LONDON (AP) — Senior IOC members have urged the Olympic body and Russian authorities to investigate the dumping of construction waste that has raised concerns of possible contamination of the water supply in the Winter Games host city of Sochi.
The Associated Press revealed Tuesday that Russia's state-owned rail monopoly is dumping tons of waste into an illegal landfill in Akhshtyr, just north of Sochi, in violation of organizers' "Zero Waste" pledge for the Olympics. On a visit last week to the site, AP reporters saw trucks dump concrete slabs into a gigantic Russian Railways-operated pit filled with spray cans, tires and foam sheets.
"If this is true, I am astonished," Gerhard Heiberg, a senior Norwegian IOC member and marketing commission chairman, told the AP on Thursday. "This would be a breach of confidence between the Russian authorities and the IOC."
"I really hope we will be able to solve this and work together with the Russian authorities to hopefully do something about it, so they can keep their promise of zero-waste program," Heiberg, who organized the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer, said in a telephone interview.
"Somebody from the IOC should go and see this for him or herself and evaluate the situation," Heiberg said.
Canadian IOC member Dick Pound called for urgent action to determine the safety of the water supply.
"If you're the IOC, you say, 'Look, we've got this report. We're not in a position from Lausanne to assess it, but if it's true, this really does compromise your own citizenry and it compromises the games. Could you please give us a quick and reliable report on what the hell is going on?"
As a centerpiece of its Olympic bid, Russia promised the cleanest games ever, saying it would refrain from dumping construction waste and rely on reusable materials.
In a letter obtained by the AP, the Environmental Protection Agency in the area where Sochi is located told the Black Sea resort's environment council in late August that it had inspected the Akhshtyr landfill and found "unauthorized dumping of construction waste as well as soil from excavation works."
The village lies in an area where dumping construction waste and soil is forbidden under the Russian Water Code. Moisture from the landfill seeps into underground springs that feed the nearby Mzymta River, which provides up to half the water supply in Sochi.
"It is important for the IOC that organizing committees deliver the games in a sustainable way and with respect for the environment," IOC spokesman Mark Adams said in an emailed statement to the AP on Thursday. "Sochi 2014's zero waste objective is linked to its operational waste at games-time and they have given us every assurance of their commitment to that objective."
Regarding the Ahshtyr site, Adams said, "We understand that this was an illegal dump, which was handling construction waste and that the organizations responsible have been fined."
He said it would be up to the "relevant local authorities" to resolve the issue.
The report on the dumping came during a week in which Sochi marked the 100-day countdown to the Feb. 7-23 games. It also comes as the International Olympic Committee and Russian organizers hold the World Conference on Sport and the Environment in Sochi, a meeting intended to highlight positive steps in making the games more ecologically friendly. New IOC President Thomas Bach is among those attending the conference.
Bach spoke at the three-day environment conference in Sochi, urging Olympic bodies to work together on green projects.
"Sport has long been well aware of this responsibility, and is moving forward with many like-minded partners by setting a good example," he said, according to an IOC release. "The Olympic Movement has already shown the international community how sport can make a tangible contribution to reducing environmental impacts. We are helping in the search for sustainable solutions by providing highly practical guidelines and strategies, for implementation globally, but also locally."
FILE - This Sept. 10, 2013 file photo shows actor Ewan McGregor at the press conference for "August: Osage County" at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto. McGregor will make his Broadway debut next year in a revival of Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Thing.” Roundabout Theatre Company said Thursday McGregor will play the unhappily married Henry in the play under the direction of Sam Gold. Previews begin next October at the American Airlines Theatre. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — "Star Wars" and "Trainspotting" star Ewan McGregor will make his Broadway debut next year in a revival of Tom Stoppard's "The Real Thing."
Roundabout Theatre Company said Thursday that McGregor will play the unhappily married Henry in the play under the direction of Sam Gold. Previews begin next October at the American Airlines Theatre.
McGregor was last seen on the stage in 2008 in London starring as Iago (ee-AY'-goh) opposite Chiwetel Ejiofor's (CHOO'-ih-tel EHJ'-ee-oh-fohrz) Othello at the Donmar Warehouse. He also starred alongside Jane Krakowski, Douglas Hodge and Jenna Russell in the original Donmar Warehouse production of "Guys and Dolls" at the Piccadilly Theatre in London.
McGregor will be seen next in John Wells' film adaptation of Tracy Letts' Pulitzer- and Tony-winning play "August: Osage County" opposite Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts.
Researchers discover how retinal neurons claim the best brain connections
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
31-Oct-2013
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Contact: Paula Byron pbyron@vt.edu 540-526-2027 Virginia Tech
Discovery may shed light on brain disease, development of regenerative therapies
Real estate agents emphasize location, location, and once more for good measure location. It's the same in a developing brain, where billions of neurons vie for premium property to make connections. Neurons that stake out early claims often land the best value, even if they don't develop the property until later.
