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Source: http://josinarahman2.blogspot.com/2013/05/can-medical-bills-cause-bankruptcy.html
Bach to the blues, our emotions match music to colors
May 18th, 2013
May 16, 2013 ? Whether we’re listening to Bach or the blues, our brains are wired to make music-color connections depending on how the melodies make us feel, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley. For instance, Mozart’s jaunty Flute Concerto No. 1 in G major is most often associated with bright yellow and orange, whereas his dour Requiem in D minor is more likely to be linked to dark, bluish gray.
Moreover, people in both the United States and Mexico linked the same pieces of classical orchestral music with the same colors. This suggests that humans share a common emotional palette — when it comes to music and color — that appears to be intuitive and can cross cultural barriers, UC Berkeley researchers said.
“The results were remarkably strong and consistent across individuals and cultures and clearly pointed to the powerful role that emotions play in how the human brain maps from hearing music to seeing colors,” said UC Berkeley vision scientist Stephen Palmer, lead author of a paper published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Using a 37-color palette, the UC Berkeley study found that people tend to pair faster-paced music in a major key with lighter, more vivid, yellow colors, whereas slower-paced music in a minor key is more likely to be teamed up with darker, grayer, bluer colors.
“Surprisingly, we can predict with 95 percent accuracy how happy or sad the colors people pick will be based on how happy or sad the music is that they are listening to,” said Palmer, who will present these and related findings at the International Association of Colour conference at the University of Newcastle in the U.K. on July 8. At the conference, a color light show will accompany a performance by the Northern Sinfonia orchestra to demonstrate “the patterns aroused by music and color converging on the neural circuits that register emotion,” he said.
The findings may have implications for creative therapies, advertising and even music player gadgetry. For example, they could be used to create more emotionally engaging electronic music visualizers, computer software that generates animated imagery synchronized to the music being played. Right now, the colors and patterns appear to be randomly generated and do not take emotion into account, researchers said.
They may also provide insight into synesthesia, a neurological condition in which the stimulation of one perceptual pathway, such as hearing music, leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a different perceptual pathway, such as seeing colors. An example of sound-to-color synesthesia was portrayed in the 2009 movie The Soloist when cellist Nathaniel Ayers experiences a mesmerizing interplay of swirling colors while listening to the Los Angeles symphony. Artists such as Wassily Kandinksky and Paul Klee may have used music-to-color synesthesia in their creative endeavors.
In the first experiment, participants were asked to pick five of the 37 colors that best matched the music to which they were listening. The palette consisted of vivid, light, medium, and dark shades of red, orange, yellow, green, yellow-green, green, blue-green, blue, and purple.
Participants consistently picked bright, vivid, warm colors to go with upbeat music and dark, dull, cool colors to match the more tearful or somber pieces. Separately, they rated each piece of music on a scale of happy to sad, strong to weak, lively to dreary and angry to calm.
Two subsequent experiments studying music-to-face and face-to-color associations supported the researchers’ hypothesis that “common emotions are responsible for music-to-color associations,” said Karen Schloss, a postdoctoral researchers at UC Berkeley and co-author of the paper.
For example, the same pattern occurred when participants chose the facial expressions that “went best” with the music selections, Schloss said. Upbeat music in major keys was consistently paired with happy-looking faces while subdued music in minor keys was paired with sad-looking faces. Similarly, happy faces were paired with yellow and other bright colors and angry faces with dark red hues.
Next, Palmer and his research team plan to study participants in Turkey where traditional music employs a wider range of scales than just major and minor. “We know that in Mexico and the U.S. the responses are very similar,” he said. “But we don’t yet know about China or Turkey.”
Other co-authors of the study are Zoe Xu of UC Berkeley and Lilia Prado-Leon of the University of Guadalajara, Mexico.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/Yq01Vu1AcRQ/130516151256.htm
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AP Source: Rutgers makes Louisville’s Hermann AD
May 17th, 2013
A person familiar with the decision says Rutgers has hired Julie Hermann from the University of Louisville to be its new athletic director.
The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the school was still working on an official announcement.
The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., first reported the hire.
Hermmann has been the Cardinals‘ senior associate athletic director and senior woman administrator. She becomes the third female athletic director at a school among the 124 playing at college football’s top tier.
Rutgers has been looking for a new AD since Tim Pernetti resigned on April 5, part of the fallout from the Mike Rice scandal.
