WASHINGTON (AP) ? If Republicans were writing a movie script for next year's congressional elections, the working title might be "2014: Apocalypse of Obamacare."
The plot: The rollout of President Barack Obama's health care law turns into such a disaster that enraged voters rebuke him by rewarding the GOP with undisputed control of Congress.
But there's a risk for Republicans if they're wrong and the Affordable Care Act works reasonably well, particularly in states that have embraced it. Republicans might be seen as obstinately standing in the way of progress.
The law already has been a political prop in two election seasons, but next year will be different.
Voters will have a real program to judge, working or dysfunctional. Will affordable health care finally be a reality for millions of uninsured working people? Or will premiums skyrocket as the heavy hand of government upends already fragile insurance markets for small businesses and individuals?
"The end of this movie has not been written," said Robert Blendon, a Harvard professor who tracks public opinion on health care. He says next year's movie actually will be a documentary: what happens in states that fully put the law in place and those that resist ? "a message of reality."
One of the most prominent doomsayers is Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who predicts "Obamacare" probably will be the biggest issue of 2014 and "an albatross around the neck of every Democrat who voted for it."
"This thing can't possibly work," says McConnell. "It will be a huge disaster in 2014."
Counting on that, House Republicans are busy framing an election narrative, voting to repeal the health law and trying to link it to the scandal over the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of tea party groups. It could help excite the conservative base.
But Democratic pollster Celinda Lake doubts reality will follow the GOP script. Next year, "we won't have to worry about the mythology laid out by the right wing about Obamacare: death panels and dramatic cuts to Medicare," she said.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said uninsured people in her state will have over 200 coverage options to choose from. "We have been hearing the fear, but in states like mine, people are seeing the reality," she said.
In just about five months, people without access to coverage through their jobs can start shopping for subsidized private insurance in new state markets. The actual benefits begin Jan. 1. But because of continuing opposition to the law from many Republican governors and state legislators, the federal government will be running the insurance markets in more than half the states.
Another major element of the law, the expansion of Medicaid to serve more low-income people, also has run into problems. With many legislative sessions over or winding down, it looks like fewer than half the states may accept the expansion. That means millions of low-income people are likely to remain uninsured, at least initially.
Other early indicators of how well the health care rollout might fare are mixed.
In a dozen or so states that have started releasing details of their new insurance markets, there's robust insurer interest in participating, according to the market research firm Avalere Health. That's a good signal for competition.
There still are concerns about a spike in premiums for people who already buy their own coverage, particularly the young and healthy. That could happen for several reasons.
The health care law forbids insurers to deny coverage to sick people, and it limits what older adults can be charged. Also, the plans that will be offered next year are more comprehensive than many bare-bones policies currently available to individuals.
Another big source of angst is the Obama administration. The Health and Human Services Department will be running the program in half the country while trying to fight off attempts by congressional Republicans to starve it financially. Unusual for a social program, the administration is largely operating behind a veil of secrecy.
Will Obama's underlings turn out to be the Keystone Kops of health care?
Frustration that he and his constituents couldn't get basic information from the administration led one of the authors of the law, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., to warn recently that he sees "a huge train wreck coming down."
Republicans loved it. Lost in the uproar was the fact that Baucus was referring to potential problems with implementation. He stills thinks the health care law itself is a good thing.
The administration official running the rollout, Gary Cohen, told Congress this past that he didn't agree with the senator's statement. "We are very much on schedule," Cohen said.
Republican pollster Bill McInturff says he's skeptical of what he hears from the administration as well as from his own party. McInturff, who has made polling on health care his specialty, says the launch of any national program is bound to have problems. President George W. Bush's Medicare prescription benefit went through several weeks of chaos before things got smoothed out.
"Life experience says to me there is not going to be some simple, clear narrative that is sitting here today," McInturff said.
FILE - This March 11, 2009 file picture shows the Axel Springer AG publishing house headquarters, in Berlin. Europe?s most-read newspaper is introducing a paywall for part of its online offerings next month. Bild - Germany?s top-selling newspaper and Europe?s biggest by circulation - says main news stories will remain free of charge online but a subscription will be required to view features, interviews and other exclusive content. The basic digital subscription will cost 4.99 euros ( US$6.50) per month starting June 11 and twice that for a premium version that includes the tabloid as an e-paper. The Axel Springer AG-owned newspaper will also offer readers buying a print copy, at 70 euro cents a day, a pass to its online content. The pass is unique to each reader, thanks to a new printing technique. Bild?s daily print circulation is about 2.5 million, 200,000 more than Britain?s The Sun. (AP Photo/Franka Bruns,File)
FILE - This March 11, 2009 file picture shows the Axel Springer AG publishing house headquarters, in Berlin. Europe?s most-read newspaper is introducing a paywall for part of its online offerings next month. Bild - Germany?s top-selling newspaper and Europe?s biggest by circulation - says main news stories will remain free of charge online but a subscription will be required to view features, interviews and other exclusive content. The basic digital subscription will cost 4.99 euros ( US$6.50) per month starting June 11 and twice that for a premium version that includes the tabloid as an e-paper. The Axel Springer AG-owned newspaper will also offer readers buying a print copy, at 70 euro cents a day, a pass to its online content. The pass is unique to each reader, thanks to a new printing technique. Bild?s daily print circulation is about 2.5 million, 200,000 more than Britain?s The Sun. (AP Photo/Franka Bruns,File)
BERLIN (AP) ? Europe's top-selling newspaper said Monday it will introduce a paywall for part of its online offerings starting next month.
Main news stories will remain free of charge online, but a subscription will be required to view features, interviews and other exclusive content, German tabloid Bild said.
The basic digital subscription will cost 4.99 euros ($6.50) per month starting June 11, and twice that for a premium version that includes the tabloid as an e-paper. The Axel Springer AG-owned newspaper will also offer readers buying a print copy, at 70 euro cents a day, a pass to its online content. The pass will be unique to each paper, thanks to a new printing technique, which the company calls a "world premiere" for the industry.
The move comes as Europe's newspaper publishers struggle to make up for lost advertisement revenue and shrinking circulation numbers. Analysts say publishers across Europe will be closely watching whether Bild's paywall will succeed, as many of them hope to follow the move of Europe's biggest publishing house.
"It is a change of paradigm toward a culture of paying for journalistic content online," said Donata Hopfen, managing director of Bild's digital division. "It's a mammoth project."
Bild's online offering is currently Germany's No. 1 news website ? a position it hopes to defend by hiding only some content behind the paywall. The company decided against a metered paywall ? which limits users to a number of free articles per month, a model championed by The New York Times. Instead, Bild will decide on a daily basis which articles or video products will be labeled as premium content that requires a so-called Bild plus subscription. It is planning to increase the share of paid content over time, hoping that readers will be increasingly ready to pay for it.
"We know it can also go wrong," acknowledged Axel Springer CEO Mathias Doepfner. "But the tendency is clear toward pay models online," he said, adding that it is without alternative to seek opening new revenue streams to fund quality newsgathering and in-depth reporting.