Scientists at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute and the University of Louisville have discovered that during neurodevelopment, neurons from the brain's cerebral cortex extend axons to the edge of the part of the brain dedicated to processing visual signals but then stop. Instead of immediately making connections, the cortical neurons wait for two weeks while neurons from the retina connect to the brain.
Now, in a study to be published in the Nov. 14 issue of the journal Cell Reports, the scientists have discovered how. The retinal neurons stop their cortical cousins from grabbing prime real estate by controlling the abundance of a protein called aggrecan.
Understanding how aggrecan controls the formation of brain circuits could help scientists understand how to repair the injured brain or spinal cord after injury or disease.
"Usually when neuroscientists talk about repairing injured brains, they're thinking about putting neurons, axons, and synapses back in the right place," said Michael Fox, an associate professor at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute and lead author of the study. "It may be that the most important synapses the ones that drive excitation need to get there first. By stalling out the other neurons, they can get the best spots. This study shows that when we think about repairing damaged neural networks, we need to consider more than just where connections need to be made. We also need to think about the timing of reinnervation."
The researchers genetically removed the retinal neurons, which allowed the cortical axons to move into the brain earlier than they normally would.
"We were interested in what environmental molecular cues allow the retinal neurons to control the growth of cortical neurons," said Fox, who is also an associate professor of biological sciences in Virginia Tech's College of Science. "After years of screening potential mechanisms, we found aggrecan."
Aggrecan is a protein that has been well studied in cartilage, bones, and the spinal cord, where it is abundant after injuries. According to Fox, aggrecan may be able to isolate damaged areas of the spinal cord to stop inflammation and prevent further destruction. The downside, however, is that aggrecan inhibits axonal growth, which prevents further repair from taking place.
"Axons see this environment and either stop growing or turn around and grow in the opposite direction," said Fox.
Although it is less studied in the developing brain, aggrecan appears in abundance there. In the new study, the researchers found that retinal neurons control aggrecan in a region that receives ascending signals from retinal cells as well as descending signals from the cerebral cortex.
Once the retinal neurons have made connections, they cause the release of enzymes that break down the aggrecan, allowing cortical neurons to move in.
Fox said it is interesting that the retinal axons can grow in this region of the developing brain, despite the high levels of aggrecan. He suspects that it may be because retinal neurons express a receptor integrin that cortical axons do not express.
###
The study, "A molecular mechanism regulating the timing of corticogeniculate innervation," is by Fox, Jianmin Su, a research assistant professor, and Carl Levy, an undergraduate from Suffolk, Va., all with the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute; graduate student Justin Brooks and undergraduate Jessica Wang from Virginia Commonwealth University; and Tania Seabrook, a postdoctoral associate, and William Guido, a professor and the chair of the Department of Anatomical Sciences and Neurobiology, both with the University of Louisville School of Medicine.
Written by Ken Kingery
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Researchers discover how retinal neurons claim the best brain connections
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
31-Oct-2013
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]
Share
Contact: Paula Byron pbyron@vt.edu 540-526-2027 Virginia Tech
Discovery may shed light on brain disease, development of regenerative therapies
Real estate agents emphasize location, location, and once more for good measure location. It's the same in a developing brain, where billions of neurons vie for premium property to make connections. Neurons that stake out early claims often land the best value, even if they don't develop the property until later.
Scientists at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute and the University of Louisville have discovered that during neurodevelopment, neurons from the brain's cerebral cortex extend axons to the edge of the part of the brain dedicated to processing visual signals but then stop. Instead of immediately making connections, the cortical neurons wait for two weeks while neurons from the retina connect to the brain.
Now, in a study to be published in the Nov. 14 issue of the journal Cell Reports, the scientists have discovered how. The retinal neurons stop their cortical cousins from grabbing prime real estate by controlling the abundance of a protein called aggrecan.
Understanding how aggrecan controls the formation of brain circuits could help scientists understand how to repair the injured brain or spinal cord after injury or disease.
"Usually when neuroscientists talk about repairing injured brains, they're thinking about putting neurons, axons, and synapses back in the right place," said Michael Fox, an associate professor at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute and lead author of the study. "It may be that the most important synapses the ones that drive excitation need to get there first. By stalling out the other neurons, they can get the best spots. This study shows that when we think about repairing damaged neural networks, we need to consider more than just where connections need to be made. We also need to think about the timing of reinnervation."
The researchers genetically removed the retinal neurons, which allowed the cortical axons to move into the brain earlier than they normally would.
"We were interested in what environmental molecular cues allow the retinal neurons to control the growth of cortical neurons," said Fox, who is also an associate professor of biological sciences in Virginia Tech's College of Science. "After years of screening potential mechanisms, we found aggrecan."
Aggrecan is a protein that has been well studied in cartilage, bones, and the spinal cord, where it is abundant after injuries. According to Fox, aggrecan may be able to isolate damaged areas of the spinal cord to stop inflammation and prevent further destruction. The downside, however, is that aggrecan inhibits axonal growth, which prevents further repair from taking place.
"Axons see this environment and either stop growing or turn around and grow in the opposite direction," said Fox.
