LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - R&B singer Chris Brown, on probation for beating his former girlfriend, was charged on Tuesday with a hit-and-run and driving without a valid license in connection with a May 21 traffic accident in Los Angeles. Brown, 24, allegedly rear-ended another car and faces up to six months in jail on each misdemeanor charge, L.A. City Attorney spokesman Frank Mateljan said. He will be arraigned in Los Angeles Superior Court on July 15, Mateljan said. ...
Study identifies protein that contributes to cognitive decline in Alzheimer'sPublic release date: 25-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Karin Eskenazi ket2116@columbia.edu 212-342-0508 Columbia University Medical Center
Findings highlight potential therapeutic targets
NEW YORK, NY (June 25, 2013) Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) have demonstrated that a protein called caspase-2 is a key regulator of a signaling pathway that leads to cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease. The findings, made in a mouse model of Alzheimer's, suggest that inhibiting this protein could prevent the neuronal damage and subsequent cognitive decline associated with the disease. The study was published this month in the online journal Nature Communications.
One of the earliest events in Alzheimer's is disruption of the brain's synapses (the small gaps across which nerve impulses are passed), which can lead to neuronal death. Although what drives this process has not been clear, studies have indicated that caspace-2 might be involved, according to senior author Michael Shelanski, MD, PhD, the Delafield Professor of Pathology & Cell Biology, chair of the Department of Pathology & Cell Biology, and co-director of the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain at CUMC.
Several years ago, in tissue culture studies of mouse neurons, Dr. Shelanski found that caspace-2 plays a critical role in the death of neurons in the presence of amyloid beta, the protein that accumulates in the neurons of people with Alzheimer's. Other researchers have shown that caspase-2 also contributes to the maintenance of normal synaptic functions.
Dr. Shelanski and his team hypothesized that aberrant activation of caspase-2 may cause synaptic changes in Alzheimer's disease. To test this hypothesis, the researchers crossed J20 transgenic mice (a common mouse model of Alzheimer's) with caspase-2 null mice (mice that lack caspase-2). They compared the animals' ability to negotiate a radial-arm water maze, a standard test of cognitive ability, with that of regular J20 mice and of normal mice at 4, 9, and 14 months of age.
The results for the three groups of mice were similar at the first two intervals. At 14 months, however, the J20/caspase-2 null mice did significantly better in the water maze test than the J20 mice and similarly to the normal mice. "We showed that removing caspase-2 from J20 mice prevented memory impairment without significant changes in the level of soluble amyloid beta," said co-lead author Roger Lefort, PhD, associate research scientist at CUMC.
Analysis of the neurons showed that the J20/caspase-2 null mice had a higher density of dendritic spines than the J20 mice. The more spines a neuron has, the more impulses it can transmit.
"The J20/caspase-2 null mice showed the same dendritic spine density and morphology as the normal miceas opposed to the deficits in the J20 mice," said co-lead author Julio Pozueta, PhD. "This strongly suggests that caspase-2 is a critical regulator in the memory decline associated with beta-amyloid in Alzheimer's disease."
The researchers further validated the results in studies of rat neurons in tissue culture.
Finally, the researchers found that caspase-2 interacts with RhoA, a critical regulator of the morphology (form and structure) of dendritic spines. "It appears that in normal neurons, caspase-2 and RhoA form an inactive complex outside the dendritic spines," said Dr. Lefort. "When the complex is exposed to amyloid beta, it breaks apart, activating the two components." Once activated, caspase-2 and RhoA enter the dendritic spines and contribute to their demise, possibly by interacting with a third molecule, the enzyme ROCK-II.
"This raises the possibility that if you can inhibit one or all of these molecules, especially early in the course of Alzheimer's, you might be able to protect neurons and slow down the cognitive effects of the disease," said Dr. Lefort.
###
The paper is titled, "Caspase-2 is required for dendritic spine and behavioural alterations in J20 APP transgenic mice." The other contributors are Julio Pozueta, PhD (co-lead author), Elena M. Ribe, Carol M. Troy, and Ottavio Arancio, all based at CUMC at the time of the study.
Dr. Pozueta was an associate research scientist at CUMC at the time of this research and is currently a senior analyst at Prescient Life Sciences. The remaining authors declare no financial or other conflicts of interests.
The study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIHAG08702 and NS15076), the Wallace Foundation for Research, and the Taub Foundation.
The Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain at Columbia University Medical Center is a multidisciplinary group that has forged links between researchers and clinicians to uncover the causes of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other age-related brain diseases and to discover ways to prevent and cure these diseases. It has partnered with the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center at Columbia University Medical Center, which was established by an endowment in 1977 to focus on diseases of the nervous system, and with the Departments of Pathology & Cell Biology and of Neurology to allow the seamless integration of genetic analysis, molecular and cellular studies, and clinical investigation to explore all phases of diseases of the nervous system. For more information, visit The Taub Institute at http://www.cumc.columbia.edu/dept/taub/.
Columbia University Medical Center provides international leadership in basic, preclinical, and clinical research; medical and health sciences education; and patient care. The medical center trains future leaders and includes the dedicated work of many physicians, scientists, public health professionals, dentists, and nurses at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Mailman School of Public Health, the College of Dental Medicine, the School of Nursing, the biomedical departments of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and allied research centers and institutions. Columbia University Medical Center is home to the largest medical research enterprise in New York City and State and one of the largest faculty medical practices in the Northeast. For more information, visit cumc.columbia.edu or columbiadoctors.org.
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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.
Study identifies protein that contributes to cognitive decline in Alzheimer'sPublic release date: 25-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Karin Eskenazi ket2116@columbia.edu 212-342-0508 Columbia University Medical Center
Findings highlight potential therapeutic targets
NEW YORK, NY (June 25, 2013) Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) have demonstrated that a protein called caspase-2 is a key regulator of a signaling pathway that leads to cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease. The findings, made in a mouse model of Alzheimer's, suggest that inhibiting this protein could prevent the neuronal damage and subsequent cognitive decline associated with the disease. The study was published this month in the online journal Nature Communications.
One of the earliest events in Alzheimer's is disruption of the brain's synapses (the small gaps across which nerve impulses are passed), which can lead to neuronal death. Although what drives this process has not been clear, studies have indicated that caspace-2 might be involved, according to senior author Michael Shelanski, MD, PhD, the Delafield Professor of Pathology & Cell Biology, chair of the Department of Pathology & Cell Biology, and co-director of the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain at CUMC.
