Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman has used a line-item veto to strike $200,000 from the state budget that was approved for an Omaha golf tournament.
The governor said Tuesday that funding for the U.S. Senior Open golf tournament is unjustified, given the state's other spending priorities on education and changes to juvenile services. Heineman also argued that the event is heavily supported by the private sector and experiencing record ticket sales.
Heineman signed the remainder of the budget bill, which authorized funding for deficit appropriations. The bill was one of seven budget measures that lawmakers have passed this year.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Chairman Ben Bernanke is telling Congress Wednesday that the U.S. job market remains weak and that it is too soon for the Federal Reserve to end its extraordinary stimulus programs.
Reducing the Fed's efforts to keep borrowing rates low would "carry a substantial risk of slowing or ending the economic recovery," Bernanke said in testimony to the Joint Economic Committee.
Bernanke noted that the economy is growing moderately this year and unemployment has fallen to a four-year low of 7.5 percent. Still, unemployment remains well above levels consistent with healthy economies. And Bernanke said higher taxes and deep federal spending cuts are expected to slow economic growth this year.
His comments about the many risks facing the economy, along with the benefits gained so far from the Fed's stimulus, suggest the Fed is not ready to taper bond purchases that have helped lower long-term interest rates to encourage more borrowing and spending.
Stocks surged after Bernanke's comments. The Dow Jones industrial average was up just 40 points before his comments were released at 10 a.m. EDT. Minutes later, the Dow was up 125 points.
The Fed has said it plans to continue its $85 billion-a-month in Treasury and mortgage bond purchases until the job market improves substantially. And after its April 30-May 1 meeting, the Fed said it could increase or decrease the pace depending on how the job market and inflation fare.
Investors have been closely scrutinizing policymakers' comments since then for clues about the pace of the bond purchases.
Bernanke has had solid support for the bond purchases among the voting members of the Fed's interest-rate setting committee. At each of the Fed's three policy meetings this year, the committee has approved the purchases 11-1.
In recent months, the job market and the broader economy have shown renewed vigor. The economy has added an average of 208,000 jobs a month since November. That's up from only 138,000 a month in the previous six months.
The economy has benefited from a resurgent housing market, rising consumer confidence and the Fed's stimulus actions, which have helped ignite a stock market rally. The Standard & Poor's 500 stock index has jumped 17 percent this year to a record high. Higher stock prices tend to make many people feel wealthier and more inclined to spend.
Those gains, in part, are why critics of the bond purchases, including some Fed regional bank presidents, have questioned the need to continue them at their current pace. They argue that keeping interest rates too low for too long could send inflation surging or inflate dangerous bubbles in assets such as stocks or real estate. Such a bubble could burst with the same destabilizing effects that the housing bust caused.
In November, Jive Software acquired Bay Area cloud-based, collaborative task manager, Producteev, to boost its social business platform. Going forward, as Alex wrote at the time, Salesforce.com and Jive will increasingly butt heads as they compete for mindshare in the enterprise. With Producteev's multi-platform task-management system, which allows users to create tasks from emails and collaborate around projects in teams, Jive acquired a service that was already beginning to compete with Asana and Salesforce.com's Do.com.
Study shows how bilinguals switch between languagesPublic release date: 20-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Anna Mikulak amikulak@psychologicalscience.org 202-293-9300 Association for Psychological Science
Individuals who learn two languages at an early age seem to switch back and forth between separate "sound systems" for each language, according to new research conducted at the University of Arizona.
The research, to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, addresses enduring questions in bilingual studies about how bilingual speakers hear and process sound in two different languages.
"A lot of research has shown that bilinguals are pretty good at accommodating speech variation across languages, but there's been a debate as to how," said lead author Kalim Gonzales, a psychology doctoral student at the University of Arizona. "There are two views: One is that bilinguals have different processing modes for their two languages they have a mode for processing speech in one language and then a mode for processing speech in the other language. Another view is that bilinguals just adjust to speech variation by recalibrating to the unique acoustic properties of each language."