Although it is less studied in the developing brain, aggrecan appears in abundance there. In the new study, the researchers found that retinal neurons control aggrecan in a region that receives ascending signals from retinal cells as well as descending signals from the cerebral cortex.
Once the retinal neurons have made connections, they cause the release of enzymes that break down the aggrecan, allowing cortical neurons to move in.
Fox said it is interesting that the retinal axons can grow in this region of the developing brain, despite the high levels of aggrecan. He suspects that it may be because retinal neurons express a receptor integrin that cortical axons do not express.
###
The study, "A molecular mechanism regulating the timing of corticogeniculate innervation," is by Fox, Jianmin Su, a research assistant professor, and Carl Levy, an undergraduate from Suffolk, Va., all with the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute; graduate student Justin Brooks and undergraduate Jessica Wang from Virginia Commonwealth University; and Tania Seabrook, a postdoctoral associate, and William Guido, a professor and the chair of the Department of Anatomical Sciences and Neurobiology, both with the University of Louisville School of Medicine.
Written by Ken Kingery
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Share
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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.
MTV has launched MTV Artists for iPhone, an app that can help you identify songs and connect you to artists. The Shazam-like song ID listens to music in order to identify it, though you can also search lyrics to find the song you're looking for. You can also find artists on Facebook and Twitter, buy music from iTunes, find tour dates and buy concert tickets. Explore a wide variety of content, including music videos and free streaming of MTV-selected tracks. MTV Artists is a free download for the iPhone, and can be found on the App Store now.
Sure the MI-24 Hind packs a wallop, but it's big, heavy, and cumbersome to fly. So, to penetrate enemy territory, Russia designed and built the agile and deadly Black Shark assault chopper. All it's missing is a frickin' laser.
In summer 1995, one year before the emergence of The nWo, WCW was stuck in a seemingly inescapable limbo. The era of Ric Flair’s thrilling rivalries against Vader, Sting and Ricky Steamboat was in the rearview mirror. Hulk Hogan had arrived one year prior, but he wasn’t being accepted by Atlanta crowds with the same maniacal frenzy that had stirred up WWE fans in the ’80s.
The lead producer of WCW at the time, Kevin Sullivan – a Boston-bred veteran brawler – needed to come up with something. He needed to do it fast. And what he came up with might be the single most absurd narrative that has ever unfolded in one of the major sports-entertainment organizations — The Dungeon of Doom.
View photos of The Dungeon of Doom's members | Watch the absurd videos inside The Dungeon's lair
A cadre of cartoonish villains that assembled in a haunted fortress, The Dungeon grew and grew to amass no fewer than 20 individual members, each more ridiculous than the next. Watching the group’s television segments today is a surreal experience and plays like a B-movie out of the mind of Troma’s Lloyd Kauffman. There were bizarre sci-fi elements like teleportation, Hogan’s turn to “the dark side” long before going Hollywood and even the first on-screen appearance of Big Show.
With the rise of YouTube, the group's run has developed a cult following thanks to its cheap production values and endlessly quotable lines like, “It’s not hot!” Fascinated by the the macabre world of The Dungeon of Doom, and the notion that its existence overlapped with the intense realism of The nWo, WWEClassics.com set out to discover the inside story. We sat down with Kevin Sullivan, the Dungeon's Taskmaster, to find out what made the group tick and why it even happened at all.
BEIRUT (AP) — Syria has destroyed critical equipment for producing chemical weapons and poison gas munitions, the global chemical weapons watchdog said Thursday as fierce clashes raged in the country's north, close to one of the sites where toxic agents are believed to be stored.
The announcement by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons came one day ahead of the Nov. 1 deadline set by The Hague-based organization for Damascus to destroy or "render inoperable" all chemical weapon production facilities and machinery for mixing chemicals into poison gas and filling munitions.
The completion of what is essentially the initial stage of destruction is a significant milestone in an ambitious timeline that aims to destroy all of Damascus' chemical weapons by mid-2014.
Destruction of the equipment means that Syria can no longer produce new chemical weapons.
However, Damascus still has to start destroying existing weapons and stockpiles. The country is believed to have around 1,000 metric tons of chemicals and weapons including mustard gas and the nerve agent sarin.
The announcement came as fighting raged Thursday in the town of Safira, which experts say is home to a chemical weapons production facility as well as storage sites, reported the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
President Bashar Assad's troops have been battling rebels, many of them linked to al-Qaida groups, in Safira for weeks. The Observatory said there were casualties on both sides Thursday but had no specifics.
The fighting underscored the dangers the chemical weapons' inspectors face as they race against tight deadlines in their mission to rid Syria of the toxic arsenal in the midst of an ongoing civil war.
A statement from the OPCW, which works closely with the United Nations, said its team was "now satisfied that it has verified — and seen destroyed — all of Syria's declared critical production and mixing/filling equipment." It added that, "no further inspection activities are currently planned."
