Keegan Bradley feels he can defend his WGC-Bridgestone Invitational title this week when he goes in search of a first win in 2013.
The 27-year-old collected the $1.4million first prize at Firestone last year, after a one-shot victory over fellow Americans Jim Furyk and Steve Stricker.
Although Bradley is a big fan of the Ohio course, which he says is "perfect" for his game, he will need to improve on a recent disappointing run of form, with no top-ten finishes since mid-May.
Despite still hunting his first tournament victory of the year, the American is 13th in the FedEx Cup standings and has shown signs of a recovery at Muirfield, where he finished tied 15th in The Open Championship.
Speaking about his chances, Bradley stated: "You must drive the ball well there. If you don't, you're not going to be able to score.
"It's a course that I've felt comfortable on the last two years, and one that I feel like every time I play, that I should have a decent shot to win the tournament."
Lindsay Lohan departs Cliffside Malibu Rehab Center on July 30, 2013.
And ... she's out! As of 6 p.m. Los Angeles time on Tuesday, Lindsay Lohan was seen departing from Cliffside Malibu, the rehab center she had been staying at for the past month and a half, reports E! Online.
Smoking a cigarette, Lohan hopped into an SUV and was driven away.
Did she get anything out of it? Her public comments post-rehab will have to wait, but back in May she told Piers Morgan in an interview for The Daily Mail's Event magazine, "I don't think I need to be on lockdown for three months. I don't think that's rehab.... Constantly sending me to rehab is pointless."
The 27-year-old had been given a 90-day sentence for reckless driving and giving false information to a peace officer in relation to a car crash last summer. She had spent the first part of her treatment at Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif. and then transferred to Cliffside halfway through.
A court hearing is scheduled for her case on Wednesday morning, though she doesn't have to be there unless there are questions about her probation. And she's already got a job: Guest-hosting E!'s "Chelsea Lately" on Aug 5.
In addition, Oprah Winfrey's OWN network has her booked for an eight-episode documentary series that will follow Lohan in her days post-rehab. The interview with Lohan will air in August, while the show is set to air in 2014.
Her latest film, "The Canyons," opens on Aug. 2, and has received largely negative reviews thus far.
What?s happening in the ad world these days? One TV ad running in my area is of a mother who, the narrator chirps, is a master multitasker. She is on a cell phone while making her kids breakfast and sending them off for the day. She?s on the cell phone while doing the grocery shopping with her kids.
She doesn?t even take that phone off her ear when going through the checkout line. Yes, she?s smiling all the time but how is it that whoever is on the other end of that phone is more important than relating to her children and the people in front of her?
Another ad: A woman tells us she is in charge of the family finances and she is so, so happy that she?s found a bundle of cable services that is faster than her old company. We follow her through the house as she indicates her daughter in her room on a computer, her husband in the living room on his laptop and her son in the family room on his tablet. Everyone is happy to have speedy Internet. Everyone is in a different room.
Together alone. Are the ads reflecting American life or are they showing us what we should accept as ?normal?? The people who make the ads know what sells. What they seem to be selling these days is the idea that it is normative for family members to be more interested in their electronics than each other. They may even be right.
According to a recent study from the Kaiser Family Foundation, kids between the ages of 8 to 18 are now spending more than seven and a half hours a day on devices with screens (computers, TVs, and other electronics.) That doesn?t count time spent texting or talking on cell phones. Meanwhile, research shows that American working parents spend an average of 19 minutes a day of quality time with their children! A study by the U.S. Department of Education found that mothers spend less than 30 minutes a day talking with their children while other polls show that fathers spend an average of 15 minutes per day.
Do the math! Who, or rather what, is spending the most time with our children?
Yes, I know. Computers are a fact of life. A kid who grows up in a home without one is at a decided disadvantage. More and more teachers assume the kids have one available and create assignments that require the ability to search the Internet for information. Social inclusion seems to require it. Cell phones provide a measure of safety for kids who are home alone or who are traveling from place to place.
But there?s a dark side. The time with computers can slide from use to abuse so gradually that we barely notice. That?s why the multitasker mom in the TV ad is so disturbing. She probably isn?t aware of how that little box on her ear has separated her from her children and her community. She thinks she can both be on the phone and in life. As happy as she seems to be, she?s missing interactions that are important to her children?s development and to her relationship with them. She?s missing the opportunity to give her kids a warm send-off in the morning. She isn?t teaching her kids about nutrition, budgeting, and courtesy at the grocery store. The message she is giving them is that they are along for her ride, not important in their own right.
