Collin Klein, the Kansas State quarterback who was a star in a spread-option offense in college but whose abilities as a passer leave much to be desired in the eyes of NFL scouts, remains committed to playing quarterback at the next level. And he thinks NFL teams are starting to come around to the idea that he can do it.
Klein told the Topeka Capital-Journal that he believes he has impressed scouts at the Combine and at Kansas State?s Pro Day.
?I felt like I had two good days,? Klein said. ?I made progress and really improved, before the Combine first and then in the time between the Combine and Pro Day we made some strides, too. We?re moving in the right direction. It?s different not being in school, but it gives me a little extra time to focus and work on little things here and there. It?s a pretty all-inclusive process, but we?re enjoying it. I just love the game. We?re getting better and having fun with it.?
Klein said his workouts with former NFL quarterback Jake Plummer have helped get him ready to play the game at the next level.
?We did everything,? Klein said. ?We worked on footwork, core strength, flexibility with the shoulder . . . lots of different things. It was pretty all-inclusive and he taught me a lot. He gave great insight from him having been there [the NFL] and doing that for a very long time. I really appreciated his time and his effort working with me.?
Although Klein still believes he is going to get drafted, he acknowledged that it?s possible he?ll have to settle for being an undrafted free agent.
?I think we?ll definitely get a chance and it?s just being ready and making the most of it,? Klein said. ?We?ll see where the best fit is going to be. Teams are out there trying to figure out who?s the best fit for them, too. It will all settle out. If that doesn?t happen, we?ll try to get picked up as a free agent on some level. We?ll cross that bridge when we get there.?
So just a few months after the Heisman Trophy voters considered Klein the third-best player in college football, Klein is just hoping NFL teams consider him one of the 254 best players available in the draft.
A hat with money belonging to a musician, is seen on the ground as he plays music at the main shopping street in central capital Nicosia, Cyprus, on Saturday, March 30, 2013. Big depositors at Cyprus' largest bank may be forced to accept losses of up to 60 percent, far more than initially estimated under the European rescue package to save the country from bankruptcy, officials said Saturday. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
A hat with money belonging to a musician, is seen on the ground as he plays music at the main shopping street in central capital Nicosia, Cyprus, on Saturday, March 30, 2013. Big depositors at Cyprus' largest bank may be forced to accept losses of up to 60 percent, far more than initially estimated under the European rescue package to save the country from bankruptcy, officials said Saturday. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
A sign at a branch of bank of Cyprus reading in Greek, "In light of the emergency restrictive measures, you can withdraw up to 300 euro either from the tellers or the ATM", as people are reflected on the glass in central capital Nicosia, Cyprus, on Surtaday, March 30, 2013. Big depositors at Cyprus' largest bank may be forced to accept losses of up to 60 percent, far more than initially estimated under the European rescue package to save the country from bankruptcy, officials said Saturday. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
Seen through a bus stop bench, a woman passes an empty shop with a sign reading in Greek 'for rent' in central capital Nicosia, Cyprus, on Saturday, March 30, 2013. Big depositors at Cyprus' largest bank may be forced to accept losses of up to 60 percent, far more than initially estimated under the European rescue package to save the country from bankruptcy, officials said Saturday. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) ? Big depositors at Cyprus' largest bank may be forced to accept losses of up to 60 percent, far more than initially estimated under the European rescue package to save the country from bankruptcy, officials said Saturday.
Deposits of more than 100,000 euros ($128,000) at the Bank of Cyprus will lose 37.5 percent in money that will be converted into bank shares, according to a central bank statement. In a second raid on these accounts, depositors also could lose up to 22.5 percent more, depending on what experts determine is needed to prop up the bank's reserves. The experts will have 90 days to figure that out.
The remaining 40 percent of big deposits at the Bank of Cyprus will be "temporarily frozen for liquidity reasons," but continue to accrue existing levels of interest plus another 10 percent, the central bank said.
The savings converted to bank shares would theoretically allow depositors to eventually recover their losses. But the shares now hold little value and it's uncertain when ? if ever ? the shares will regain a value equal to the depositors' losses.
Emergency laws passed last week empower Cypriot authorities to take these actions.
Cyprus' Finance Minister Michalis Sarris said the measures were taken to put the Bank of Cyprus on a solid footing.
"We suffered a serious blow without doubt ... but we now have a bank which is reformed and ready to assume its role in the Cypriot economy," the state-run Cyprus News Agency quoting him as saying.
Analysts said Saturday that imposing bigger losses on Bank of Cyprus customers could further squeeze already crippled businesses as Cyprus tries to rebuild its banking sector in exchange for the international rescue package.
Sofronis Clerides, an economics professor at the University of Cyprus, said: "Most of the damage will be done to businesses which had their money in the bank" to pay suppliers and employees. "There's quite a difference between a 30 percent loss and a 60 percent loss." With businesses shrinking, Cyprus could be dragged down into an even deeper recession, he said.
