Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/157075117?client_source=feed&format=rss
war in iraq war in iraq gunner kiel gunner kiel baby lisa baby lisa
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Federal Reserve wraps up policy meeting
FILE - Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke delivers the board's Monetary Policy Report to the Senate Banking Committee in Washington in this July 19, 2006 file photo. The Federal Reserve, after employing a dwindling set of policy options at its last two meetings, may hit the pause button in hopes that the faint signs of the economy's rebound will grow stronger. The Fed's decision will be announced around mid-day Wednesday Nov. 2, 2011 following two days of closed-door discussions. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook, File)
FILE - Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke delivers the board's Monetary Policy Report to the Senate Banking Committee in Washington in this July 19, 2006 file photo. The Federal Reserve, after employing a dwindling set of policy options at its last two meetings, may hit the pause button in hopes that the faint signs of the economy's rebound will grow stronger. The Fed's decision will be announced around mid-day Wednesday Nov. 2, 2011 following two days of closed-door discussions. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Federal Reserve, after employing a dwindling set of policy options at its last two meetings, may hit the pause button in hopes that the faint signs of the economy's rebound will grow stronger.
By taking a wait-and-see approach, the Fed would be buying time to assess whether its actions in August and September are having the desired effect of lowering long-term interest rates enough to jump-start growth.
The Fed's decision will be announced around mid-day Wednesday following two days of closed-door discussions.
The central bank will also release an updated economic forecast and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will hold a news conference to discuss the Fed's new forecast.
It will be Bernanke's third news conference after a Fed meeting and will continue a practice he began last April in an effort to give the public a better understanding of the Fed's decision-making.
Most economists believe the Fed will leave policy unchanged, although it will be a close call.
"It is about 50-50 on whether they will do anything. There is evidence the economy is continuing to grow, but we still have a fundamentally weak economy," said Brian Bethune, economics professor at Amherst College.
Financial markets in the United States and around the world were jolted Tuesday after Greece's prime minister made the surprise decision to call a referendum on the country's latest rescue package. The move sparked fears that the entire debt deal could unravel, that Greece could default on its debt and that the crisis could ripple through the global financial system.
Economists said Europe was sure to be a major discussion topic during the Fed meeting.
"They will talk about Europe, but I don't expect any action," said David Jones, head of DMJ Advisors, a Denver-based consulting group. "The Fed will not respond to the problems in Europe until it is clear they are causing a significant weakening in economic activity in the United States."
David Wyss, former chief economist at Standard & Poor's, said one reason for the Fed's reluctance to do more is that they don't have many policy options left.
"They know they are running out of tools so they don't want to employ another one unless they have to," he said.
The economy nearly stalled out during the first six months of the year, with growth slowing to an anemic 0.9 percent, the slowest pace since the recession ended in June 2009.
However, the government reported last week that growth rebounded modestly in the summer with the economy expanding at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in the July-September period, the best quarterly performance in a year.
While the economy would have to nearly double from the 2.5 percent rate to make a significant dent in high unemployment, the faster growth at least eases fears of a new recession.
At its Aug. 9 meeting, the central bank approved changing its guidance on future policy to say it hoped to keep a key interest rate, which has been near zero since December 2008, at a record low through at least mid-2013, as long as inflation does not become a threat.
The belief was that such an assurance would give investors more confidence that rates would not begin rising any time soon and help to push long-term rates down farther.
At the next meeting on Sept. 20-21, the Fed voted to shift $400 billion of its holdings from short-term to long-term Treasury securities in another effort to push already low long-term rates down further. These rates are critical for consumers borrowing to buy homes and cars and for businesses borrowing to make investments to expand their operations.
Both the August and September moves were approved on 7-3 votes with three regional bank presidents ? Richard Fisher of Dallas, Charles Plosser of Philadelphia and Narayana Kocherlakota of Minneapolis ? voting no because of concerns the actions raise the threat of future inflation.
That was the largest number of dissents in nearly 20 years from an action by the Federal Open Market Committee, the panel of Fed governors and central bank presidents who meet eight times a year to set interest-rate policies.
On the other side are at least four Fed officials, Vice Chair Janet Yellen, Governor Daniell Tarullo, Chicago Fed President Charles Evans and New York Fed President William Dudley who have expressed concerns that the economy is still at risk and may need more support.
