From its humble beginnings on OS X, Fantastical's contextual input changed the way plenty of people set appointments and reminders. When it arrived on the iPhone last November, the app became the first calendar software to reach number one on the App Store. Almost a year later, and Flexibits is ...
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/kUemOsCANSo/Gymnast Nastia Liukin is set to attend the 2014 Winter Olympics -- on the sidelines reporting, that is. The U.S. gold medalist will join NBC's broadcasting team for the upcoming Sochi, Russia games, she confirms to Us Weekly. The athlete has previously contributed to NBC's online coverage for the Summer Games in London in 2012.
"I'm thrilled to be a part of the NBC team reporting at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi," Liukin tells Us. "As both a U.S. Olympic Gold Medalist and as a dual U.S.-Russian citizen whose family has an Olympic legacy in Russia, the Sochi Games will be particularly meaningful to me. I'm honored and excited to be able to bring that unique perspective to Russia's first winter Olympics."
PHOTOS: Celebrities at the Olympics!
The Moscow native, 24, is a dual Russian-U.S. citizen and previously won five medals at the 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing -- one gold, three silver, and one bronze. She also ties with Shannon Miller and Mary Lou Retton for the most won at a single Olympics for a U.S. gymnast. The medalist is currently a student at New York University.
The reporting news comes just one week after fellow US Olympian Johnny Weir announced that he too will be working with NBC for the 2014 Sochi Olympics. He also revealed he's retiring from figure skating.
"Seventeen years ago, it's hard to say exactly how, but I knew my life would have some magic, and I have figure skating to thank for that," he said to Us in a statement at the time. "I wish for everyone in this world to have even one moment of finding their bliss and chasing after it at all costs and I pray that you are lucky enough to even have two of those moments, because they are fleeting and sometimes unappreciated."
Stiff drama heats up as it goes.
Hamptons International Film Festival
Jonas Armstrong, Ben Kingsley, Hannah Tointon, Simon Kunz, Simon Dutton, Burn Gorman, Shane Taylor, William Hope, Flora Spenzer-Longhurst
Mark Schmidt
THE HAMPTONS, NEW YORK -- A sometimes clumsy film recounting an impressive tale of real-life WWII heroism, Mark Schmidt's Walking With the Enemy centers on a Hungarian Jew who was able to save hundreds of others, in part, by using a dead man's uniform to impersonate a Nazi officer. Motivated by an earnest need to inspire, Schmidt's debut suffers from stiffness but improves as it goes, the tension of its plot overcoming many dramatic failings. Mainstream commercial value is hobbled by the abundance of more artful Holocaust survival films, but in special engagements the picture will find some responsive audiences. The presence of Ben Kingsley in a few scenes, as the Hungarian regent struggling to maintain order, will help prospects to some extent.
Jonas Armstrong plays Elek Cohen, whose heroics are inspired by those of real-world Pinchas Tibor Rosenbaum. (Other details have been changed along with the name, like the fact that Rosenbaum employed not a Nazi uniform but that of the Arrow Cross, a Hungarian faction aligned with Hitler's cause.) After escaping from a labor camp, he returns to find that his family has been taken by the Germans, his house and those of his friends given to non-Jewish townsfolk.
Reconnecting with Hannah (Hannah Tointon), a girl he met before the Occupation, Elek finds an operation at Budapest's "Glass House," where the Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz (William Hope) is busy printing thousands of official-looking documents offering his government's protection to Jews. Elek helps distribute these certificates but is soon going much further, dressing as an officer and mingling with the SS in nail-biting scenes in which he passes himself off as the genuine article.
Elek gleans some important information in these conversations, but the emboldened young man is soon taking direct action -- going to places Jews are being rounded up and using his ersatz authority to commandeer them (marching them off "to dig ditches" and instead taking them to safety) or otherwise stop their mistreatment. He makes enemies in these encounters, though, and raises suspicion about his credentials. Kenny Golde's screenplay builds this tension effectively, and Armstrong believably presents a determination that verges on grim mania. As Elek's role-playing makes him face increasingly swampy moral dilemmas, one wonders if storytellers will ever run out of astonishing tales from this terrible period.