Several years ago, in tissue culture studies of mouse neurons, Dr. Shelanski found that caspace-2 plays a critical role in the death of neurons in the presence of amyloid beta, the protein that accumulates in the neurons of people with Alzheimer's. Other researchers have shown that caspase-2 also contributes to the maintenance of normal synaptic functions.
Dr. Shelanski and his team hypothesized that aberrant activation of caspase-2 may cause synaptic changes in Alzheimer's disease. To test this hypothesis, the researchers crossed J20 transgenic mice (a common mouse model of Alzheimer's) with caspase-2 null mice (mice that lack caspase-2). They compared the animals' ability to negotiate a radial-arm water maze, a standard test of cognitive ability, with that of regular J20 mice and of normal mice at 4, 9, and 14 months of age.
The results for the three groups of mice were similar at the first two intervals. At 14 months, however, the J20/caspase-2 null mice did significantly better in the water maze test than the J20 mice and similarly to the normal mice. "We showed that removing caspase-2 from J20 mice prevented memory impairment without significant changes in the level of soluble amyloid beta," said co-lead author Roger Lefort, PhD, associate research scientist at CUMC.
Analysis of the neurons showed that the J20/caspase-2 null mice had a higher density of dendritic spines than the J20 mice. The more spines a neuron has, the more impulses it can transmit.
"The J20/caspase-2 null mice showed the same dendritic spine density and morphology as the normal miceas opposed to the deficits in the J20 mice," said co-lead author Julio Pozueta, PhD. "This strongly suggests that caspase-2 is a critical regulator in the memory decline associated with beta-amyloid in Alzheimer's disease."
The researchers further validated the results in studies of rat neurons in tissue culture.
Finally, the researchers found that caspase-2 interacts with RhoA, a critical regulator of the morphology (form and structure) of dendritic spines. "It appears that in normal neurons, caspase-2 and RhoA form an inactive complex outside the dendritic spines," said Dr. Lefort. "When the complex is exposed to amyloid beta, it breaks apart, activating the two components." Once activated, caspase-2 and RhoA enter the dendritic spines and contribute to their demise, possibly by interacting with a third molecule, the enzyme ROCK-II.
"This raises the possibility that if you can inhibit one or all of these molecules, especially early in the course of Alzheimer's, you might be able to protect neurons and slow down the cognitive effects of the disease," said Dr. Lefort.
###
The paper is titled, "Caspase-2 is required for dendritic spine and behavioural alterations in J20 APP transgenic mice." The other contributors are Julio Pozueta, PhD (co-lead author), Elena M. Ribe, Carol M. Troy, and Ottavio Arancio, all based at CUMC at the time of the study.
Dr. Pozueta was an associate research scientist at CUMC at the time of this research and is currently a senior analyst at Prescient Life Sciences. The remaining authors declare no financial or other conflicts of interests.
The study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIHAG08702 and NS15076), the Wallace Foundation for Research, and the Taub Foundation.
The Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain at Columbia University Medical Center is a multidisciplinary group that has forged links between researchers and clinicians to uncover the causes of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other age-related brain diseases and to discover ways to prevent and cure these diseases. It has partnered with the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center at Columbia University Medical Center, which was established by an endowment in 1977 to focus on diseases of the nervous system, and with the Departments of Pathology & Cell Biology and of Neurology to allow the seamless integration of genetic analysis, molecular and cellular studies, and clinical investigation to explore all phases of diseases of the nervous system. For more information, visit The Taub Institute at http://www.cumc.columbia.edu/dept/taub/.
Columbia University Medical Center provides international leadership in basic, preclinical, and clinical research; medical and health sciences education; and patient care. The medical center trains future leaders and includes the dedicated work of many physicians, scientists, public health professionals, dentists, and nurses at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Mailman School of Public Health, the College of Dental Medicine, the School of Nursing, the biomedical departments of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and allied research centers and institutions. Columbia University Medical Center is home to the largest medical research enterprise in New York City and State and one of the largest faculty medical practices in the Northeast. For more information, visit cumc.columbia.edu or columbiadoctors.org.
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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.
25 June 2013Last updated at 09:18 ETBy Jonathan AmosScience correspondent, BBC News
Scientists have identified three new planets around a star they already suspected of hosting a trio of worlds.
It means this relatively nearby star, Gliese 667C, now has three so-called super-Earths orbiting in its "habitable zone".
This is the region where temperatures ought to allow for the possibility of liquid water, although no-one can say for sure what conditions are really like on these planets.
Gliese 667C is 22 light-years away.
Astronomers can see it on the sky in the constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion).
Previous studies of Gliese 667C had established there were very likely three planets around it, with its habitable zone occupied by one super-Earth - an object slightly bigger than our home world, but probably still with a rocky surface.
Now, a team of astronomers led by Guillem Anglada-Escude of the University of G?ttingen, Germany, and Mikko Tuomi, of the University of Hertfordshire, UK, has re-examined the system and raised the star's complement of planets.
The researchers used a suite of telescopes including the 3.6m telescope at the Silla Observatory in Chile. This incorporates the high-precision Harps instrument. Harps employs an indirect method of detection that infers the existence of orbiting planets from the way their gravity makes a parent star appear to twitch in its motion across the sky.
Full to bursting
The planets' presence needs to be disentangled from this complex signal but the Harps instrument is recognised as having tremendous success in identifying smaller worlds.
Gliese 667C is a low-luminosity "M-dwarf" star just over one-third the mass of our Sun.
This means its habitable zone can be much closer in before temperatures make liquid water impossible. The team is now confident that three rocky worlds occupy this region at Gilese 667C.
"Their estimated masses range from 2.7 to 3.8 that of the Earth's," Mikko Tuomi told BBC News.
"However, we can only estimate the physical sizes by assuming certain compositions that is, well, only educated guessing.
"Their orbital periods are 28, 39, and 62 days, which means that they all orbit the star closer to its surface than Mercury in our own system. Yet, the estimated surface temperatures enable the existence of liquid water on them because of the low luminosity and low mass of the star."
These planets are said to completely fill the habitable zone. There are no more stable orbits in which to fit another planet.
That said, the team has found tantalising evidence for what may be another rocky world on the inner-edge of the zone. This would be a seventh planet in the system.
Fruitful targets
The planets would need an atmosphere to sustain liquid water on their surfaces, but at a distance of more than 200 trillion km, there are no means currently to determine what the precise conditions are like or whether life would have any chance of establishing itself.
