VATICAN CITY (AP) ? The Shroud of Turin went on display for a special TV appearance Saturday amid new research disputing claims it's a medieval fake and purporting to date the linen some say was Jesus' burial cloth to around the time of his death.
Pope Francis sent a special video message to the event in Turin's cathedral, but made no claim that the image on the shroud of a man with wounds similar to those suffered by Christ was really that of Jesus. He called the cloth an "icon," not a relic ? an important distinction.
"This image, impressed upon the cloth, speaks to our heart and moves us to climb the hill of Calvary, to look upon the wood of the Cross, and to immerse ourselves in the eloquent silence of love," he said.
"This disfigured face resembles all those faces of men and women marred by a life which does not respect their dignity, by war and violence which afflict the weakest," he said. "And yet, at the same time, the face in the Shroud conveys a great peace; this tortured body expresses a sovereign majesty."
Many experts stand by carbon-dating of scraps of the cloth that date it to the 13th or 14th century. However, some have suggested the dating results might have been skewed by contamination and have called for a larger sample to be analyzed.
The Vatican has tiptoed around just what the cloth is, calling it a powerful symbol of Christ's suffering while making no claim to its authenticity.
The 14-foot-long, 3.5-foot-wide (4.3-meter-long, 1 meter-wide) cloth is kept in a bulletproof, climate-controlled case in Turin's cathedral, but is only rarely open to the public. The last time was in 2010 when more than 2 million people lined up to pray before it and then-Pope Benedict XVI visited.
The latest display coincided with Holy Saturday, when Catholics mark the period between Christ's crucifixion on Good Friday and his resurrection on Easter Sunday. A few hundred people, many in wheelchairs, were invited inside the cathedral for the service, which was presided over by Turin's archbishop. It was only the second time the shroud has gone on display specifically for a TV audience; the first was in 1973 at the request of Pope Paul VI, the Vatican said.
The display also coincided with the release of a book based on new scientific tests on the shroud that researchers say date the cloth to the 1st century.
The research in "The Mystery of the Shroud," by Giulio Fanti of the University of Padua and journalist Saverio Gaeta, is based on chemical and mechanical tests on fibers of material extracted for the carbon-dating research. An article with the findings is expected to be submitted for peer-review, news reports say.
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Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield
In 2009, ?The Hangover? dominated the summer box office on its way to becoming the most profitable ?R? rated comedy ever. But the film, and its sequel, are certainly not without their critics.
Regardless of where you stand, you?ll probably enjoy this hilariously edited movie trailer for the film, which re-imagines The Hangover as a horror movie.
Warning, there are two spots of foul language in the trailer, so don?t this one in front of your kids.
Film student Richard W. Scott edited the footage as part of his college dissertation in order to, in Scott?s words, serve as, ?part of an experimental investigation into the power of post-production techniques on a movie's genre.?
Scott employs several editing techniques that are common in today?s horror films. For examples, the color-coding of the trailer has been saturated into sepia tones, as opposed to the actual film?s bright and welcoming colors. And the music has been replaced with sharp and harsh sound cues which put the viewer on edge.
But the real creativity lies in the way that Scott has pieced the footage together, to make the film appear to be a dark journey into a world where the character of Alan, portrayed by Zach Galifinakis, is actually a murderer on the loose in Las Vegas wreaking havoc upon the lives of his unsuspecting friends and anyone else who stumbles across his path.
As Alan declares at the end of the clip, ?I don?t care what happens. I don?t care if I kill someone.?
And if you want to see more of Scott's work, he has put together another clip for his dissertation, which re-imagines the 2005 film "Batman Begins" as a comedy.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) ? Mike Krzyzewski already holds the NCAA record for most wins by a coach.
Thanks to Seth Curry's big scoring night, Krzyzewski could finish the weekend by tying one of John Wooden's records.
Curry scored 29 points, tied the school record for most 3-pointers in an NCAA tournament game and led the Duke Blue Devils past Michigan State 71-61, putting Krzyzewski within one win of his 12th Final Four appearance. All Duke has to do is beat top-seeded Louisville in the NCAA tournament's Midwest Regional final ? something it already has done.
"We were fortunate to win that game. They've been playing the best basketball in the country," Krzyzewski said, referring to Duke's 76-71 victory Nov. 24. "I love their two guards. I think they're great kids and they're dynamic. But they're deep. They're a deep team. We can't turn the ball over against them."
Duke (30-5) can create its own set of problems as the Spartans found out Friday night.
Curry knocked down six of his first seven 3s before missing his final two to tie a school record that had been attained six other times, most recently by Jason Williams on March 22, 2001, against UCLA. He had plenty of help, too. Rasheed Sulaimon scored 16 points, making 12 of 14 from the free-throw line, also tying a school record for free throws made in a tourney game. Mason Plumlee added 14 points and seven rebounds in the return to his home state.
And if Krzyzewski earns career win No. 958 on Sunday against top-seeded Louisville, he will break a second-place tie with North Carolina's Dean Smith and move into a tie with Wooden for most Final Four appearances by a head coach in NCAA history.
Krzyzewski isn't the only one chasing a milestone.
A win would also move Louisville coach Rick Pitino into a tie for fourth all-time with Roy Williams and he is trying to get the Cardinals back to the Final Four for the second straight year.
Clearly, Louisville (32-5) has a few advantages. The game in Indianapolis will be played about 100 miles from campus and another heavily-partisan Cardinals crowd is expected at Lucas Oil Stadium.
But Louisville will face a team that was ranked No. 1 earlier this season and in the same venue it lost as the top seeded team in the Midwest Region just four years ago to Michigan State. Plus, they'll be facing a Duke team that is clicking on all cylinders.
"If a team's game plan is to just to be tough or physical with us, that's not going to win," Plumlee said.
The Spartans (27-9) learned that lesson the hard way.
They focused, as usual, on dominating the middle.
Instead, Curry's 3-point barrage loosened things up, and forced Michigan State to play catch-up most of the second half.
His sixth 3 of the night broke a 38-38 tie early in the second half, sending Duke on a 9-0 run. The Blue Devils never trailed again.
"Honestly, I was just trying to help my shot. I got a few to go early," Curry said. "I feel like every time I take a shot, it's going to go down and nothing felt different tonight."
The Spartans were led by Keith Appling, who scored 16 points despite playing with a brace over his injured right shoulder. Adreian Payne added 14 points and 10 rebounds, but it wasn't nearly enough against Curry & Co.
Coach Tom Izzo was hoping that his only son's prediction, that Duke would beat Michigan State in the regional semis, would be wrong. Instead, the younger Izzo got it right.