Production Company: Liberty Studios
Cast: Jonas Armstrong, Ben Kingsley, Hannah Tointon, Simon Kunz, Simon Dutton, Burn Gorman, Shane Taylor, William Hope, Flora Spenzer-Longhurst
Director: Mark Schmidt
Screenwriter: Kenny Golde
Producers: Mark Schmidt, D. Scott Trawick, Christopher Williams, Randy Williams
Director of photography: Dean Cundey
Production designer: Christian Niculescu
Music: Tim Williams
Costume designer: Oana Paunescu
Editors: Eric L. Beason, Richard Nord
No rating, 129 minutes
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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 31-Oct-2013
ShareContact: Anna Mikulak
amikulak@psychologicalscience.org
202-293-9300
Association for Psychological Science
When faced with stress, some people seem to lose their appetite while others reach for the nearest sweet, salty, or fatty snack. Conventional wisdom tells us that stress eaters are the ones who need to regulate their bad habits, but new research suggests that stress eaters show a dynamic pattern of eating behavior that could have benefits in non-stressful situations.
The study, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, shows that "munchers" and "skippers" display compensatory patterns of consumption in response to positive and negative social situations. While munchers in the study ate more after being stressed, they ate less in response to a positive situation; skippers actually showed the reverse pattern, eating more after a positive experience.
"These findings challenge the simplistic view that stress eaters need to regulate their eating behavior to prevent weight gain," says lead researcher Gudrun Sproesser of the University of Konstanz, in Germany. "Both skippers and munchers have their 'soft spot' for food, they just show different compensatory eating patterns in response to positive and negative situations."
Sproesser and colleagues recruited volunteers to participate in a study on "first impressions." The participants interacted with an unfamiliar partner by video before meeting them in person. After making their own videos, the participants received one of three messages in return: Some heard that their partner had decided not to meet with them after seeing the video, while others heard that their partner liked them and looked forward to meeting them. A third control group was told that the experiment had to be cancelled for other reasons.
Then, the participants went on to participate in a supposedly unrelated study involving a taste test for three flavors of ice cream. They were allowed to eat as much ice cream as they wanted.
The results showed that, when faced with negative feedback, self-identified munchers ate more ice cream than participants in the control group, while self-identified skippers ate less. Munchers ate, on average, about 120 more calories' worth of ice cream than did the skippers.
But, when faced with positive feedback, munchers actually ate less than the control group, while skippers tended to eat more the skippers consumed, on average, 74 calories' worth more than the munchers.
"We predicted that munchers and skippers differ in food intake after experiencing a positive situation," says Sproesser. "However, we were rather surprised that the data showed an almost mirror image in ice cream consumption when compared to the data from the social exclusion condition."
The research offers insight for anyone who wants to understand the relationship between stress and eating, but it has specific importance for clinicians and practitioners working to promote healthy eating.The patterns of calorie consumption suggest that the behavior of both munchers and skippers could significantly influence body weight over time.
"Stress eaters should not be considered at risk to gain weight by default," says Sproesser. "Our results suggest the need for a dynamic view of food intake across multiple situations, positive and negative."
"Furthermore, our findings suggest rethinking the recommendation to regulate stress eating. Skipping food when being stressed may cause additional stress in munchers and could possibly disturb compensation across situations."
###
For more information about this study, please contact: Gudrun Sproesser at gudrun.sproesser@uni-konstanz.de.
Co-authors include Harald T. Schupp and Britta Renner of the University of Konstanz. This research was supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
The article abstract is available online: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/10/28/0956797613494849.abstract
The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article "The Bright Side of Stress-Induced Eating: Eating More When Stressed but Less When Pleased" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Anna Mikulak at 202-293-9300 or amikulak@psychologicalscience.org.