Gonzales's research supports the first view that bilinguals who learn two languages early in life learn two separate processing modes, or "sound systems."
The study looked at 32 Spanish-English early bilinguals, who had learned their second language before age 8. Participants were presented with a series of pseudo-words beginning with a 'pa' or a 'ba' sound and asked to identify which of the two sounds they heard.
While 'pa' and 'ba' sounds exist in both English and Spanish, how those sounds are produced and perceived in the two languages varies subtly. In the case of 'ba,' for example, English speakers typically begin to vibrate their vocal chords the moment they open their lips, while Spanish speakers begin vocal chord vibration slightly before they open their lips and produce 'pa' in a manner similar to English 'ba.' As a result of those subtle differences, English-only speakers might, in some cases, confuse the 'ba' and 'pa' sounds they hear in Spanish, explains co-author Andrew Lotto, associate professor of speech, language and hearing sciences at the University of Arizona.
"When most people think about differences between languages, they think they use different words and they have different grammars, but at their base languages use different sounds," Lotto said.
"One of the reasons it sounds different when you hear someone speaking a different language is because the actual sounds they use are different; they have a sound code that's specific to that language," he said. "One of the reasons someone might sound like they have an accent if they learn Spanish first is because their 'pa' is like an English 'ba,' so when they say a word with 'pa,' it will sound like a 'ba' to an English monolingual."
For the study, the bilingual participants were divided into two groups. One group was told they would be hearing rare words in Spanish, while the other was told they would be hearing rare words in English. Both groups heard audio recordings of variations of the same two words bafri and pafri which are not real words in either language.
Participants were then asked to identify whether the words they heard began with a 'ba' or a 'pa' sound.
Each group heard the same series of words, but for the group told they were hearing Spanish, the ends of the words were pronounced slightly differently, with the 'r' getting a Spanish pronunciation.
The findings: Participants perceived 'ba' and 'pa' sounds differently depending on whether they were told they were hearing Spanish words, with the Spanish pronunciation of 'r,' or whether they were told they were hearing English words, with the English pronunciation of 'r.'
"What this showed is that when you put people in English mode, they actually would act like English speakers, and then if you put them in Spanish mode, they would switch to acting like Spanish speakers," Lotto said. "These bilinguals, hearing the exact same 'ba's and 'pa's would label them differently depending on the context."
When the study was repeated with 32 English monolinguals, participants did not show the same shift in perception; they labeled 'ba' and 'pa' sounds the same way regardless of which language they were told they were hearing. It was that lack of an effect for monolinguals that provided the strongest evidence for two sound systems in bilinguals.
"Up until this point we haven't had a good answer to whether bilinguals actually learn two different codes so a 'ba-pa' English code and a 'ba-pa' Spanish code or whether they learn something that's sort of in the middle," Lotto said. "This is one of the first clear demonstrations that bilinguals really do have two different sounds systems and that they can switch between one language and the other and then use that sound system."
This is true primarily for those who learn two languages very young, Lotto said.
"If you learn a second language later in life, you usually have a dominant language and then you try to use that sounds system for the other language, which is why you end up having an accent," he said.
Research on bilingualism has increased in recent years as the global climate has become more intermixed, Lotto noted. These new findings challenge the idea that bilinguals always have one dominant language.
"This raises the possibility that bilinguals can perceive speech like a native speaker in both languages," said Gonzales, whose own son is growing up learning English and Chinese simultaneously.
"The predominant view of late has been that bilinguals will never be able to perceive a second language beyond what a late learner is capable of, or someone who learns a second language late in life. So even if you learn two languages simultaneously from birth, you're always going to perceive one of them like a late learner," Gonzales said. "Our findings cast doubt on that prominent view in the bilingual literature."
###
For more information about this study, please contact: Kalim Gonzales at kalimg@email.arizona.edu.