"They're a good team, they played well, Curry hurt us, no question about it," Izzo said. "We didn't quit, we hung in there. I thought we played poorly for us, but the better team won tonight."
The game was billed as an entertaining contest between two of college basketball's most successful coaches ? and it lived up to the hype.
The first half was played to a near draw with four ties and eight lead changes.
Michigan State grabbed an 18-17 lead on Derrick Nix's tip-in with 9:52 left in the first half, but Curry then scored nine points in an 11-2 run for the Blue Devils. He was fouled by Travis Trice while attempting a 3-pointer and made all three free throws to make it 28-20 with 4:59 remaining.
Back came the Spartans, who clamped down on defense and closed to 32-31 at halftime.
But Curry's early second-half scoring spree was all the Blue Devils needed. Michigan State pulled within seven with 1:32 to go, but couldn't get any closer after trailing by as much as 13 in the second half.
"We knew we would have to play at that level. They're a little more athletic than we are," Krzyzewski said. "We had to try to match that and tonight we were able to do that. I'm glad it's not a seven-game series because I'm not sure we'd be able to continue to do it. But tonight we were able to do it."
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When Tufts University developmental biologist Michael Levin proposed tweaking cells? electrical signals to create new patterns of growth, he encountered some resistance. "People thought it was nuts," Levin says. That's because although all cells have electric potentials (defined as the amount of energy required to move a given electrical unit against an electrical field), and these potentials clearly relate to cellular properties?the assumption in most cases was that the electric potential related primarily to cellular maintenance or ?housekeeping.? Disrupting a cell?s electrical potential, the conventional wisdom went, would kill it. Yet for more than a decade Levin's work has countered this idea. He has manipulated the electrical potentials of cells in various ways to produce a menagerie of strange beasts: tadpoles with eyes on their tails or within their guts and frogs sprouting toes at the site of an amputated leg. In fact, Levin believes he has found a new role for the bioelectricity of cells. He posits that the pattern of cellular voltages creates a system of electric signals that direct how the body grows. He calls these signals the bioelectric code and believes they are fundamentally as important in understanding growth and development as the genes in the body or the various chemical switches that turn them on and off. Indeed, he thinks that changes in electric potentials across cells can also serve as a so-called epigenetic switch to regulate how genes function. Although Levin may have coined the phrase ?bioelectric code,? the belief that electric signals relate to patterns of growth is not a new concept. "The idea goes back a long way," says regenerative biologist David Stocum of Indiana University?Purdue University Indianapolis. "[Levin]'s taken it to a much higher art,? Stocum says, by actually looking at cellular potentials with specialized dyes. Some of the earliest investigations go back nearly one hundred years. In the early 20th century Yale University biologist Harold Burr placed various organisms in a voltmeter to study their electric potentials and suggested there was a link between shape and electrical properties. Then in the 1970s Lionel Jaffe, a biologist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., used a probe to study electrical currents in and around cells. He noted differences in the electrical properties of creatures that could regenerate, such as salamanders, and those that could not, such as adult frogs. But much of this bioelectric research would be forgotten in subsequent decades in the rush toward molecular biology and genetics. In recent years, researchers at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland have been examining how electric fields guide the growth of tissues during healing. But Levin's approach is the first to look at electric potentials on the level of individual cells and how they can be incorporated into our knowledge of molecular biology. All cells have an electric potential that comes from the difference between charged atoms and molecules, or ions, on either side of the cell's membrane. Highly malleable cells, such as stem cells, which have the ability to grow into other cell types as well as tumor cells (which are characterized by abnormal and uncontrolled growth) have low electric potentials whereas mature and stable cells have high potentials. Levin reasoned that if you could alter a cell's potential you can change how it would grow. And by changing the electric potential of many cells, he hypothesized that he could trigger the growth of a specific structure. Levin sees these patterns of electrical activity as a form of cellular communication, signaling when and how to grow. To test his hypothesis, Levin has co-opted tools from neuroscience and molecular biology. By inserting new genetic material or compounds into cells, for example, he has found he can manipulate their electric potentials. For example, an injection of the appropriate genetic information leads to the creation of new pumps and channels in the cell membrane that allow ions to cross whereas certain pharmaceutical compounds can facilitate the flow of ions in and out of the cell. More recently his lab has begun publishing work that incorporates opto-genetics, which involves genes that contain the hereditary instructions for making light-sensitive proteins, allowing the researchers to control cellular changes with the flick of a lightswitch. The approach is simple conceptually?help ions pass in or out by encouraging or constricting flow?but in practice it is more complex, requiring intricate calculations to determine what changes will produce the desired charge within and outside of the cell. "You have to think about the whole mathematics of all the pumps and channels present, and the medium inside and outside of the cell," Levin says. In the January issue of Development Levin and colleagues describe how they identified the pattern of cellular voltages responsible for growing a frog's eyes. Tweaking those voltages during early development caused them to be malformed. Mimicking this pattern of voltages with other cell clusters in the body induced the growth of eyes in those locations, creating frogs with eyes on their tails or backs. The work is a proof of concept with implications for regenerative biology. Levin believes one could take any cluster of cells in the body?including mature and fully differentiated cells?and override existing chemical and molecular signals by changing electric potentials. The signals would then direct growth into any shape desired, such as a new nose or eyes as well as manipulate them to repair a lost limb or correct birth defects. What's most impressive about the study is not the outcome?scientists investigating regenerative medicine have created similar strange creatures for decades with grafts and chemical interventions?but the approach. It's possible that the electric signals serve as a master switch, meaning researchers don't need to know about the subsequent interplay of chemical and molecular signals involved in creating a new structure. This is not to say genetics and epigenetics are not important. In fact, Levin points out that these signals are all cyclically linked and interdependent. "Genetics determines the cell's channels, for example, which in turn determines the gradient," he says. "And the bioelectric gradient can change gene expression." Precisely how these three sets of signals are intertwined in nature, however, remains unclear. Levin's lab has also demonstrated how observing patterns of electrical potential can be used to recognize abnormal growths?a finding they believe can have important implications in cancer research. In a study to be published in the May issue of Disease Models & Mechanisms, the team details how it identified electrical signals associated with tumor formation. Levin and graduate student Brook Chernet noticed a bioelectric signature associated with tumor-like structures, which offers a novel approach to spotting cancer. In addition, they even had some success in raising the typically low electrical potentials of these cells to prevent tumor development. But many challenges remain in understanding the possibilities of Levin's bioelectric code. Levin, for example, believes far more needs to be understood about cellular physiology, and hopes that with more data and tools he and his colleagues can begin creating a more systematic understanding of how sets of bioelectric signals relate to specific growth patterns. It also remains to be seen how well this work translates to other animals. University of Dayton regenerative biologist Panagiotis Tsonis points out that although mature frogs do not typically regenerate limbs, amphibians generally are more gifted in regeneration than mammals and less prone to cancers. "I would like to see this work extended to animals like mice," Tsonis says. "If that works, that would be fantastic." Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news. ? 2013 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.