Rice, the former men’s basketball coach, was fired when a video of him pushing, kicking and throwing balls at players became public.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ap-source-rutgers-makes-louisvilles-hermann-ad-142032940.html
Sharif’s win sparks hope for Pakistan-India ties
May 16th, 2013
FILE – In this Monday, May 13, 2013 file photo, former prime minister and leader of Pakistan Muslim League-N party, Nawaz Sharif, gestures while speaking to members of the media at his residence in Lahore, Pakistan. Over a decade ago, the man now set to become Pakistan?s next prime minister stood at this border crossing with archenemy India to inaugurate a ?friendship? bus service connecting the two countries. There is widespread hope on both sides of the border that Nawaz Sharif will take similarly bold steps to improve relations with India following his election victory, thus reducing the chance of a fourth major war between the nuclear-armed foes. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)
FILE – In this Monday, May 13, 2013 file photo, former prime minister and leader of Pakistan Muslim League-N party, Nawaz Sharif, gestures while speaking to members of the media at his residence in Lahore, Pakistan. Over a decade ago, the man now set to become Pakistan?s next prime minister stood at this border crossing with archenemy India to inaugurate a ?friendship? bus service connecting the two countries. There is widespread hope on both sides of the border that Nawaz Sharif will take similarly bold steps to improve relations with India following his election victory, thus reducing the chance of a fourth major war between the nuclear-armed foes. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)
In this photo taken on Tuesday, May 14, 2013, Pakistan laborers unload sacks of onion imported from neighboring India at Pakistani border Wagah near Lahore Pakistan. Over a decade ago, the man now set to become Pakistan?s next prime minister stood at this border crossing with archenemy India to inaugurate a ?friendship? bus service connecting the two countries. There is widespread hope on both sides of the border that Nawaz Sharif will take similarly bold steps to improve relations with India following his election victory, thus reducing the chance of a fourth major war between the nuclear-armed foes. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)
FILE – In this Saturday, Feb. 20, 1999 file photo, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, left, receives Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee at the Wagah border near Lahore, Pakistan. Over a decade ago, the man now set to become Pakistan?s next prime minister stood at this border crossing with archenemy India to inaugurate a ?friendship? bus service connecting the two countries. There is widespread hope on both sides of the border that Nawaz Sharif will take similarly bold steps to improve relations with India following his election victory in May 2013, thus reducing the chance of a fourth major war between the nuclear-armed foes. (AP Photo/B.K. Bangash, File)
WAGAH, Pakistan (AP) ? Over a decade ago, the man now set to become Pakistan’s next prime minister stood at this border crossing with archenemy India to inaugurate a “friendship” bus service connecting the two countries as cheering supporters waved flags and tossed rose petals.
There is widespread hope on both sides of the border that Nawaz Sharif will take similarly bold steps to improve relations with India following his election victory over the weekend, thus reducing the chance of a fourth major war between the nuclear-armed foes.
The reason for this optimism is not only his track record of reaching out to India the last time he was prime minister ? until the effort was doomed by Pakistan’s powerful army ? but also his commitment to turning around Pakistan’s stuttering economy. Closer ties with India are seen as critical because of the potential for much greater trade between the two countries.
Reducing the threat from India could also help the 63-year-old Sharif accomplish another unspoken goal, reducing the clout of the Pakistani army, which has long used the potential for armed conflict to justify a huge defense budget.
But the army, which sabotaged Sharif’s previous peace efforts in 1999 by secretly sending troops into India and eventually toppling him in a coup, could hit back. It may do so if it feels its interests are being threatened or the country is moving too quickly on sensitive issues with India like the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.
“We will pick up the threads from where we left in 1999,” Sharif told reporters Monday at his palatial estate near the eastern city of Lahore. “That is the roadmap that I have for improvement of relations between Pakistan and India.”
Another potential spoiler is the Pakistan-based Islamic militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out an attack on the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008 that killed over 160 people. The attack followed efforts by Pakistan’s newly elected government to improve ties with majority Hindu India.
India’s political leaders and media have hailed Sharif’s victory. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sent Sharif a message the day after the May 11 election saying the people of India “welcome your publicly articulated commitment to a relationship between India and Pakistan that is defined by peace, friendship and cooperation.” Sharif responded to the goodwill by saying he would be pleased if Singh attended his inauguration.
But India has been frustrated by Pakistan’s failure to crack down on Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has strong historical links with Pakistani intelligence. That frustration could grow with Sharif since he has also shown no inclination to target the group, which is based in his party’s stronghold of Punjab province. The two-time prime minister is also seen as more devoutly religious and close to hardline Islamic parties than the outgoing government is.
Sharif sought to temper concerns Monday when an Indian journalist asked him about the Mumbai attack, saying “we will ensure there is no repeat of any such incident ever again.”