Clerides accused some of the 17 European countries that use the euro of wanting to see the end of Cyprus as an international financial services center and to send the message that European taxpayers will no longer shoulder the burden of bailing out problem banks.
But German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble challenged that notion, insisting in an interview with the Bild daily published Saturday that "Cyprus is and remains a special, isolated case" and doesn't point the way for future European rescue programs.
Europe has demanded that big depositors in Cyprus' two largest banks ? Bank of Cyprus and Laiki Bank ? accept across-the-board losses in order to pay for the nation's 16 billion euro ($20.5 billion) bailout. All deposits of up to 100,000 are safe, meaning that a saver with 500,000 euros in the bank will only suffer losses on the remaining 400,000 euros.
Cypriot officials had previously said that large savers at Laiki ? which will be absorbed in to the Bank of Cyprus ? could lose as much as 80 percent. But they had said large accounts at the Bank of Cyprus would lose only 30 to 40 percent.
Asked about Saturday's announcement, University of Cyprus political scientist Antonis Ellinas predicted that unemployment, currently at 15 percent, will "probably go through the roof" over the next few years.
"It means that (people) ... have to accept a major haircut to their way of life and their standard of living. The social impact is yet to be realized, but they will be enormous in terms of social unrest and radical social phenomenon," Ellinas said.
There's also concern that large depositors ? including many wealthy Russians ? will take their money and run once capital restrictions that Cypriot authorities have imposed on bank transactions to prevent such a possibility are lifted in about a month.
Sarris, the finance minister, said that foreign branches of the Bank of Cyprus and Laiki Bank in countries such as Britain, Russia, Ukraine and Romania will eventually be sold. He also said that Cypriots would seek out new markets like China and the Arab countries while maintaining good business relations with Russians, "despite their bitterness."
Cyprus agreed on Monday to make bank depositors with accounts over 100,000 euros contribute to the financial rescue in order to secure 10 billion euros ($12.9 billion) in loans from the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund. Cyprus needed to scrounge up 5.8 billion euros ($7.4 billion) on its own in order to clinch the larger package, and banks had remained shut for nearly two weeks until politicians hammered out a deal, opening again on Thursday.
But fearing that savers would rush to pull their money out in mass once banks reopened, Cypriot authorities imposed a raft of restrictions, including daily withdrawal limits of 300 euros ($384) for individuals and 5,000 euros for businesses ? the first so-called capital controls that any country has applied in the eurozone's 14-year history.
The rush didn't materialize as Cypriots appeared to take the measures in stride, lining up patiently to do their business and defying dire predictions of scenes of pandemonium.
Under the terms of the bailout deal, the country' second largest bank, Laiki ? which sustained the most damaged from bad Greek debt and loans ? is to be split up, with its nonperforming loans and toxic assets going into a "bad bank." The healthy side will be absorbed into the Bank of Cyprus.
On Saturday, economist Stelios Platis called the rescue plan "completely mistaken" and criticized Cyprus' euro partners for insisting on foisting Laiki's troubles on the Bank of Cyprus.
____
AP business correspondent Geir Moulson in Berlin and APTN reporter Adam Pemble in Nicosia contributed.
As much as we're intrigued by the prospect of Twitter's music app, the rumored emphasis on SoundCloud would potentially limit the selection given major label resistance to giving away ad-free content: we'd expect a lot of DJ sets and indie demos. A supposed leak from AllThingsD has Twitter catering to the less adventurous among us by adding Vevo support. While the full workings of the rumored app remain a mystery, Twitter would reportedly play Vevo's mostly pop-oriented music videos through a custom player. It might not be the only service involved, too: the same tips suggest that Twitter wants to round up multiple services, and the two that have surfaced so far are just the first to hop aboard. We have a hunch that the expanded app (if real) won't make the originally claimed March launch when we're already at the last weekday of the month, but the latest tidbit suggests Twitter is far from giving up on turning microblogs into mini jukeboxes.
By Jason Szep SIT KWIN, Myanmar (Reuters) - The Muslims of Sit Kwin were always a small group who numbered no more than 100 of the village's 2,000 people. But as sectarian violence led by Buddhist mobs spreads across central Myanmar, they and many other Muslims are disappearing. Their homes, shops and mosques destroyed, some end up in refugee camps or hide in the homes of friends or relatives. Dozens have been killed. ...
Long rumoured - and hoped for - GDC 2013 has finally provided confirmation that Apple will release its own dedicated game controller.
Of course, there's no official word yet, but Apple has been active during the conference talking to developers about its plans and ensuring plenty of games will support the joypad at launch.
It's been operating a meeting room at the show, albeit booked under a pseudonym company name to avoid media attention.