MOSCOW (AP) ? Russian authorities are raiding non-governmental organizations to make sure they comply with a law intended to stem foreign meddling in Russian politics, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday.
Activists have criticized the sweeping searches of as many as 2,000 NGOs across the country as an attempt by the Kremlin to intimidate its critics. France and Germany have summoned Russia's ambassadors to explain the searches, while the U.S., Britain and the EU have expressed concern.
Russia's rights ombudsman, Vladimir Lukin, asked Putin about the raids, saying they have been conducted for no apparent reason.
Putin responded that the goal was to "check whether the groups' activities conform with their declared goals and whether they are abiding by the Russian law that bans foreign funding of political activities."
Hours before he spoke, the prosecutor general's office said the raids aimed to weed out underground groups and combat money laundering.
A recent law requires all NGOs with foreign funding that engage in vaguely defined political activities to register as "foreign agents." Leading Russian NGOs have denounced the law as impossibly vague.
Although rights activists such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have faced the most pressure, the Russian searches have also affected groups offering French-language courses in Siberia and those promoting bird-watching.
Pavel Chikov, a member of the presidential human rights council, said Russian agencies with no connection to the new law ? including the fire, labor and health departments ? had joined the checks.
"The prosecutor general's office has become a kind of repressive machine, instead of serving as institution that enforces the law," fellow council member Sergei Krivenko said Thursday.
In Washington, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland slammed what she called a Russian "witch hunt" against non-governmental organizations.
"These inspections appear to be aimed at undermining important civil society activities across the country," Nuland told reporters, adding that the U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, has expressed his displeasure to Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.
Nuland said the laws passed last year by Moscow impose "harsh restrictions on NGO activity in Russia."
"They are chilling the environment for civil society, which is taking Russian democracy in the wrong direction," she added.
Nuland said the U.S. was continuing its support for Russian advocacy groups, using platforms outside of Russia to direct funds to organizations.
Putin, who returned to the presidency in May, has repeatedly accused NGOs of being fronts allowing the U.S. government to interfere in Russia's affairs.
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AP writers Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow and Bradley Klapper in Washington contributed to this report.
Humans don't "own" their own genes, the cellular chemicals that define who they are and what diseases they might be at risk for. Through more than 40,000 patents on DNA molecules, companies have essentially claimed the entire human genome for profit, report two researchers who analyzed the patents on human DNA. Their study, published March 25 in the journalGenome Medicine, raises an alarm about the loss of individual "genomic liberty."
In their new analysis, the research team examined two types of patented DNA sequences: long and short fragments. They discovered that 41 percent of the human genome is covered by longer DNA patents that often cover whole genes. They also found that, because many genes share similar sequences within their genetic structure, if all of the "short sequence" patents were allowed in aggregate, they could account for 100 percent of the genome.
Furthermore, the study's lead author, Dr. Christopher E. Mason of Weill Cornell Medical College, and the study's co-author, Dr. Jeffrey Rosenfeld, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey and a member of the High Performance and Research Computing Group, found that short sequences from patents also cover virtually the entire genome -- even outside of genes.
"If these patents are enforced, our genomic liberty is lost," says Dr. Mason, an assistant professor of physiology and biophysics and computational genomics in computational biomedicine at the Institute for Computational Biomedicine at Weill Cornell. "Just as we enter the era of personalized medicine, we are ironically living in the most restrictive age of genomics. You have to ask, how is it possible that my doctor cannot look at my DNA without being concerned about patent infringement?"
The U.S. Supreme Court will review genomic patent rights in an upcoming hearing on April 15. At issue is the right of a molecular diagnostic company to claim patents not only on two key breast and ovarian cancer genes -- BRCA1 and BRCA2 -- but also on any small sequence of code within BRCA1, including a striking patent for only 15 nucleotides.
In its study, the research team matched small sequences within BRCA1 to other genes and found that just this one molecular diagnostic company's patents also covered at least 689 other human genes -- most of which have nothing to do with breast or ovarian cancer; rather, its patents cover 19 other cancers as well as genes involved in brain development and heart functioning.
"This means if the Supreme Court upholds the current scope of the patents, no physician or researcher can study the DNA of these genes from their patients, and no diagnostic test or drug can be developed based on any of these genes without infringing a patent," says Dr. Mason.
One Patented Sequence Matched More Than 91 Percent of Human Genes
Dr. Mason undertook the study because he realized that his research into brain and cancer disorders inevitably involved studying genes that were protected by patents.
Under U.S. patent law, genes can be patented by those researchers, either at companies or institutions, who are first to find a gene that promises a useful application, such as for a diagnostic test. For example, the patents received by a company in the 1990s on BRCA1 and BRCA2 enables it to offer a diagnostic test to women who may have, or may be at risk for, breast or ovarian cancer due to mutations in one or both of these genes. Women and their doctors have no choice but to use the services of the patents' owner, which costs $3,000 per test, "whereas any of the hundreds of clinical laboratories around the country could perform such a test for possibly much less," says Dr. Mason.
The impact on these patents is equally onerous on research, Dr. Mason adds.
"Almost every day, I come across a gene that is patented -- a situation that is common for every geneticist in every lab," says Dr. Mason. Dr. Mason and his research partner sought to determine how many other genes may be impacted by gene patents, as well as the overall landscape of intellectual property on the human genome.
To conduct the study, Dr. Mason and Dr. Rosenfeld examined the structure of the human genome in the context of two types of patented sequences: short and long fragments of DNA. They used matches to known genes that were confirmed to be present in patent claims, ranging from as few as 15 nucleotides (the building blocks of DNA) to the full length of all patented DNA fragments.
Before examining the patented sequences, the researchers first calculated how many genes had common segments of 15 nucleotide (15mer), and found that every gene in the human genome matched at least one other gene in this respect, ranging from as few as five matches 15mer to as many as 7,688 gene matches. They also discovered that 99.999 percent of 15mers in the human genome are repeated at least twice.