If the Fed does move again, many believe it will not occur until either the December meeting or early next year. Some economists believe the likely next change would be a further tweaking of the Fed's communication efforts.
Associated Presskoch brothers ashley judd brewers harbaugh the walking dead season 2 milwaukee brewers will power
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Arithmetic Progression: U.S. Education Assessment Shows Modest but Steady Gains in Math Scores
News |
More Science
The so-called Nation's Report Card shows some progress in bringing U.S. students up to speed in mathematics
?| November 1, 2011
New data from a national math test show that U.S. fourth- and eighth-graders have made slight gains since 2009, but only 35 to 40 percent of the students tested showed proficiency in math.
The federally run National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often known as "the Nation's Report Card," periodically tests students on several subjects to gauge their progress over time. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released the results of the 2011 assessments in mathematics and reading on November 1.
The new math results continue two trends: a history of overall improvement since 1990, and a series of small but continual gains since 2003, when biennial testing began. Both the fourth- and eighth-grade groups increased their average scores on the 500-point test by a single point between 2009 and 2011, and both groups are now testing six points higher than they were in 2003. "In grades four and eight, in mathematics we actually see the highest scores to date," NCES commissioner Jack Buckley said in an October 31 conference call with reporters.
The math test is designed to gauge the status of the entire U.S. student population by taking a representative sample of pupils at public, private and religious schools. Some 209,000 fourth-graders from 8,500 schools and 175,200 eighth-graders from 7,610 schools participated in the 2011 test.
But when it comes to how many of those students meet proficiency standards, the picture is hardly rosy. The National Assessment Governing Board, an independent committee that sets policy for the test, defines proficiency as "solid academic performance" with "demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter." In the 2011 test, 40 percent of fourth-graders were assessed as proficient or better in math; among eighth-graders only 35 percent qualified as proficient. The latest figures each represent an increase of one percentage point from 2009 levels.
The new numbers are a far cry from the goals of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the ambitious education law signed by President George W. Bush in 2002. That policy set a target of 100 percent academic proficiency across the board?not just in math?by 2014. If the pace of improvement that has held steady since the passage of NCLB does not change, it will be two decades or so before a mere 50 percent of U.S. eighth-graders reach math proficiency. President Barack Obama recently enacted changes that allow states to request waivers for some of the legal requirements of NCLB, including the 2014 deadline, stating that the strictures of the law were hampering academic progress in some schools.
Buckley acknowledged that the gains from 2009 to 2011 were modest, taking as an example the one-point rise in math scores among fourth-graders. "While it is statistically significant, it is not an enormous increase substantively in terms of, 'What can students really do?'" Buckley said. "They're a little bit more likely to get some particular types of items right?they have made some small improvements, but it's not an enormous change."
The NAEP statistics on mathematical proficiency are in broad agreement with international assessments that show U.S. students trailing their peers in industrialized nations in math and science. In a 2009 survey of 15-year-olds in the member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, U.S. students placed in the bottom third in terms of mathematical literacy.
Nevertheless, some observers are encouraged. "I think you have to take a step back and look at the longer trend line," says Russ Whitehurst, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at The Brookings Institution. Scores have increased steadily for two decades, raising nationwide averages by 28 points for fourth-graders and by 21 points for eighth-graders since 1990. "I don't view the gains as subtle in mathematics," Whitehurst says. "They are very large."
"We should understand that the size of any year-to-year change isn't the important thing," agrees Jeremy Kilpatrick, a professor of mathematics education at the University of Georgia. "What's important is that the movement in average scores over time has been consistently in the right direction."
Some bright spots did emerge from the latest assessment. Hawaii, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C., all posted significant score increases at both grade levels, compared with 2009. And nationwide scores for students classified as Hispanic rose in both grade levels; the score gap between white and Hispanic eighth-graders shrunk by three points between 2009 and 2011. Average test scores for girls increased slightly in both grade levels, drawing to within one point of the average scores for boys.
