71,380 in 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Meanwhile, jobs for network and computer systems administrators are growing at double the national average, with a median annual salary of $69,160.

Yet high schools and universities seem to be out of step with the job market. Nine out of 10 high schools don?t offer computer programming classes and the number of students graduating from college with a computer science degree is down from a decade ago, according to Code.org.

Earlier this year, President Barack Obama said programming should be a required course in high school, similar to foreign languages.

?Given how pervasive computers and the Internet is now and how integral it is into our economy and how fascinated kids are with it, I want to make sure they know how to actually produce stuff using computers and not just simply consume stuff,? Obama said during a Google+ Hangout.

Yale Oseroff?s high school back in Virginia doesn?t offer programming classes. The 17-year-old is spending his fourth year at an iD Tech Camp working through C++, a popular programming language used for systems and application software, for drivers to communicate between an operating system and devices like printers and to create some video games.

?I?m learning (computer) networking, which is what I want to do in college,? he said, as he worked on developing a program to capture usernames and passwords and store them in a database.

On the Georgia Tech campus, the Institute for Computing Education offers a variety of camps clustered into elementary, middle and high school groups. Courses include making apps with App Inventor, creating moving sculptures with the WeDo Robotics systems that uses rotational motion and creating animations using Alice software.

Barbara Ericson, director of computer outreach at the Institute for Computing Education at Georgia Tech, said people sometimes ask: why not wait until children are older to start teaching them how to program?

?Anything over the age of 7 is capable, they are capable of learning reasoning,? she said.

During a presentation earlier this month at a technology conference in Washington, D.C., Code.org founder Hadi Partovi said less than 5 percent of U.S. high school students spend class time learning computer science while it?s a graduation requirement in China. He noted that many ?software? jobs are outside the tech industry such as banking, retail, government and entertainment, which makes programming skills particularly versatile.

?It could mean starting your own company,? he said. ?But it could mean you?re a doctor and you?re tired of entering the same data into a chart using paper and you want to write an app that does it for you.?

___

Associated Press videographers Johnny Clark in Atlanta and Bill Gorman in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

___

Follow Christina Almeida Cassidy on Twitter: http://twitter.com/AP_Christina .

This entry was posted on June 25, 2013, 12:39 pm and is filed under United States. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Source: http://www.artesianews.com/2013/06/25/ap-news/united-states-ap-news/coding-camps-for-kids-rise-in-popularity/

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Imagination Tech reveals Warrior CPU core to fight (uphill) battle against ARM

This news isn't remotely surprising, given Imagination Tech's recent acquisition of CPU designer MIPS, but reporting it still gives us a little flutter of excitement. And for good reason: Imagination has just revealed that its first MIPS-based CPU core, which should be able to run Android, will be introduced by the end of this year, and that it'll go by the totally appropriate codename of Warrior (or, less dramatically, "MIPS Series5"). The core's first battle will be to prove that the MIPS architecture really can be a competitive alternative to ARM (which uses a similar low-power RISC architecture) and that Imagination didn't just blow $100 million on hot air. Speaking of which, the attached press release comes with plenty of bold claims, including a statement that the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Warrior will offer "best-in-class performance and efficiency," and a promise that Imagination "will change the landscape for CPU IP." We have no idea how all of this is going to play out, but we fully intend to be ringside when it does.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/gaSJ6aCLy-M/

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What the New 'Star Wars' Movies Need: Zuckuss

By Ryan Rigley Now that production on "Star Wars VII' is starting to heat up, the flood gates have been opened for rumors a plenty regarding the film. Last Wednesday, Bleeding Cool intercepted a casting breakdown for the movie revealing seven brand new characters; late-teen female, young twenty-something male, late twenty-something male, seventy-something male, second [...]

Source: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2013/06/24/star-wars-movies-need-zuckuss/

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'70s Show' star parks on freeway, is arrested

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Lisa Robin Kelly is shown in the mug shot from her November 2012 assault arrest.

Sometimes cars must stand still on the freeway -- but only when traffic forces the issue. In the case of former "That '70s Show" star Lisa Robin Kelly, it was purposeful parking in a lane of Interstate 5 near Burbank, Calif., that caused problems.

The actress, who played Eric's older sister, Laurie, on the sitcom, was arrested after apparently parking on the freeway Saturday night, E! has confirmed.

The California Highway Patrol responded to calls about Kelly's car blocking the lane. She reportedly failed a field sobriety test and was arrested for driving under the influence.

Kelly, 43, has been in trouble with the law several times recently. She pled guilty to DUI in 2010 in North Carolina. In March of 2012, she was arrested on a felony charge of corporal injury upon a spouse and released on bail. The L.A. County district attorney declined to file charges in that case.

In November 2012, Kelly and her husband were both arrested for assault after a disturbance at their North Carolina home. They were later released on bond.

After the 2010 DUI arrest, which included the release of a wild-haired mug shot of Kelly, the actress said she was embarrassed, but was not abusing drugs or alcohol at the time. "My poor mother has to look at that picture of me," she told ABC News in 2012. "That doesn't look like me. That's not me."