Nonetheless, Dr Tuomi believes M-dwarf stars are good candidates to go hunting for potentially habitable worlds.
They are small enough that close-in rocky planets will show up well in the Harps Doppler spectroscopy data, but they are also dim enough that those close-orbiting worlds will not be roasted.
"This discovery single-handedly demonstrates that low-mass stars can be hosts of several potentially habitable planets," explained Dr Tuomi.
"In practice, it means that we might have to double or treble our estimates for the occurrence rate of habitable-zone planets around M-dwarf stars.
"There might, in fact, be more habitable-zone planets in the Universe than there are stars, which makes it much easier for the future space missions to obtain images of these planets.
"So, although only a rather simple discovery, its implications might force us to re-think how common habitable-zone planets are in the Universe."
The research has been written up for the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos
Former Yahoo engineers Brian Acton and Jan Koum are making millions of dollars per year.
They could make hundreds of millions of dollars ? maybe a billion or two.
All it would take is a?relatively brief flurry of paperwork, signatures, and handshakes.
But so far, Acton and Koum?have chosen not to.
Mostly, this is because they hate advertising.
Acton and Koum are making millions because they are the creators of an app called WhatsApp.?It's a text messaging replacement.
Acton and Koum make money from WhatsApp in two ways. They charge iPhone users a one-time $.99 fee upon installation.?They charge Android users $.99 every year (after the first year).?Lots of people have paid Acton and Koum $.99.?The Wall Street Journal reports that?250 million people use WhatsApp every month.
It doesn't take a very complicated estimation to figure out that 250 million people paying $.99 once or annually adds up to a lot of money ? millions and millions of dollars.
Acton and Koum haven't said so (they are very press shy), but you have to assume?huge percentage of that money is going straight into their pockets. ?The company has taken little to zero outside investment. A year ago this time, Acton and Koum told a reporter they only employ 30 people.?Their company does all its development in Russia, where there is cheap talent.
The millions Acton and Koum are making is obviously nice.
But they could make much more ?if they chose to.
They are two ways they could do this:
Acton and Koum could potentially make a lot more money over time by taking venture capital investment and growing WhatsApp into a larger corporation.?Two industry sources tell us that late stage startup investors would love to fund Acton and Koum's project, giving it a valuation north of a billion dollars.
According to several reports, Acton and Koum could make a ton of money right away by selling their app to Google or Facebook.?
So far, Acton and Koum have declined to go down either path.
They haven't explained why.?
But it's pretty clear the reason Acton and Koum have turned all offers down (so far) is that Google, Facebook, and venture capitalists would each demand the same thing for their money: that WhatsApp sell advertising.
Acton and Koum hate advertising.
A couple of days ago, Koum posted a note to the WhatsApp company blog explaining "why we don?t sell ads."
It began with a ?quote from the character Tyler Durden in the book "Fight Club."
"Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don?t need."
It went on:
Brian and I spent a combined 20 years at Yahoo!, working hard to keep the site working. And yes, working hard to sell ads, because that?s what Yahoo! did. It gathered data and it served pages and it sold ads.
We watched Yahoo! get eclipsed in size and reach by Google? a more efficient and more profitable ad seller. They knew what you were searching for, so they could gather your data more efficiently and sell better ads.
These days companies know literally everything about you, your friends, your interests, and they use it all to sell ads.
When we sat down to start our own thing together three years ago?we wanted to make something that wasn?t just another ad clearinghouse. We wanted to spend our time building a service people wanted to use because it worked and saved them money and made their lives better in a small way. We knew that we could charge people directly if we could do all those things. We knew we could do what most people aim to do every day: avoid ads.
No one wakes up excited to see more advertising, no one goes to?sleep thinking about the ads they?ll see tomorrow. We know people go to sleep excited about who they chatted with that day (and disappointed about who they didn?t). We want WhatsApp to be the product that keeps you awake? and that you reach for in the?morning. No one jumps up from a nap and runs to see an advertisement.
Advertising isn?t just the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought. At every company that sells ads, a significant portion of their engineering team spends their day tuning data mining, writing better code to collect all your personal data, upgrading the servers that hold all the data and making sure it?s all being logged and collated and sliced and packaged and shipped out? And at the end of the day the result of it all is a slightly different advertising banner in your browser or on your mobile screen.
Remember, when advertising is involved?you the user?are the product.
At WhatsApp, our engineers spend all their time fixing bugs, adding new features and ironing out all the little intricacies in our task of bringing rich, affordable, reliable messaging to every phone in the world. That?s our product and that?s our passion. Your data?isn?t even in the picture. We are simply not interested in any of it.
When people ask us why we charge for WhatsApp, we say ?Have you considered the alternative??
In Silicon Valley, industry sources are at once amazed by WhatsApp's success and skeptical that Acton and Koum can sustain it.
LinkedIn
Jan Koum's Linkedin Profile
One industry source told us?WhatsApp's?strong and distinct company culture is modeled after Craigslist.
This was not a compliment.
Despite being world famous, Craigslist is still operated as a small, profitable company by its founder, Craig Newmark.
It has made Newmark very wealthy individually, but many believe it could have been a company the size of eBay by now, if it had taken outside money and had been run by someone with greater ambitions.
This source said WhatsApp's company culture makes it?less likely Acton and Koum will be able to build?what?many in the Valley would consider to be a real business and company.
But the thing is ? from where we sit, it doesn't look like Acton and Koum much care if the rest of Silicon Valley views WhatsApp as "a real business and company."
They are already making millions off an app which is used by hundreds of millions of people.
Also, both were relatively early employees at Yahoo, and it's likely that made them financially secure.
The?best evidence that the WhatsApp founders don't care about how the rest of the Valley views them is Jan Koum's Twitter account.?
His avatar for it is not your typical founder's studio head shot. His bio doesn't brag about his title. It's a quote. He is followed by just 4,000 people ? a lot for most people, but not very much for a Silicon Valley star. He only follows one account. It's?@jesus94306, the account for Jesus Christ Silicon Valley, a witheringly satirical blog about the tech business. One of his most recent tweets is a quote from a Kanye West lyric.
"You think you free but you a slave to the funds, baby."