An additional service featuring video footage from soccer games ? to which Axel Springer acquired the rights for Germany ? will cost an extra 2.99 euros a month ? a product the company has high hopes for in football-crazy Germany.
Bild's move is the first significant attempt to make users in Europe's biggest economy pay for reading their news online.
Doepfner said the company has no expectations for the new business to generate millions of euros in new revenues right away.
"We cannot say how many subscriptions we will have. The genius who would have a complete business plan right away, he would get a job with Springer immediately," the CEO said. "We cannot do it."
Germany's other leading news website, Spiegel Online, has so far rejected the idea of a paywall. That appears poised to change following a leadership shake-up earlier this year, but the company has not announced any plans.
Axel Springer launched a test balloon earlier this year and put some content on the website of its daily Die Welt behind a paywall.
"We now sell more digital subscriptions than normal ones. That is encouraging," said Doepfner, without providing specific figures.
Axel Springer also publishes, among others, Poland's biggest tabloid, the conservative daily Fakt. Bild's daily print circulation has been falling for the past few years and now stands at about 2.5 million, 200,000 more than Britain's The Sun.
Rupert Murdoch's British tabloid, which is still struggling from the fallout of a phone hacking scandal that dented its reputation, recently announced plans to implement a paywall, charging 2 pounds ($3) per week in return for access to the tabloid's website and a package of Premier League soccer highlights.
An increasing number of U.S. newspapers also are starting to charge customers for online content; most recently The Washington Post announced the introduction of a digital subscription plan.
Trends in the European newspaper industry overall appear to follow those set by their U.S. peers, with falling revenues leading to paper closures as readers switch to view their news online or on tablet computers.
Germany's second-largest business daily, Financial Times Deutschland, was shut late last year, and the newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau filed for insolvency and laid off all but a core staff. The German news agency dapd went bankrupt this year, and most newspapers are currently seeking to cut costs amid falling advertisement revenues.
Newspaper readership in Germany has been falling over the past few years. From 2000 to 2011, the daily circulation of all newspapers fell by about 22 percent, from 24 million to 18.9 million copies, according to the BDZV lobby group of newspaper publishers.
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Raphael Satter in London contributed reporting.
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Follow Juergen Baetz on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jbaetz
MADERA, Calif. (AP) ? After Paulino Mejia crossed the border illegally into the U.S. in 1980, he picked grapes, peaches and other crops in California's agricultural heartland, lived in crowded rental housing, hid from immigration agents and sent paychecks to family in his native Mexico.
His life, however, changed in 1986, when Congress agreed to allow immigrants who were in the country illegally to get legal status ? with a special provision that focused on farmworkers.
Mejia then stopped living in fear. He left agriculture to join a construction company that hired only legal workers, sent his two daughters to college and bought a house in Madera, near Fresno, instead of wiring money to Mexico.
"Immigration reform changed my life. It gave my family freedom," he said. "It allowed us to reach the American dream."
With Congress considering a new immigration proposal that includes a speedier process to legal status for farmworkers, experts say the best indicator of how such an overhaul would play out is to look at the fate of the generation of farmworkers legalized over two decades ago.
In Central California, the nation's agricultural powerhouse and a region with one of the highest poverty levels, the 1986 law had a profound impact on people like Mejia.
And like him, many other farmworkers legalized after 1986 have left the fields, moving to jobs in packing houses, warehouses and factories, attending college and working as professionals. And many who remained in agriculture became supervisors, crew leaders or labor contractors.
As their wages soared, they bought cars, houses and trailer homes ? and many airplane tickets to visit family south of the border.
Workers, advocates and experts say immigration reform could again lift many farmworkers, one of the poorest groups of immigrants, out of poverty. But this time, they say, legalization's impact would be much bigger: in 1986, many farmworkers were single men; today most have families.
Unlike in 1986, growers and worker advocates say the current reform proposal would also ensure that a poor, illegal class of farmworkers isn't created again ? by including a viable guest worker program that would allow for a flow of legal temporary workers into California's fields.
"Nobody knows the future, but if the past is any guide, the farmworkers who get legalized, many of them will leave agriculture pretty quickly," said Philip Martin, professor of agricultural and resource economics at University of California, Davis.
More than 1 million farmworkers applied for legalization under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.
After the corresponding drop in the number of farmworkers in the country illegally, federal data show that farmers failed to retain their legalized workers and turned again to hiring employees from the groups of people entering the U.S. illegally.
Today, experts say, at least two-thirds of the nation's farmworkers are in the country illegally and those legalized thanks to the 1986 changes make up just 12 to 15 percent of the agricultural workforce.
Experts say newly legalized farmworkers sought non-seasonal, year-round employment with a steady income and benefits such as health insurance or vacations, which are rare in agriculture.
"If you're a seventh-grade educated worker, after legalization you're still a seventh-grade educated worker, but you have more confidence that you will get another job and more opportunities are open to you," Martin said.
Even those who remained in the fields due to lack of language skills, little education or other barriers still benefited, because they were able to claim unemployment insurance and other benefits when farm work dried up for the season.
Other farmworkers went to college.
Fausto Sanchez, of Arvin, Calif., left agriculture for a job as a certified interpreter of Mixteco, an indigenous Mexican language spoken by many farmworkers.
He then got his high school diploma in adult school and an associate's degree in human services. He now works for a nonprofit, educating farmworkers about pesticides, heat rules and workers' rights. He and his wife own a house and two cars ? and he is planning to return to college to become a social worker.
"If I didn't get legalized, all this would not have been possible for me," Sanchez said.
California growers and labor contractors acknowledge many farmworkers would leave the fields if granted legal status.
"There's no question that once farmworkers get a green card, many will apply for other jobs and leave agriculture," said Tom Nassif, president of Western Growers, an industry group that represents California and Arizona growers. "We support the pathway to citizenship at our own peril, knowing we will lose the people who are most skilled and most productive employees within a short time."
But the flight from agriculture may not happen as fast, Nassif said, because the current version of immigration reform requires farmworkers to remain in agriculture for at least five years to qualify for the speedier legalization process.
The current reform proposal, Nassif said, also includes a viable guest worker program to provide a future flow of workers.
And once legalized, some farmworkers will choose to stay in the fields ? as was the case with Julia Cervantes, Mejia's wife, who still occasionally picks grapes and other crops. "I like fresh air. I sincerely like working in the fields," she said.
For Mejia, it came down to wages: He and his wife could not make ends meet with what farmers paid in the fields. "Our family started growing, and we didn't have enough to survive," Mejia said.
Legalization allowed Mejia to get a job erecting the metal frames of big box stores. His brother became a roofer. Other friends became plumbers and electricians, or field supervisors. "The work is easier and the money is better," Mejia said of his new profession.