The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article "A bafri, un pafri: Bilinguals' pseudoword identifications support language-specific phonetic systems" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Anna Mikulak at 202-293-9300 or amikulak@psychologicalscience.org.
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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.
Study shows how bilinguals switch between languagesPublic release date: 20-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Anna Mikulak amikulak@psychologicalscience.org 202-293-9300 Association for Psychological Science
Individuals who learn two languages at an early age seem to switch back and forth between separate "sound systems" for each language, according to new research conducted at the University of Arizona.
The research, to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, addresses enduring questions in bilingual studies about how bilingual speakers hear and process sound in two different languages.
"A lot of research has shown that bilinguals are pretty good at accommodating speech variation across languages, but there's been a debate as to how," said lead author Kalim Gonzales, a psychology doctoral student at the University of Arizona. "There are two views: One is that bilinguals have different processing modes for their two languages they have a mode for processing speech in one language and then a mode for processing speech in the other language. Another view is that bilinguals just adjust to speech variation by recalibrating to the unique acoustic properties of each language."
Gonzales's research supports the first view that bilinguals who learn two languages early in life learn two separate processing modes, or "sound systems."
The study looked at 32 Spanish-English early bilinguals, who had learned their second language before age 8. Participants were presented with a series of pseudo-words beginning with a 'pa' or a 'ba' sound and asked to identify which of the two sounds they heard.
While 'pa' and 'ba' sounds exist in both English and Spanish, how those sounds are produced and perceived in the two languages varies subtly. In the case of 'ba,' for example, English speakers typically begin to vibrate their vocal chords the moment they open their lips, while Spanish speakers begin vocal chord vibration slightly before they open their lips and produce 'pa' in a manner similar to English 'ba.' As a result of those subtle differences, English-only speakers might, in some cases, confuse the 'ba' and 'pa' sounds they hear in Spanish, explains co-author Andrew Lotto, associate professor of speech, language and hearing sciences at the University of Arizona.
"When most people think about differences between languages, they think they use different words and they have different grammars, but at their base languages use different sounds," Lotto said.
"One of the reasons it sounds different when you hear someone speaking a different language is because the actual sounds they use are different; they have a sound code that's specific to that language," he said. "One of the reasons someone might sound like they have an accent if they learn Spanish first is because their 'pa' is like an English 'ba,' so when they say a word with 'pa,' it will sound like a 'ba' to an English monolingual."
For the study, the bilingual participants were divided into two groups. One group was told they would be hearing rare words in Spanish, while the other was told they would be hearing rare words in English. Both groups heard audio recordings of variations of the same two words bafri and pafri which are not real words in either language.
Participants were then asked to identify whether the words they heard began with a 'ba' or a 'pa' sound.
Each group heard the same series of words, but for the group told they were hearing Spanish, the ends of the words were pronounced slightly differently, with the 'r' getting a Spanish pronunciation.
The findings: Participants perceived 'ba' and 'pa' sounds differently depending on whether they were told they were hearing Spanish words, with the Spanish pronunciation of 'r,' or whether they were told they were hearing English words, with the English pronunciation of 'r.'
"What this showed is that when you put people in English mode, they actually would act like English speakers, and then if you put them in Spanish mode, they would switch to acting like Spanish speakers," Lotto said. "These bilinguals, hearing the exact same 'ba's and 'pa's would label them differently depending on the context."
When the study was repeated with 32 English monolinguals, participants did not show the same shift in perception; they labeled 'ba' and 'pa' sounds the same way regardless of which language they were told they were hearing. It was that lack of an effect for monolinguals that provided the strongest evidence for two sound systems in bilinguals.
"Up until this point we haven't had a good answer to whether bilinguals actually learn two different codes so a 'ba-pa' English code and a 'ba-pa' Spanish code or whether they learn something that's sort of in the middle," Lotto said. "This is one of the first clear demonstrations that bilinguals really do have two different sounds systems and that they can switch between one language and the other and then use that sound system."
This is true primarily for those who learn two languages very young, Lotto said.