Earlier this week, the inspectors said they had completed their first round of verification work, visiting 21 of 23 sites declared by Damascus. They were unable to visit two sites because of security concerns, the inspectors said.
On Thursday, OPCW said the two locations were, according to Syria, "abandoned and ... the chemical weapons program items they contained were moved to other declared sites, which were inspected."
It was not immediately clear if the facility in Safira was one of the two sites that OPCW inspectors were not able to visit.
Syria has submitted a plan for the total destruction of its chemical weapons that has to be approved next month by the OPCW's executive committee.
"I salute the fortitude and courage you've all demonstrated in fulfilling the most challenging mission ever undertaken by this organization," the watchdog's director-general, Ahmet Uzumcu, said in comments released by the OPCW.
Syria's conflict has killed more than 100,000 people and forced some 2 million more to flee the country. Now in its third year, the civil war pits the primarily Sunni Muslim rebels against Assad's government and its security forces, which are stacked with members of his Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
In other developments, the Observatory's chief Rami Abdurrahman said there had been a strong explosion Wednesday inside an air defense facility in Syria's coastal province of Latakia. The cause of the blast was not known, he said.
A man walks by a discount electronics shop displaying Panasonic products in Tokyo Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013. Panasonic said its quarterly profit improved to 63.3 billion yen ($644 million) from a 698.6 billion yen loss the year before. Panasonic, like Sony, has benefited from weaker yen. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)
A man walks by a discount electronics shop displaying Panasonic products in Tokyo Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013. Panasonic said its quarterly profit improved to 63.3 billion yen ($644 million) from a 698.6 billion yen loss the year before. Panasonic, like Sony, has benefited from weaker yen. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)
A man stands by a huge advertisement board of Panasonic at a train station in Tokyo Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013. Panasonic said its quarterly profit improved to 63.3 billion yen ($644 million) from a 698.6 billion yen loss the year before. Panasonic, like Sony, has benefited from weaker yen. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)
TOKYO (AP) — The "White House Down" flop added to earnings woes at Sony Corp. in the latest quarter, dragging the entertainment and electronics giant to a 19.3 billion yen ($196 million) loss.
The action movie's lackluster box office, especially compared with last year's releases of "21 Jump Street" and "The Amazing Spider Man," contributed to a 17.8 billion yen ($181 million) operating loss for Sony's pictures division, the company said Thursday.
The company slashed its profit forecast for the fiscal year ending in March to 30 billion yen from 50 billion yen, reflecting deep-seated problems in its electronics business, televisions in particular, and the disappointing performance at Sony Pictures.
"White House Down" starred Jamie Foxx as President of the United States and Channing Tatum as a Capitol police officer who ends up as the president's impromptu bodyguard while touring the executive residence with his daughter just as a band of rogue former soldiers and government employees attack. Milder in its violence, it appeared to suffer from comparisons with "Olympus Has Fallen," a slightly earlier release featuring a former North Korean terrorist who takes the president hostage.
Sony's sales for the July-September quarter rose 10.6 percent from a year earlier to 1.78 trillion yen ($18.1 billion), thanks mainly to the favorable impact of the yen's decline against the U.S. dollar. Adjusted for the 20 percent drop in the value of the yen, revenue fell 9 percent.
The company's sales of digital cameras and video cameras fell while its television, music and smartphone businesses improved. Sales of its Xperia Z smartphone helped and are expected to remain strong, the company said.
Although sales of televisions and personal computers improved slightly from earlier in the year, they were lower than the same quarter of 2012.
"The electronics business is declining beyond expectations" due to shrinking sales of televisions and other audio-visual equipment, along with slowing growth in major emerging markets such as China, the company said in its presentation.
"Sony expects its business environment to continue to be severe in the second half of the fiscal year," it said.
Sony said it is striving to improve profitability at its troubled television division by focusing on sales of higher cost products such as its 4K LCD TVs.
The company, which has suffered declining fortunes for several years, is also gearing up for the launch of its PlayStation 4 game machine.
But it still faces fierce competition from Apple Inc's iPad and iPhone as well as from powerful South Korean rival Samsung Electronics Co.
Sony sank to record losses for the fiscal year ended March 2012, reporting the worst result in the company's six decade history.
Still, its loss for April to September narrowed to 15.8 billion yen ($161 million) from 40 billion yen in the first half of the previous fiscal year.
Rival Panasonic, meanwhile, said its quarterly profit improved to 63.3 billion yen ($644 million) from a 698.6 billion yen loss the year before.
Panasonic, like Sony, has benefited from weaker yen. While its domestic sales fell 4 percent, sales overseas climbed 11 percent. Total revenue of 1.88 trillion yen ($19.1 billion) was up 3 percent from a year earlier after taking a hit from the sale of Sanyo businesses carried out in the current fiscal year.
Panasonic raised its sales forecast to 7.4 trillion yen ($75.3 billion) and doubled its profit forecast for the fiscal year to 100 billion yen ($1 billion).