However, speaking anonymously, multiple developer sources have confirmed the news to PocketGamer.biz.
In the hand
It's expected Apple will formally announce its plans during its annual April press event; previously this has been centred around the iPad.
Many things remain unknown, though.
None of our contacts had seen or held the physical device so we don't know if the pad will take a conventional approach or employ a radical new design.
Following recent mishaps, Apple doesn't let unreleased hardware leave its closely guarded offices.
Neither are we sure when the pad will be released.
It would be logical for it to hit retail alongside a new iPad, but given the opportunities a dedicated controller would provide in the living room, we'd expect it to be part of a large announcement also revealing Apple's wide TV strategy, including a direct assault on the console businesses of Sony and Microsoft.
Everybody plays the joypad game
The news follows on from an explosion in third-party controllers from iOS and Android devices during 2012.
This has come from dedicated peripheral companies like MOGA and Nyko, as well as start ups such as Green Throttle, and even unconsole players like Ouya and GameStick, for whom a physical controller is a vital part of their plans to disrupt the console business.
Another example of the important of a game pad to big business was Samsung's surprise announcement of its Game Pad at the Galaxy S4 launch.
And to complete the picture, one developer source also told us that Google will be making its own announcement about an official game controller in the near future too.
In this March 24, 2013 photo, former Marine Corps Cpl. Marshall Archer, left, a veterans' liaison for the city of Portland, Maine, speaks to a man on a street in Portland. Veterans groups are rallying to fight any proposal to change disability payments as the federal government attempts to address its long-term debt problem. They say they've sacrificed already. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
In this March 24, 2013 photo, former Marine Corps Cpl. Marshall Archer, left, a veterans' liaison for the city of Portland, Maine, speaks to a man on a street in Portland. Veterans groups are rallying to fight any proposal to change disability payments as the federal government attempts to address its long-term debt problem. They say they've sacrificed already. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
In this March 24, 2013 photo, veterans' liaison Marshall Archer, a former Marine Corps corporal, poses for a photo in Portland, Maine. Veterans groups are rallying to fight any proposal to change disability payments as the federal government attempts to address its long-term debt problem. They say they've sacrificed already. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Veterans groups are rallying to fight any proposal to change disability payments as the federal government attempts to address its long-term debt problem. They say they've sacrificed already.
Government benefits are adjusted according to inflation, and President Barack Obama has endorsed using a slightly different measure of inflation to calculate Social Security benefits. Benefits would still grow but at a slower rate.
Advocates for the nation's 22 million veterans fear that the alternative inflation measure would also apply to disability payments to nearly 4 million veterans as well as pension payments for an additional 500,000 low-income veterans and surviving families.
"I think veterans have already paid their fair share to support this nation," said the American Legion's Louis Celli. "They've paid it in lower wages while serving, they've paid it through their wounds and sacrifices on the battlefield and they're paying it now as they try to recover from those wounds."
Economists generally agree that projected long-term debt increases stemming largely from the growth in federal health care programs pose a threat to the country's economic competitiveness. Addressing the threat means difficult decisions for lawmakers and pain for many constituents in the decades ahead.
But the veterans' groups point out that their members bore the burden of a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the past month, they've held news conferences on Capitol Hill and raised the issue in meetings with lawmakers and their staffs. They'll be closely watching the unveiling of the president's budget next month to see whether he continues to recommend the change.
Obama and others support changing the benefit calculations to a variation of the Consumer Price Index, a measure called "chained CPI." The conventional CPI measures changes in retail prices of a constant marketbasket of goods and services. Chained CPI considers changes in the quantity of goods purchased as well as the prices of those goods. If the price of steak goes up, for example, many consumers will buy more chicken, a cheaper alternative to steak, rather than buying less steak or going without meat.
Supporters argue that chained CPI is a truer indication of inflation because it measures changes in consumer behavior. It also tends to be less than the conventional CPI, which would impact how cost-of-living raises are computed.
Under the current inflation update, monthly disability and pension payments increased 1.7 percent this year. Under chained CPI, those payments would have increased 1.4 percent.
The Congressional Budget Office projects that moving to chained CPI would trim the deficit by nearly $340 billion over the next decade. About two-thirds of the deficit closing would come from less spending and the other third would come from additional revenue because of adjustments that tax brackets would undergo.
Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow in economic studies at The Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, said she understands why veterans, senior citizens and others have come out against the change, but she believes it's necessary.
"We are in an era where benefits are going to be reduced and revenues are going to rise. There's just no way around that. We're on an unsustainable fiscal course," Sawhill said. "Dealing with it is going to be painful, and the American public has not yet accepted that. As long as every group keeps saying, 'I need a carve-out, I need an exception,' this is not going to work."
Sawhill argued that making changes now will actually make it easier for veterans in the long run.