"If you learn a second language later in life, you usually have a dominant language and then you try to use that sounds system for the other language, which is why you end up having an accent," he said.
Research on bilingualism has increased in recent years as the global climate has become more intermixed, Lotto noted. These new findings challenge the idea that bilinguals always have one dominant language.
"This raises the possibility that bilinguals can perceive speech like a native speaker in both languages," said Gonzales, whose own son is growing up learning English and Chinese simultaneously.
"The predominant view of late has been that bilinguals will never be able to perceive a second language beyond what a late learner is capable of, or someone who learns a second language late in life. So even if you learn two languages simultaneously from birth, you're always going to perceive one of them like a late learner," Gonzales said. "Our findings cast doubt on that prominent view in the bilingual literature."
###
For more information about this study, please contact: Kalim Gonzales at kalimg@email.arizona.edu.
The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article "A bafri, un pafri: Bilinguals' pseudoword identifications support language-specific phonetic systems" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Anna Mikulak at 202-293-9300 or amikulak@psychologicalscience.org.
[ | 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.
Flexible displays are set to become the next big thing in mobile technology. LG previously confirmed that it will release a smartphone with a flexible display later this year, while unbreakable handsets from Samsung and Motorola are also said to be in the pipeline. LG on Monday announced that it plans to demo a 5-inch flexible and unbreakable OLED display for the first time this week at the Society for Information Display?s (SID) annual trade show. The company will also showcase a new 5-inch HD display with a 1mm wide bezel, which will allow for the ?production of borderless smartphones that are lightweight and emit significantly less heat.? LG plans to release a smartphone with a flexible OLED display in the fourth quarter of 2013. The company?s press release follows below.
LG Display Introduces Next Generation Display Technology at SID 2013
[More from BGR: HTC One with stock Android to reportedly launch by the end of the summer]
Curved 55-inch OLED TV and 5-inch plastic OLED panels on exhibit
Seoul, Korea (May 20, 2013) ? LG Display [NYSE: LPL, KRX: 034220], a leading innovator of display technologies, will showcase the latest TV, mobile, and other products representing the future of display technology at the Society for Information Display?s (SID) Display Week 2013. Underscoring its leadership in OLED technology, the company will introduce both a curved 55-inch OLED TV and a 5-inch plastic OLED panel. Also exhibited will be mobile panels applied with Oxide Thin Film Transistor (TFT) which is viewed as the next generation TFT technology.
?Recent trends indicate that the small- and medium-sized display market is moving towards high resolution and low power consumption, and the large panel market to OLED and Ultra HD,? said Dr. Sang-Deok Yeo, CTO and Executive Vice President of LG Display. ?With the resulting rapid need for new display advancements, LG Display, at the forefront of these trends, is well positioned to lead the market with its differentiated and cutting-edge technologies.?
Industry Leadership in OLED
LG Display will demonstrate its industry leadership in OLED technology by showcasing a curved 55-inch OLED TV, as well as its award-winning standard 55-inch OLED TV at SID 2013. Based on the same WRGB OLED technology as the standard set, now widely adopted as the most effective OLED application for large-sized panels, the new curved 55-inch OLED TV offers a glimpse into the future of TV design.
In addition, for the first time to the public, the company will unveil an unbreakable and flexible 5- inch plastic OLED panel for mobile devices. The development comes at a crucial time when smart devices are being used more than ever and at increased risk for damage from drops, hits, and other accidents.
Next Generation TFT LCD Method
LG Display will also introduce 5-inch and 7-inch HD LCD panels based on Oxide TFT, seen as the next generation TFT technology as it offers high investment efficiency in producing thin, high transparency, and low power consumption displays. LG Display, which utilized this technology in its large-sized OLED displays for the first time in the world, will expand its expertise to LCD panel development thereby leading the market. The 5-inch HD panel will feature 1.0mm bezel allowing production of borderless smartphones that are lightweight and emit significantly less heat. The 7-inch HD LCD panel is equipped with touch function-embedded technology enabling superior touch functionality in thin and lightweight mobile products.