Forward-thinking financial institution Wells Fargo is offering its customers the choice of receiving a text message receipt -- in addition to its e-receipt and email options -- whenever you use one of the bank's ATMs. All that's required to take part in the environmentally friendly scheme is to attach your cellphone number to your account, either online, over the phone or at your local branch. The service is available starting today, and if you'd like to learn more, we've tucked the official release below the fold.
We have a perfect ending for "Mad Men's" season finale: Don Draper jumping out the window.
Obviously there's no chance of that happening. He's the star of the show, and besides, two season-ending suicides in a row (RIP, Lane Pryce) would be awfully repetitive. (Like juggling two juice accounts. RIP, Ocean Spray.)
But nothing is more redundant than Don Draper himself. Other than his brief interlude as a faithful newlywed, you just can't teach this dog new tricks.
Even a year ago, the thought of losing Don would have been inconceivable -- even though the businessman's freefall in the opening title sequence seems to imply that is his ultimate fate. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a metaphor, we get it. But the wretched ad exec has become so dull, predictable and dislikable that we really wouldn't miss him if he took a shortcut down to Madison Ave.
Everyone with sense agrees that Jon Hamm is a nearly perfect human creature, but we'd much rather see him in another role -- like his hilarious bubble boy Drew on "30 Rock." And you know what? "Mad Men's" ensemble cast would be just fine without him -- especially Roger Sterling and Sally Draper, who could easily front their own spin-off series.
Here are all the reasons we're over Don Draper:
Serial cheating: He's not unique among his colleagues at Sterling Cooper & Partners, but at least infidelity isn't a full-time hobby for Roger, Pete, Ted (maybe) and the gang. And yes, we know it's a manifestation of Dick Whitman's childhood in a whorehouse, but the backstory doesn't make his adultery any less boring.
Alcoholism: Another snoozer story line. But would Don be more interesting if he were sober? Doubtful. Another Roger acid trip, on the other hand ...
The sads: He wept on Peggy's shoulder and curled up in a fetal position on his disgusted daughter's bed, but we have lost all sympathy for depressed Don. In fact, our reaction is the same as his: Wah, wah, wah.
Tyranny: Don really is a monster, as Peggy called him after he humiliated her and Ted in the season's penultimate episode. He's spiteful, insensitive and downright cruel. So is Pete Campbell -- but at least we love to hate the snarky stair-tumbler. Don we just hate.
Impostor: Once upon a time, Don's identify theft was a thrilling narrative. Now nearly everyone knows the truth, and no one seems to care. Sterling Cooper's creative director works about five minutes a day, is trashed or asleep the rest of the time, insults his clients and colleagues and betrays his family. So why haven't they publicly outed him? Not that we'd really care. Bob Benson's fraud is so much more fascinating now.
Grim Reaper: Don isn't directly to blame for all the show's deaths, but they sure do seem to follow him like Pig Pen's cloud of dirt. And speculation is rampant that Megan might be the next to go, thanks to a number of clues connecting her to Charles Manson victim Sharon Tate. (Megan's obsession with "Rosemary's Baby" -- directed by Tate's husband, Roman Polanski -- only added fuel to the fire.) Her murder would paradoxically breathe new life into "Mad Men" -- but not if it means we'll be subjected to a final season devoted to her widower's grief.
Are you ready for Don to take a flying leap (literally or figuratively)? What do you hope to see in the season finale? Click on "Talk about it" below and share your thoughts!
Videogame focused live video streaming platform (and new Xbox 360 / Xbox One partner) Twitch.tv is down at the moment, but even once it's restored users will have to reset their passwords and stream keys. That information comes directly from the site's official blog, which blames the issue on a caching problem with its web CDN partner. Some users are worried the site may have been hacked since prior to its shutdown, many suddenly found themselves viewing accounts that belonged to other people and now all the login information has been cleared. The company continues to state that isn't the case and belief to the contrary is related to an outdated outage message (from its original incarnation as the Gaming section of Justin.tv) but it may be worth keeping an eye on if you have an account with the site. It should be back up shortly, but apparently "10s of millions of accounts resets takes quite a bit of time."
DEL NORTE, Colo. (AP) ? A wildfire threatening a tourist region in southwestern Colorado mushroomed to about 100 square miles Saturday, but officials said that they remained optimistic they could protect the town of South Fork.
The rapid advance of the erratic blaze prompted the evacuation of hundreds of summer visitors and the town's 400 permanent residents Friday, and it could be days before people are allowed back into their homes, cabins and RV parks, fire crew spokeswoman Laura McConnell said. South Fork Mayor Kenneth Brooke estimated that 1,000 to 1,500 people were forced to flee.
Saturday night, officials provided an estimate of the size of the wildfire burning through a rugged and remote mountainous region, but said they wouldn't have a better idea of its size until infrared imaging is done overnight.
Some business owners were being allowed back into South Fork during the day Saturday to tie up issues left unattended in the rush to leave.
Officials, meanwhile, closely monitored an arm of the blaze moving toward the neighboring town of Creede.
"We were very, very lucky," said Rio Grande County Commissioner Carla Shriver. "We got a free pass yesterday."
McConnell said no structures had been lost and the fire was still about 5 miles from the town.
The blaze had been fueled by dry, hot, windy weather and a stand of dead trees, killed by a beetle infestation. The fire's spread had slowed for a while Saturday morning after the flames hit a healthy section of forest. Fire crews remained alert as more hot, dry and windy weather was forecast.
The wildfire, a complex of three blazes, remains a danger, officials said.
"The fire is very unpredictable," Shriver told evacuees at Del Norte High School, east of the fire. "They are saying they haven't quite seen one like this in years. There is so much fuel up there."
Winds picked up Saturday afternoon and a heavy black again permeated the air in Del Norte, where a Red Cross shelter was set up for evacuees. Anticipating the mandatory South Fork evacuation would last for days, the Red Cross promised more supplies and portable showers.
Ralph and Leilani Harden of Victoria, Texas, spend summers in South Fork.
"We jumped out of the South Texas hot box into the Colorado frying pan," Ralph Harden said.
Bob and Sherry Mason bought the Wolf Creek Ski Lodge on the Western Edge of South Fork about a year and a half ago.
"This (wildfire) was in our contingency plan being in Colorado, but we didn't expect it this soon," Bob Mason said.
New fire crews, meanwhile, descended from other areas to join more than 32 fire engines stationed around South Fork, with hoses and tankers at the ready. Firefighters also worked to move potential fuel, such as lawn furniture, propane tanks and wood piles, away from homes and buildings.