As connected as everyone seems to be with the social world, it takes some effort to make genuine connections within the family. Kids need the nurturing that only another human being can provide. They need role models from life, not from TV, about how to be an adult, how to be in loving relationship with a partner, and how to parent their children. They need more protection than ?nannyware? can provide from material that is too mature or too stimulating for them to handle. They need to learn how to get information from people as well as from Google. They need parents to monitor their progress and school and to teach them to value schooling. They need gentle teaching by loving parents about what is important culturally and spiritually.
The mom who happily takes us through her perfect house, finding her perfectly happy family members in separate corners, should be concerned. Is her tour just a moment in time, or is it a reflection of the general state of relationships in her family? If it is the latter, she and her husband have some talking to do about how to fix their lack of connection with their kids.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has weighed in on the subject. They recommend that parents establish ?screen-free? zones in our homes. That means no TVs or computers in kids? bedrooms and limiting entertainment time on computers to two hours a day or less. Further, they stress the importance of monitoring what our kids are watching (and playing if in online gaming) for quality.
It almost doesn?t matter what adults do with kids as long as there is an opportunity to talk, to have affectionate physical contact and to pass on information, values, and beliefs. Having a game of catch outside, chatting while making dinner together or washing the car or snuggling up on the couch to read stories all provide the one-on-one, adult-to-kid time that gives our kids things no screen, no matter what the app, can.
?
Dr. Marie Hartwell-Walker is licensed as both a psychologist and marriage and family counselor. She specializes in couples and family therapy and parent education. She writes regularly for Psych Central as well as Psych Central's Ask the Therapist feature, and has published the insightful parenting e-book, Tending the Family Heart.
APA Reference Hartwell-Walker, M. (2013). Together Alone: Computers, Technology & Kids. Psych Central. Retrieved on July 30, 2013, from http://psychcentral.com/lib/together-alone-computers-technology-kids/00017226
????Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 25 Jul 2013 ????Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.
*Got dryhumped by a goat when I was 8 crew* *Dad videotaped it crew* *Won America's Funniest Home Videos crew* *Recognized daily on the street by strangers crew* *Depressed for life crew*
"Nothing lifts me out of a bad mood better than a hard workout on my treadmill. It never fails. Exercise is nothing short of a miracle." - Cher.
Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai has said the company's entertainment division is off limits.
HONG KONG (CNNMoney)
Since May, the hedge fund investor has pressed Sony to spin off its entertainment division. The Japanese electronics giant has responded by indicating its movie and music business isn't going anywhere near an auction block at the moment.
Now, Loeb is increasing pressure on the company -- and he's not dancing around the key issues.
"Keeping entertainment underexposed, undervalued and underperforming is not a strategy for success," Loeb wrote in a July 29 letter to investors with his Third Point fund.
The letter says that profits from the division lag behind its competitors, a trend exacerbated by recent summer blockbuster films like After Earth and White House Down that "bombed spectacularly at the box office."
Loeb also issued a sharp critique of management in the entertainment division, saying the operation has a "famously bloated corporate structure, generous perk packages, high salaries for underperforming senior executives, and marketing budgets that do not seem to be in line with any sense of return on capital invested."
Sony won't realize its full potential unless it stops treating its entertainment division as a "red-headed stepchild," he said.
Related story: Nintendo's big problem
Third Point, as one of Sony's largest shareholders, has continued to raise its stake. In June, the fund boosted its holdings to about $1.4 billion.
Sony's earnings could benefit directly from a separation, as it "stands at the crossroads of compelling corporate opportunity and massive Japanese economic reform," Loeb wrote previously in a letter to the company. "Under Prime Minister Abe's leadership, Japan can regain its position as one of the world's preeminent economic powerhouses and manufacturing engines."
Related story: Why Dan Loeb loves Japan
Loeb has been vocal about his interest in Japan, telling investors that his firm is "extremely focused" on the country. At a hedge fund conference in May, Loeb said Japanese stocks were cheap despite recent strong gains.
Sony was noncommittal when asked for comment on Tuesday. The company said in a statement that it was "focused on creating shareholder value" while the board reviews Loeb's proposal, and "looks forward to a constructive dialogue with our shareholders."
Sony shares gained 3% in Tokyo trading and have surged 121% so far this year. The company will release its latest quarterly earnings report on Aug. 1.
Former Director General of Al Jazeera Wadah Khanfar joined me Monday for a wide-ranging conversation on the ongoing violence in Egypt, slamming the military's "horrific" crackdown on civilians and accusing the United States of hypocrisy, predicting both civil war in Egypt and the "collapse of the entire region" if there is no real U.S. intervention against military violence there.
Khanfar, whose HuffPost blog post last week focused on the Egyptian military's role in dragging the country closer to a civil war, said the unprecedented amount of violence the military has carried out against the people in recent days marks "a beginning of a new history where people will give up on democracy and will turn to defend themselves through violence."