Superior High Resolution for Monitors and Tablets
LG Display, which was first to introduce an 84-inch Ultra HD TV, now advances the high-definition trend further with the world?s first Ultra HD panel for 23.8-inch monitors. In addition, the company will showcase a 14-inch Quadruple HD (2,560X1,440) panel for laptops, and the world?s first 7-inch Full HD panel for tablets that exceeds 300 pixels per inch (PPI).
Other Innovative Advancements on Exhibit
LG Display will also present a new type of LCD which can depict the highest level of color reproduction ratio for implementation across various industries. Products, on exhibit, applying this technology include a transparent 47-inch LCD panel for refrigerators featuring a 15% increase in transparency while maintaining NTSC 72% or the same as generic HDTVs, a 12.3-inch Full HD LCD panel for automotive dashboards with 800nit high brightness and 85% color reproduction ratio, and a 24-inch Adobe RGB monitor panel for professionals with 100% color reproduction ratio.
The company will also spotlight it?s commitment to heightened design standards based on borderless technology with a 5-inch HD LCD panel for smartphones with 1.0mm bezel, as well as products boasting the world?s most narrow bezels including a 13.3-inch Full HD LCD Neo Edge panel for laptops with 1.5mm bezel, a 23.8-inch Full HD LCD Neo Blade panel for monitors with 3.5mm bezel, and a 55-inch LCD panel for video walls with 5.3mm bezel.
SID Display Week 2013
SID Display Week 2013 will be held in Vancouver, Canada from May 19 to 24. LG Display?s products will be showcased at Booth #1012, and allow visitors to experience the latest offerings from the world?s leading display company.
In addition to product exhibits, LG Display will also present its distinguished technology with 17 major dissertations on a variety of display topics. Also, Dr. In-Byung Kang, Senior Vice President and Lead Laboratory Chief of LG Display, will be recognized with a special achievement award for his work in FPR 3D and IPS LCD technology.
AMMAN (Reuters) - Lebanese Hezbollah militants attacked a Syrian rebel-held town alongside Syrian troops on Sunday and Israel threatened more attacks on Syria to rein the militia in, highlighting the risks of a wider regional conflict if planned peace talks fail.
Activists said it was the fiercest fighting in Syria's two year-old civil war involving Hezbollah, a Shi'ite group backed by Iran which they said appeared to be helping President Bashar al-Assad secure a vital corridor in case Syria fragments.
Speaking from Qusair near the border with Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, activist Hadi Abdallah said Syrian warplanes bombed the town in the morning and shells were hitting the town at a rate of up to 50 a minute. At least 32 people were killed.
"The army is hitting Qusair with tanks and artillery from the north and east while Hezbollah is firing mortar rounds and multiple rocket launchers from the south and west," he said.
Assad poured scorn on the idea that a U.S.- and Russian-sponsored peace conference planned for Geneva next month would end fighting that is deepening the sectarian fault lines between Sunnis against Shi'ites across the Middle East.
"They think a political conference will halt terrorists in the country. That is unrealistic," he told the Argentine newspaper Clarin, in reference to the mainly Sunni groups seeking to unseat him.
Assad declared "No dialogue with terrorists", but it was not clear from his remarks whether he would agree to send delegates to a conference that may falter before it starts due to disagreements between its two main sponsors and their allies.
The opposition will agree its stance on the proposed peace conference in a meeting due to start in Istanbul on Thursday, during which it will also appoint a new leadership.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country was "preparing for every scenario" in Syria and held out the prospect of more Israeli strikes inside Syria to stop Hezbollah and other opponents of Israel getting advanced weapons.
"We will act to ensure the security interest of Israel's citizens in the future as well," Netanyahu said.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied reports that it attacked Iranian-supplied missiles stored near Damascus this month that it believed were awaiting delivery to Hezbollah, which fought a war with Israel in 2006 and is allied with Assad.