The town of Creede's 300 residents were under voluntary evacuation orders as officials feared the fire could reach the roads leading out of town.
The heavy black smoke, broken up only by an orange glow over the outlines of the San Juan mountains, was so thick Friday that the plume helped keep an 18-square-mile wildfire burning 100 miles to the east near Walsenburg from spreading as fast as it would have otherwise.
Susan Valente, an on-site spokeswoman for the fire near Walsenburg, said the shade helped keep the forest from drying out in the hot afternoon sun. Residents from 300 homes remain evacuated while in the city of Walsenburg and the town of Aguilar remain on pre-evacuation notice, meaning residents must be ready to flee at a moment's notice.
"Fire conditions are prime with the combination of fuels, heat, winds and low humidity," fire information officer Mike Stearly of the Rocky Mountain Area Coordination Center, "It's expected to be like this through next Tuesday."
There are 12 wildfires burning in Colorado that have scorched 133 square miles, which includes the Black Forest fire that destroyed 511 homes north of Colorado Springs and is the most destructive in Colorado history.
SARASOTA, Fla. (AP) ? Nik Wallenda, the Florida-based daredevil, acrobat and heir to the famed Flying Wallendas circus family, is afraid of only one thing.
"I would say the only thing I fear is God," said the 34-year-old Wallenda.
He certainly had no fear of walking across Niagara Falls on a tightrope, riding a bike on a high wire 260 feet above the ground or hanging from a hovering helicopter by his teeth.
On Sunday, Wallenda will attempt an even more ambitious feat, even for a man who was born into a family of risk-takers.
He will bid to walk on a tightrope stretched across the Little Colorado River Gorge near the Grand Canyon. The event, which will be broadcast on live television at 8 p.m. EDT on Sunday with a 10 second delay, will take place on the Navajo reservation near Cameron, outside the boundaries of Grand Canyon National Park.
Wallenda will walk a third of a mile across a wire suspended 1,500 feet above the river. (In comparison, the Empire State Building in New York City is 1,454 feet high).
"I respect deeply what I do and realize there's a lot of danger in it," he acknowledged on a recent day in his Florida hometown of Sarasota.
Wallenda, who is married and has three children, always says a prayer with his family prior to stepping onto the wire.
The 34-year-old is a seventh-generation high-wire artist and is part of the famous "Flying Wallendas" circus family ? a clan that is no stranger to death-defying feats and great tragedy.
His great-grandfather, Karl Wallenda, fell during a performance in Puerto Rico and died at the age of 73. Several other family members, including a cousin and an uncle, have perished while performing wire walking stunts.
Nik Wallenda, who was born a year after his great-grandfather died, began wire walking at the age of 2, on a 2-foot high stretched rope. He grew up performing with his family and as a teen, had an epiphany.
"It's an honor to be carrying on a tradition that my family started over 200 years ago," Wallenda said during a news conference on a recent day in Florida. "When I turned 19, I told my family I was going to set out to make sure everyone in the world knew who the Wallendas were again."
Over the years, Wallenda has performed some dangerous stunts, but his walk across Niagara Falls in June of 2012 placed him firmly in celebrity territory.
Wallenda became the first person to walk on a tightrope 1,800 feet across the mist-fogged brink of the roaring falls separating the U.S. and Canada.
Other daredevils had wire-walked over the Niagara River but farther downstream and not since 1896.
Niagara Falls, Wallenda said, was a dream of his. So is the Grand Canyon.
But here's the difference between the two stunts: ABC televised the walk and insisted Wallenda use a tether to keep him from falling in the river. Wallenda said he agreed because he wasn't willing to lose the chance to perform the walk.
On Sunday, the Discovery Channel will televise the walk, but Wallenda won't wear a tether. There won't be a safety net, either.
He anticipates it will take him about 30 minutes to cross the chasm.
Milton Tso, president of the Cameron community, has mixed feelings about the event. While he's praying for Wallenda to succeed, he questions why the tribe is promoting a man who is gambling with his life for the benefit of tourism. He said he'll join a group of people over the weekend that is protesting the event and raising awareness on other issues facing Navajos.
"We don't need to put anybody's life in danger to promote tourism," he said. "There are other ways to do it. I would probably be a little more comfortable if the Navajo Nation implemented this safety harness for him."
For the last two weeks, Wallenda ? who has a boyish face, strawberry blonde hair and a muscular build ? has been practicing in front of crowds in his hometown of Sarasota.
Each morning and evening, he glides across a two-inch cable strung on the banks of a river. Hundreds of his local fans show up every day to watch, and talk ? Wallenda usually will stop and sit on the wire and take questions from his fans from high above.
"I'm just fascinated by the movement, the way he walks," said Loy Barker, a Sarasota resident who watched one of Wallenda's practice sessions. "He's just an amazing athlete."
Wallenda has tried to simulate different conditions he might face while crossing the gorge.
"It's very important that I train on a cable that simulates the weight, the feeling, the movement of the cable, the way it will move under my feet," he said. "We have also brought wind machines out. I've walked in 52 mile an hour gusts during Tropical Storm Andrea, with a torrential downpour. And we also brought out wind machines where we simulated 45-55 mile per hour gusts. Then I also walked in 91-mile an hour winds that day."
Only one thing could halt the planned wire walk, he says: lightning detected within a 15-mile radius of the wire.
In the meantime, he's training physically and mentally. Wallenda said the adrenaline has "kicked in" and that he's anxious to be suspended with only a 2-inch-cable below his feet.
"I absolutely will look down," he said. "And I'll enjoy the view."
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On the Web: http://skywire.discovery.com/
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Follow Tamara Lush on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tamaralush
Saul of Tarsus? path to sainthood began when a celestial light enveloped him on the road to Damascus. He heard Jesus? voice, inaudible to his companions, saying: ?I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.? The conversion experience of Father James Martin was less dramatic. Once a corporate finance grunt, he came home one night after a particularly frustrating day at the office and flipped on the television. PBS was airing a documentary called Merton: A Film Biography, about Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk who had chucked his dissolute New York life to serve God in rural Kentucky. Onscreen, Merton?s face glowed with an otherworldly peace; Martin was so stressed and miserable at work that he regularly suffered stomach aches and migraines. ?I still remember his expression, so much happier than the one I saw in the mirror every morning,? the priest [or Jesuit] recalls. ?His life?the monastic life?seemed exotic, mysterious, romantic.?