"The longer we wait to make these changes, the worse the hole we'll be in and the more draconian the cuts will have to be," she said.
That's not the way Sen. Bernie Sanders sees it. The chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs said he recently warned Obama that every veterans group he knows of has come out strongly against changing the benefit calculations for disability benefits and pensions by using chained CPI.
"I don't believe the American people want to see our budget balanced on the backs of disabled veterans. It's especially absurd for the White House, which has been quite generous in terms of funding for the VA," said Sanders, I-Vt. "Why they now want to do this, I just don't understand."
Sanders succeeded in getting the Senate to approve an amendment last week against changing how the cost-of-living increases are calculated, but the vote was largely symbolic. Lawmakers would still have a decision to make if moving to chained CPI were to be included as part of a bargain on taxes and spending.
Sanders' counterpart on the House side, Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., the chairman of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, appears at least open to the idea of going to chained CPI.
"My first priority is ensuring that America's more than 20 million veterans receive the care and benefits they have earned, but with a national debt fast approaching $17 trillion, Washington's fiscal irresponsibility may threaten the very provision of veterans' benefits," Miller said. "Achieving a balanced budget and reducing our national debt will help us keep the promises America has made to those who have worn the uniform, and I am committed to working with Democrats and Republicans to do just that."
Marshall Archer, 30, a former Marine Corps corporal who served two stints in Iraq, has a unique perspective about the impact of slowing the growth of veterans' benefits. He collects disability payments to compensate him for damaged knees and shoulders as well as post-traumatic stress disorder. He also works as a veterans' liaison for the city of Portland, Maine, helping some 200 low-income veterans find housing.
Archer notes that on a personal level, the reduction in future disability payments would also be accompanied down the road by a smaller Social Security check when he retires. That means he would take a double hit to his income.
"We all volunteered to serve, so we all volunteered to sacrifice," he said. "I don't believe that you should ever ask those who have already volunteered to sacrifice to then sacrifice again."
That said, Archer indicated he would be willing to "chip in" if he believes that everyone is required to give as well.
He said he's more worried about the veterans he's trying to help find a place to sleep. About a third of his clients rely on VA pension payments averaging just over $1,000 a month. He said their VA pension allows them to pay rent, heat their home and buy groceries, but that's about it.
"This policy, if it ever went into effect, would actually place those already in poverty in even more poverty," Archer said.
The changes that would occur by using the slower inflation calculation seem modest at first. For a veteran with no dependents who has a 60 percent disability rating, the use of chained CPI this year would have lowered the veteran's monthly payments by $3 a month. Instead of getting $1,026 a month, the veteran would have received $1,023.
Raymond Kelly, legislative director for Veterans of Foreign Wars, acknowledged that veterans would see little change in their income during the first few years of the change. But even a $36 hit over the course of a year is "huge" for many of the disabled veterans living on the edge, he said.
The amount lost over time becomes more substantial as the years go by. Sanders said that a veteran with a 100 percent disability rating who begins getting payments at age 30 would see their annual payments trimmed by more than $2,300 a year when they turn 55.
Stocks in the S&P 500 are now at record low valuations; the market trades as cheaply as it did in 1980 as measured by price-to-earnings, or PE, ratios, trading at a PE ratio of 15.4 times earnings.
While retail stock investors have largely been stuck on the sidelines, the stock market has made new highs. But despite the upward surge, things aren't as rosy for Wall Street as one might suppose.
Although individuals have added almost $20 billion to U.S. stock funds so far this year, the amount is just 3.5 percent of the withdrawals since 2007, Investment News.com?reported, and compares with $44 billion placed with fixed-income managers in 2013, according to the Investment Company Institute.
Fund inflows tend to buttress the beliefs of those who think the stock market?s short-term bull run can continue. As the old adage goes, individual investors don?t make money in the market, they just borrow from the institutions for a while.
The lack of participation by retail investors in the continuing rally would seem to indicate we have yet to hit a top -- because the retail money has yet to hit the market.? And that?s the line of reasoning I would have used 10 years ago. ?But a lot has changed in 10 years.
There?s a growing sense of alienation between Wall Street and Main Street. Much of the alienation has to do with the lack of the right type of oversight on money and markets. That lack of confidence, which is largely political in nature, hurts PEs.
Last week, Attorney General Eric Holder, for example, announced he'd have difficulty prosecuting too-big-to-fail management, not because there was no violation of the laws, but simply because it might affect the economy at home and abroad.
"I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions become so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if we do prosecute -- if we do bring a criminal charge -- it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy," Holder told senators this month. "I think that is a function of the fact that some of these institutions have become too large."
So in other words, people like former Barack Obama economic capo, Democrat Jon Corzine, will be off the hook after his firm, MG Global, ?misplaced? $1.6 billion in customer-segregated accounts in one of the top 10 bankruptcies in the country?s history.