REBELS UNDER PRESSURE
Attacks by troops and militias loyal to Assad, who inherited power in Syria from his father in 2000, have put rebel brigades under pressure in several of their strongholds across the majority-Sunni country of 21 million people.
In one attempt to strike back, opposition sources said rebel fighters had abducted the father of Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad in the province of Deraa, one of many tit-for-tat kidnappings being carried on by both sides.
"Mekdad's nephew was taken before, and exchanged for Free Syrian Army (rebel) prisoners. The speculation is that a similar deal will be struck for his father," said activist Al-Mutassem Billah of the opposition Sham News Network.
In the fighting near Lebanon, rebel fighters clashed with mechanized Syrian army units and Hezbollah guerillas in nine points in and around Qusair, 10 km (six miles) from the border, activists said.
The region is needed by Assad, who is from the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, to secure a route from Hezbollah's strongholds in the Bekaa to areas near Syria's Mediterranean coast where many Alawites live, they said.
Opposition sources say Syria's coastal region could serve as an Alawite statelet if Assad should lose control of Damascus, a potential fragmentation of Syria along ethnic and sectarian lines that raises the prospect of many more deaths.
Sources in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley said shells fired by rebels had hit the edges of the town of Hermel, a Hezbollah stronghold, but no casualties were reported.
Syrian Television said troops "leading an operation against terrorists in Qusair" had reached the town centre.
"Our heroic forces are advancing toward Qusair and are chasing the remnants of the terrorists and have hoisted the Syrian flag on the municipality building. In the next few hours we will give you joyous news," the television said.
Abu Imad, another activist in the Qusair region, said the rebel grip was tenuous but the army was far from in control.
"If Qusair falls, it will be a big problem because the regime will be in control of most of the countryside south of the city of Homs and the rebel forces holding Old Homs will be squeezed," he said.
The United Nations says at least 80,000 people have been killed in the conflict, which started with peaceful protests against four decades of rule by Assad and his late father.
(Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem; writing by Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Philippa Fletcher; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
Fear of dental care can be paralyzing. Spending a few minutes learning about new dental procedures will teach people that visiting the dentist is nothing to fear. The following advice is a great start!
Having trouble thinking of spending a lot of money on a toothbrush? Many dentists claim that the electronic toothbrushes are the closest at-home experience you can get to a visit to the dentist. They aren?t perfect, but they do have far more cleaning power than the average toothbrush. Pick out a model that has multiple heads as well as a good warranty.
How you maneuver your toothbrush while brushing is a key factor in whether or not you are actually caring for your teeth properly. Tilting the toothbrush slightly is the right way. Then, move it in a circular motion. Also, be sure that you are not brushing so hard that you are hurting your gums.
Flossing once daily is an important part of your dental hygiene routine. Good flossing really makes a big difference. Carefully place the floss between your teeth. Move the floss backwards and forwards. Don?t get the floss under the gums; it should be at the gum line. You need to go slowly and clean the back and sides of every tooth with the floss.
If you are in the middle of a teeth-whitening procedure, you should avoid any food or drink that can cause your teeth to stain. Your efforts will be self-defeating. Have willpower and make some changes in your diet in order to achieve beautiful, white teeth.
Make regular visits to your dentist. You can improve your dental health by regularly visiting your dentist. Dealing with dental problems early cuts down the cost of fixing the problem later. It will also help you decrease your chances of pain, because you will be fixing things early on. Getting your teeth cleaned and looked at on a regular basis can save you a lot of money and keep you healthy in the long run.
If your child is scared of going to the dentist, you should try playing dentist with them. Pretend your children are patients, and you act as the dentist. Count their teeth using a toothbrush. Afterwards, you can let your child be the professional on a stuffed animal.
It sometimes can be rough finding info on your specific dental issues, but this post should have given you some answers. There are many things that go along with proper dental care. Use what you have learned here, and be more healthy.
To learn more gum disease treatment where you can find out all about it.
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Public release date: 20-May-2013
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