A seed was planted. The next day, 25-year-old Martin unearthed Merton?s autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, at a local bookstore. It was, Martin writes in his spiritual memoir, My Life With the Saints, ?a beautiful book. ?When I finished [it] late one night and set it on my nightstand, I knew with certainty that this was what I wanted to do ? that?s what the ?call? was for me.?
Martin has spent 25 years as a Jesuit, 14 of them as an ordained priest. (The Jesuits, formally the Society of Jesus, are a Roman Catholic religious order devoted to poverty, chastity, and obedience.) He is one of several top editors at Americamagazine, the country?s largest-circulation Catholic weekly, where, he jokes with some pride, his spacious corner office boasts three panelsof fluorescent light bulbs. (In Dante?s Paradiso, the more dazzlingly bright the angel, the closer he sits to God.) He also appears frequently on The Colbert Report, in the capacity of the show?s ?official chaplain,? and has contributed to Slate. ??
But Father Martin took a rather unorthodox path to the priesthood. After an undergraduate degree from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania?he?d studied finance?he worked for six years in accounting and human resources. He lived a fast life of clubbing and boozy lunches in New York City before relocating to Stamford, Conn., where the nightlife was tamer but the paychecks were fatter and the work more interesting.
How did Martin get from the often ruthless, hedonistic world of business to the Society of Jesus? What did he have to cast away?and what could he carry over?as he undertook something that was both a career gutting and a spiritual renovation?
To start at The Beginning: He grew up in a mildly observant Roman Catholic family, attending Mass on the major holidays but rarely reciting the rosary or saying grace before meals. By the age of 10, he was a Sunday school dropout.
In college, Martin went to church almost every week but avoided extracurricular clubs for Catholic students. His scattershot approach to faith persisted after he joined the corporate world in 1982.
?I was a bit of a grind,? Martin admits, using a characteristically self-deprecating term to describe his strong work ethic. He?d decided to study business because it seemed respectable and lucrative. The Wharton classes were moderately interesting. But once he entered the professional sphere, logging frequent overtime hours on painfully involved accounting projects, he found that something wasn?t clicking. Martin remembers watching his friends flip through business magazines in their free time. He couldn?t comprehend it?how could they read that stuff for fun?
He also began to notice a cruel streak in some of his supervisors, an unscrupulous selfishness that pricked him with moral disgust. At one point, a manager informed Martin that he planned to fire another man, ?Joe,? even though Joe had just earned an award for excellent performance. When Martin, protesting that the move was unnecessary and undeserved, begged the manager to show a little compassion, he got a simple answer: ?Fuck compassion.? Another time, he overheard a colleague making grossly sexist remarks about a female co-worker. He developed stomach problems from excess anxiety. ?It started to seem so circular,? he says. ?I was going to work so that I could afford food, shelter, and clothes, so that I could go to work. I remember sitting at my desk and realizing no one at Wharton had ever asked me, ?What do you want to do with your life? Are you sure?? ?
Into this fog came Thomas Merton, the priest in the documentary, whose example offered Martin a way out. But being called is one thing; answering the call is something else entirely. ?At that time, joining the priesthood would have been like becoming an opera singer or running away to the circus,? Martin says. He consulted a psychologist instead.
?What would you do if you could be doing anything?? the doctor asked him, a year or so into his therapy.
?I?d be a priest,? Martin replied.
?Well, why don?t you??
The next day, Martin was on the phone with the local office of the Jesuits.
The formation program for Jesuit priests takes its roots in the plan originally laid out by St. Ignatius of Loyola, who founded the order. You start off with a two-year sprint through ?spiritual boot camp??called the novitiate?during which you learn about Jesuit history and spirituality, and perform charitable works. This period is capped by a 30-day silent retreat and officially ends when you pronounce the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Next up are ?first studies,? a two-year curriculum of philosophy and theology taken at a Jesuit university (Martin did his at Loyola in Chicago); then dawns a three-year period called the regency, devoted to work of a nonstudious nature. (Martin flew to East Africa to work with refugees.) Four years of intense theological study follow, crowned?whew?by ordination, first as a deacon and then as a priest. Last of all comes tertianship, the ultimate stage in formation, a stretch of contemplation about Jesuit spirituality that closes with another 30-day retreat. Final vows are then made, including a special vow of obedience to the pope.??
The whole process took 21 years, and Martin?s family and friends spent the early portion of that time being horrified. His parents fretted that their promising young businessman had been swallowed whole by a cult. Former colleagues at his corporate job weren?t shy about voicing their skepticism. (A typical conversation: ?You should see a psychologist.? ?I am.? ?You should see another psychologist.?) But eventually Martin?s family came to terms with his new life: ?They thought I would be lonely, which is ironic because I have more friends now than ever,? Martin explains. ?They held this old-fashioned idea of Jesuits being cloistered.?
When asked about the priesthood?s greatest challenges, Father Martin doesn?t hesitate. ?Chastity,? he says. ?It?s difficult living without sexual intimacy, the intimacy that comes with having one person you can rely on. You?re never going to be the most important person in anybody?s life.? And yet he describes the stricture as a blessing, a way of becoming close to many people at once?of more fairly rationing out finite stores of time and emotion. It?s our noble hope that we can love lots of people simultaneously, but in practice that gets harder once you start factoring in life partners. Plus, ?people open up to you quicker when they know you don?t have a sexual agenda,? Martin says. ?
His inner HR manager has found an afterlife of sorts, as a dispenser of professional tough love. Not infrequently, Jesuit brothers present him with human-resource-related dilemmas. (?How do I deal with very sweet employees who waste too much time chatting with each other?? was a query a few years back. ?What would you do if you ran a McDonald?s? Tell them to get to work,? Martin replied.) He is thankful that his time in the business sphere taught him the secular virtues of setting goals, working hard, and being efficient. Such values have a place in faith, too: St. Ignatius, he observes, ?basically ran a multinational corporation?he had to hire and fire, train recruits, raise money, and get things done.? Occasionally Martin finds religious institutions too forgiving of lackluster performance. Holy folk tend to mistake niceness for competence. Still, he says, ?the corporate world could learn a lot from the religious one in terms of the dignity of every human person.?
My Life With the Saints highlights an almost preternaturally apt Whitman quote: ?Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)? Martin?s story is a collecting basin for contradictions: the earthly and the sacred, the supposedly pre-ordained and the supposedly freely chosen.