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3 Replies - 41 Views - Last Post: Today, 09:55 AM
#1 THX ?
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Posts:2
Joined:Today, 07:45 AM
Posted Today, 07:56 AM
why does this code break every time it hits, mov [eax], ebx?
1. what are you trying to do? 2. what do you think you are doing?
when you add brackets around a register, the register becomes a pointer. You moved 2 into eax, so when you do: mov [eax], ebx, you are telling the cpu to move the value in ebx to the address - 2 which there is no such address.
29 March 2013Last updated at 03:14 ETBy Roger HarrabinEnvironment analyst
The Met Office has admitted issuing advice to government that was "not helpful" during last year's remarkable switch in weather patterns.
Between March and April 2012, the UK experienced an extraordinary shift from high pressure and drought to low pressure and downpours.
But the Met Office said the forecast for average rainfall "slightly" favoured drier than average conditions.
The three-month forecast is said to be experimental.
It is sent to contingency planners but has been withheld from the public since the Met Office was pilloried for its "barbecue summer" forecast in 2009.
Last spring's forecast has been obtained by BBC News under Freedom of Information.
Continue reading the main story
?Start Quote
The probabilistic forecast can be considered as somewhat like a form guide for a horse race?
End QuoteMet Office
The Met Office three-monthly outlook at the end of March stated: "The forecast for average UK rainfall slightly favours drier than average conditions for April-May-June, and slightly favours April being the driest of the three months."
A soul-searching Met Office analysis later confessed: "Given that April was the wettest since detailed records began in 1910 and the April-May-June quarter was also the wettest, this advice was not helpful."
In a note to the government chief scientist, the Met Office chief scientist Julia Slingo explains the difficulty of constructing long-distance forecasts, given the UK's position at the far edge of dominant world weather systems.
She says last year's calculations were not actually wrong because they were probabilistic.
The Met Office forecast that the probability that April-May-June would fall into the driest of five categories was 20-25%, whilst the probability it would fall into the wettest was 10-15% (The average probability would be 20%).
The Met Office explained it this way: "The probabilistic forecast can be considered as somewhat like a form guide for a horse race.
'Unsolved challenges'
"It provides an insight into which outcomes are most likely, although in some cases there is a broad spread of outcomes, analogous to a race in which there is no strong favourite. Just as any of the horses in the race could win the race, any of the outcomes could occur, but some are more likely than others."
It said: "The creation of the three-monthly outlook relies upon the fact that weather is influenced by the slow variation of ocean conditions (and other processes) which can be predicted months in advance.
"Whilst there is a very strong dependence of tropical weather on processes such as El Nino ,the UK's weather is dominated by the highly variable atmospheric circulation over the North Atlantic, making it much harder to what will happen weeks and months ahead."
In the case of last spring, Dr Slingo says the forecast may have been pushed awry by a little-understood climate phenomenon, the Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO) - a pattern of thunderstorms that starts in the Indian Ocean. The Met Office calls it "one of the great unsolved challenges of tropical meteorology".
The irregular phenomenon is an envelope of thunderstorms starting in the Indian Ocean and moving into the Pacific. The MJO concentrates tropical rainfall within the envelope, with blue skies around it.
Nick Klingaman from Reading University says that, as it moves east, the MJO influences monsoon rainfall in Australia, India, Southeast Asia, South America and Africa.
These "bursts" and "breaks" in the monsoon cause floods and droughts that impact agriculture, river systems and infrastructure. The "long arm of the MJO" even extends into the middle latitudes.
"The thunderstorm activity generates waves in the atmosphere that move toward the poles," he told me. "The position of the MJO today has been shown to influence the position of the Pacific and Atlantic jet streams 10-15 days later."
He says the MJO can be an important predictor of the state of the North Atlantic Oscillation - which controls much of our weather in the UK - about 2-4 weeks in advance.
And that's how a thunderstorm off the coast of India might trigger a pattern of events which led to the weather switch last spring.
Some weather models can predict the MJO three weeks ahead, he said, but others struggle to predict it a week ahead.
Forecasts have greater skill when the MJO is already active. Reading University is working with the Met Office on improving MJO forecasting, he said.
A Met Office spokesman said: "The science of long-range forecasting is at the cutting edge of meteorology and the Met Office is leading the way in this research area. We are confident that long-range outlooks will improve progressively.
"Looking at the skill of these outlooks over many individual forecasts clearly shows that they provide useful advice to their specialist users more often than not."
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Mar. 25, 2013 ? Teens today are involved in intimate relationships at a much younger age and often have different definitions of what is acceptable behavior in a relationship. Violence is something that is all too common and according to researchers at Iowa State it is a reflection of the relationships teens have with their parents or their parent's partner.