"This demonstrates that short patent sequences are extremely non-specific and that a 15mer claim from one gene will always cross-match and patent a portion of another gene as well," says Dr. Mason. "This means it is actually impossible to have a 15mer patent for just one gene."
Next, researchers examined the total sequence space in human genes covered by 15mers in current patent claims. They found 58 patents whose claims covered at least 10 percent of all bases of all human genes. The broadest patent claimed sequences that matched 91.5 percent of human genes. Then, when they took existing gene patents and matched patented 15mers to known genes, they discovered that 100 percent of known genes are patented.
"There is a real controversy regarding gene ownership due to the overlap of many competing patent claims. It is unclear who really owns the rights to any gene," says Dr. Rosenfeld. "While the Supreme Court is hearing one case concerning just the BRCA1 patent, there are also many other patents whose claims would cover those same genes. Do we need to go through every gene to look at who made the first claim to that gene, even if only one small part? If we resort to this rule, then the first patents to be granted for any DNA will have a vast claim over portions of the human genome."
A further issue of concern is that patents on DNA can readily cross species boundaries. A company can have a patent that they received for cow breeding and have that patent cover a large percentage of human genes. Indeed, the researchers found that one company owns the rights to 84 percent of all human genes for a patent they received for cow breeding. "It seems silly that a patent designed to study cow genetics also claims the majority of human genes," says Dr. Rosenfeld.
Finally, they also examined the impact of longer claimed DNA sequences from existing gene patents, which ranged from a few dozen bases up to thousands of bases of DNA, and found that these long, claimed sequences matched 41 percent (9,361) of human genes. Their analysis concluded that almost all clinically relevant genes have already been patented, especially for short sequence patents, showing all human genes are patented many times over.
"This is, so to speak, patently ridiculous," adds Dr. Mason. "If patent claims that use these small DNA sequences are upheld, it could potentially create a situation where a piece of every gene in the human genome is patented by a phalanx of competing patents."
In their discussion, the researchers argue that the U.S. Supreme Court now has a chance to shape the balance between the medical good versus inventor protection, adding that, in their opinion, the court should limit the patenting of existing nucleotide sequences, due to their broad scope and non-specificity in the human genome.
"I am extremely pro-patent, but I simply believe that people should not be able to patent a product of nature," Dr. Mason says. "Moreover, I believe that individuals have an innate right to their own genome, or to allow their doctor to look at that genome, just like the lungs or kidneys. Failure to resolve these ambiguities perpetuates a direct threat to genomic liberty, or the right to one's own DNA."
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Weill Cornell Medical College: http://www.med.cornell.edu/index.html
Thanks to Weill Cornell Medical College for this article.
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NEW YORK (AP) ? The Standard & Poor's 500 index closed within a short reach of its all-time high on Tuesday. Rising home prices and orders for manufactured goods drove stocks up from the opening bell.
The S&P 500 index rose 12.08 points, or 0.8 percent, to close at 1,563.77. That's less than two points from the peak it reached on Oct. 9, 2007, before a recession and ensuing financial crisis battered markets.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 111.90 points, also 0.8 percent, to 14,559.65.
"Unless something major comes along to derail this rally, it just seems like the market is going to keep climbing higher," said Marty LeClerc, the managing partner of Barrack Yard Advisors, an investment firm in Bryn Mawr, Pa.
Factory orders surged in February, helped by stronger demand for commercial aircraft. Overall orders for durable goods, a catchall term for products ranging from refrigerators to jumbo jets, jumped 5.7 percent from the previous month, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. It was the biggest increase in five months.
The stock market's gains were widely shared. All 10 industry groups in the S&P 500 rose, with health care and energy companies leading the way.
Smaller companies, which have been beating the market all year, didn't do as well Tuesday. The Nasdaq composite rose 17.18 points, or 0.5 percent, to 3,252.48, and the Russell 2000 rose 3.97 points, or 0.4 percent, to 949.82. That's roughly half of the S&P 500's gain.
Big company stocks and small-company stocks often part ways, said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank in Chicago. Big corporations generally have stronger ties to Europe, and their stocks wavered over the past week as traders kept an eye on negotiations to rescue Cyprus.
By contrast, smaller companies are less exposed to the rest of the world. "That's part of the reason small-caps have outpaced the market this year," Ablin said.
The S&P 500, used by investors as a proxy for the overall market, is up 9.7 percent so far this year. The Russell 2000 has fared better, rising 11.8 percent.
European markets rose modestly as investors gained confidence in the new bailout plan arranged for Cyprus and its banking system. The island country decided to keep its banks closed for another two days in an attempt to ward off panicked withdrawals.
Netflix surged 5 percent, leading the S&P 500, after an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities said the stock will likely climb as the company adds subscribers. Netflix's database of its members' viewing habits should give it an edge in creating new shows and draw more people to sign up for the video-streaming service, the analyst said. Netflix rose $9.82 to $190.61.
Housing prices rose in January at the fastest pace since the summer of 2006, before the housing bubble popped. The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-city price index climbed 8.1 percent in the 12 months to January. That compares with a 6.8 percent increase the previous month. Prices rose in all 20 cities, led by Phoenix.
The economic reports out Tuesday added to evidence that the economy is slowly improving, and that's exactly what many investors want right now, LeClerc said. Slow growth means it will take a while before the Federal Reserve starts unraveling its bond-buying program and raising interest rates.
In the market for U.S. government bonds, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note slipped to 1.91 percent from 1.92 percent late Monday.
Among stocks making big moves:
? Drive-in restaurant chain Sonic jumped 10 percent after reporting that its quarterly earnings more than doubled. Sales were flat but Sonic said its expects them to improve in the year ahead. Its stock rose $1.14 to $12.87.
? Supervalu rose after announcing plans to lay off more than 1,000 people, roughly 3 percent of its workforce. The supermarket operator said its recent sale of five grocery chains means it needs fewer workers. Supervalu's stock gained 7 cents, or 1.4 percent, to $5.12.
? Children's Place Retail Stores sank 3 percent after the company reported weaker quarterly earnings. The retailer also said bad weather would crimp its sales. The company's stock lost $1.48 to $44.51.
We got to play around a bit with Ultima Forever: Quest of the Avatar at GDC, and here's what it does -- it brings the classic hardcore MMO model to a more casual audience. Players party up in groups of four to delve into dungeon romps and dragon battles that last five minutes and up, depending on how much time you and your buddies have.