Throughout the interview, Khanfar repeatedly used the word "coup," calling the recent images of civilians harmed by military "horrific" and saying that "the Arab world did not sleep [two nights ago] watching live the shooting and killing by the military of people who were not armed."
Khanfar, co-founder of the Sharq Forum and one of the most widely-respected journalists in the Arab world, predicted the situation in Egypt will have major consequences in an already volatile region.
"If this coup continues in Egypt, then we are not only in front of a dictatorship, a military dictatorship, but we are facing the collapse of the entire region," he said. "No government, no international power will be able to predict or even imagine what kind of consequences we are going to see in this region."
Khanfar said that Egyptian minister of defense Lt. General Abdul Fatah al-Sisi reminded him of former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi by invoking the Bush administration's favorite phrase to frame Egyptian civilians as terrorist and thus justify violence against them.
"The [phrase] 'War on Terrorism' became very useful for our dictators," Khanfar said. "Today Sisi is imitating Muammar Gaddafi, who used the war on terrorism to put down people and put them in jail."
Ultimately, Khanfar blames the United States government for "putting security above freedom" and failing to stand up to restore democracy in Egypt. He said that Egyptian people see the US as unwilling to "call things as they are" and will ultimately hold America accountable if the violence persists.
"If the Americans, at this stage, do not take a bold stance against this coup and demand immediate restoration of the democratic process, I do believe the people in this region will put this burden of the collapse of democracy on American shoulders as well," he said. "If the Americans do not call this a coup, it will be seen as hypocrisy and another act to suppress the demands of the public in this part of the world."
Space station OPALS points to ramped up returns for researchPublic release date: 30-Jul-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Julie A. Robinson, PhD julie.a.robinson@nasa.gov NASA/Johnson Space Center
It is a good thing that nobody ever told the International Space Station that it is considered rude to point. Scientists plan to ignore this much touted rule of manners when using the orbiting research platform to host a technology investigation to "point" back to Earth to improve data return communication capabilities from space.
Current spacecraft send data to Earth using radio frequency, but the Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS) will test the use of laser optics to transfer information to the ground. The switch from radio frequency to a laser beamwhich can be hundreds to thousands of times narrower in comparison to radio wavescould improve communication data rates by a factor of 10 to 100. This advanced approach stands to increase the amount of data future missions can send using the same power resources, optimizing research return.
"OPALS represents a tangible stepping stone for laser communications, and the International Space Station is a great platform for an experiment like this," said Michael Kokorowski, OPALS project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "Future operational laser communication systems will have the ability to transmit more data from spacecraft down to the ground than they currently do, mitigating a significant bottleneck for scientific investigations and commercial ventures."
During tests, a laser beacon will transmit between OPALS and a telescope at the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory, a JPL ground station in Wrightwood, Calif., while the space station is flying overhead. OPALS's on-board camera system tracks the line-of-sight between the instrument and telescope while a two-axis gimbal and closed-loop system maintain a lock on the uplink beacon.
Each demonstration lasts about two minutes, during which OPALS will downlink a pre-encoded formatted video using the modulated laser beam. The precision of this pointing is the real challenge for optical communications, also termed "lasercomm."
"It's like aiming a laser pointer continuously for two minutes at a dot the diameter of a human hair from 30 feet away while you're walking," explained OPALS systems engineer Bogdan Oaida of JPL.
The instrument's system consists of three main components. The first is a sealed container that houses the laser and electronics. This container connects via cables to the second mechanism, a two-axis gimbal-mounted optical transceiver that includes a camera receiver and collimated laser transmitter for downlink. Finally, there is the Flight Releasable Attachment Mechanism (FRAM) that the sealed container and gimbal transceiver sit on. The FRAM also provides the electrical and mechanical connection to the space station and launch vehicle.
"Our particular payload is actually trying to do something that is relatively modest by optical communications standards," said Oaida during an interview. "That is because the focus is not so much to show that we can do high data rates, but rather to show that we can do optical communications. The sort of rates we will be getting are about 10 to 50 times faster than what you would get at home in your typical cable Internet."
Although OPALS is a demonstration, future applications of this technology promise to increase the efficiency of transmitting science data from the space station, while also having applications for deep space and satellite communications. Such optimizations factor into the ability of people on the ground to receive higher definition video feeds from near-Earth and deep-space assets, improving the interaction and experience with the related missions. Testing in orbit also helps train engineers on the ground and can lead to improved optical communication instrument design.
OPALS recently transferred from JPL to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. There, it is undergoing final interface testing before launch to the space station aboard the SpaceX Dragon commercial resupply capsule, scheduled for late 2013.
The instrument will be installed on the Express Logistics Carrier (ELC) on the exterior of the station where it will operate for 90 days, performing test demonstrations of the optical communications technology. Researchers will analyze the technical data to determine how well the hardware performs.