"It is true that if you grow up in a violent household you have a higher likelihood of being in a violent relationship," said Brenda Lohman, lead author and an associate professor of human development and family studies at Iowa State University.
The research focused on psychological violence instead of physical violence. Lohman and her colleagues discovered that psychological violence between a parent and child was more significant than a child witnessing violence between two adults in the home.
"If the parent is more aggressive toward the child, the child is more likely to be in relationships where they're being victimized or perpetrating violence against their partner a few years or even a decade later," Lohman said.
This study is part of a special series of articles on teen dating violence guest edited by Lohman for the April issue of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. It is one of the first studies to examine patterns of violence over three decades to see how children exposed to psychological violence and family stress were affected in relationships later in life. Researchers relied on data from the Iowa Youth and Family Project, a 24-year project assessing families in rural Iowa, as well as video recordings of families and couples having a discussion or completing assigned problem-solving tasks.
Researchers found family stress, both emotional and financial, during adolescence is another predictor of intimate partner violence, but only when people are in their late 20s or early 30s, not during the teen years. Tricia Neppl, coauthor and an assistant professor in human development and family studies, said there could be several reasons why. It could be that people are more stable in their relationships or the fact that they have children.
"For whatever reason, the family stress that you experienced in early adolescence is having some kind of a lasting effect on your role as you settle into adulthood," Neppl said. "And more so than emerging adulthood, or your early 20s, when you're still trying to figure out what those roles are, you're young and you may or may not have children yet."
What is troubling for researchers is how the cycle of violence continues from one generation to the next. Adolescents who are influenced by family stress early in life not only grow up to have poor relationships with their partner or spouse, but Neppl's work shows it influences their children's development into adulthood as well.
Negative personality and the more sexual partners a teen has also increases the likelihood of risky behavior and violence in a relationship, researchers said.
Teenage girls and the definition of violence
Perception and gender also factor into the cycle of violence. In a second study, Lohman interviewed teens in low-income neighborhoods in Boston, Chicago and San Antonio and found an individual's perception made a difference in how violence was reported.
For example, Lohman said she and her colleague found that in an urban sample "females were a lot more psychologically violent during the teen years than boys. This includes minor acts of violence, like name-calling, hitting, slapping or pushing."
However, the data did not allow researchers to pinpoint how the cycle of violence started with each reported incident and whether the male or female was the perpetrator. But it is not surprising to them to see more teen girls initiating the violence.
In the second study, drug and alcohol use, low parental monitoring, academic difficulties and involvement with antisocial peers were also significant early risk factors for perpetration of dating violence in late adolescence. Differences in race, culture and gender also strongly influenced if teens perpetrated violence.
"Teens who were struggling in school or were using drugs and alcohol were more likely to perpetrate violence," Lohman said. "Furthermore, teens whose parents did not know who their friends were or did not know where their child hung out socially with peers, were more likely to be violent. This underscores the importance of prevention and intervention programs that address peers, families and schools."
Prevention and building relationship skills
The fact that one in four adolescents report dating violence every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control, underscores the need for better and earlier prevention, Lohman said. The renewal of the Violence Against Women Act is a step in that direction, but researchers would like to see more education and programming in the schools or after-school programs that focus on the teen years.
Family intervention is also important to preventing psychological violence later in life.
"Working with families who are under particular amounts of stress, whether it is economic or emotional distress, it's working with those families to help lower their stress loads," Neppl said. "We also want to help teach them how to be better parents and focus more on prevention services."
The results from these two studies imply that early warning signs across multiple systems, such as the family, peers and schools, should be addressed in dating violence prevention programs.
"Beyond parenting, I think it starts with peer skill building and peer development. Adults can start by explaining appropriate things to say to other peers and that you don't call peers names. These skills then carry over into future romantic relationships," Lohman said. "The earlier you can teach relationship skills the better. As for romantic relationship skills, I would like to see those taught at least by middle school and beyond."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Iowa State University.
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Journal Reference:
Brenda J. Lohman, Tricia K. Neppl, Jennifer M. Senia, Thomas J. Schofield. Understanding Adolescent and Family Influences on Intimate Partner Psychological Violence During Emerging Adulthood and Adulthood. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 2013; 42 (4): 500 DOI: 10.1007/s10964-013-9923-7
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Hybrid ribbons of vanadium oxide (VO2) and graphene may accelerate the development of high-power lithium-ion batteries suitable for electric cars and other demanding applications.
The Rice University lab of materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan determined that the well-studied material is a superior cathode for batteries that could supply both high energy density and significant power density. The research appears online this month in the American Chemical Society journalNano Letters.
The ribbons created at Rice are thousands of times thinner than a sheet of paper, yet have potential that far outweighs current materials for their ability to charge and discharge very quickly. Cathodes built into half-cells for testing at Rice fully charged and discharged in 20 seconds and retained more than 90 percent of their initial capacity after more than 1,000 cycles.