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 31-Oct-2013
ShareContact: Anna Mikulak
amikulak@psychologicalscience.org
202-293-9300
Association for Psychological Science
When faced with stress, some people seem to lose their appetite while others reach for the nearest sweet, salty, or fatty snack. Conventional wisdom tells us that stress eaters are the ones who need to regulate their bad habits, but new research suggests that stress eaters show a dynamic pattern of eating behavior that could have benefits in non-stressful situations.
The study, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, shows that "munchers" and "skippers" display compensatory patterns of consumption in response to positive and negative social situations. While munchers in the study ate more after being stressed, they ate less in response to a positive situation; skippers actually showed the reverse pattern, eating more after a positive experience.
"These findings challenge the simplistic view that stress eaters need to regulate their eating behavior to prevent weight gain," says lead researcher Gudrun Sproesser of the University of Konstanz, in Germany. "Both skippers and munchers have their 'soft spot' for food, they just show different compensatory eating patterns in response to positive and negative situations."
Sproesser and colleagues recruited volunteers to participate in a study on "first impressions." The participants interacted with an unfamiliar partner by video before meeting them in person. After making their own videos, the participants received one of three messages in return: Some heard that their partner had decided not to meet with them after seeing the video, while others heard that their partner liked them and looked forward to meeting them. A third control group was told that the experiment had to be cancelled for other reasons.
Then, the participants went on to participate in a supposedly unrelated study involving a taste test for three flavors of ice cream. They were allowed to eat as much ice cream as they wanted.
The results showed that, when faced with negative feedback, self-identified munchers ate more ice cream than participants in the control group, while self-identified skippers ate less. Munchers ate, on average, about 120 more calories' worth of ice cream than did the skippers.
But, when faced with positive feedback, munchers actually ate less than the control group, while skippers tended to eat more the skippers consumed, on average, 74 calories' worth more than the munchers.
"We predicted that munchers and skippers differ in food intake after experiencing a positive situation," says Sproesser. "However, we were rather surprised that the data showed an almost mirror image in ice cream consumption when compared to the data from the social exclusion condition."
The research offers insight for anyone who wants to understand the relationship between stress and eating, but it has specific importance for clinicians and practitioners working to promote healthy eating.The patterns of calorie consumption suggest that the behavior of both munchers and skippers could significantly influence body weight over time.
"Stress eaters should not be considered at risk to gain weight by default," says Sproesser. "Our results suggest the need for a dynamic view of food intake across multiple situations, positive and negative."
"Furthermore, our findings suggest rethinking the recommendation to regulate stress eating. Skipping food when being stressed may cause additional stress in munchers and could possibly disturb compensation across situations."
###
For more information about this study, please contact: Gudrun Sproesser at gudrun.sproesser@uni-konstanz.de.
Co-authors include Harald T. Schupp and Britta Renner of the University of Konstanz. This research was supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
The article abstract is available online: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/10/28/0956797613494849.abstract
The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article "The Bright Side of Stress-Induced Eating: Eating More When Stressed but Less When Pleased" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Anna Mikulak at 202-293-9300 or amikulak@psychologicalscience.org.
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Serial product shot leaker @evleaks is showing off pics of a new tablet tonight, tagged as the Verizon Ellipsis 7, 2013. It looks like a standard 7-inch Android tablet, albeit with some overly heavy bezel action, but there's little else to go on regarding where it's from and how it may arrive. The rest of the puzzle may be filled in, however, by a trademark for "Ellipsis" and "Ellipsis 7" that FierceCable dug up just a few days ago, and imagines could cover a new service / device. Filed by Verizon Wireless, the Ellipsis application covers a "wireless telecommunications device featuring transmission of voice, data, image and video", while Ellipsis 7 includes tablet computers and other wireless devices. So now we know what the hardware is called and what it looks like, but what it does is still unclear, although recent Verizon moves like ending its wireless partnership with cable companies, rumors that it will purchase Intel's IPTV technology and the Corvair / FiOS Companion tablet that popped up last year are enough to keep our imaginations humming.