Prior to the 1986 Amnesty, Mejia wanted to return to Mexico and wired money to build a house in Oaxaca, in southwestern Mexico. But after reform, Mejia's new construction job and his newly acquired social security number allowed his family to buy a home in California. Paying a mortgage and taxes cemented their decision to remain in the U.S.
"Before reform, we were afraid to buy anything or to settle here, because if they deported us, we would lose everything," he said. "Reform helped us to invest here."
Mark Thoma, a macroeconomist and time-series econometrician at the University of Oregon, discusses the future of gas prices and clean energy in an interview with OilPrice.com.
By James Stafford,?Guest blogger / May 25, 2013
A service person works on sign at BP station in Vadnais Heights, Minn. New energy sources and the corresponding increase in supply will temper the upward trend, said Mark Thoma in an interview with OilPrice.com, but the trend will continue due in particular to growth in demand from developing economies.
Marlin Levison/The Star Tribune/AP/File
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If you want an objective view of energy, ask an economist, who can tell you what to expect to pay at the pump in the coming years, and why, as well as what to expect from medium- and long-term economic growth and what the real drivers will be. These are questions that are crucial to a pending decision by the US government over natural gas exports, and while we know where big oil stands versus its manufacturing rivals?it?s the economist who can set things straight.?
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offers extensive coverage of all energy sectors from crude oil and natural gas to solar energy and environmental issues. To see more opinion pieces and news analysis that cover energy technology, finance and trading, geopolitics, and sector news, please visit?Oilprice.com.
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Mark Thoma is a macroeconomist and time-series econometrician at the University of Oregon. His research focuses on how monetary policy affects the economy, and he has also worked on political business cycle models. Mark is currently a fellow at The Century Foundation, a columnist at The Fiscal Times, an analyst at CBS MoneyWatch, and he blogs daily at?Economist?s View. In an exclusive interview with Oilprice.com, Thoma discusses: ? ???? What we can expect from gas prices this summer and beyond ???? Why clean energy won?t see an dramatic investment rival, for now ???? How political feasibility, not economic feasibility, drives the ethanol mandate ???? Why the ethanol mandate might eventually be nixed ???? How we weigh the free market against government intervention ???? Why there is little momentum for a US-wide carbon market ???? What we learned from the global financial crisis ???? Why our best hope for strong economic growth is in exports Interview by James Stafford of?Oilprice.com
James Stafford:?What every regular consumer wants to know is why the price of gas at the pump continues to rise in the midst of a much-lauded oil and gas boom? ?
The largest study to date confirms that ketamine ? a ?club drug? that is also legally used as an anesthetic ? could be a quick and effective way to relieve depression.
The results were presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association and represent growing excitement about ketamine?s potential. The study included 72 patients who had previously failed to respond to at least two other medications. After receiving a single intravenous (IV) dose of ketamine, 64% of patients reported fewer depression symptoms within one day compared to 28% of those given midazolam ? an anesthetic drug that was used as a control.
?[This research] reports the largest controlled evaluation of the antidepressant effects of ketamine to date,? says Dr. John Krystal, professor of psychiatry at Yale, who published the first study in 2000 suggesting that ketamine could quickly lift depression, but was not associated with this trial.
Antidepressants typically take weeks to improve mood ? and that?s a time when people with the disorder are at an especially high risk of suicide. ?Among people who respond to antidepressants, it takes on average 7 weeks to produce this response,? Krystal says, ?When simply getting through a single day can be difficult, waiting 7 weeks to get better can be daunting.? Ketamine? and similar drugs currently being tested by pharmaceutical companies could help relieve suffering faster and potentially reduce the suicide risk associated with the mood disorder.
And because the doses used were lower than those taken by clubbers or used in anesthesia, most patients didn?t have the extreme experiences of ?out of body? sensations or profoundly distorted perceptions of reality.? ?Nobody freaked out,? says Murrough, adding that most described the experience of the infusion as being similar to having had a few drinks. About 10%, however, did have some dissociative effects.? ?One patient [reported] wondering whether time still existed during the infusion,? he says.
The results are especially noteworthy because ketamine was compared to another anesthetic with similar psychoactive effects, not just a placebo. Such comparisons are?important because drugs that result in highly noticeable responses like sedation also tend to have strong placebo effects. Researchers had argued that without such a comparison, it would be difficult to tell whether ketamine was actually relieving depression.
?This design was elegant because midazolam briefly made patients feel better, but did not produce a real antidepressant effect,? Krystal says, ?In contrast, ketamine produced the robust antidepressant effects that have been observed in every study of ketamine since our initial preliminary observations. ?This is the first direct evidence that the antidepressant effects of ketamine are specific, increasing our confidence in importance of this clinical observations.?
MORE:?A Mystery Partly Solved: How the ?Club Drug? Ketamine Lifts Depression So Quickly
Since the study has not been published, however, the results have not yet been subject to peer review. But Krystal and others are encouraged by the apparently lasting effects of the drug; the study showed that seven days after the infusion, 46% of those who received ketamine were still experiencing significant relief? compared to just 18% of those who received the midazolam.
The findings also follow about half a dozen smaller trials that tested the drug for depression or bipolar disorder. Murrough and his colleagues also published a study last year in Biological Psychiatry that could pave the way for broader use of the drug. In that analysis, his team examined whether ketamine could be used repeatedly for longer term results, perhaps as a replacement for, or addition to, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). In that study, 24 patients with treatment-resistant depression who were not taking any other medications received several daily doses of ketamine; after 12 days, 71% of the patients showed a 50% reduction in depression symptoms, with relief typically coming within 2 hours of the treatment.? On average, the patients who responded remained well for 18 days following the last infusion.
But because ketamine distorts consciousness, it likely would not be practical as a daily medication, as Prozac is currently used. In cases of profoundly disabling depression, however, it might be helpful if given several days a week, the way ECT is now prescribed.? While ECT is the best existing treatment for cases of depression that do not respond to medication and therapy, the stimulation can interfere with memory and it requires general anesthesia. Murrough envisions ketamine could be administered in conjunction with talk therapy and in combination with other medications to try to maintain recovery.
In fact, since ketamine is already FDA-approved, some clinicians have started to offer infusions to their patients, but that?s not a practice that Murrough condones.??There are physicians carrying out this procedure in nearly every major American city,? Krystal notes, ?[But] I think that ketamine infusion is still an experimental procedure.?
Indeed, Krystal?s colleagues recently reported some significant negative side effects in his trial of using ketamine to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Two of three participants who had OCD, who did not have current depression but had suffered from it in the past, developed new symptoms the day after ketamine treatment, which included suicidal thoughts, anxiety and severe distress.
MORE: Ketamine for Depression: The Most Important Advance in Field in 50 Years?
The researchers agree that while promising, ketamine-based therapy is probably still best conducted in an experimental setting? but that any clinicians who use it outside of research must, at the very minimum, carefully monitor patients. Krystal is planning to urge the National Institute on Mental Health to collect more data on all patients currently being treated for mental illness with ketamine. ?The largest study of repeated ketamine administration ever published has only 24 patients in it,? he says,??This is an extremely thin and somewhat risky evidence-base to launch a national treatment program.?