"This is the direction battery research is going, not only for something with high energy density but also high power density," Ajayan said. "It's somewhere between a battery and a supercapacitor."
The ribbons also have the advantage of using relatively abundant and cheap materials. "This is done through a very simple hydrothermal process, and I think it would be easily scalable to large quantities," he said.
Ajayan said vanadium oxide has long been considered a material with great potential, and in fact vanadium pentoxide has been used in lithium-ion batteries for its special structure and high capacity. But oxides are slow to charge and discharge, due to their low electrical conductivity. The high-conductivity graphene lattice that is literally baked in solves that problem nicely, he said, by serving as a speedy conduit for electrons and channels for ions.
The atom-thin graphene sheets bound to the crystals take up very little bulk. In the best samples made at Rice, fully 84 percent of the cathode's weight was the lithium-slurping VO2, which held 204 milliamp hours of energy per gram. The researchers, led by Rice graduate student Yongji Gong and lead author Shubin Yang, said they believe that to be among the best overall performance ever seen for lithium-ion battery electrodes.
"One challenge to production was controlling the conditions for the co-synthesis of VO2 ribbons with graphene," Yang said. The process involved suspending graphene oxide nanosheets with powdered vanadium pentoxide (layered vanadium oxide, with two atoms of vanadium and five of oxygen) in water and heating it in an autoclave for hours. The vanadium pentoxide was completely reduced to VO2, which crystallized into ribbons, while the graphene oxide was reduced to graphene, Yang said. The ribbons, with a web-like coating of graphene, were only about 10 nanometers thick, up to 600 nanometers wide and tens of micrometers in length.
"These ribbons were the building blocks of the three-dimensional architecture," Yang said. "This unique structure was favorable for the ultrafast diffusion of both lithium ions and electrons during charge and discharge processes. It was the key to the achievement of excellent electrochemical performance."
In testing the new material, Yang and Gong found its capacity for lithium storage remained stable after 200 cycles even at high temperatures (167 degrees Fahrenheit) at which other cathodes commonly decay, even at low charge-discharge rates.
"We think this is real progress in the development of cathode materials for high-power lithium-ion batteries," Ajayan said, suggesting the ribbons' ability to be dispersed in a solvent might make them suitable as a component in the paintable batteries developed in his lab.
###
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Plaintiffs Kris Perry, left, and her partner Sandy Stier, right, both from Berkeley, Cailf., meet with the media outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Tuesday, March 26, 2013, after the court heard arguments on California's voter approved ban on same-sex marriage, Proposition 8. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Plaintiffs Kris Perry, left, and her partner Sandy Stier, right, both from Berkeley, Cailf., meet with the media outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Tuesday, March 26, 2013, after the court heard arguments on California's voter approved ban on same-sex marriage, Proposition 8. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Marcus, left, and Daniel German-Dominguez stand outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Tuesday, March 26, 2013, before the court's hearing on California?s voter approved ban on same-sex marriage. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
A demonstrator holds a bible while marching outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Tuesday, March 26, 2013, as the court heard arguments on California's voter approved ban on same-sex marriage, Proposition 8. The Supreme Court waded into the fight over same-sex marriage Tuesday, at a time when public opinion is shifting rapidly in favor of permitting gay and lesbian couples to wed, but 40 states don't allow it. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Sandy Stier, left, and Kris Perry of Berkeley, Calif., arrive at the National Archives in Washington, Monday, March 25, 2013, to view the U.S. Constitution, a day before their same-sex marriage case is argued before the Supreme Court. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Demonstrators stand outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Tuesday, March 26, 2013, where the court will hear arguments on California?s voter approved ban on same-sex marriage, Proposition 8. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Supreme Court suggested Tuesday it could find a way out of the case over California's ban on same-sex marriage without issuing a major national ruling on whether America's gays have a right to marry.
Several justices, including some liberals who seemed open to gay marriage, raised doubts during a riveting 80-minute argument that the case should even be before them. And Justice Anthony Kennedy, the potentially decisive vote on a closely divided court, suggested that the court could dismiss it with no ruling at all.
Such an outcome would almost certainly allow gay marriages to resume in California but would have no impact elsewhere.
Kennedy said he feared the court would go into "uncharted waters" if it embraced arguments advanced by gay marriage supporters. But lawyer Theodore Olson, representing two same-sex couples, said that the court similarly ventured into the unknown in 1967 when it struck down bans on interracial marriage in 16 states.
Kennedy challenged the accuracy of that comment by noting that other countries had had interracial marriages for hundreds of years.
There was no majority apparent for any particular outcome and many doubts expressed about the arguments advanced by lawyers for the opponents of gay marriage in California, by the supporters and by the Obama administration, which is in favor of same-sex marriage rights.