The Lashkar-e-Taiba founder who is believed to have masterminded the attack, Hafiz Saeed, remains free in Lahore, despite a $10 million reward offered by the U.S. for his arrest and conviction. A trial of seven Pakistani men suspected of involvement in the Mumbai attack has also made little progress.
Even if Sharif wanted to target Lashkar-e-Taiba, he could run up against Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency, which helped form the group to put pressure on India over Kashmir, which is divided between the two countries but claimed in its entirety by both.
Kashmir has sparked two of the three major wars fought between Pakistan and India since they were carved out of British India in 1947. The Pakistani army used militant proxies to fight in Kashmir for years, and is accused of still doing so despite its denials.
Sharif discovered the danger of crossing the army in 1999. He began the year by inaugurating the “friendship” bus service at the Wagah border near Lahore in February. The Indian prime minister at the time, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, rode the first bus across the border to meet Sharif, who reminisced about the day in his meeting with reporters Monday.
“We were very happy on this visit,” said Sharif. “It was a defining moment in Indo-Pak relations.”
Two days later, the leaders signed a landmark agreement known as the Lahore Declaration that sought to avoid nuclear conflict.
But the goodwill didn’t last long. In May 1999, the Pakistani army chief at the time, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, quietly sent soldiers into an area of Indian-held Kashmir called Kargil, sparking a conflict that cost hundreds of lives and could have led to nuclear war. Sharif said the army acted without his knowledge. Five months later, Musharraf toppled Sharif in a coup and sent him into exile in Saudi Arabia, not allowing him to return until 2007.
Hostility in the army toward India remains strong, but the current chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, is believed to have supported efforts over the past 18 months to improve trade relations given the poor state of Pakistan’s economy. Trade between the two countries is about $2 billion dollars per year, and many experts believe that amount could increase multiple times with better ties.
Pakistan announced in 2011 that it would grant India most favored nation trading status, something India did in 1996. But domestic pressure from businesses worried about competition has prevented the government from following through.
Sharif, the son of a wealthy industrialist whose party is considered pro-business, will be watched closely to see if he moves quickly on the issue, said Khurram Husain, a freelance business journalist in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi.
“The faster he does it after coming into power, the more he shows the other side we are serious,” Husain said.
Another area where Sharif could work to improve economic ties is by trying to open more border crossings between the two countries, Husain said, noting that Wagah is currently the only crossing for cargo.
The Wagah crossing is also the site of a colorful border closing ceremony each day attended by hundreds of people on both sides, who watch Pakistani and Indian soldiers try to outmarch each other by throwing their legs high in the air to show their rivals the bottom of their boot ? a grave insult in this part of the world.
Zaheer Ahmed, who was headed to the border ceremony with his young son, said he was optimistic that relations with India would improve following Sharif’s victory.
“Nawaz is a businessman, so I believe he will definitely improve trade with India, which would help both countries,” said Ahmed. “An increase in trade would also bring more people-to-people contact, which would make Pakistan’s relations with India friendlier.”
Despite the optimism, an editorial in the Hindustan Times in India said the country should not expect a Kashmir settlement or a crackdown on Lashkar-e-Taiba in the coming months.
“What it can hope for is a government that will address the structural failures of the Pakistani economy, a government that will try and strengthen civilian institutions at the expense of the army; and a government that will understand that cutting dependence on the United States and China is only possible if Pakistan has a modus vivendi with India,” it said.
____
Associated Press writers Rebecca Santana and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad, Asif Shahzad and Zaheer Babar in Lahore and Ashok Sharma in New Delhi contributed to this report.
Associated Press
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PFT: Ex-Saints, Chargers RB Muncie dies at 60
May 16th, 2013
Getty Images
Safety Bernard Pollard isn?t simply done talking about the Ravens.? He?s done talking to the Ravens.? Well, at least some of them.
Pollard tells 105.7 The Fan in Baltimore that he won?t be attending Baltimore?s post-Super Bowl visit to the White House.
?I?m not gonna be there,? Pollard said.? ?I gotta sit this one out, man.? I actually have a vacation with my family and then I?m coming back to get [my ring].? If I didn?t have a vacation, I wouldn?t come in anyway.?
So what?s the problem?
?It?s not my teammates,? Pollard said.? ?It?s not my teammates at all.? I would celebrate with them any time, any day of the week I would celebrate with them.? But at the end of the day, I know what happened, I know what took place. . . . I?m sorry, I just don?t want to be in the room with certain people.?