You've got all of the standard trappings of a classic RPG in Ultima Forever - slaying monsters, gaining experience points, leveling up, unlocking abilities, and amassing loot - but there's a ton of storyline to chew through here too. You've got to remember that Ultima has been around for ages, and so there's a lot of lore to pull on. There's a tie-in with Facebook so you can keep in touch with any players there and coordinate your next raid.
By far my favorite mechanic of the whole game is how they handle virtues. Making certain decisions in dialog and completing quests will have players gain different kinds of virtue points. Every city values a handful of virtues, so the more highly-ranked you are in one of its associated virtues, the more quests are available to you in that city. You even earn virtue points for helping out your underlevelled friends on quests.
I've poured more than a few hours into Ultima Online, so it's great to see the world coming to iOS in a social, bite-sized way. The only downer is that there's no crafting or housing systems as of yet, which were major staples in the older games. Fingers are crossed that they'll bring those options in through a future update.
Key find for treating wastewater on World Water DayPublic release date: 26-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Kanina Foss kanina.foss@wits.ac.za 27-117-171-024 University of the Witwatersrand
A newly developed membrane used to separate waste from water could become key in the treatment of pollutants ranging from acid mine drainage to oil-containing wastewater, as well as in processes ranging from desalination to kidney dialysis.
The research was published in Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group) on Friday, 22 March, coinciding with World Water Day and falling within South Africa's National Water Week.
The technology which was developed by a team of researchers from Wits University, in collaboration with NASA will make it easier to filter pure water from waste produced during mining, oil and gas exploration and production, and nuclear exploration, to name a few. Even medical purification processes such as kidney dialysis could benefit.
A commercial product will hopefully be developed soon, and there are plans to approach the US government regarding their problems with contaminants such as arsenic, mercury, and other heavy metals in their water. Closer to home, the technology could make huge inroads in dealing with the major issue of acid mine drainage.
According to the Head of the Wits School of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering, Prof. Sunny Iyuke, who developed the product in collaboration with two PhD students, the membrane module (similar to a household water filter) could be used to catch water waste from mines before it entered drains or the water table. Water flow analytics could be used to track the direction and location of any escaped wastewater, where another membrane module (in the form of a borehole) could be stationed.
The nanocomposite membrane gives two products: a smaller amount of concentrated waste and water so clean it could be drinkable. The waste can be reused, as in the case of arsenic, which is used in preservatives for wood and leather, ammunitions manufacturing, and pest control. Even the waste from acid mine drainage could be reused.
"Water is critical to sustaining life, and water scarcity is becoming a huge problem not just in South Africa, but all over the world," said Iyuke. "This technology produces a win win situation, for industry and the environment."
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Key find for treating wastewater on World Water DayPublic release date: 26-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Kanina Foss kanina.foss@wits.ac.za 27-117-171-024 University of the Witwatersrand
A newly developed membrane used to separate waste from water could become key in the treatment of pollutants ranging from acid mine drainage to oil-containing wastewater, as well as in processes ranging from desalination to kidney dialysis.
The research was published in Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group) on Friday, 22 March, coinciding with World Water Day and falling within South Africa's National Water Week.
The technology which was developed by a team of researchers from Wits University, in collaboration with NASA will make it easier to filter pure water from waste produced during mining, oil and gas exploration and production, and nuclear exploration, to name a few. Even medical purification processes such as kidney dialysis could benefit.
A commercial product will hopefully be developed soon, and there are plans to approach the US government regarding their problems with contaminants such as arsenic, mercury, and other heavy metals in their water. Closer to home, the technology could make huge inroads in dealing with the major issue of acid mine drainage.
According to the Head of the Wits School of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering, Prof. Sunny Iyuke, who developed the product in collaboration with two PhD students, the membrane module (similar to a household water filter) could be used to catch water waste from mines before it entered drains or the water table. Water flow analytics could be used to track the direction and location of any escaped wastewater, where another membrane module (in the form of a borehole) could be stationed.
The nanocomposite membrane gives two products: a smaller amount of concentrated waste and water so clean it could be drinkable. The waste can be reused, as in the case of arsenic, which is used in preservatives for wood and leather, ammunitions manufacturing, and pest control. Even the waste from acid mine drainage could be reused.
"Water is critical to sustaining life, and water scarcity is becoming a huge problem not just in South Africa, but all over the world," said Iyuke. "This technology produces a win win situation, for industry and the environment."
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Decoding the genetic history of the Texas longhornPublic release date: 25-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Daniel Oppenheimer daniel.oppenheimer@utexas.edu 512-745-3353 University of Texas at Austin
The study of the genome of the Longhorn and related breeds tells a fascinating global history of human and cattle migration
AUSTIN, Texas Texas Longhorn cattle have a hybrid global ancestry, according to a study by University of Texas at Austin researchers published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The study of the genome of the Longhorn and related breeds tells a fascinating global history of human and cattle migration. It traces back through Christopher Columbus' second voyage to the New World, the Moorish invasion of Spain and the ancient domestication of the aurochs in the Middle East and India.
"It's a real Texas story, an American story," said Emily Jane McTavish, a doctoral student in the lab of biology professor David Hillis. "For a long time people thought these New World cattle were domesticated from a pure European lineage. But it turns out they have a more complex, more hybrid, more global ancestry, and there's evidence that this genetic diversity is partially responsible for their greater resilience to harsh climatic conditions."
To reconstruct the genetic history of Texas Longhorns, McTavish, Hillis and colleagues from the University of Missouri-Columbia analyzed almost 50,000 genetic markers from 58 cattle breeds. The most comprehensive such analysis to date, it was funded in part by the Cattlemen's Texas Longhorn Conservancy, which helped the scientists get access to samples used by ranchers.
Among the findings was that the Texas Longhorn breed are direct descendants of the first cattle in the New World. The ancestral cattle were brought over by Columbus in 1493 to the island of Hispaniola. They traveled the rest of the way to the continent in 1521 on the ships of later Spanish colonists.
Over the next two centuries the Spanish moved the cattle north, arriving in the area that would become Texas near the end of the 17th century. The cattle escaped or were turned loose on the open range, where they remained mostly wild for the next two centuries.
"It was known on some level that Longhorns are descendants from cattle brought over by early Spanish settlers," said Hillis, the Alfred W. Roark Centennial Professor in the College of Natural Sciences, "but they look so different from the cattle you see in Spain and Portugal today. So there was speculation that there had been interbreeding with later imports from Europe. But their genetic signature is co mpletely consistent with being direct descendants of the cattle Columbus brought over."