Kennedy made clear he did not like the rationale of the federal appeals court that struck down Proposition 8, the California ban, even though it cited earlier opinions in favor of gay rights that Kennedy wrote.
That appeals court ruling applied only to California, where same-sex couples briefly had the right to marry before voters adopted a constitutional amendment in November 2008 that defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
Several members of the court also were troubled by the Obama administration's main point that when states offer same-sex couples civil union rights of marriage, as California and eight other states do, they also must allow marriage. The other states are: Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon and Rhode Island.
Justice Samuel Alito described gay marriage as newer than such rapidly changing technological advances as cellphones and the Internet, and appeared to advocate a more cautious approach to the issue.
"You want us to assess the effect of same-sex marriage," Alito said to Solicitor General Donald Verrilli. "It may turn out to be a good thing. It may turn out to be not a good thing."
Charles Cooper, representing the people who helped get Proposition 8 on the ballot, ran into similar resistance over his argument that the court should uphold the ban as a valid expression of the people's will and let the vigorous political debate over gay marriage continue.
Here, Kennedy suggested that Cooper's argument did not take account of the estimated 40,000 children who have same-sex parents. "The voices of these children are important, don't you think?" Kennedy said.
If the court is to find the exit without making a decision about gay marriage, it has two basic options.
It could rule that the gay marriage opponents have no right, or legal standing, to defend Proposition 8 in court. Such an outcome also would leave in place the trial court decision in favor of the two same-sex couples who sued for the right to marry. On a practical level, California officials probably would order county clerks across the state to begin issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples, although some more conservative counties might object.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had the sharpest questions for Cooper on the issue of standing.
The justices also could determine that they should not have agreed to hear the case in the first place, as happens a couple of times a term on average. In that situation, the court issues a one-sentence order dismissing the case "as improvidently granted." The effect is to leave in place the appeals court ruling, which in the case of Proposition 8, applies only to California. The appeals court also voted to strike down the ban, but on somewhat different grounds than the trial court.
The Supreme Court waded into the fight over same-sex marriage at a time when public opinion is shifting rapidly in favor of permitting gay and lesbian couples to wed, but 40 states don't allow it.
The court's first major examination of gay rights in 10 years continues Wednesday, when the justices will consider the federal law that prevents legally married gay couples from receiving a range of benefits afforded straight married Americans.
The courtroom was packed on Tuesday and the crowd included actor-director Rob Reiner, who helped lead the fight against California's Proposition 8. Some people waited since Thursday ? even through light snow ? for coveted seats for the argument.
Both sides of the case were represented outside the courthouse. Supporters of gay marriage came with homemade signs including ones that read "a more perfect union" and "love is love."
Among the opponents was retired metal worker Mike Krzywonos, 57, of Pawtucket, R.I. He wore a button that read "marriage 1 man + 1 woman" and said his group represents the "silent majority."
Same-sex marriage is legal in nine states and the District of Columbia. The states are Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont and Washington.
Thirty states ban same-sex marriage in their state constitutions, while ten states bar them under state laws. New Mexico law is silent on the issue.
Polls have shown increasing support in the country for gay marriage. According to a Pew Research Center poll conducted in mid-March, 49 percent of Americans now favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally, with 44 percent opposed.
The California case was argued 10 years to the day after the court took up a challenge to Texas' anti-sodomy statute. That case ended with a forceful ruling prohibiting states from criminalizing sexual relations between consenting adults.
Kennedy was the author of the decision in Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, and he is being closely watched for how he might vote on the California ban. He cautioned in the Lawrence case that it had nothing to do with gay marriage, but dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia predicted the decision would lead to the invalidation of state laws against same-sex marriage.
Kennedy's decision is widely cited in the briefs in support of same-sex unions.
The California couples, Kris Perry and Sandy Stier of Berkeley and Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo of Burbank, filed their federal lawsuit in May 2009 to overturn the same-sex marriage ban that voters approved the previous November. The ballot measure halted same-sex unions in California, which began in June 2008 after a ruling from the California Supreme Court.
Roughly 18,000 couples were wed in the nearly five months that same-sex marriage was legal and those marriages remain valid in California.
The high-profile case has brought together onetime Supreme Court opponents. Olson, a Republican, and Democrat David Boies are leading the legal team representing the same-sex couples. They argued against each other in the Bush v. Gore case that settled the disputed 2000 presidential election in favor of George W. Bush.
On the other side Tuesday was Cooper, Olson's onetime colleague at the Justice Department in the Reagan administration.
The case is Hollingsworth v. Perry, 12-144.
___
Associated Press writer Jessica Gresko contributed to this report.
___
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modi123_1, on 29 March 2013 - 07:59 AM, said:
