Egyptian court drops lawsuit to ban comedy show

CAIRO (AP) ? A Cairo court turned down on Saturday a lawsuit filed by an Islamist lawyer demanding that a popular Egyptian satirist's TV show be banned for allegedly insulting the president and containing excessive sexual innuendo.

Judge Hassouna Tawfiq said that the lawsuit against Bassem Youssef's "ElBernameg," or "The Program," was dropped because the plaintiff did not have an interest in the case. Youssef still faces other investigations related to the show but the ruling may set a precedent.

Youssef ? known as Egypt's Jon Stewart ? frequently satirizes President Mohammed Morsi who hails from the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's best-organized political force. The lawyer who brought forth the case is a Brotherhood member.

Chief Brotherhood lawyer Abdel-Moneim Maqsoud told The Associated Press that plaintiff Mahmoud Abul-Enein filed the case on his own without involving the Islamist group.

Islamist lawyers have filed multiple legal complaints against Youssef and other public figures for their political or religious opinions.

Opposition groups and activists say such lawsuits against public figures are part of a wider campaign to intimidate critics in deeply polarized Egypt.

Youssef was interrogated this week in a separate case where he was also accused of insulting the country's leader and Islam. The questioning drew criticism from Washington and rights advocates.

The president's office said earlier this week that it was not involved in the investigation, and that it recognizes the "importance of freedom of expression."

In his written opinion, the judge explained that "it is clear from the statement released by the president's office ... that the presidency is not going to file a complaint against media personality Bassem Youssef or anyone else out of respect for freedom of expression."

"It is the right of citizens to express themselves freely far from restrictions and the presidency urges respect for the law," the judge added.

Brotherhood lawyer Abul-Enein filed the suit demanding the suspension of the license of the private satellite TV channel, the Capital Broadcasting Center, which broadcasts the show. He claimed Youssef's program "corrupted morals" and violated "religious principles."

Undeterred by the charges against him, Youssef was back on the air Friday poking new fun at the international publicity he received after lampooning the Egyptian president.

"Not everything has to be about the president. This isn't fear. I am not pulling back," he said on the show.

Youssef then said sarcastically that after his visit to the attorney general, he had decided not to talk on the show about Morsi ? just the attorney general. The television audience erupted in applause and laughter.

Then Youssef spent a good part of his show ridiculing both the attorney general and the president.

Responding to a member of Morsi's Brotherhood party who said in a news clip that Youssef only focuses on the Islamist group and the president, he joked: "They are not two things. They are one."

It was a way of mocking the president's insistence that his policy decisions are made independent of the Brotherhood.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/egyptian-court-drops-lawsuit-ban-comedy-show-095147567.html

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If Facebook Home is All About Targeted Ads, Sign ... - The Next Web

Of all the reactions so far to Facebook?s Home announcement?yesterday, the one that most caught my eye was Om Malik?s cautionary missive entitled ?Why Facebook Home bothers me: It destroys any notion of privacy?.

In it, Om warns that Facebook Home has the worrying potential to track our every move because being ?always on? can mean ?always collecting data?:

?It can start to correlate all of your relationships, all of the places you shop, all of the restaurants you dine in and other such data. The data from accelerometer inside your phone?could tell it if you are walking, running or driving.?

The risk here, he warns, is that ?Facebook is going to use all this data ? not to improve our lives ? but to target better marketing and advertising messages at us.?

Is that really such a bad thing?

It?s worth noting that while Mark Zuckerberg said yesterday that Facebook Home would be used for advertising in the future, we don?t know for sure that it will be doing the kind of tracking Om describes, (Facebook says it won?t actively track location, for example), but it?s a topic worth addressing. Even if Facebook Home doesn?t track as much as Om suggests, maybe it should.

Do you really want bad ads?

Advertising is an inconvenient reality in this world. We don?t really want it, but it?s an important factor in how the economy works and how most online services (including The Next Web and GigaOM) keep going. Most advertising is horribly targeted. Even ?tracking cookie? based advertising that uses the sites you visit to target which ads you see is flawed (ever visited a particular e-commerce site and then seen ads for it all over the Web for days afterwards, even though you?ve already shopped there?).

Facebook?s advertising system is praised for its impressively granular targeting system, but being able to target 28-to-34-year-old married women who like The Walking Dead is far more useful to the advertiser than the end user. It often results in terribly targeted ads when Facebook could do so much better by using more information.

I want more targeted ads. If I?m going to have to see advertising, I want it to know what I want before I do and cater to my needs. I want it to have analysed my behaviour and know that I?m probably thinking about buying a new mobile phone now, or that because I travel abroad a lot I want a good deal on travel insurance, or that because I walked an average of 7,113 steps per day last week (true story ? thanks Fitbit!) I probably should go to the gym more.

Sure, there are concerns to address. As Om points out, Facebook is ?a company that is known to have played loose-and-easy with consumer privacy and data since its very inception.? A ?do not track? option would be an important addition to such detailed analysis of our habits ? it needs to be optional. Also, just like the data produced by wearable devices, there?s a risk it could be subpoenaed in court cases to find out if you were really doing what you said you were, or accessed by hackers wanting to find out what you get up to.

The uncanny valley of targeted advertising

I believe that just as with acceptance of human-like robots, there?s an ?uncanny valley? of targeted advertising. Many people resist it now because it?s just not targeted enough and shows its flaws when a regular shopper at Target is shown lots of Target ads, or when people who hate gambling are shown ads for poker apps because they otherwise fit the profile of the kind of person who likes gambling.

Targeted advertising will gain true acceptance when it?s so targeted that we don?t notice it any more.?If Facebook Home and other apps with the potential to track our every activity and move can get us there, I?m all for it.

Also read:?Facebook Home doesn?t impress, but its potential as a data collection powerhouse does

Keep up with the latest Facebook news at TNW Facebook.

Image credit: Getty Images

Source: http://thenextweb.com/media/2013/04/05/if-facebook-home-will-track-my-every-move-and-serve-me-targeted-ads-sign-me-up-now/

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A 'light switch' in the brain illuminates neural networks

Friday, April 5, 2013

There are cells in your brain that recognize very specific places, and have that as one of their main jobs. These cells, called place cells, are found in an area behind your temple called the hippocampus. While these cells must be sent information from nearby cells to do their job, so far no one has been able to determine exactly what kind of nerve cells, or neurons, work with place cells to craft the code they create for each location. Neurons come in many different types with specialized functions. Some respond to edges and borders, others to specific locations, others act like a compass and react to which way you turn your head.

Now, researchers at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology have combined a range of advanced techniques that enable them to identify which neurons communicate with each other at different times in the rat brain, and in doing so, create the animal's sense of location. Their findings are published in the 5 April issue of Science.

"A rat's brain is the size of a grape. Inside there are about fifty million neurons that are connected together at a staggering 450 billion places (roughly)," explains Professor Edvard Moser, director of the Kavli Institute. "Inside this grape-sized brain are areas on each side that are smaller than a grape seed, where we know that memory and the sense of location reside. This is also where we find the neurons that respond to specific places, the place cells. But from which cells do these place cells get information?"

The problem is, of course, that researchers cannot simply cut open the rat brain to see which cells have had contact. That would be the equivalent of taking a giant pile of cooked spaghetti, chopping it into little pieces, and then trying to figure out how the various spaghetti strands were tangled together before the pile was cut up.

A job like this requires the use of a completely different set of neural tools, which is where the "light switches" come into play.

Neurons share many similarities with electric cables when they send signals to each other. They send an electric current in one direction ? from the "body" of the neuron and down a long arm, called the axon, which goes to other nerve cells. Place cells thus get their small electric signals from a whole series of such arms.

So how do light switches play into all of this?

"What we did first was to give these nerve arms a harmless viral infection," Moser says. "We designed a unique virus that does not cause disease, but that acts as a pathway for delivering genes to specific cells. The virus creeps into the neurons, crawls up to the nucleus of the cell, and uses the nerve cell's own factory to make the genetic recipe that we gave to the virus to carry."

The genetic recipe enabled the cell to make the equivalent of a light switch. Our eyes actually contain the same kind of biological light switch, which allows us to see. The virus infection converts neurons that have previously existed only in darkness, deep inside the brain, to now be sensitive to light.

Then the researchers inserted optical fibres in the rat's brain to transmit light to the different unidentified cells that now had light switches in them. They also implanted thin microelectrodes down between the cells so they could detect the signals sent through the axons every time the light from the optical fibre was turned on.