The study reveals that being a "pure" descendant of cattle from the Iberian peninsula indicates a more complicated ancestry than was understood. Approximately 85 percent of the Longhorn genome is "taurine," descended from the ancient domestication of the wild aurochs that occurred in the Middle East 8,000-10,000 years ago. As a result, Longhorns look similar to purer taurine breeds such as Holstein, Hereford and Angus, which came to Europe from the Middle East.
The other 15 percent of the genome is "indicine," from the other ancient domestication of the aurochs, in India. These indicine cattle, which often have a characteristic hump at the back of the neck, spread into Africa and from there up to the Iberian peninsula.
"It's consistent with the Moorish invasions from the 8th to the 13th centuries," said Hillis. "The Moors brought cattle with them, and brought these African genes, and of course the European cattle were there as well. All those influences come together in the cattle of the Iberian peninsula, which were used to stock the Canary Islands, which is where Columbus stopped and picked up cattle on his second voyage and brought them to the New World."
Once in the New World, most of the cattle eventually went feral. Under the pressures of natural selection they were able to re-evolve ancient survival traits that had been artificially bred out of their European ancestors. Selection for longer horns allowed them to defend against wild predators. They became leaner and more able to survive heat and drought.
"The Longhorns that were in the area when Anglo settlers arrived almost looked more like the ancestral aurochsen than like modern cattle breeds," said McTavish. "Living wild on the range, they had to become very self sufficient. Having that genetic reservoir from those wild ancestors made it possible for a lot of those traits to be selected for once again."
McTavish said it's possible the indicine heritage in particular helped, because the climate in India and Africa tended to be hotter and drier than in Europe.
The Longhorns remained wild on the range, or very loosely managed, until after the Civil War, when Texans rounded up the wild herds and began supplying beef to the rest of the country. Since then the fortunes of the Longhorns have waxed and waned depending on how their unique genetic profile intersects with the changing needs of American consumers.
"The Longhorns almost went extinct starting in the late 19th century," said Hillis. "A lot of the value of cattle at that time had to do with the fat they had, because the primary lighting source people had was candles, made of tallow, and Texas Longhorns have very low fat content. Ranchers began fencing off the range and importing breeds from Europe that had higher fat content. That's when Americans began developing their taste for fatty beef, so then the other cattle became valuable in that respect as well. The only reason the Longhorns didn't go extinct was because half a dozen or so ranchers kept herds going even though they knew that these other breeds were more valuable in some sense. They appreciated that the Longhorns were hardier, more self-sufficient."
Hillis, who raises Longhorns of his own out at the Double Helix Ranch, said that the winds of history now seem to be blowing in the Longhorns' direction. They can survive in hotter, drier climates, which will become increasingly important as the world warms. They provide lean and grass-fed beef, which is seen as healthier by many consumers. And their genes may prove valuable to ranchers, who can use the increasingly sophisticated genetic information to selectively breed the Longhorns' toughness into other breeds of cattle.
"It's another chapter in the story of a breed that is part of the history of Texas," he said.
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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.
Decoding the genetic history of the Texas longhornPublic release date: 25-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Daniel Oppenheimer daniel.oppenheimer@utexas.edu 512-745-3353 University of Texas at Austin
The study of the genome of the Longhorn and related breeds tells a fascinating global history of human and cattle migration
AUSTIN, Texas Texas Longhorn cattle have a hybrid global ancestry, according to a study by University of Texas at Austin researchers published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The study of the genome of the Longhorn and related breeds tells a fascinating global history of human and cattle migration. It traces back through Christopher Columbus' second voyage to the New World, the Moorish invasion of Spain and the ancient domestication of the aurochs in the Middle East and India.
"It's a real Texas story, an American story," said Emily Jane McTavish, a doctoral student in the lab of biology professor David Hillis. "For a long time people thought these New World cattle were domesticated from a pure European lineage. But it turns out they have a more complex, more hybrid, more global ancestry, and there's evidence that this genetic diversity is partially responsible for their greater resilience to harsh climatic conditions."
To reconstruct the genetic history of Texas Longhorns, McTavish, Hillis and colleagues from the University of Missouri-Columbia analyzed almost 50,000 genetic markers from 58 cattle breeds. The most comprehensive such analysis to date, it was funded in part by the Cattlemen's Texas Longhorn Conservancy, which helped the scientists get access to samples used by ranchers.
Among the findings was that the Texas Longhorn breed are direct descendants of the first cattle in the New World. The ancestral cattle were brought over by Columbus in 1493 to the island of Hispaniola. They traveled the rest of the way to the continent in 1521 on the ships of later Spanish colonists.
Over the next two centuries the Spanish moved the cattle north, arriving in the area that would become Texas near the end of the 17th century. The cattle escaped or were turned loose on the open range, where they remained mostly wild for the next two centuries.
"It was known on some level that Longhorns are descendants from cattle brought over by early Spanish settlers," said Hillis, the Alfred W. Roark Centennial Professor in the College of Natural Sciences, "but they look so different from the cattle you see in Spain and Portugal today. So there was speculation that there had been interbreeding with later imports from Europe. But their genetic signature is co mpletely consistent with being direct descendants of the cattle Columbus brought over."
The study reveals that being a "pure" descendant of cattle from the Iberian peninsula indicates a more complicated ancestry than was understood. Approximately 85 percent of the Longhorn genome is "taurine," descended from the ancient domestication of the wild aurochs that occurred in the Middle East 8,000-10,000 years ago. As a result, Longhorns look similar to purer taurine breeds such as Holstein, Hereford and Angus, which came to Europe from the Middle East.
The other 15 percent of the genome is "indicine," from the other ancient domestication of the aurochs, in India. These indicine cattle, which often have a characteristic hump at the back of the neck, spread into Africa and from there up to the Iberian peninsula.
"It's consistent with the Moorish invasions from the 8th to the 13th centuries," said Hillis. "The Moors brought cattle with them, and brought these African genes, and of course the European cattle were there as well. All those influences come together in the cattle of the Iberian peninsula, which were used to stock the Canary Islands, which is where Columbus stopped and picked up cattle on his second voyage and brought them to the New World."
Once in the New World, most of the cattle eventually went feral. Under the pressures of natural selection they were able to re-evolve ancient survival traits that had been artificially bred out of their European ancestors. Selection for longer horns allowed them to defend against wild predators. They became leaner and more able to survive heat and drought.
"The Longhorns that were in the area when Anglo settlers arrived almost looked more like the ancestral aurochsen than like modern cattle breeds," said McTavish. "Living wild on the range, they had to become very self sufficient. Having that genetic reservoir from those wild ancestors made it possible for a lot of those traits to be selected for once again."