Kelly left her regular role on the sitcom in 2003, made a few appearances later, and was eventually replaced. She told ABC News that she lost a baby during her time on the show and as a result, " I lost everything and I was abusing alcohol."

She also said she hoped for an acting comeback.

Source: http://www.today.com/entertainment/70s-show-star-arrested-after-parking-l-freeway-6C10424016

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Vitamin D improves mood and blood pressure in women with diabetes

June 25, 2013 ? In women who have type 2 diabetes and show signs of depression, vitamin D supplements significantly lowered blood pressure and improved their moods, according to a pilot study at Loyola University Chicago Niehoff School of Nursing.

Vitamin D even helped the women lose a few pounds.

The study was presented at the American Diabetes Association 73rd Scientific Sessions in Chicago.

"Vitamin D supplementation potentially is an easy and cost-effective therapy, with minimal side effects," said Sue M. Penckofer, PhD, RN, lead author of the study and a professor in the Niehoff School of Nursing. "Larger, randomized controlled trials are needed to determine the impact of vitamin D supplementation on depression and major cardiovascular risk factors among women with Type 2 diabetes."

Penckofer recently received a four-year, $1.49 million grant from the National Institute of Nursing Research at the National Institutes of Health to do such a study. Penckofer and her Loyola co-investigators plan to enroll 180 women who have type 2 diabetes, symptoms of depression and insufficient levels of vitamin D. Women will be randomly assigned to receive either a weekly vitamin D supplementation (50,000 International Units) or a matching weekly placebo for six months. The study is titled "Can the Sunshine Vitamin Improve Mood and Self Management in Women with Diabetes?

About 1 in 10 people in the United States has diabetes, and the incidence is projected to increase to 1 in 4 persons by 2050. Women with type 2 diabetes have worse outcomes than men. The reason may be due to depression, which affects more than 25 percent of women with diabetes. Depression impairs a patient's ability to manage her disease by eating right, exercising, taking medications, etc.

Many Americans do not get enough vitamin D, and people with diabetes are at especially high risk for vitamin D insufficiency or deficiency. Reasons include limited intake of foods high in vitamin D, obesity, lack of sun exposure and genetic variations.

The pilot study included 46 women who were an average age of 55 years, had diabetes an average of 8 years and insufficient blood levels of vitamin D (18 ng/ml). They took a weekly dose (50,000 International Units) of vitamin D. (By comparison, the recommended dietary allowance for women 51 to 70 years is 600 IU per day.)

After six months, their vitamin D blood levels reached sufficient levels (average 38 ng/ml) and their moods improved significantly. For example, in a 20-question depression symptom survey, scores decreased from 26.8 at the beginning of the study (indicating moderate depression) to 12.2 at six months (indicating no depression. (The depression scale ranges from 0 to 60, with higher numbers indicating more symptoms of depression.)

Blood pressure also improved, with the upper number decreasing from 140.4 mm Hg to 132.5 mm Hg. And their weight dropped from an average of 226.1 pounds to 223.6 pounds.

Penckofer is internationally known for her research on vitamin D, diabetes and depression. In October, she will be inducted as a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing for her scientific contributions in improving the health and quality of life of women with chronic disease. And she recently was appointed as the first nurse researcher to the Chicago Diabetes Center for Translational Research.

Co-authors of the study are Todd Doyle, PhD, Patricia Mumby, PhD, Mary Byrn, Mary Ann Emanuele, MD and Diane Wallis, MD.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/health_medicine/nutrition/~3/DPhOiwJotg4/130625091841.htm

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Sloth bear cub debuts at the Smithsonian's National Zoo: Hank is the zoo's first sloth bear cub in seven years

June 21, 2013 ? The daring and adventurous sloth bear cub, Hank, made his public debut at the Smithsonian's National Zoo this week. He is the first sloth bear born at the Zoo in seven years.

Born Dec. 19, 2012, Hank and his mother, Hana, have spent the past six months in a den near the Asia Trail exhibit. Now that he is adept at climbing, the Zoo's animal care staff are confident he can conquer the yard's complex climbing structures and varied terrain. Visitors can see the family on Asia Trail daily from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., weather permitting.

"Sloth bears in general are full of personality, but watching Hank explore and play in his yard is especially endearing," said animal keeper Mindy Babitz. "Only 18 zoos in the U.S. exhibit this species, so visitors are in for a rare and special treat watching him grow up."

Via the live Sloth Bear Cub Cam on the National Zoo's website, animal care staff and the public have had the opportunity to watch Hank play, grow and ride on his mother's back. Keepers will share the information gathered with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums' Species Survival Plan for the benefit of other institutions that exhibit and want to breed this species. Hank is one of seven sloth bear cubs born to the North American SSP this year, and his birth increases the population in human care by 3 percent.

Last month, the Zoo's Facebook fans elected to name the cub Hank, a moniker that combines the cub's parents' names, Hana and Francois. Keepers have spent the last few months training Hank and teaching him behaviors that will help animal care staff evaluate his health, such as presenting body parts and opening his mouth.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists sloth bears as vulnerable because populations in their native Bhutan, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka are decreasing due to loss of habitat and poaching.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/rsDvHU6MPmM/130621141700.htm

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