With more data, however, researchers may become more confident in how best? and safely? to use the drug. And the latest study is an important first step toward that goal. ?It seems that a new antidepressant approach has been identified that may expand the scope of effective antidepressant treatment,? Krystal says, ?We look forward to larger and more definitive clinical trials that will help to determine whether more patients will be effectively treated through this mechanism and whether the possibility of rapid improvements in depression substantially reduces the burden of this disease.?
Paolo Soleri, who died last month at 93, transformed the way people imagine cities of the future. You've probably seen some of his concepts without realizing it. He even built an experimental city in Arizona, called Arcosanti. We've got a gallery of his drawings and designs, some of which have never been online before.
UCLA life scientists present new insights on climate change and species interactionsPublic release date: 21-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Stuart Wolpert swolpert@support.ucla.edu 310-206-0511 University of California - Los Angeles
UCLA life scientists provide important new details on how climate change will affect interactions between species in research published online May 21 in the Journal of Animal Ecology. This knowledge, they say, is critical to making accurate predictions and informing policymakers of how species are likely to be impacted by rising temperatures.
"There is a growing recognition among biologists that climate change is affecting how species interact with one another, and that this is going to have very important consequences for the stability and functioning of ecosystems," said the senior author of the research, Van Savage, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and of biomathematics at UCLA. "However, there is still a very limited understanding of exactly what these changes will be. Our paper makes progress on this very important question."
Climate change is causing global increases in mean temperature, as well as more fluctuations and greater variability in temperature. Growing evidence suggests these changes are altering when and how species interact, and even which species are able to interact without going extinct, Savage said.
Already, climatic warming is rapidly altering the timing and rate of flowering in plants, as well as breeding and migration in animals changes that are likely to disrupt interactions between species.
"These changes may bring about novel and potentially unstable species interactions by causing warm-adapted species to seek out geographic regions and to experience seasonal periods that have historically been too cold for them until temperatures begin to rise," said lead author Anthony Dell, a former UCLA postdoctoral researcher now at Germany's University of Gottingen.
Such changes could destabilize entire ecosystems, such as rainforests or coral reefs, said co-author Samraat Pawar, a former UCLA postdoctoral researcher currently at the University of Chicago, who noted that although biologists are becoming increasingly aware that changes in species interactions are likely to be one of most important biological impacts of climate change, they have found it challenging to understand and predict.
Savage's research team has recently made significant progress on this front by developing a biotraits database. This massive dataset has been compiled from the literature and has been standardized and organized so that data can be combined and compared. This group has already used statistical analysis and mechanistic mathematical models to provide information on how various biological traits of organisms respond to changes in temperature and other environmental factors.
In particular, Savage and his team have looked at the impact temperature changes can have on the rate at which an organism uses energy, known as the metabolic rate. This fundamental process governs many aspects of an organism's life, including how much food it will eat, how fast it can move, how much it sleeps and how fast its heart beats. The team makes predictions about how an organism's activity and thus the broader ecology are affected by temperature.
In the current research, Savage and his colleagues examined how organisms' different physiological responses to rising temperatures could impact what are known as consumerresource interactions. These are interactions between two organisms that lead to a "feeding" event a prime example being a predator (consumer) and its prey (resource). Taken as a whole, a collection of consumerresource interactions constitutes the food chain or food web that drives the diversity, dynamics and stability of particular communities and ecosystems.
Their model accounts for the fact that a change in temperature is likely to result in some predators becoming better at capturing prey while some prey animals become more efficient at evading capture, leading to imbalances in the food chain and potential repercussions for ecosystems.
A key biological trait driving different responses to temperature change among consumers and resources is body velocity the speed at which an animal moves. Cold-blooded animals, for example, tend to move faster as their body temperature increases. The biologists predict that one of the primary impacts of global warming will be increasing the amount of time and speed with which organisms move around a landscape and thus encounter and interact with one another.
Specifically, the researchers say, the effects of climatic warming will be determined by the ways in which predators seek their prey by moving around the landscape in search of mobile prey (active-capture), by remaining stationary and waiting for moving prey (sit-and-wait) or by moving around in search of immobile prey (grazing) as well as by whether interacting predatorprey species are both cold-blooded, both warm-blooded or one of each.
Because of the effect of temperature on body velocity, biologists predict that encounter rates between predators and prey will increase with rising temperatures if the foraging strategy is active-capture (both predator and prey moving through the landscape), as with an eagle hunting a fish. However, if both species respond to temperature in identical ways, these changes may not lead to significant shifts in their interactions.
With a sit-and-wait strategy, often used by snakes and lizards, the effects of temperature change would arise primarily via the moving prey species, potentially creating a very strong asymmetry between predator and prey. In this case, the asymmetry may profoundly alter the nature of the interaction, so that the two species have much higher or lower abundances and may no longer be able to coexist in the feeding relationship without one or both going extinct.
Similarly, increasing temperatures are likely to have significant impacts on interactions between warm-blooded and a cold-blooded animals, such as warm-blooded birds that feed on cold-blooded lizards, or snakes that feed on squirrels. In these cases, the internal body temperature of the cold-blooded animal the lizard or snake will vary when the climate changes. As a result, the organism's physiology will change and, in turn, influence its body velocity, activity and reaction rates. In contrast, warm-blooded animals, whose body temperature is largely independent of external climate, will not experience much change, again creating an asymmetry between species.
Using the biotraits database, the authors show that trait-specific asymmetries exist in organisms' responses to temperature change and are likely to be a major factor in determining the effects of climate change on species interactions.
Naturally, the researchers say, it is impossible to study all the species on the planet, but with their new mathematical model, predictions can be made about effects of warming on different types of consumerresource interactions.
"The large diversity of species that make up natural ecosystems mean it is logistically infeasible to study every species interaction in a community and make predictions about how these interactions will be affected by climate warming," Savage noted. "However, models that assume all species respond to temperature in the same way will both miss the large diversity in ecological systems and therefore miss the most important consequences that arise from differential and asymmetric responses to temperature among species."
"In this paper we forge a middle ground between these two extremes," Dell said. "We allow different species to have different thermal responses and show this is essential for predicting species responses to climate change, while also having our categories be much broader than every species on the planet. This new model can help form the foundation for a more predictive framework for understanding the effects of climate change on communities and ecosystems."
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The research was federally funded by the National Science Foundation (grant DEB 1021010.)
UCLA is California's largest university, with an enrollment of more than 40,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The UCLA College of Letters and Science and the university's 11 professional schools feature renowned faculty and offer 337 degree programs and majors. UCLA is a national and international leader in the breadth and quality of its academic, research, health care, cultural, continuing education and athletic programs. Six alumni and six faculty have been awarded the Nobel Prize.