"Now we had everything set up, with light switches installed in cells around the place cells, a lamp, and a way to record the activity," Moser said.

The researchers then turned the lights on and off more than ten thousand times in their rat lab partners, while they monitored and recorded the activity of hundreds of individual cells in the rats' grape-sized brains. The researchers did this research while the rats ran around in a metre-square box, gathering treats. As the rats explored their box and found the treats, the researchers were able to use the light-sensitive cells to figure out which cells were feeding information to the place cells as the rat's brain created the map of where the rat had been.

When the researchers put together all the information afterwards they concluded that there is a whole range of different specialized cells that together provide place cells their information. The brain's GPS ? its sense of place ? is created by signals from head direction cells, border cells, cells that have no known function in creating location points, and grid cells. Place cells thus receive both information about the rat's surroundings and landmarks, but also continuously update their own movement, which is actually independent on sensory input.

"One mystery is the role that the cells that are not part of the sense of direction play. They send signals to place cells, but what do they actually do?" wonders Moser.

"We also wonder how the cells in the hippocampus are able to sort out the various signals they receive. Do they 'listen' to all of the cells equally effectively all the time, or are there some cells that get more time than others to 'talk' to place cells?"

###

Norwegian University of Science and Technology: http://www.ntnu.edu

Thanks to Norwegian University of Science and Technology for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127609/A__light_switch__in_the_brain_illuminates_neural_networks

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Indiegogo Suffers DDOS Aimed At YourAnonymousNews Campaign

When there is no central authority, who has the authority to sell t-shirts? That question came to a head over the past few days when YourAnonNews announced it planned to create something like a newswire for Anonymous news.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/MLxZ9q2-JFU/

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Psychologist Reveals Battles with Depression and Suicide in New Fiction

In his newly published book, titled ?Seven Lives,? author George Herrman creatively crafts a dramatic tale based on true events after the 9/11 attacks.

TAYLOR RIDGE, Ill. (PRWEB) April 05, 2013

http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20507781,00.html ?[Depression] is more common than AIDS, cancer, and diabetes combined, and nearly 400,000 people attempt suicide in the U.S. every year,? states Lynne Peeples in her article 15 Myths and Facts About Suicide and Depression in Health.com. Impelled by such baffling reports and statistics, author George Herrman pens and publishes a new drama based on true events, titled Seven Lives.

Seven Lives takes place post 9/11 in a suburban area outside of Atlanta, Georgia. The main character, Mark Cots, a psychologist specializes in helping people who are battling depression and more specifically those who are contemplating suicide. After years of listening to people?s stories of gruesome tragedies he is pushed down a path of drugs, alcohol and his own fetish with suicide, just to cope with his job.

After losing his job, a divorce, and an addiction to prescription pills, Mark is on a downward spiral until one day he finds his calling, helping young veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan cope with being back home. Mark?s vocation to help veterans has become his very own redemption, and a striking example that service towards other people?s needs may be a therapeutic way out of one?s own trials and tribulations.

An eye-opening tale about the most controversial issues in modern-day society, Seven Lives reveals the lights and shadows of depression, suicide, drugs, alcohol, and divorce to help readers have a better understanding of the plight of people who suffer from them. Herrman has indeed creatively crafted a story that delivers a powerful and empowering story to help society face its pressing problems.

For more information on this book, interested parties may log on to http://www.Xlibris.com.

About the Author

George Herrman is from East Peoria, Ill and was born in 1972. He graduated from East Peoria Community High School in 1991. Soon after graduation, he enlisted in the Army where he spent four years working on electronic devices and achieved a remarkable military career by attaining the rank of Sergeant before his discharge in 1995. Upon leaving the military he started his college career at a local community college, Illinois Central College (ICC) and at the same time worked for Sonitrol, an electronic security company located in Peoria, Ill. After graduating with his Associates Degree he transferred to Western Illinois University (WIU) where he received both a Bachelors and Masters of Science Degrees in I.T.T. After graduating from WIU, Herrman spent the next nine years working for the Department of Defense as a project manager at Rock Island Arsenal, Ill. In 2008, he received his ham radio or amateur radio license (KC9OEN) and enjoys working stations around the country and the world. Currently, Herrman spends a majority of his time writing and when he is not doing that he can be found looking after his twin sons and being the best husband he can be.