McTavish said it's possible the indicine heritage in particular helped, because the climate in India and Africa tended to be hotter and drier than in Europe.
The Longhorns remained wild on the range, or very loosely managed, until after the Civil War, when Texans rounded up the wild herds and began supplying beef to the rest of the country. Since then the fortunes of the Longhorns have waxed and waned depending on how their unique genetic profile intersects with the changing needs of American consumers.
"The Longhorns almost went extinct starting in the late 19th century," said Hillis. "A lot of the value of cattle at that time had to do with the fat they had, because the primary lighting source people had was candles, made of tallow, and Texas Longhorns have very low fat content. Ranchers began fencing off the range and importing breeds from Europe that had higher fat content. That's when Americans began developing their taste for fatty beef, so then the other cattle became valuable in that respect as well. The only reason the Longhorns didn't go extinct was because half a dozen or so ranchers kept herds going even though they knew that these other breeds were more valuable in some sense. They appreciated that the Longhorns were hardier, more self-sufficient."
Hillis, who raises Longhorns of his own out at the Double Helix Ranch, said that the winds of history now seem to be blowing in the Longhorns' direction. They can survive in hotter, drier climates, which will become increasingly important as the world warms. They provide lean and grass-fed beef, which is seen as healthier by many consumers. And their genes may prove valuable to ranchers, who can use the increasingly sophisticated genetic information to selectively breed the Longhorns' toughness into other breeds of cattle.
"It's another chapter in the story of a breed that is part of the history of Texas," he said.
###
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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.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two Democratic lawmakers on Monday stepped up their scrutiny of how regulators handled a botched review of past home mortgage foreclosures, requesting a meeting with regulatory officials as they seek further information about the reviews.
The Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency reached settlements worth about $9.3 billion with 13 banks earlier this year to end case-by-case reviews of whether they had wrongly seized homes.
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who sits on the banking committee, and Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, who is the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, asked regulators for more information in January about the reviews after the settlements were announced.
The lawmakers said the public needed to know more about the process in order to trust it.
Unsatisfied with the response they received from the Fed and the OCC on Friday, the pair on Monday demanded further information and a personal briefing on the status of their requests.
"Criminal activity should not be shielded by regulators as if it constitutes proprietary information or trade secrets," the lawmakers wrote. "We continue to believe transparency is critical around the operations of the review and settlement processes."
The settlements proved controversial because they ended reviews that had already cost the banks some $2 billion but had not yet resulted in any relief to consumers. Banks including Bank of America Corp, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Wells Fargo were part of the reviews.
The agencies to date have provided little information about what those reviews produced and how the consultants who performed the reviews were monitored. Cummings and Warren had sought that information.
The $2 billion in fees amounts to nearly $20,000 per file, a "staggering amount," Warren and Cummings said.
"It is nearly five times the average payout that will go to homeowners as part of the settlement," they wrote.
Under the settlement, borrowers who were foreclosed on in 2009 and 2010 will receive between a few hundred dollars and $125,000, depending on the issues they dealt with.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry said in their letter on Friday that the Fed and the OCC plan to make additional information public, such as the findings of reviews and the costs associated with them.
The agencies are in the process of analyzing some of that data for upcoming reports on the implementation of the settlement agreements, Bernanke and Curry said.
They also said that Fed and OCC staff could provide a briefing for the lawmakers' staffs to discuss the settlements.
Warren and Cummings said on Monday that they wanted to attend the briefing, and they asked to hold the meeting on April 9 after lawmakers return from the Easter recess.
(Reporting By Emily Stephenson and Aruna Viswanatha)
(LONDON DAILY MAIL) Animal rights charity PETA killed almost 90 per cent of dogs and cats placed in the care of the shelter at its Virginia headquarters last year, it has been revealed today.
The charity, well-known for attention grabbing publicity campaigns such as the ?I?d rather go naked? anti-fur campaign, euthanized 1,647 cats and dogs last year and only placed 19 in new homes according to the data submitted to the?Virginia Department for Agriculture and Consumer Services.
PETA told Mail Online that the animals they take in at the center are ?unadoptable?, however 89.4 per cent of pets is much higher than their own approximation that half of animals taken to shelters end up being euthanized.?
Israel said it fired into Syria on Sunday and destroyed a machinegun position in the Golan Heights from where shots had been fired at Israeli soldiers in a further spillover of the Syrian civil war along a tense front.
It was not immediately clear whether Israel held Syrian troops or rebels responsible for what a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said had been a deliberate attack on Israeli patrols in the occupied territory.
Israeli forces ?destroyed a Syrian machine gun nest that fired twice in the last 24 hours on Israeli patrols operating to safeguard the border,? the spokesman, Ofir Gendelman, said on his Twitter page.
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This article was posted: Sunday, March 24, 2013 at 11:03 am
DAYTON, Ohio (AP) ? Indiana's season, the one that's supposed to finish with confetti falling and nets coming down, was minutes from ending in shock and disappointment.
The Hoosiers were on the brink.
As the clock ticked down, coach Tom Crean wouldn't allow himself to thing about defeat, so his mind wandered elsewhere.
"That's when you just pray," he said.
Request answered.
Victor Oladipo hit a 3-pointer with 14 seconds remaining and the top-seeded Hoosiers, unable to stop Temple star Khalif Wyatt for most of the game, shut him down in the final three minutes for a 58-52 win on Sunday in the East Regional.
Trailing by four with 2:56 left, the Hoosiers (29-6) closed with a 10-0 run and advanced to the round of 16 for the second straight year. After stopping to tell Temple's players they're as good as any Big Ten team, Crean, his red tie askew and his hair messed, was overcome by emotion.
"That," he said, "was relief."
Indiana, with its sights set on a sixth national championship, will play No. 4 seed Syracuse in the regional semifinals on Thursday in Washington, a rematch of the classic 1987 title game won by the Hoosiers.
Wyatt scored 31 points to lead the Owls (24-10), who for 37 minutes gave top-seeded Indiana all it could handle before collapsing when it mattered most.
"We competed really hard," Wyatt said. "We battled. A couple plays here and there, we win. It was just a tough battled game, and they came out on top."
Oladipo, who drew the assignment of chasing Wyatt around the floor and needed plenty of help from his teammates, scored 16 and Cody Zeller added 15 for the Hoosiers, the regular-season Big Ten champs.
"If they were in our league, they'd be fighting for a championship too," Crean said. "I don't think there's any doubt about that. They're that good."