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UCLA life scientists present new insights on climate change and species interactionsPublic release date: 21-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Stuart Wolpert swolpert@support.ucla.edu 310-206-0511 University of California - Los Angeles
UCLA life scientists provide important new details on how climate change will affect interactions between species in research published online May 21 in the Journal of Animal Ecology. This knowledge, they say, is critical to making accurate predictions and informing policymakers of how species are likely to be impacted by rising temperatures.
"There is a growing recognition among biologists that climate change is affecting how species interact with one another, and that this is going to have very important consequences for the stability and functioning of ecosystems," said the senior author of the research, Van Savage, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and of biomathematics at UCLA. "However, there is still a very limited understanding of exactly what these changes will be. Our paper makes progress on this very important question."
Climate change is causing global increases in mean temperature, as well as more fluctuations and greater variability in temperature. Growing evidence suggests these changes are altering when and how species interact, and even which species are able to interact without going extinct, Savage said.
Already, climatic warming is rapidly altering the timing and rate of flowering in plants, as well as breeding and migration in animals changes that are likely to disrupt interactions between species.
"These changes may bring about novel and potentially unstable species interactions by causing warm-adapted species to seek out geographic regions and to experience seasonal periods that have historically been too cold for them until temperatures begin to rise," said lead author Anthony Dell, a former UCLA postdoctoral researcher now at Germany's University of Gottingen.
Such changes could destabilize entire ecosystems, such as rainforests or coral reefs, said co-author Samraat Pawar, a former UCLA postdoctoral researcher currently at the University of Chicago, who noted that although biologists are becoming increasingly aware that changes in species interactions are likely to be one of most important biological impacts of climate change, they have found it challenging to understand and predict.
Savage's research team has recently made significant progress on this front by developing a biotraits database. This massive dataset has been compiled from the literature and has been standardized and organized so that data can be combined and compared. This group has already used statistical analysis and mechanistic mathematical models to provide information on how various biological traits of organisms respond to changes in temperature and other environmental factors.
In particular, Savage and his team have looked at the impact temperature changes can have on the rate at which an organism uses energy, known as the metabolic rate. This fundamental process governs many aspects of an organism's life, including how much food it will eat, how fast it can move, how much it sleeps and how fast its heart beats. The team makes predictions about how an organism's activity and thus the broader ecology are affected by temperature.
In the current research, Savage and his colleagues examined how organisms' different physiological responses to rising temperatures could impact what are known as consumerresource interactions. These are interactions between two organisms that lead to a "feeding" event a prime example being a predator (consumer) and its prey (resource). Taken as a whole, a collection of consumerresource interactions constitutes the food chain or food web that drives the diversity, dynamics and stability of particular communities and ecosystems.
Their model accounts for the fact that a change in temperature is likely to result in some predators becoming better at capturing prey while some prey animals become more efficient at evading capture, leading to imbalances in the food chain and potential repercussions for ecosystems.
A key biological trait driving different responses to temperature change among consumers and resources is body velocity the speed at which an animal moves. Cold-blooded animals, for example, tend to move faster as their body temperature increases. The biologists predict that one of the primary impacts of global warming will be increasing the amount of time and speed with which organisms move around a landscape and thus encounter and interact with one another.
Specifically, the researchers say, the effects of climatic warming will be determined by the ways in which predators seek their prey by moving around the landscape in search of mobile prey (active-capture), by remaining stationary and waiting for moving prey (sit-and-wait) or by moving around in search of immobile prey (grazing) as well as by whether interacting predatorprey species are both cold-blooded, both warm-blooded or one of each.
Because of the effect of temperature on body velocity, biologists predict that encounter rates between predators and prey will increase with rising temperatures if the foraging strategy is active-capture (both predator and prey moving through the landscape), as with an eagle hunting a fish. However, if both species respond to temperature in identical ways, these changes may not lead to significant shifts in their interactions.
With a sit-and-wait strategy, often used by snakes and lizards, the effects of temperature change would arise primarily via the moving prey species, potentially creating a very strong asymmetry between predator and prey. In this case, the asymmetry may profoundly alter the nature of the interaction, so that the two species have much higher or lower abundances and may no longer be able to coexist in the feeding relationship without one or both going extinct.
Similarly, increasing temperatures are likely to have significant impacts on interactions between warm-blooded and a cold-blooded animals, such as warm-blooded birds that feed on cold-blooded lizards, or snakes that feed on squirrels. In these cases, the internal body temperature of the cold-blooded animal the lizard or snake will vary when the climate changes. As a result, the organism's physiology will change and, in turn, influence its body velocity, activity and reaction rates. In contrast, warm-blooded animals, whose body temperature is largely independent of external climate, will not experience much change, again creating an asymmetry between species.
Using the biotraits database, the authors show that trait-specific asymmetries exist in organisms' responses to temperature change and are likely to be a major factor in determining the effects of climate change on species interactions.
Naturally, the researchers say, it is impossible to study all the species on the planet, but with their new mathematical model, predictions can be made about effects of warming on different types of consumerresource interactions.
"The large diversity of species that make up natural ecosystems mean it is logistically infeasible to study every species interaction in a community and make predictions about how these interactions will be affected by climate warming," Savage noted. "However, models that assume all species respond to temperature in the same way will both miss the large diversity in ecological systems and therefore miss the most important consequences that arise from differential and asymmetric responses to temperature among species."
"In this paper we forge a middle ground between these two extremes," Dell said. "We allow different species to have different thermal responses and show this is essential for predicting species responses to climate change, while also having our categories be much broader than every species on the planet. This new model can help form the foundation for a more predictive framework for understanding the effects of climate change on communities and ecosystems."
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The research was federally funded by the National Science Foundation (grant DEB 1021010.)
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PHOENIX (AP) ? In a surprise jailhouse interview just hours after a jury began deliberating her fate, Jodi Arias spoke out Tuesday about her murder trial, her many fights with her legal team and her belief that she "deserves a second chance at freedom someday."
Arias spoke to The Associated Press as part of a series of interviews with media outlets. She repeated many of her claims from previous interviews, testimony on the witness stand and her statements to the jury earlier Tuesday as she pleaded for mercy.
But she provided some new information about her case and how she believed her lawyers let her down by not calling more witnesses who could have bolstered her claims that she was a victim of domestic violence at the hands of Travis Alexander.
Arias was convicted last week of first-degree murder in the June 2008 stabbing and shooting death of her one-time lover in what prosecutors described as a cold, calculated killing carried out in a jealous rage. Arias has maintained all along it was self-defense.
The jury began deliberating Tuesday as they worked to determine whether she should live or die for her crime. If the jury opts for a life sentence, the judge will have the option of determining whether she spends the rest of her days behind bars or is eligible for release after 25 years. Arias acknowledged it was unlikely she would ever be released, but believed she deserves a second chance.
Following her conviction last week, she told a local TV station that she preferred the death penalty. She said Tuesday night that she changed her mind after a tearful meeting with family members that same day, realizing that her death would only cause them more pain.