The open source Tizen mobile operating system is one of the most visible examples that Samsung isn't completely dependent on the Android mobile OS.
At the Samsung Developer Conference in San Francisco this week, Samsung held a single breakout session on developing apps using Tizen. The session was led by two engineers from Intel, which is working jointly with Samsung to create code to enable Tizen to run across multiple hardware platforms, including tablets, smartphones, cars and smart TVs.
[ Also on InfoWorld: The 8 mobile OS upstarts that want to topple iOS and Android. | InfoWorld presents the Bossies 2013, the best open source software for clouds, mobile, developers, and more. | Track trends in open source with InfoWorld's Open Sources blog and Technology: Open Source newsletter. ]
Most of Samsung's smartphones and tablets today run Android or the company's own Bada OS. In fact, Samsung is by far the largest Android smartphone maker globally, as well as the largest maker of smartphones overall, according to IDC and others.
The company does make Windows Phone smartphones as well, though a Windows Phone session wasn't among among the 50 scheduled at the developer conference. Nearly all of the sessions focused on applications or services that work on Android.
Tizen has a modern Internet interface for use on devices, supporting HTML 5 and other Web technologies, so developers can theoretically write applications once to work on many devices. A Samsung roadmap for Tizen rollouts hasn't been announced.
At the Tizen session on Tuesday, two developers in the audience said they had different experiences with their early Tizen development efforts. Developers at MightyMeeting, a maker of business collaboration applications, have been using Tizen with promising results because of its use of HTML 5 across platforms, said Mighty Meeting CEO Dmitri Tcherevik.
On the other hand, Shivakumar Mathapathi, COO at Dew Mobility, said his company tried Tizen with Windows Phone devices and found it wasn't very stable on the Microsoft mobile OS. He didn't provide any details.
Tcherevik said that Samsung's interest in Tizen demonstrates that it's "willing to try many different things" even as a large company.
Some attendees at Samsung's first developer conference said they were glad to see Samsung to show off its distinctive features with Android at an event other than Google I/O. Here, Samsung could separate itself from other Android smartphone and tablet makers.
If you needed more proof that our nation's industrial surveillance complex has gone completely off the rails, look no further than today's Washington Post. There you will find another blockbuster story on NSA spying that should make your blood boil, assuming it isn't already hot enough to cook an egg.
Bottom line: The spooks are tapping into private fiber backbones operated overseas by Google and Yahoo, decrypting all the traffic before it gets into their private clouds, storing copies, and re-encrypting it before sending it on its way. And yes, this is another gift from Edward Snowden.
Per the Post's Barton Gellman and independent security wonk Ashkan Soltani:
According to a top secret accounting dated Jan. 9, 2013, NSA's acquisitions directorate sends millions of records every day from Yahoo and Google internal networks to data warehouses at the agency's Fort Meade headquarters. In the preceding 30 days, the report said, field collectors had processed and sent back 181,280,466 new records -- ranging from "metadata," which would indicate who sent or received e-mails and when, to content such as text, audio and video.
The story is accompanied by a hand-drawn illustration showing how and where the wires get tapped, along with a smiley face indicating (one assumes) a happy NSA agent now swimming in unencrypted data.
Credit: Washington Post
Yahoo & Google: Not happy campers
Unlike PRISM, in which major tech firms respond to legal requests for data from the spooks, this program, known in NSA parlance by the code name "Muscular," appears to be a complete surprise to both Google and Yahoo, who sound none too happy about it. The difference between each tech company's fierce denial of the original claims about PRISM -- that they had allowed the NSA "direct access" to their networks -- and their response to this revelation is pretty telling. Per the Post article:
In a statement, Google said it was "troubled by allegations of the government intercepting traffic between our data centers, and we are not aware of this activity...."
At Yahoo, a spokeswoman said: "We have strict controls in place to protect the security of our data centers, and we have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency...."
Two engineers with close ties to Google exploded in profanity when they saw the drawing. "I hope you publish this," one of them said.