Seven Lives * by George Herrman

Based on True Events

Publication Date: February 18, 2013

Trade Paperback; $19.99; 200 pages; 978-1-4797-9254-2

Trade Hardback; $29.99; 200 pages; 978-1-4797-9255-9

eBook; $3.99; 978-1-4797-9256-6

Members of the media who wish to review this book may request a complimentary paperback copy by contacting the publisher at (888) 795-4274 x. 7879. To purchase copies of the book for resale, please fax Xlibris at (610) 915-0294 or call (888) 795-4274 x. 7879.

For more information on self-publishing or marketing with Xlibris, visit http://www.Xlibris.com. To receive a free publishing guide, please call (888) 795-4274.

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/psychologist-reveals-battles-depression-suicide-fiction-060036138.html

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Mapping the chemistry needed for life at Jupiter's moon Europa

Apr. 5, 2013 ? A new paper led by a NASA researcher shows that hydrogen peroxide is abundant across much of the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. The authors argue that if the peroxide on the surface of Europa mixes into the ocean below, it could be an important energy supply for simple forms of life, if life were to exist there.

The paper was published online recently in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

"Life as we know it needs liquid water, elements like carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur, and it needs some form of chemical or light energy to get the business of life done," said Kevin Hand, the paper's lead author, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Europa has the liquid water and elements, and we think that compounds like peroxide might be an important part of the energy requirement. The availability of oxidants like peroxide on Earth was a critical part of the rise of complex, multicellular life."

The paper, co-authored by Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, analyzed data in the near-infrared range of light from Europa, using the Keck II Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, over four nights in September 2011. The highest concentration of peroxide found was on the side of Europa that always leads in its orbit around Jupiter, with a peroxide abundance of 0.12 percent relative to water. (For perspective, this is roughly 20 times more diluted than the hydrogen peroxide mixture available at drug stores.) The concentration of peroxide in Europa's ice then drops off to nearly zero on the hemisphere of Europa that faces backward in its orbit.

Hydrogen peroxide was first detected on Europa by NASA's Galileo mission, which explored the Jupiter system from 1995 to 2003, but Galileo observations were of a limited region. The new results show that peroxide is widespread across much of the surface of Europa, and the highest concentrations are reached in regions where Europa's ice is nearly pure water with very little sulfur contamination. The peroxide is created by the intense radiation processing of Europa's surface ice that comes from the moon's location within Jupiter's strong magnetic field.

"The Galileo measurements gave us tantalizing hints of what might be happening all over the surface of Europa, and we've now been able to quantify that with our Keck telescope observations," Brown said. "What we still don't know is how the surface and the ocean mix, which would provide a mechanism for any life to use the peroxide."

The scientists think hydrogen peroxide is an important factor for the habitability of the global liquid water ocean under Europa's icy crust because hydrogen peroxide decays to oxygen when mixed into liquid water. "At Europa, abundant compounds like peroxide could help to satisfy the chemical energy requirement needed for life within the ocean, if the peroxide is mixed into the ocean," said Hand.

The study was funded in part by the NASA Astrobiology Institute through the Icy Worlds team based at JPL, a division of Caltech. The NASA Astrobiology Institute, based at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., is a partnership among NASA, 15 U.S. teams and 13 international consortia. The Institute is part of NASA's astrobiology program, which supports research into the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life on Earth and the potential for life elsewhere.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/lZA_bx0his8/130405143418.htm

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LG Optimus G on AT&T starts seeing Android 4.1.2 updates (update: official)

Last month, Sprint served up a dose of Jelly Bean for its variant of LG's Optimus G, and today it appears that AT&T is following suit. We've received a flurry of tips and screenshots like the one above denoting that Ma Bell is slowly starting to trickle out Android 4.1.2 to its Optimus G owners. Seeking confirmation, we've reached out to AT&T and will provide an update of our own once we receive official word on the matter. Until then, if you're rocking an Optimus G on Big Blue's network, now might be the time to manually check your device for new software.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Update: It's official -- the Jelly Bean rollout has begun on Big Blue's network. Along with the usual upgrades associated with the OS, AT&T's over-the-air patch enables Isis mobile payments for those who happen to live in Austin or Salt Lake City.

Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile, AT&T, LG

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/eXkaUhBv7_k/

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