"I felt like by asking for death, it's like asking for assisted suicide and I didn't want to do that to my family," she told the AP.
Arias said she fought from the beginning to keep cameras out of the courtroom to limit the media spectacle, and believes that the jury should have been sequestered. She stated flatly that she did not receive a fair trial.
"The prosecutor has accused me of wanting to be famous, which is not true," she said.
However, Arias has sought the spotlight at every turn, providing TV interviews and even using a third-party to tweet throughout the trial.
Arias repeated her claims that she never wanted to go to trial in the first place but instead wanted to reach a deal with prosecutors on a second-degree murder count that would have carried a maximum of 22 years in prison. However, she said, "no deal was offered."
She gave the interviews Tuesday after the judge lifted an order barring jail officials from arranging any media requests. The judge did not elaborate on the reason for the ruling, but Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office quickly began making the media arrangements that lasted late into the night.
A shackled Arias wore makeup for the interviews and showed up in a jail classroom with a comb in hand as she fixed her hair for the cameras. When pressed for details on some of her conflicting stories, she was mostly evasive, citing advice from her attorneys and possible pending appeals.
She was also asked about the conflicts she had had with her two court-appointed lawyers, Kirk Nurmi and Jennifer Willmott.
Arias said she wanted at least three people called as witnesses who could have testified to having seen bruises on her neck "when I was choked out" by Alexander but she said she was rebuffed by her lawyers. The prosecutor insisted her claims of self-defense were an exaggerated attempt to avoid being convicted.
She said her lawyers "felt a little betrayed" and blindsided by her post-conviction interview but that they gave their blessings for Tuesday night's interviews, warning her to be cautious.
Arias said she sometimes wishes she'd never met Alexander, "just because of how ultimately everything ended and I say that for his sake and mine ? not just a selfish thing."
She said if the attack never occurred and she never crossed paths with the victim, she would likely now be a happily married 32-year-old with children, good finances and a successful wedding photography business.
Earlier Tuesday, Arias told jurors she planned to use her time in prison to bring about positive changes, including donating her hair to be made into wigs for cancer victims, helping establish prison recycling programs and designing T-shirts to raise money for domestic abuse victims.
Arias became emotional as she displayed for jurors photos of her friends, boyfriends and family members, including newborn relatives she has met only from behind bars.
She asked jurors to reject the death penalty for the sake of her family.
"I'm asking you to please, please don't do that to them. I've already hurt them so badly, along with so many other people," she said. "I want everyone's healing to begin, and I want everyone's pain to stop."
Arias stabbed and slashed Alexander nearly 30 times, shot in him in the forehead and slit his throat, nearly decapitating him, before leaving his body in his shower to be found by friends about five days later.
"To this day, I can hardly believe I was capable of such violence. But I know that I was," Arias told jurors. "And for that, I'm going to be sorry for the rest of my life."
Her speech to jurors came a day after her attorneys asked to be removed from the case, saying the five-month trial had become a witch hunt that prompted death threats against a key witness in the penalty phase. They also argued for a mistrial. The judge denied both requests.
Alexander's family showed little emotion as Arias' mother, father and sister looked on from the other side of the gallery and cried.
After Arias finished speaking, Judge Sherry Stephens explained to jurors that their finding would be final.
The jury heard closing arguments later Tuesday, with Willmott citing Arias' mental health problems and lack of a criminal record among the reasons to spare her life.
"The question now before you is: Do you kill her? Do you kill her for the one act that she did, the one horrible act, or can you see that there is a reason to let her live? Can you see that there is value in her life?" she said.
Prosecutor Juan Martinez said that despite Arias' claims, there were no factors in the case that would warrant a sentence other than death.
He implored jurors to look at the "whole panorama" of the case, not just Arias' statement Tuesday, and explained how Alexander's family will live with the pain of their loss for the rest of their lives.
"They can't forget that what happened on that afternoon, Travis Victor Alexander suffered immense physical pain," Martinez said. "They can't forget that."
An American flag blows in the wind at sunrise atop the rubble of a destroyed home a day after a tornado moved through Moore, Okla., Tuesday, May 21, 2013. The monstrous tornado roared through the Oklahoma City suburb Monday, flattening entire neighborhoods and destroying an elementary school with a direct blow as children and teachers huddled against winds up to 200 mph. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)
An American flag blows in the wind at sunrise atop the rubble of a destroyed home a day after a tornado moved through Moore, Okla., Tuesday, May 21, 2013. The monstrous tornado roared through the Oklahoma City suburb Monday, flattening entire neighborhoods and destroying an elementary school with a direct blow as children and teachers huddled against winds up to 200 mph. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)
A member of a security team helps guard an area of rubble from a destroyed residential neighborhood, one day after a tornado moved through Moore, Okla., Tuesday, May 21, 2013. The huge tornado roared through the Oklahoma City suburb Monday, flattening entire neighborhoods and destroying an elementary school with a direct blow as children and teachers huddled against the winds. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)
A deadly tornado hit suburban Oklahoma City on Monday. A quick look at some basic facts:
Q. Is global warming to blame?
A. You can't blame a single weather event on global warming. In any case, scientists just don't know whether there will be more or fewer twisters as global warming increases. Tornadoes arise from very local conditions, and so they're not as influenced by climate change as much as larger weather systems like hurricanes and nor'easters. They're not easy to incorporate in the large computer simulations scientists use to gauge the impact of global warming.
And when scientists ponder the key weather ingredients that lead to twisters, there's still no clear answer about whether to expect more or fewer twisters. Some scientists theorize that the jet stream is changing because sea ice in the Arctic is shrinking. And the jet stream pattern drives weather in the Northern Hemisphere.
Q. How does this tornado season stack up against previous ones?
A. The season got off to a quiet start this year. Typically, there are more during spring, and the numbers dwindle in the worst heat of the summer. An unusually cool spring kept the funnel clouds at bay until mid-May this year. The last two seasons illustrate the extremes in tornado activity. In 2011, the United States saw its second-deadliest tornado season. Last year, it was busy in April but there were few twisters after that.
Q. What happened in Oklahoma?
A. The tornado destroyed an elementary school and flattened neighborhoods with winds up to 200 miles an hour. The National Weather Service made a preliminary ranking of the twister as an EF4, the second-most-powerful classification.
Q. How did it form?
A. Like the most destructive and deadly tornadoes, this one came from a rotating thunderstorm. The thunderstorm developed in an area where warm moist air rose into cooler air. Winds in the area caused the storm to rotate, and that rotation promoted the development of a tornado.