With the space station operating at full capacity, the amount of research taking place and generating data continues to grow. Likewise, advances in technology, such as high definition video feeds, require greater communication capabilities. An optimization such as OPALS may mean greater return for the investigations, providing scientists that much more data at their fingertips as they seek answers for studies looking at various science disciplines.
The goal is to use information from OPALS testing to improve future designs for optical communications systems. In the case of this instrument it would be rude not to point to the potential it provides for improvements in communications between spacecraft for future exploration missions and commercial endeavors.
###
Jessica Nimon
International Space Station Program Science Office
NASA's Johnson Space Center
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
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.
Space station OPALS points to ramped up returns for researchPublic release date: 30-Jul-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Julie A. Robinson, PhD julie.a.robinson@nasa.gov NASA/Johnson Space Center
It is a good thing that nobody ever told the International Space Station that it is considered rude to point. Scientists plan to ignore this much touted rule of manners when using the orbiting research platform to host a technology investigation to "point" back to Earth to improve data return communication capabilities from space.
Current spacecraft send data to Earth using radio frequency, but the Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS) will test the use of laser optics to transfer information to the ground. The switch from radio frequency to a laser beamwhich can be hundreds to thousands of times narrower in comparison to radio wavescould improve communication data rates by a factor of 10 to 100. This advanced approach stands to increase the amount of data future missions can send using the same power resources, optimizing research return.
"OPALS represents a tangible stepping stone for laser communications, and the International Space Station is a great platform for an experiment like this," said Michael Kokorowski, OPALS project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "Future operational laser communication systems will have the ability to transmit more data from spacecraft down to the ground than they currently do, mitigating a significant bottleneck for scientific investigations and commercial ventures."
During tests, a laser beacon will transmit between OPALS and a telescope at the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory, a JPL ground station in Wrightwood, Calif., while the space station is flying overhead. OPALS's on-board camera system tracks the line-of-sight between the instrument and telescope while a two-axis gimbal and closed-loop system maintain a lock on the uplink beacon.
Each demonstration lasts about two minutes, during which OPALS will downlink a pre-encoded formatted video using the modulated laser beam. The precision of this pointing is the real challenge for optical communications, also termed "lasercomm."
"It's like aiming a laser pointer continuously for two minutes at a dot the diameter of a human hair from 30 feet away while you're walking," explained OPALS systems engineer Bogdan Oaida of JPL.
The instrument's system consists of three main components. The first is a sealed container that houses the laser and electronics. This container connects via cables to the second mechanism, a two-axis gimbal-mounted optical transceiver that includes a camera receiver and collimated laser transmitter for downlink. Finally, there is the Flight Releasable Attachment Mechanism (FRAM) that the sealed container and gimbal transceiver sit on. The FRAM also provides the electrical and mechanical connection to the space station and launch vehicle.
"Our particular payload is actually trying to do something that is relatively modest by optical communications standards," said Oaida during an interview. "That is because the focus is not so much to show that we can do high data rates, but rather to show that we can do optical communications. The sort of rates we will be getting are about 10 to 50 times faster than what you would get at home in your typical cable Internet."
Although OPALS is a demonstration, future applications of this technology promise to increase the efficiency of transmitting science data from the space station, while also having applications for deep space and satellite communications. Such optimizations factor into the ability of people on the ground to receive higher definition video feeds from near-Earth and deep-space assets, improving the interaction and experience with the related missions. Testing in orbit also helps train engineers on the ground and can lead to improved optical communication instrument design.
OPALS recently transferred from JPL to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. There, it is undergoing final interface testing before launch to the space station aboard the SpaceX Dragon commercial resupply capsule, scheduled for late 2013.
The instrument will be installed on the Express Logistics Carrier (ELC) on the exterior of the station where it will operate for 90 days, performing test demonstrations of the optical communications technology. Researchers will analyze the technical data to determine how well the hardware performs.
With the space station operating at full capacity, the amount of research taking place and generating data continues to grow. Likewise, advances in technology, such as high definition video feeds, require greater communication capabilities. An optimization such as OPALS may mean greater return for the investigations, providing scientists that much more data at their fingertips as they seek answers for studies looking at various science disciplines.
The goal is to use information from OPALS testing to improve future designs for optical communications systems. In the case of this instrument it would be rude not to point to the potential it provides for improvements in communications between spacecraft for future exploration missions and commercial endeavors.
###
Jessica Nimon
International Space Station Program Science Office
NASA's Johnson Space Center
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
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.
What?s happening in the ad world these days? One TV ad running in my area is of a mother who, the narrator chirps, is a master multitasker. She is on a cell phone while making her kids breakfast and sending them off for the day. She?s on the cell phone while doing the grocery shopping with her kids. 
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Public release date: 30-Jul-2013
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