FILE - In a Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013 file photo, Lady Gaga arrives for a presentation of her upcoming new album "Artpop" at a fan event at the Berghain club in Berlin. Dick Clark productions announced Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013 that Lady Gaga, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Kendrick Lamar and Luke Bryan will perform at the American Music Awards on Nov. 24, 2013. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Hold your applause: Lady Gaga will perform at the American Music Awards next month.
Dick clark productions announced Thursday that Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Kendrick Lamar and Luke Bryan will also hit the stage for the Nov. 24 awards show in Los Angeles.
Previously announced performers include Miley Cyrus, One Direction, Imagine Dragons and Florida Georgia Line.
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis lead with six nominations, including artist, new artist and single of the year for "Thrift Shop." Taylor Swift and Justin Timberlake have five nominations each, while Robin Thicke, Rihanna and Florida Georgia Line have four each. Bruno Mars and Imagine Dragons are both up for three awards.
The AMAs will air on ABC from the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live.
I don’t remember for certain which number Clark had just sung—honestly, it might have been any of the songs off her amazing debut album, 12 Stories, released Oct. 22—but I think it was “What Will Keep Me out Heaven.” In that breathtaking piano-and-pedal-steel ballad, Clark plays a woman hesitating before an elevator, torn: The man waiting for her upstairs is married to a woman she doesn’t know and doesn’t wish to hurt—but then again she’s come to realize that she’s married to a stranger herself; that’s why she’s here. The lyric leaves her right there, too, undecided, weighing promise and regret—though the tremble and ache in Clark’s voice leaves little doubt she’s headed upstairs.
Clark was joined at the Bluebird that evening by a trio of good friends and fellow songwriters: Trevor Rosen, Josh Osborne, and, seated directly across from Clark for the Sept. 21 in-the-round-performance, Shane McAnally, who’s been on quite a songwriting roll lately. Partnering with several others—Clark, Rosen, Osborne, or the likeminded Kasey Musgraves, often as not—McAnally has co-written hits for Kenny Chesney, Lady Antebellum, Jake Owen, Miranda Lambert, The Band Perry, and Luke Bryan, and has seen dozens more of his songs recorded by Nashville types ranging from Lee Ann Womack to Uncle Cracker, Tim McGraw to Kelly Clarkson to Florida Georgia Line. He is the most successful songwriter Nashville has seen in a generation.
As the applause for Clark shrinks to excited murmurs, McAnally nods in his friend’s direction and says, “That girl’s gonna save this town.”
It was an offhand comment, but, considering the source, it was nearly as jaw-dropping as the performance that inspired it. After all, by the measures that matter most to the Nashville music establishment, Shane McAnally is this town. How can he possibly believe it needs saving?
Concerns about the soul of Nashville or of country music—not the same entities, by any means, but in this case close enough—are hardly new. Choose nearly any period of country you like—Nashville Sound, Urban Cowboy, Garth and Shania’s “Hot New Country,” take your pick—and you’ll find plenty of folks who, upon listening to the latest mainstream version of the genre, declared it in figurative danger of going to hell. But previously these complaints have come from musicians specializing in some sub-style or other that was just then being shut out by country radio—or from the fans who preferred those out-of-fashion sounds—rather than from someone like McAnally, whose work is in heavy commercial rotation, albeit in recordings by other singers.
So what’s the complaint, then? For the past several weeks, the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs Chart has been a hard-rocking number with verses that are rapped as much as sung, a hoedown throw-down in which a hyper-macho singer seduces a tanned hottie while drinking a beer and driving his pickup truck down to the river in the moonlight. The record is “That’s My Kind of Night,” by country heartthrob Luke Bryan. But set the action in the afternoon instead, and switch out “beer” for “Southern [Comfort],” and the very same description works for “Cruise,” the Florida Georgia Line hit that topped the same chart for most of this past spring and summer. As it would, with minimal edits, for Blake Shelton’s “The Boys ’Round Here” and Randy Houser’s “How Country Feels” and too-many-to-count other radio hits, big and small, across the past half-decade.
Admittedly, there’s been more to country radio during these last several years than these party-hearty hits. But the songs have dominated playlists to such an extent that it has certainly felt like the format had turned into one never-ending-beer-keg-dirt-road-good-time-I’m-country-truck song. That dominance, to the seeming extinction of almost any other emotion or subject, is the complaint.
Tomahawk's seamless searching feature is very impressive. Just enter your search term in the slender window at the top of the application window. Including filters makes the searching even more efficient. Tomahawk searches through all of your enabled services. The results list is very expansive and uses columns to show artists, albums, songs, tracks and much more.
The trick to designing an all-purpose music player is to make it work the way you want. The Tomahawk Music Player performs that trick very well.
It could well be a better listening choice than any other cross-platform music player application. It runs on a variety of Linux distros, Microsoft Windows and the Apple OS platforms. This flexibility is important to me as a user because I work on all three.
Tomahawk is intuitive, with a very uncluttered display. That holds true for its interface on all of its supported platforms.
Another performance factor is its ability to separate the song title from the source. This creates a universal translation layer across music repositories, streaming services and geographic territories.