He looks at his second start with a kind of double vision. On one hand, he felt bored and unhappy in the corporate world, intellectually intrigued by religious life and desperate for escape?that?s the natural explanation. But he proposes a supernatural narrative, too, in which God fills his heart with longing, ?the happy inability to think of anything else.?
S?ren Kierkegaard dubbed the man who can hold two paradoxical ideas in his mind at once and still remain at peace the ?knight of faith.? In Martin?s case, perhaps we should just call him ?Father.??
This month, Slate is sharing stories of people who started over?like budget wonk Ina Garten,?better known as the Barefoot Contessa?in our "Second Acts" Hive. We want to hear your tales, too. Please hit the "Enter your proposal" button or?go here?to submit your story about starting over.
I am a high school dropout. School just wasn't my thing. I loved animals, I loved to read, and I loved people. So what does a high school dropout do ? opens a pet shop at 24 years old. Read More? Submitted by S.Segner | June 17, 2013
Prosecutors may refer to George Zimmerman as a ??wannabe cop? and a ?vigilante? in their opening statements, a judge presiding over Zimmerman?s case ruled Friday.
The prosecution is also allowed to describe his actions as ?profiling,? but may not use the words ?racial profiling? after Seminole district Judge Debra S. Nelson ruled that prosecutors may employ any language they feel appropriately describes their evidence, although the defense requested that they avoid ?inflammatory language,? according to The Miami Herald.?
Judge Nelson did not issue the most anticipated order ? one which would allow the all-female jury to hear expert testimony on the implications of the frantic 911 call made during the lethal?Feb. 26 struggle.
Zimmerman, a volunteer neighborhood watchman, contends he fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in self-defense. He has been charged with second-degree murder.
Opening statements will take place Monday morning.
NEW YORK (AP) ? The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating why two airplanes came too close to each other over New York City last week.
A Delta Air Lines Boeing 747 arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport came close to a Shuttle America Embraer E170 departing from LaGuardia Airport at around 2:40 p.m. on June 13, the FAA said in a statement Friday.
The planes were about a half-mile apart horizontally and 200 feet vertically, the FAA said. The required separation is 3 miles horizontally or a thousand feet vertically.
The FAA said the aircraft were "turning away from each other at the point where they lost the required separation." Both aircraft landed safely.
Delta declined to give details, including the number of passengers on board, pending the FAA investigation. The Shuttle America jet was operating as a Delta Connection flight and is equipped for 69 people. The Delta 747 can hold 376 passengers.
Jason Rabinowitz, editor of the aviation news website NYC Aviation, reviewed air traffic control audio and radar tracking data and concluded the pilots and controllers acted professionally in an unusual sets of circumstances brought on by strong winds.
"The traffic controllers did a very good job," he told The Associated Press, noting that traffic is extremely heavy at the two airports. "It was handled very well. ... They did take immediate action to prevent anything from happening in very unusual circumstances."
The close call happened because the Delta jet and an American Airways flight preparing to land on a parallel runway broke off their approaches to JFK almost simultaneously, he said.
The American flight was instructed by the control tower to make a right turn and attempt another landing. When the Delta pilot seconds later said he needed to circle, the tower told him to make a left, Rabinowitz said.
That left turn put the Delta jet closer to departing traffic from LaGuardia. The Delta pilot then turned right hard, but 747s aren't "the most nimble aircraft in the sky," Rabinowitz wrote, and that allowed the Delta and Shuttle America airplanes to wind up too close to each other.
Rabinowitz said there was a moment the two aircraft were at nearly the same altitude and headed for each other, but the controllers and both pilots were aware of the conflicting traffic and both jets were turning away from each other.
The Delta flight originated in Narita, Japan; the Shuttle America was heading for Jacksonville, Fla.
Rabinowitz said he doubted passengers were aware of the situation.
'I'm still debating if I'm actually a celebrity,' the 'Voice' champion tells MTV News of her newfound fame. By James Montgomery, with additional reporting by Natasha Chandel
If we're going to keep up the hypocritical charade of, on one hand, expecting pruitanical censorship of human anatomy while, on the other, selling 8-year-olds Juicy Couture then we might as well put those silly black bars to good use. Just look at what the Brighton Port Authority (BPA the band, not BPA the BPA) were able to accomplish. Frickin' PONG.
Toe Jam was the first single off the band's 2008 album, I Think We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat and features the talents of both David Byrne and Dizzee Rascal.
June 21, 2013 ? A synthetic compound is able to turn off "secondary" vacuum cleaners in the brain that take up serotonin, resulting in the "happy" chemical being more plentiful, scientists from the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio have discovered. Their study, released June 18 by The Journal of Neuroscience, points to novel targets to treat depression.
Serotonin, a neurotransmitter that carries chemical signals, is associated with feelings of wellness. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are commonly prescribed antidepressants that block a specific "vacuum cleaner" for serotonin (the serotonin transporter, or SERT) from taking up serotonin, resulting in more supply of the neurotransmitter in circulation in the extracellular fluid of the brain.
Delicate balance
"Serotonin is released by neurons in the brain," said Lyn Daws, Ph.D., professor of physiology and pharmacology in the School of Medicine. "Too much or too little may be a bad thing. It is thought that having too little serotonin is linked to depression. That's why we think Prozac-type drugs (SSRIs) work, by stopping the serotonin transporter from taking up serotonin from extracellular fluid in the brain."
A problem with SSRIs is that many depressed patients experience modest or no therapeutic benefit. It turns out that, while SSRIs block the activity of the serotonin transporter, they don't block other "vacuum cleaners." "Until now we did not appreciate the presence of backup cleaners for serotonin," Dr. Daws said. "We were not the first to show their presence in the brain, but we were among the first show that they were limiting the ability of the SSRIs to increase serotonin signaling in the brain. The study described in this new paper is the first demonstration of enhancing the antidepressant-like effect of an SSRI by concurrently blocking these backup vacuum cleaners."
Serotonin ceiling
Even if SERT activity is blocked, the backup vacuum cleaners (called organic cation transporters) keep a ceiling on how high the serotonin levels can rise, which likely limits the optimal therapeutic benefit to the patient, Dr. Daws said.
"Right now, the compound we have, decynium-22, is not an agent that we want to give to people in clinical trials," she said. "We are not there yet. Where we are is being able to use this compound to identify new targets in the brain for antidepressant activity and to turn to medicinal chemists to design molecules to block these secondary vacuum cleaners."