The new NAEP figures do not include an explanation of which education policies or practices are working or not. That analysis falls to the individual states, which are left to provide context for the data on their own school systems. "NAEP is very good at telling us where we stand...but data of the sort that we collect are not as useful in making causal inferences," Buckley said. "We're not very good at telling you why the scores are what they are."
Many have tried to ascribe gains to specific policies or practices, such as No Child Left Behind, but Whitehurst dismisses such connections as "guesswork," noting that there are simply too many moving parts to make clear inferences. "So to attribute this [gain] to any particular policy initiative, whether it's a federal policy, a state policy or a policy of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, is very perilous," he says.
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=4075361f74b743d4fcb3befd2bf2f033
phish sylvia plath def leppard tim wakefield tim wakefield jacqueline kennedy
99% The Interrupters
The Interrupters bares more than a passing resembles to the HBO TV series The Wire - except it's a documentary and it's all true. At nearly three hours, this searing, immersive documentary looks at a group called CeaseFire, an organization in Chicago set up by a doctor who has theorised that the cycle of violence spreads like a virus, and that preventative measures might be better than, for example, increasing police. Some areas in Chicago have exceptionally high rates of violent crime and statistically a young person is more likely to die from a shooting or stabbing than from anything else. "The Interrupters" refers to the brave group of people, all of whom who have grown up in Chicago and whom in their past have experienced first hand the drugs, violence, and incarceration that practically seems predetermined in some areas, and who now talk to individuals and groups and act as peacekeepers, or, where necessary, 'interrupters' literally putting themselves in the midst of dangerous scenes to stop violence escalating, and to prevent retaliatory violence and shootings. The documentary concentrates on three of these interrupters and offers throughout the film details about the pasts and what they now do in CeaseFire. Often times their role might just be to listen to what people are saying, or to calm them down, and sometimes they might have to be much more involved. We get to follow some of the people they are working with or the groups they are involved with, and they run the gamut from working one-to-one to get estranged brothers talking to themselves and their mother, through to work with classes of schoolchildren on anti-violence projects, through to speaking at funerals to beg for the violence to stop, or to ensure the people their are with make a promise to not retaliate - all of which has varying but absolutely noticeable effect in terms of violence committed. One especially powerful moment shows one of the interrupters literally breaking up a fight in the moment rocks are thrown - surely preventing murder on the streets in broad daylight. Though clocking in at nearly three hours, there's barely a frame that seems misplaced and if anything the film could have been even more exhaustive (we barely see for example, the involvements of police or government aside from a few news clips and archive footage) though this would surely have been at the expensive of the personal stories, all of which are touching. The Interrupters themselves should be seen as nothing less than heroes; their work is valuable and certainly saves lives.
August 13, 2011Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_interrupters_2011/
revenge revenge extremely loud and incredibly close boston redsox hunger games trailer hunger games trailer red sox
Entrepreneurship Lessons For The Academic-Minded
The slow pace of job creation has revived interest in getting promising new technologies out of university labs and into the marketplace. At Stanford University, a group of academic researchers from all over the country gathered to take a crash course in how to turn their projects into startup companies.
Enlarge Courtesy of Forrest Glick/Stanford University Ellis Meng and Tuan Hoang, researchers from the University of Southern California, brainstorm as part of their Innovation Corps course. Their project is an implantable device for drug delivery, connected by a wireless network to let physicians remotely track the patients' progress.
Courtesy of Forrest Glick/Stanford UniversityEllis Meng and Tuan Hoang, researchers from the University of Southern California, brainstorm as part of their Innovation Corps course. Their project is an implantable device for drug delivery, connected by a wireless network to let physicians remotely track the patients' progress.
The National Science Foundation screened applicants for this Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program and awarded each research team $50,000. They'll be mentored by entrepreneurs familiar with bringing a new technology to market, and participate in ongoing webinars and progress meetings throughout the process.
Steve Blank, an I-Corps mentor, is passionate about the entrepreneurship course he teaches at Stanford. To instill enthusiasm for the startup and offer a taste of the potential financial rewards, he invited the academics about to take his class to his spectacular ranch on the California coast.
Standing on the second floor landing above the crowd, he tells the researchers: You're in entrepreneurial boot camp; you need to be smart, focused and eager.
He bounds down the stairs, urging the researchers to be first to show off their stuff.