The latest version is 0.7.0 for all supported Linux distros except Fedora and Debian. For those two distros the current version is 0.6.0.
Dual Sources
Tomahawk is a very young Linux music player, but it makes up for its youth with a surprisingly mature level of performance.
It handles local and Internet-based music collections as a single music platform across all three computing platforms. This is a standard that should be met in all modern music players.
Tomahawk seamlessly integrates YouTube, Spotify, Jamendo, Grooveshark, LastFM, OfficialFM and a dozen more. This latest edition makes plugging in Internet music sources easy through a system of third-party resolvers. Just open the Settings panel and click the Services button. Select the corresponding resolver from the list and click the Install>From File button. The same process lets you connect Tomahawk to your social networks.
Look and Feel
Some music players I have liked had a glaring problem with putting too much information into too little display space. That does not happen with Tomahawk.
Its interface has a menu bar you can hide. It is replaced with an icon that opens the tools and settings menus.
A sidebar helps reduce the display clutter. It has to show the local collection, online playlists and radio stations. Playback controls are at the bottom.
What You See
The Queue display expands as you add more titles to play from your collections. You can view the open queue list or keep it closed but see the number of titles waiting to play.
A nice touch is the ability to remove songs or change their order by dragging and dropping them around the list.
Depending on what sidebar labels you select, other expandable windows open in the right side of the player window. For instance, when a title is playing, the display shows the top hits, related artists and a condensed version of the Wikipedia entry for that artist.
Screen Real Estate
Hold the mouse over any item in the sidebar to see a floating option to hide it. The sidebar serves as the functional control panel for what you see in the display window.
For example, the first label is the Dashboard. It shows recent additions to the local catalog, the newest playlists from both local collections and online sources, stations and recently played tracks.
The Super Collection label combines the local libraries of all included online friends also using Tomahawk. This might be the least-used feature, depending on your social status, but if you use it, Top Loved Tracks shows the tracks loved the most by all of your friends. Recently Played Tracks shows the last tracks they've played. I'm not a huge social media fan, so pardon my big yawn here.
More Sidebar Navigation
Charts is somewhat more useful, as it shows the currently best-selling songs on selected services activated by your choice of subscriptions. The New Releases and Search History features are more of those love-it or hate-it options.
Perhaps the most useful part of the sidebar display choices are the My Music and My Collection options. You can hide or show the sublists.
This is where you click to see your local and online music lists. You also can create playlists and radio station lists for regular listening.
Searching Success
Tomahawk's seamless searching feature is very impressive. Just enter your search term in the slender window at the top of the application window. Including filters makes the searching even more efficient.
Tomahawk searches through all of your enabled services. The results list is very expansive and uses columns to show artists, albums, songs, tracks and much more.
Clicking the information icon that appears on hover pops up related details about your listening history for that selection. A Footnote button at the bottom of the information pop-up shows more details about related artists, top hits and more.
You can click on a song or other related album or artist. If that title is not already in your local collection, Tomahawk will connect you to its location on your enabled online music outlets and play it for you.
Getting It
Installing Tomahawk is about the only part of using it that is a bit of a hassle. It is not routinely available in many distro repositories. If you do luck out and find it included in your distro, it will be several versions out of date.
Instead, go to the developer's website and click the download button. Then check the download page for distro-specific installation instructions.
Tomahawk is available for a wide range of distros, but you must install your flavor through the terminal by adding distro-specific repository commands. So far Tomahawk installs on Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, Arch Linux, Chakra, Gentoo and Exherbo. Debian is coming soon.
For other Linux distros, you can download the tarball from the developer's website or get it from github.
Bottom Line
If you are looking for the next generation of music players, Tomahawk is a good choice. It is still a young effort with lots of areas its developers need to finesse, but that maturity will continue to come with each new release.
Meanwhile, Tomahawk performs well in its current release state. It has some usability quirks that are more annoying than dysfunctional.
Want to Suggest a Linux Application for Review?
Is there a Linux software application you'd like to suggest for review? Something you love or would like to get to know?
Please send your ideas to me at jack.germain@newsroom.ectnews.com, and I'll consider them for a future Linux Picks and Pans column.
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Jack M. Germain has been writing about computer technology since the early days of the Apple II and the PC. He still has his original IBM PC-Jr and a few other legacy DOS and Windows boxes. He left shareware programs behind for the open source world of the Linux desktop. He runs several versions of Windows and Linux OSes and often cannot decide whether to grab his tablet, netbook or Android smartphone instead of using his desktop or laptop gear.