Pollard didn?t name the ?certain people? with whom he doesn?t want to share space.? But he heaped praise on G.M. Ozzie Newsome and owner Steve Bisciotti, so it?s apparently not them.
?Ozzie is great,? Pollard said.? ?Ozzie is amazing.? I love Ozzie, man, he gave me an opportunity.? Mr.? Bisciotti.? It?s just one of those things where they made some moves, they cleaned house, Ozzie put together a really, really good defense as we see on paper right now.?
Pollard still seems to be particularly troubled by the situation that has been characterized in the media as ?practically a mutiny,? along with its potential link to his release.
?I?m just a player where you ask me my opinion, I?m gonna tell you,? Pollard said.? ?And for you to get upset or whatever afterwards, you know, you asked me.? That?s that. . . .? We were just asked our opinion about something.? And we let the coach know our opinion. . . .? It was us as players. . . .? We were asked, the floor was open.? And we responded, and let the coaches know how we felt, and that?s how it has to be as a football team.? We can?t walk around on eggshells as a football team.?
Though Pollard didn?t specifically mention coach John Harbaugh, it?s likely that he?s one of the people against whom Pollard holds a grudge.
Then again, Harbaugh and the Ravens ultimately may be in the right.? Pollard will never admit ? indeed, he may not even realize ? that he was out of line or over the top in anything he said or did while with the Ravens.? Still, Pollard has a reputation for being outspoken, for complaining, and for drawing too much attention to himself.
?Three teams in how many years,? one source said in the wake of Pollard?s release. ?Soon four.? What does that tell you??
The Ravens surely didn?t expect Pollard?s habit of complaining to suddenly change once he was released.? Still, if he can manage not to complain his way off the roster in Tennessee until 2014, it?ll be well worth the price of admission to see the Ravens and Titans get together in Baltimore.
Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/05/14/chuck-muncie-dies-at-60/related/
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An Unlocked Samsung Galaxy S4 Is Your Deal of the Day
May 16th, 2013
Thanks to legislation currently in the House, someday soon you’re probably going to have to pay online sales tax. Surprisingly, it’s not Amazon fighting the current bill?they’re kinda behind it
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Outlook.com Users Can Now Chat With Their Google Friends
May 15th, 2013
Here is something you probably didn’t see coming: Outlook.com just enabled chat interoperability with Google Talk. This new feature, which is rolling out worldwide over the next few days, allows Outlook.com users to chat with their friends on Google, just like they can already do with their Facebook friends. Given the somewhat strained relationship between Microsoft and Google, this move comes as a bit of a surprise, but it looks like Microsoft doesn’t expect any issues with this rollout. The new chat feature will be available across a number of Outlook.com-related products, including your inbox, calendar, address book and SkyDrive, so you can chat with your friends on Google while working on a document, for example. As Microsoft’s senior product manager for Outlook.com Dharmesh Mehta told me yesterday, Microsoft heard from its users that chat interoperability was “one of the things that was holding people back from switching from Gmail to Outlook.com.” Many of those users who did switch, he added, said that this was a feature “they missed after the switch.” To enable Google chat in Outlook.com, users simply have to connect their accounts using Google’s standard OAuth system to give Microsoft access to their accounts. After that, they can start new chats by hovering over a Gmail user’s contact cord or right from the standard chat pane. One thing that doesn’t currently work, though, is to start group chats that include Gmail and Facebook users. Mehta left open the possibility that Microsoft would enable this in the future, but for now, the team hasn’t built the pieces that would allow Microsoft to pass messages between the networks. Google is widely expected to launch updates to its own text, audio and video chat features at I/O later this week. It’s unlikely, however, that these will have any influence on the new features Microsoft announced today.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/PMMQAyNYTGk/
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Twitch video platform for gamers comes to Xbox 360, watch and play from the same place (video)
May 14th, 2013
How does a dedicated gamer relax when they’re finally beat on Call of Duty? Surely by watching others suffer the same fate, right? Well, now that just got even easier with an official Twitch app for Xbox 360. The game-centric video service finds a natural home on the console, which could go some way to augment the platform’s already 34-million strong audience (or at least prevent hundreds of wasted gaming calories used when switching screens). It’s not clear if there will be the option to bring your premium credentials along with you. But, we do know the app will bring access to the top 300 live Twitch channels, albeit initially only for Xbox Live Gold subscribers. Still, as a dedicated gamer, you probably already are one, right?
Filed under: Gaming
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/A5o5Dc_dkNo/
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Is Affiliate Advertising and marketing Genuinely Excellent
May 14th, 2013
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Source: http://thinkingparticle.com/blog/affiliate-advertising-and-marketing-genuinely-excellent
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