After Oladipo's long 3 put the Hoosiers up 56-52, Indiana had to buckle down on Wyatt, the Atlantic 10's Player of the Year. Wyatt was way off with a 3-pointer from the right wing with six seconds left and Indiana's Christian Watford grabbed the rebound and was fouled.
With his hands on his hips, Wyatt walked dejectedly up the floor as Dayton Arena rocked and the senior pounded his chest. The Hoosiers? heartbeats finally slowed. On Saturday, Gonzaga became the first No. 1 seed to be knocked off and, until Wyatt's miss, Indiana was in danger of zigging with the Zags.
Instead, Indiana will pack up and head to the nation's capital and a homecoming for Oladipo, who is from Upper Marlboro, Md. The junior will get to play in front of family and friends. Most importantly, he'll get to play.
"It's a great feeling," Oladipo said. "I'm just glad that we're going."
After Watford, who earlier made a huge block on Anthony Lee with Indiana trailing 52-50, hit two free throws to seal the win, the red-and-white-clad Indiana faithful relaxed and celebrated much the way Big Ten brethren Ohio State did earlier, when Aaron Craft's 3-pointer in the final second beat Iowa State and pushed the Buckeyes ahead in the West Regional.
Wyatt nearly turned this tournament into his national coming-out party. Despite playing with an injured left thumb, Wyatt, who also scored 31 in the opener against North Carolina State, gave the Hoosiers fits. With the score tied at 52-all, he broke free from Oladipo, but missed a 3-pointer and Indiana got the rebound.
Oladipo was fouled, and during a stop in action, Wyatt stared at the ball at his feet and yelled in frustration. Oladipo split a pair of free throws, but he was able to keep the ball from Wyatt on Temple's next trip, which ended when Rhalir Hollis-Jefferson's contested shot missed everything.
Then, with Indiana needing a score to open some breathing room, Oladipo hit a shot Hoosier fans will add to the pantheon of big ones by IU players.
"I was just open, and I shot it," Oladipo said, downplaying his heroics.
Indiana senior Jordan Hulls, who has played in more games for the Hoosiers than any other player, returned in the second half with a protective wrap on an injured right shoulder. He knocked down a 3 with 8:49 left to pull the Hoosiers within 41-40 and give Indiana's fans something to do other than complain about the officiating.
Scoring from inside and out, and looking into the crowd after every made shot, Wyatt had 20 points in the first half. And although he missed a 3-pointer in the final second, the senior clapped his hands and let out a high-pitched "whoooop" as he headed to the locker room with the Owls leading 29-26.
The three-point deficit at the break matched Indiana's largest this season, and the Hoosiers hardly looked like themselves for much of the opening 20 minutes.
But in the second half, Indiana used Oladipo, Remy Abell, Sheehey and even Zelller on Wyatt, who found it much more difficult to get to the basket ? or even an unobstructed look at it.
"It was fun while it lasted," he said.
The Hoosiers' good times roll on.
Kentucky had barely finished cutting down the nets as national champions last year in New Orleans, when Indiana, which lost to the Wildcats in the tournament, were labeled as the team to beat in 2013. They embraced the higher expectations, and led by seniors Hulls and Watford ? who were around when IU bottomed out amid scandal ? the Hoosiers spent most of this season at or near the top of the AP Top 25. Indiana took a few lumps in the brutal Big Ten, but handed out just as many in winning its first regular-season conference title since 1993.
Nice, but not close to the ultimate goal ? a national championship. That's still in front of the Hoosiers.
A new McDonald's ad that uses a bus full of South African children to promote the McFlurry ice cream shake is either an inspiring act of genius, or mawkish exploitation, depending how you see it.
The ad, by DDB South Africa, shows a bunch of kids from the Sakhumzi orphanage (which is apparently in Mfuleni, a township east of Cape Town). They are woken up by a nurse in the morning, put onto a bus and taken to McD's to get McFlurries. Then they deliver the drinks to folks at the Huis De Kuilen Old-Age Home.
It's heartwarming stuff. And the agency claimed it's a "live stunt" on Ads of the World, a site where agency people showcase their new work.
But there's no mention of whether McDonald's made a donation to the orphanage, or whether the kids were compensated for their star turn. (We asked the agency and McD's for comment; no word yet.)
The Daily Mail suggests that some people may be annoyed by the ad, but reaction on YouTube and AOTW is mostly positive so far.
The agency said:
Based on the premise that everybody has got something to give, we set out to spread happiness with this live stunt commercial. No actors, just a real orphanage and old age home, and one take to get the moment. The TVC has already been awarded Best of McDonald's TVC for 2012/13 by some of the top Mcdonald's Creative Directors from around the world.
Keeping your backyard well-maintained and attractive as well as looking valuable does require proper lawn maintenance and requires an amount of time devoted for to task. To keep the yard in perfect condition, you have to dedicate your time and have patience as well as willingness to get your hands dirty. If you practice improper mowing techniques and don't know safety information, you are likely to meet accidents and injuries. Also, the wrong choice of equipment can make the task harder or even ruin the landscape which can make it more costly to fix.
Thanks to new lawn equipment technologies, mowing the lawn has become an easier, safer, more efficient and even interesting task. The right choice of equipment can help you get the job done faster, and will allow you to implement your lawn maintenance plans more accurately. Home owners and property keepers note that the best performance can be assured if you count on high-quality brands and trusted lawn equipment manufacturers. As expected, big-name brands typically require a bigger investment. If you think that a lawn equipment upgrade is in order, why not look for a lawn mower for hire first?
Renting lawn equipment enables you to immediately get to use your preferred lawn mower without the high price of an outright purchase. This solution will give you more time to save up for the actual cost. More importantly, it will enable you to experience first-hand if a particular model is really the right fit for your needs, the size of the lawn, and the expected workload and frequency of use of the equipment. Just make sure that you rent only from reliable suppliers, as they will check and test every unit to guarantee you'll get the best results for your task.
Once you have decided that it's time to make the purchase, take a look at mowers' websites to be informed about the latest rates; be on the lookout for current promos and discounts. A leading lawn equipment business can offer high-end brands such as Honda lawn mowers for sale at a specially reduced rate, thanks to their years in service and established relationships with main manufacturers.
Moreover, purchasing lawn mowers for sale from an established business can help you have access to financing options that will allow you to fast-track ownership of your preferred product at the most efficient and friendliest process possible. Should you have questions or concerns after purchase, a trusted lawn mower supplier can likewise provide you with fast, responsive after sales service to help you figure out the best way to maximise the use of your brand-new lawn equipment.
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Public release date: 26-Mar-2013
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