Marilyn Tavenner, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, goes over her notes on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2013, prior to testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Stressing that improvements are happening daily, the senior Obama official closest to the administration's malfunctioning health care website apologized Tuesday for problems that have kept Americans from successfully signing up for coverage. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)
Marilyn Tavenner, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, goes over her notes on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2013, prior to testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Stressing that improvements are happening daily, the senior Obama official closest to the administration's malfunctioning health care website apologized Tuesday for problems that have kept Americans from successfully signing up for coverage. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)
House Ways and Means Committee member Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, right, accompanied by fellow committee member Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., left, questions Marilyn Tavenner, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, during the committee's hearing on on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2013, on problems with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. As the senior Obama administration official closest to the implementation of the health care law's dysfunctional website, Tavenner is getting tough questions from the Republican-controlled panel about whether she saw the problems coming and will things be running efficiently by the end of November as promised. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Photographers surround Marilyn Tavenner, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as she prepares to testify on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2013, before the House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Stressing that improvements are happening daily, the senior Obama official closest to the administration's malfunctioning health care website apologized Tuesday for problems that have kept Americans from successfully signing up for coverage. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Stressing that improvements are happening daily, the senior Obama official closest to the administration's malfunctioning health care website apologized Tuesday for problems that have kept Americans from successfully signing up for coverage.
"I want to apologize to you that the website has not worked as well as it should," Medicare chief Marilyn Tavenner said as she began her testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee. It was the most direct mea culpa yet from a top administration official.
The first senior official to publicly answer questions from lawmakers, Tavenner is being grilled not only on what went wrong with HealthCare.gov, but also whether lawmakers can trust promises that things will be running efficiently by the end of November.
She firmly refused to provide current enrollment numbers, saying repeatedly they will not be available until mid-November. However, she did try to lower expectations of strong initial sign-up.
Tavenner's appearance follows last week's testimony of outside contractors who said there wasn't enough time to test the complex online enrollment system. It froze up the day it was launched, Oct. 1.
At stake is what the Republicans' partial government shutdown could not achieve: a delay of President Barack Obama's law expanding coverage for uninsured Americans. As a result of widespread sign-up problems, even some Democrats have joined Republicans in calling for a one-year postponement of the law's tax penalties for the remaining uninsured. The insurance industry warns that would saddle the new system with too many high-cost patients.
By every indication, initial enrollments have been disappointingly low. Although millions of Americans were interested in checking out new options, apparently few have been able to get through the online application process. "We expect the initial numbers to be small," said Tavenner.
An internal memo obtained by The Associated Press shows that the administration expected nearly 500,000 uninsured people to sign up for coverage just in October, the program's first month. Tavenner repeatedly declined to cite enrollment numbers, saying they will not be provided until mid-November.
House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp, R- Mich., drew his own conclusion. He told Tavenner that by his math, the administration appears headed for less than a fourth of its October sign-up estimate.
Less well known than Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Tavenner was closer to the day-to-day work of setting up the enrollment website, which was handled by experts within her agency, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, along with outside contractors. Like other administration officials, she previously had assured Congress that everything was on track for a reasonably smooth launch in all 50 states.
"If people can't navigate such a dysfunctional and overly complex system, is it fair for the IRS to impose tax penalties?" said Camp. In a concession, the White House has said it will waive penalties for anyone who signs up by March 31, in effect granting a limited grace period.
Democrats repeatedly questioned the credibility of Republican critics, given the GOP's die-hard opposition to the health care law. Ranking Democrat Sander Levin of Michigan drew a contrast between Obama's law and former President George W. Bush's Medicare prescription benefit, also beset with problems initially. For the most part, Democrats helped to smooth those issues, he said.
"If we all had the same spirit with the Affordable Care Act, it would be more than helpful," he said.
Tavenner began her career as a nurse and built a successful record as a hospital executive before entering public service. Seen as a businesslike manager, she has enjoyed support from lawmakers across the political spectrum. Indeed, Republicans are calling for Sebelius to resign, not Tavenner. But the Medicare chief's professional reputation is also at stake.
On Monday, a spokeswoman acknowledged Tavenner's central role. The Medicare agency "has said we are responsible for the issues the website is currently facing," communications director Julie Bataille said. As administrator, Tavenner "has been in charge of the overall ... implementation effort."
What Tavenner knew about the potential for problems and whom she told will be key questions from lawmakers. Additionally, some are concerned about the security of the HealthCare.gov site. Others worry about unintended consequences from the feverish, hasty work to repair the site.
Sebelius is likely to face some of the same questions Wednesday when she appears before another powerful House panel, the Energy and Commerce Committee.
Momentum to fix the problems has grown since Obama personally acknowledged the problems last week. He sent in management consultant Jeff Zients to assess the situation. By the end of the week, Zients reported that he had two big lists with dozens of needed fixes, and said he was optimistic they could be completed by Nov. 30.
HHS also announced that an outside company would assume the role of general contractor shepherding the fixes, in effect taking over the coordination job that Tavenner's agency had been doing.
Although the administration has released a blizzard of statistics on the numbers of people visiting the website, opening accounts and having their income verified by the Internal Revenue Service, it has yet to say how many have successfully enrolled for health insurance.
The website was supposed to be the online portal to coverage for people who don't have a health plan on the job. Its target audience is not only uninsured Americans but those who already purchase coverage individually. A companion site for small businesses has also run into problems.