Editor?s note:?Derek?Andersen?is the founder of?Startup Grind, a 40-city community bringing the global startup world together while educating, inspiring, and connecting entrepreneurs. I remember when the press first hit about Nest Labs, the guys behind the iPod/iPhone were taking on thermostats everywhere! A collective “huh?” went through the tech industry.?It felt like the tech version of the Avengers got together to build an office park, not save the world. After sitting down with Nest co-founder Matt Rogers at Google For Entrepreneurs‘ office a few weeks ago, I learned the backstory and vision of a company on a mission to build one of the world’s only great hardware/software companies in the world. There are hard workers, there are really hard workers, and then there are the Matt Rogers of the world. If you think you work hard, please read/watch our?entire interview?then?reevaluate.?He had a quick start with his first Mac product?interactions being at age three. As a child growing up in?Gainesville?Florida, when asked what he wanted to be someday, Matt would respond “I want to work at Apple.” At 16 he was building robots and entering them into competitions with his classmates.?As a sophomore at Carnegie Mellon, he agreed to basically do anything (anything?was help draw bones in CAD for a robotics hand project) to get a chance to work with with the robotics lab. His Junior year he applied via Monster.com, and pestered employees until he got accepted for an internship at Apple. That summer he took on the worst?grunt work?project imaginable (he rewrote all the software for manufacturing for iPod), and had three months for what he described as a “one year project.” ?7-days a week, 20-hour days, and “basically not sleeping.” How did it pay off? As an intern Apple awarded him a cash bonus, what VP of iPod at the time and eventual Nest co-founder Tony Fadell said was something, “He had never done before.” Apple After school he returned to Apple and spent the next few years working on the firmware for iPod nano and iPod classic. After his first weekend back at Apple, and spending Saturday and Sunday getting moved in and buying furniture, his manager approached him saying, “Where have you been?” Matt responded, “I went to buy furniture.” He replied, “You should have been here.” He responded, “Oh. I didn’t even know!” Matt said that this,?”Set the pace for how iPod would be for the
Our house might have been messy, but we had loving relationships and meaningful work. My mom was busy 'having it all': raising two kids and pursuing a career. She?was modeling a liberated womanhood that has shaped me more than my shame about our unkempt dining room.
By Liz Logan / May 10, 2013
First lady Michelle Obama gestures during a surprise visit from Prince Harry at an event in honor of military mothers at the White House May 9. Op-ed contributor Liz Logan writes: 'Turns out, a messy house just might be the new feminist manifesto....If you have time to lean, you don?t have time to clean, my mom might say.'
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
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I grew up in a messy house. It?s hard to write those words. But the fact is, I come from a ?creative? family, and creativity comes with a lot of stuff.
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But lately, as I read various essays debating whether women can really ?have it all,? I feel grateful that my mom was a failed housekeeper. I remember her explaining to me that while our family might not have a perfect house, we had the important things ? loving relationships and meaningful work. My mom was busy ?having it all?: raising two kids and pursuing a successful second career as an artist. She knew what ?it all? meant to her.
So this Mother?s Day, I want to thank my mom, Gloria Blasz Logan, for her messy house and the lessons she taught me about being a woman.
My dad, like his dad, is an obsessive collector ? Hawaiian shirts, watches, books, poetry journals, ugly Christmas sweaters (not kidding), you name it. An introverted writer like me, he read endless piles of newspapers and magazines, turning them into hundreds of tiny clippings that covered the dining room table.
He never met a yard sale or a used bookstore that he didn?t like. And he wasn?t selfish in his shopping proclivities: For us kids, he filled an entire room of the house with toys. We called it ?the toy room,? and it remained full long after we outgrew play dates.
My dad wasn?t a hoarder, but he accumulated far more than he ever threw away, and he didn?t like people messing with his stuff. If my mom hired someone to clean the house, it was an invitation to a standoff. A professional painter, gregarious volunteer, and voracious reader, she wasn?t as much of a collector, but she had never been a neatnik. If she disliked cleaning to begin with, my dad?s habits made her truly hate it.
Having a beautiful house just wasn?t important to my parents. And while their cluttered, bourgeois-bohemian lifestyle sounds cool now, it didn?t feel that way when I was living under their roof. My classmates at private school lived in houses that were pristine. I rarely brought friends over, and my parents, who were equally self-conscious, sometimes even discouraged it.
Not being able to bring a friend home from school like a ?normal? kid was painful at times. But looking back, I see my mother was modeling liberated womanhood in a way that has shaped me much more than my shame about our unkempt dining room.
Turns out, a messy house just might be the new feminist manifesto.
In her recent New York Magazine cover story ?The Feminist Housewife,? Lisa Miller cited a survey from the Families and Work Institute, in which women said that they hated doing housework and yearned for more free time. Yet when the women had more free time, they used it to clean. (Unlike my mom, apparently these women didn?t need to read all of Proust.)
?Psychologists suggest that perhaps American women are heirs and slaves to some atavistic need to prove their worth through domestic perfectionism,? Miller wrote.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg also writes about the unequal division of household chores in her best-seller ?Lean In,? encouraging women to make their partners ?real partners? ? in other words, loosening their domestic perfectionism so that men can be involved at home.
If you have time to lean, you don?t have time to clean, my mom might say.
But seriously, isn?t the constant pressure to have a beautiful house just an extension of the pressure women feel to be beautiful? While we teach young girls not to define themselves through their appearances, we seem to have no problem letting adult women be defined by whether or not the dishes are done.
My mom, God bless her, didn?t spend much time worrying about what other people thought. Sure, she occasionally felt guilty and embarrassed, but mostly she was unapologetic and defiant.
Our messy house was also a lesson about relationships. Instead of trying to change my dad, my mom chose to accept him ? clutter, flaws, and all. She always looked at the positive: ?Some men gamble or have affairs. Your father just wants to buy some used books.?
As for me, I take after my dad in a big way, so ?naturally,? for my own partner, I?ve chosen an industrial designer who worships minimalism. But like my mom, my boyfriend is incredibly kind and doesn?t judge based on appearances. And like my dad, my boyfriend is looking for a lot more than a domestic goddess.
That?s why I find myself writing tonight, in a new apartment, surrounded by boxes I?m in no hurry to unpack. It?s about to be Mother?s Day, when we celebrate mom for how perfect she is. Or, for me, just the opposite.
Liz Logan is a freelance writer and editor. Her work has appeared in Time; O, The Oprah Magazine; and Martha Stewart Living, among other publications.
JERUSALEM (AP) ? Israeli police with metal barriers and human chains on Friday held back thousands of ultra-Orthodox protesters who tried to prevent a liberal Jewish women's group from praying at a key holy site, the first time police have come down on the side of the women and not the protesters.
The switch followed a court order backing the right of the women to pray at the Western Wall in the Old City with practices Orthodox Jews insist are the role of men alone.
The "Women of the Wall" group has been holding monthly prayer services on the first day of the Hebrew month at the Western Wall in Jerusalem for more than two decades, wearing prayer shawls and performing religious rituals reserved for men under Orthodox Judaism. Accused by ultra-Orthodox leaders of violating "local custom" at the holy site, many of the group's members have been arrested.