CHISINAU, Moldova (AP) ? Moldova's Parliament has called on international partners negotiating a settlement with a breakaway republic to stop separatists from seizing territory in eastern Moldova.
Lawmakers adopted a statement late Friday urging the U.S., the European Union, Russia, Ukraine and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to "resolve the situation in Trans-Dniester through political and peaceful means, respecting democratic...principles."
Last week separatist leader Yevgeny Shevchuk leader signed legislation that would expand the region to include eight Moldovan villages, saying he would do everything possible to make sure the legislation came into effect.
Moldovan Defense Minister Vitalie Marinuta said the army would respond to any attack on its territory if necessary, adding he did not think the situation would escalate into an armed conflict. Trans-Dniester is not recognized internationally but is supported by Russia.
Russia opposes Moldova signing an association agreement with the EU in November, and Moldovan analysts say Moscow is seeking to destabilize the situation in one of Europe's poorest countries.
Trans-Dniester broke away from Moldova in 1990 fearing it planned to reunite with neighboring Romania and a war broke out in 1992, leaving 1,500 dead. In 2005, the EU and the U.S. joined Ukraine and Russia as negotiators finding a solution for the situation, known as one of the frozen conflicts of the former Soviet Union.
Trans-Dniester, wedged between Moldova and Ukraine, is a narrow strip of land separated by from the rest of Moldova by the River Dniester. Moldova was part of Romania until 1940 when it was annexed to the Soviet Union, but Trans-Dniester was never part of Romania.
NASA researchers have composed an interactive, panoramic view of Mars created with more than 900 exposures taken from the Curiosity rover.
By Elizabeth Barber,?Contributor / June 20, 2013
A slice of the panorama from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity with 1.3 billion pixels in the full-resolution version. It shows Curiosity at the "Rocknest" site where the rover scooped up samples of windblown dust and sand.
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NASA has released an interactive, billion-pixel view from the surface of Mars, an amalgamation of some 900 exposures shot from Curiosity?s cameras.
The grand, unearthly view stretches like a timeline of Curiosity?s journey, from the site where Curiosity collected its first rock sample to Mount Sharp, to which the rover is now chugging. The result is a landscape portrait as majestic as any Ray Bradbury novel: a red-brown, rocky desert, sloping to a distant mountain bathed in dust.
"It gives a sense of place and really shows off the cameras' capabilities," said Bob Deen of the Multi-Mission Image Processing Laboratory at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a statement. "You can see the context and also zoom in to see very fine details."
Deen assembled the panorama using some 850 frames from Curiosity?s telephoto camera, along with about 21 frames from its wider-angle camera and some 25 black-and-white frames from the rover?s Navigation Camera. The images were shot on different days in the fall of 2012, showing variation in atmospheric quality and light.
The 1.3-billion-pixel image can be seen at NASA?s website with zoom and pan tools that let earthling explorers tour the red planet. A scaled-down version of the photograph is also available for download.
The raw, single-frames that Curiosity sends home are regularly posted on NASA?s homepage for its rover.
Curiosity has been on Mars since August and has continuously sent back to Earth information that has changed our understanding of the far-off planet. Earlier this June, Curiosity found a rock containing clay-mineral elements that could only have formed in water ? evidence that the dusty planet once had fresh water.
The supermoon may loom large and bright in the sky this Sunday, but the rocky orb will not trigger any natural disasters or even wreak havoc on the tides.
What the full moon's closest approach to Earth will do, however, is continue to fascinate and mystify humanity as it has for millennia.
"When I go outside and look at the full moon I feel very connected to the universe," said Michelle Thaller, the assistant director of science at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "The full moon is so immediate. It looks like a place you could go, you could stand on, you could visit." [See Amazing Images of the Full Moon]
She added that Carl Sagan once spoke about how the moon may have led to humans' desire to leave Earth and explore the universe, because other bodies, like the stars and planets, are so far away they aren't immediately visible.
"But the moon is so there; it's a part of our lives; it may have affected the way humans thought about the universe, our evolution as a culture," Thaller told LiveScience.
And this Sunday's full moon will be a close one. Since the moon takes an elliptical path around Earth, it can swing far away from us at one point on its orbit ??called apogee ? and super close during the lunar perigee.
Sunday's supermoon will reach its peak fullness at 7:32 a.m. EDT on Sunday (June 23), which is about 32 minutes after the moon reaches perigee; at this point, the moon will be about 221,300 miles (357,000 km) from Earth.
"The close timing of the moon's perigee and its full phase are what will bring about the biggest full moon of the year, a celestial event popularly defined by some as a 'supermoon,' said Joe Rao, as quoted by SPACE.com, a sister site to LiveScience.
At its closest and fullest, the supermoon will appear 12 percent larger than it will look during apogee on Jan. 16, 2014. The large ball in the sky has caused some to howl, it seems.
"A lot of the misconceptions are that this is somehow dangerous, that when the moon is a little bit closer, the gravity will cause earthquakes or tidal waves, or particularly high tides of any sort and that's just not true," Thaller said. "We've looked very hard to see if there were any correlations between where the moon is and natural disasters, and there just doesn't seem to be any relationship at all."
Thaller even mentioned that some thought that when they looked into a bowl of water under the light of the full moon they would see their future husband. "Unfortunately there really isn't any scientific basis for that," she added.
You can watch a free webcast of 2013 supermoon full moon on SPACE.com beginning on Sunday at 9 p.m. EDT (0100 June 24), courtesy of the skywatching website Slooh Space Camera.
Editor's note: If you snap an amazing photo of the Sunday Supermoon and you'd like to share it for a possible story or image gallery on SPACE.com, please send images and comments, including equipment used, to managing editor Tariq Malik at?spacephotos@space.com.
Follow Jeanna Bryner on Twitter?and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook?& Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
As part of its efforts to promote the unsung heroes of computing history, Google is celebrating the Manchester Baby's 65th birthday. Despite the cutesy nickname, the Manchester Small Scale Experimental Machine was the first computer to use electronic memory rather than punchcards for programming, heralding the software revolution. The secret was in the Williams-Kilburn cathode-ray tube, which could store a (then) staggering 128 bytes worth of data. Of course, that's not much by modern standards, but given that the 5-meter machine weighed in at over a ton, we still think it could take your fancy laptop in a bar-room brawl. If you're curious to learn more and hear the immortal quips of Professor F.C. Williams, head on past the break for the video.
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Public release date: 25-Jun-2013
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