Under the law, middle-class people can qualify for tax credits to make private health insurance more affordable, while low-income people will be steered to Medicaid in states agreeing to expand that safety net program.
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This Feb. 3, 2012 microscope image made available by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases shows a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) budding out of a human immune cell, which the virus infects and uses to replicate. Doctors may one day be able to control a patient’s HIV infection in a new way: injecting swarms of germ-fighting antibodies, two new studies suggest. Reports by Dr. Dan Barouch of Harvard and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and the National Institutes of Health were published Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2013 in the journal Nature. (AP Photo/NIAID)
This Feb. 3, 2012 microscope image made available by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases shows a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) budding out of a human immune cell, which the virus infects and uses to replicate. Doctors may one day be able to control a patient’s HIV infection in a new way: injecting swarms of germ-fighting antibodies, two new studies suggest. Reports by Dr. Dan Barouch of Harvard and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and the National Institutes of Health were published Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2013 in the journal Nature. (AP Photo/NIAID)
This April 12, 2011 electron microscope image made available by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases shows an H9 T cell, colored in blue, infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), yellow. Doctors may one day be able to control a patient’s HIV infection in a new way: injecting swarms of germ-fighting antibodies, two new studies suggest. Reports by Dr. Dan Barouch of Harvard and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and the National Institutes of Health were published Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2013 in the journal Nature. (AP Photo/NIAID)
NEW YORK (AP) — Doctors may one day be able to control a patient's HIV infection in a new way: injecting swarms of germ-fighting antibodies, two new studies suggest.
In monkeys, that strategy sharply reduced blood levels of a cousin of HIV. The results also gave tantalizing hints that someday the tactic might help destroy the AIDS virus in its hiding places in the body, something current drugs cannot do.
The study results "could revolutionize efforts to cure HIV" if the approach is found to work in people, said a commentary published Wednesday by the journal Nature along with the monkey studies.
Antibodies are proteins in the blood that grab onto specific germs and mark them for elimination. People infected with HIV naturally make antibodies to fight the AIDS virus, but they are generally ineffective. The two new studies used lab-made versions of rare antibodies with unusual potency against HIV.
One study of rhesus monkeys showed a profound effect from a single injection of antibodies, said lead author Dr. Dan Barouch of Harvard and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
The 18 animals had been infected with SHIV, a monkey version of HIV. In 13 animals, blood levels of SHIV became undetectable by standard tests within a week of the treatment. After the antibodies petered out, the virus came back. That happened one to three months after treatment.
In three monkeys with the lowest levels of SHIV before treatment, the virus didn't return during an observation period of up to eight months. Barouch said the animals were not cured, but the treatment had apparently improved their immune systems enough to keep the virus in check.
The two other monkeys started with the highest blood levels of SHIV. Treatment lowered those levels but not to the point where they were undetectable.
The second study in Nature, from the National Institutes of Health, showed encouraging results in a smaller group of monkeys.
In people, standard drugs routinely tamp down HIV to undetectable levels in the blood. But the antibody approach may someday help doctors attack virus that's hiding in infected cells, beyond the reach of today's drugs, said the Nature commentary by Dr. Steven Deeks of the University of California, San Francisco, and Dr. Louis Picker of the Oregon Health & Science University in Beaverton.
In theory, antibodies might activate the body's immune system to kill those infected cells, they wrote. Barouch's results hinted at such an effect, they noted. Virus levels dropped faster in the monkeys than they do when people get standard HIV drugs, and when the monkey virus returned, it generally didn't reach its pre-treatment levels. Barouch also found virus levels reduced in cells and tissues after treatment.
The findings of the two studies are "provocative" about prospects for attacking HIV's hiding places, Deeks said in a telephone interview.
"These studies raised more questions than they answered," he said. "But that's how science advances."
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Online:
Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature
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Malcolm Ritter can be followed at http://www.twitter.com/malcolmritter
The space gray iPhone 5s appears to have been the most popular model in the United States in the first month after launch. The silver model was the second most popular, while gold was third. Though the iPhone 5s has been difficult to find for many, the silver and gold models have faced greater supply constraints than the space gray model, contributing to its popularity. This data comes from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, by way of MacRumors:
43 percent of iPhone 5s units sold were space gray, while 30 percent were silver and 27 percent were gold. Supplies of the space gray model were more readily available than the silver and gold iPhones, but consumers have demonstrated a preference for the black iPhone in the past.
CIRP also found that blue was the favorite iPhone 5c color, coming in at 27%, ahead of white (25%), green (21%), pink (20%), and yellow (7%). When breaking down color preference by gender, men preferred the space gray iPhone 5s to the silver or gold, while women preferred the silver model. Men generally chose the blue or white iPhone 5c, while the pink model did well amongst women.
It's highly probable that this data is somewhat skewed by that fact that many people would have purchased an iPhone 5s when they could rather than wait for their preferred color. A more accurate picture of consumer demand for these devices will undoubtedly emerge as supplies of these devices normalize.
What color iPhone 5s or 5c did you get? Was it the one you wanted? Let us know in the comments.
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