"Yeah, yeah, don't all rush to the front," he says as some of the researchers start to cheer.
Each of the 21 teams has its own project ? things like terahertz electronics, new technology for detecting explosives, or a smarter device for delivering pain medication.
The National Science Foundation has a history of funding basic research, but its efforts to get cutting edge technology out of the lab and into the market have been relatively modest.
"What do you do if you want to get more startups, more technology transferred out of the university?" asks Jacob Schmidt, a researcher at UCLA who's taking the class. "You need to bootstrap. You need to start that culture up from scratch."
A New Way To Think About Business
Schmidt says that hopefully the program will train a bunch of scientists and engineers to think like entrepreneurs, who will then go back to their labs and spread the word to others.
So what are they learning in class? Bullet point No. 1 is that startups are not smaller versions of large companies. Steve Blank adds that the emphasis on management and execution ? things taught in traditional MBA programs ? can come later.
Another point: It's OK to take risks and fail, as long as you learn from your mistakes.
"You know what we call a failed entrepreneur in Silicon Valley? 'Experienced.' It's a huge idea," Blank says.
Enlarge Courtesy of Zhentang Luo A pair of tweezers holds a graphene transistor fabricated on a silicon wafer. An I-Corps team from the University of Pennsylvania is working on scaling up their cheaper method of making high-quality graphene, an extremely strong, conductive material one atom thick that was the subject of a Nobel Prize last year.
Courtesy of Zhentang LuoA pair of tweezers holds a graphene transistor fabricated on a silicon wafer. An I-Corps team from the University of Pennsylvania is working on scaling up their cheaper method of making high-quality graphene, an extremely strong, conductive material one atom thick that was the subject of a Nobel Prize last year.
Enlarge Courtesy of Jenny Knoth An I-Corps team from the University of Washington is working on bringing their pyrolysis blanket to the market. Forest debris are set on fire then covered by the blanket to reduce oxygen, turning ordinary open-air combustion into a process called pyrolysis. The resulting material, known as biochar, can help soil retain moisture and nutrients.
Courtesy of Jenny KnothAn I-Corps team from the University of Washington is working on bringing their pyrolysis blanket to the market. Forest debris are set on fire then covered by the blanket to reduce oxygen, turning ordinary open-air combustion into a process called pyrolysis. The resulting material, known as biochar, can help soil retain moisture and nutrients.
Blank, a successful entrepreneur himself, poses two questions for the students to answer: What is their business model, and how will they test it?
"The most efficient way to teach this is to treat everything you think you know about building a business as nothing more than a hypothesis," he says.
So Blank sends the academic teams out of the building and often out of their comfort zones to contact potential customers face to face. And what many quickly discover is they may have to rethink parts of their strategy.
"Our initial view of who we thought the customers were was a bit flawed," says Ellis Meng, from the University of Southern California. Her team is working on a new implantable device for drug delivery, and they're happy to be part of the program.
"I think the value to us is the focus and then finding the new information," she says. "I think we were actually pretty far along when we came in, but we are now even further and better for that."
Hopes For Startup Growth
Jorge Heraud, an engineer who took Blank's class at Stanford earlier this year, is a big believer in the instructor's approach. He originally thought of building a grass clipping robot, but discovered a large untapped market for a weed cutter for organic farms. Blue River Technology was launched and has already received outside funding. It hired an employee, and plans to add several more.
"I think we can be a billion-dollar company in maybe 10 years," Heraud says. "I feel I'm prepared, I'm having successes. It's feeling really, really right."
But whether large numbers of researchers who've spent most of their professional lives in academic labs will be able to start companies is far from certain. Still, venture capitalist Jon Feiber, who's been part of the teaching team, predicts the government's investment will pay off.
"If we look at the core strength of the United States over a long period of time, it's great universities, it's funded research ? and it's what comes out of that commercially that employs people and creates great businesses," Feiber says. "So that's the long-term strategic opportunity for us as a country."
The number of startups likely to emerge from this group of students is small, but Stanford's Steve Blank predicts the course will change how these researchers think. He sits in the back of the room, he says, and smiles because he's planted something that will never disappear.
Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/10/31/141702806/entrepreneurship-lessons-for-the-academic-minded?ft=1&f=1007
nina dobrev nina dobrev michael turner tom brady emmy nominations desean jackson
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Chavez rejects British firm's compensation demands (AP)
CARACAS, Venezuela ? President Hugo Chavez says Venezuela refuses to pay compensation in foreign currency to a British-owned company after his government expropriated tens of thousands of acres of its ranchlands.
Chavez says the government has received a demand for payment in dollars from the owners of Agropecuaria Flora, a local subsidiary of the British company Vestey Group.
But Venezuela insists in paying for private land it has taken over in bolivars, Venezuela's currency.
It's difficult for foreign companies operating in Venezuela to repatriate profits and other income due to foreign currency controls in the South American country.
Representatives of Agropecuaria Flora did not answer telephone calls seeking comment Sunday.
craigslist killer chattanooga joey lawrence joey lawrence iraq war iraq war
Activists slam US studio for filming in China city (AP)
BEIJING ? Rights activists have criticized a Hollywood studio for filming a buddy comedy in an eastern Chinese city where a blind, self-taught activist lawyer is being held under house arrest and reportedly has been beaten.
Relativity Media is shooting part of the comedy, "21 and Over," in Linyi, a city in Shandong province where the activist Chen Guangcheng's village is located. Authorities have turned Chen's village of Dongshigu into a hostile, no-go zone, and activists, foreign diplomats and reporters have been turned back, threatened and had stones thrown at them by men patrolling the village.
The news that Relativity Media had chosen Linyi, a city of 10 million, as a location for its film and was touting its close government connections comes at a time when activists have renewed their attention on Chen.
A campaign to try get people to visit Chen, who documented forced late-term abortions, has caught on and intensified in recent weeks, though no one has succeeded in seeing him and many would-be visitors have been met with violence.
On China's popular Twitter-like microblog Sina Weibo, some bloggers circulated email addresses for Relativity staff, urging users to write to the company in protest. A few called for a boycott of the film.
Relativity Media said in a statement Monday that it has always been committed to supporting human rights and that "we would never knowingly do anything to undermine this commitment." It also said it believes engaging the Chinese in business and trade can bring positive outcomes.
In an earlier press release, Linyi's top Communist Party official, Zhang Shajun, is quoted as calling Relativity's chief executive, Ryan Kavanaugh, a "good friend," while Relativity's co-president, Tucker Tooley, describes Linyi as an "amazing" place.
"I hope Relativity Media will learn more about the real Linyi, about Chen Guangcheng, and see that what is currently happening in Dongshigu village is what is really 'amazing,'" Nanjing-based activist He Peirong said in an interview.
In the past several weeks, dozens of activists and Chen's supporters have risked being violently assaulted to attempt visits to his home in a bid to draw attention to his plight. The latest group was made up of 37 petitioners who traveled there by bus from Beijing on Sunday and fled after being attacked by about 50 unidentified thugs as they approached Chen's village, said one petitioner, Peng Zhonglin, from Jiangxi province. Linyi police refused to comment when reached by phone.
Human Rights Watch's senior Asia researcher, Nicholas Bequelin, said it was puzzling that Relativity appeared comfortable cozying up with the city's political leadership.
"They seem to be eager to assume this role of being a prop in Linyi's propaganda campaign to cast itself as a civilized municipality that promotes culture when the reality is that it is not only holding one of China's most prominent human rights defenders, but going to extraordinary lengths to persecute him," Bequelin said.
Relativity describes "21 and Over" as a comedy about two childhood friends who drag their buddy out to celebrate his 21st birthday the night before a medical school interview in an evening that turns into "a wild epic misadventure of debauchery and mayhem." It stars "Footloose" star Miles Teller and Justin Chon, who was in "The Twilight Saga."
Shooting in Linyi began Wednesday, and it was unclear how long filming was scheduled to take place there. Previous footage was shot in Seattle, the company said. Relativity has produced or co-financed more than 200 movies, including "Cowboys & Aliens," "Bridesmaids" and "Limitless."
___
Relativity Media's press release: http://bit.ly/vyQ9iH
___
Follow Gillian Wong on Twitter at http://twitter.com/gillianwong
kris humphries madoff bernie madoff today show school closings
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)