On Friday the tables were turned because of the court ruling. Police protected the women and arrested three ultra-Orthodox men for disorderly conduct, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
It's a turning point for the group. Along with the arrests, the women have faced heckling and legal battles in a struggle to attain what they say is their right: to worship at the wall ? the holiest place where Jews can pray ? as men do. Then last month a Jerusalem court instructed police to stop detaining the women.
"It's a historic moment," said Shira Pruce, a spokeswoman for Women of the Wall. "The police did an amazing job protecting women to pray freely at the Western Wall. This is justice."
The plaza just in front of the Western Wall, a remnant of the biblical Jewish Temples, is marked off into two distinct sections, one for men and the other for women, where they pray separately. Up to now, women have had to abide by the Orthodox strictures of prayer.
Under Orthodox Jewish practice, only men may wear prayer shawls and skullcaps, and most Orthodox Jews insist that only men should carry a Torah scroll. The more liberal Reform and Conservative streams of Judaism, marginal in Israel but the largest denominations in the United States, allow women to practice the same way as men do in Orthodox Judaism. They are ordained as rabbis, lead services, read from the Torah and wear prayer shawls.
Israel's ultra-Orthodox establishment opposes any inroads from these groups, fearing their customs and authority could be eroded. They have argued that visitors to the Western Wall, whose rabbi is ultra-Orthodox, must respect the local practices.
Israeli media reported that before Friday's prayer service, some rabbis called on followers to flood the Western Wall in a bid to block the women from reaching the site.
Israeli TV video showed a packed Western Wall plaza with police forming a ring around the women and others shoving back ultra-Orthodox men. Female police officers had aligned in a human chain around young women protesters who were peering out at the Women of the Wall.
Pruce said police escorted the Women of the Wall out of the area after they finished their service and boarded them on buses, which were then pelted with stones as they left the Old City.
The Western Wall rabbi, Shmuel Rabinowitz, who has in the past called the women's group a "provocation," tried to ease tensions at the holy place. "No one in Israel wants a disagreement at the Western Wall," Rabinowitz told Israel Army Radio.
Israeli officials and lawmakers have been attempting to find a compromise that will satisfy both the women's group and the ultra-Orthodox. They have proposed establishing a new section at the Western Wall where men and women can pray together. The proposal, if implemented, would be seen as a victory for the more liberal streams of Judaism, which have been battling to be granted recognition in Israel.
The Women of the Wall, in contrast, insist on their right to pray as they want in the current women's section.
It's part of a wider culture clash that has triggered a backlash against Israel's ultra-Orthodox community.
The ultra-Orthodox make up about 10 percent of Israel's 8 million citizens. For most of the last three decades, they have served in coalition governments, securing vast budgets for religious schools and exemptions from mandatory military service for tens of thousands of young men in full-time religious studies.
The system has bred widespread resentment among the secular and modern Orthodox majority. It became a central issue in January parliamentary elections, and ultra-Orthodox parties were eventually left out of the government.
Many Israelis also feel the ultra-Orthodox attempt to impose their values on the rest of society, with their activists pushing for gender-segregated buses and sidewalks, defacing billboards showing women or trying to force women to dress modestly.
This week, Israel's attorney general urged Cabinet ministers to take measures to end gender segregation. Then on Thursday, Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said she has instructed her staff to draft a bill that would make the segregation and humiliation of women in public a criminal offense.
"The dismissal of women from the public sphere harms not only their dignity, but also harms us as a society that aspires toward equality," Livni wrote on her Facebook page.
DUBAI (Reuters) - The United States and its allies are preparing for naval exercises in the Gulf energy export hub that will include minesweeping and escorting commercial ships in a region where Iran is seen as a threat both to trade and security.
Forty-one countries are taking part in the two-week International Mine Countermeasures Exercise (IMCMEX-13) to practice minesweeping and protecting ports and energy installations in the Gulf.
Vice Admiral John Miller, Commander of the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, said on Monday the annual exercise was an "opportunity to enhance international naval capability to preserve freedom of navigation in international waterways.
"If 41 nations are willing to come here and practice MCM, just imagine how effective the global mine response would be if someone actually put mines in the water."
Iran repeatedly threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, east of Bahrain, in early 2012 during heightened tensions with the West over Tehran's disputed nuclear program.
Iranian threats to block Hormuz have since subsided, but the nuclear impasse remains.
There is also growing unease in the Middle East over Gulf Arab support for rebel uprisings against Tehran's ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Dropping mines is one way to disrupt shipping through the narrow route through which most of the Gulf's oil and gas is exported and many of the goods it consumes are imported.
The phase of the exercise staged on water, which begins next week, will involve 35 ships, 18 unmanned underwater vehicles and dozens of underwater explosives disposal divers.
In addition to minesweeping and flying drones, this year's event will include oil spill crisis management and protecting offshore terminals that oil and gas exporters rely on.
Last year's exercise included Britain and France, several Middle Eastern states and countries from as far afield as Estonia and New Zealand. The countries taking part this year have not been named.
(Reporting by Daniel Fineren; editing by Mike Collett-White)
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Public release date: 21-May-2013
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Editor?s note:?Derek?Andersen?is the founder of?Startup Grind, a 40-city community bringing the global startup world together while educating, inspiring, and connecting entrepreneurs. I remember when the press first hit about Nest Labs, the guys behind the iPod/iPhone were taking on thermostats everywhere! A collective “huh?” went through the tech industry.?It felt like the tech version of the Avengers got together to build an office park, not save the world. After sitting down with Nest co-founder Matt Rogers at Google For Entrepreneurs‘ office a few weeks ago, I learned the backstory and vision of a company on a mission to build one of the world’s only great hardware/software companies in the world. There are hard workers, there are really hard workers, and then there are the Matt Rogers of the world. If you think you work hard, please read/watch our?entire interview?then?reevaluate.?He had a quick start with his first Mac product?interactions being at age three. As a child growing up in?Gainesville?Florida, when asked what he wanted to be someday, Matt would respond “I want to work at Apple.” At 16 he was building robots and entering them into competitions with his classmates.?As a sophomore at Carnegie Mellon, he agreed to basically do anything (anything?was help draw bones in CAD for a robotics hand project) to get a chance to work with with the robotics lab. His Junior year he applied via Monster.com, and pestered employees until he got accepted for an internship at Apple. That summer he took on the worst?grunt work?project imaginable (he rewrote all the software for manufacturing for iPod), and had three months for what he described as a “one year project.” ?7-days a week, 20-hour days, and “basically not sleeping.” How did it pay off? As an intern Apple awarded him a cash bonus, what VP of iPod at the time and eventual Nest co-founder Tony Fadell said was something, “He had never done before.” Apple After school he returned to Apple and spent the next few years working on the firmware for iPod nano and iPod classic. After his first weekend back at Apple, and spending Saturday and Sunday getting moved in and buying furniture, his manager approached him saying, “Where have you been?” Matt responded, “I went to buy furniture.” He replied, “You should have been here.” He responded, “Oh. I didn’t even know!” Matt said that this,?”Set the pace for how iPod would be for the
