Emmy-winning composer arraigned on child porn charge (Reuters)

CHARLESTON, South Carolina (Reuters) ? Fernando Rivas, 59, an Emmy-award winning children's music composer, was arraigned on charges of production, distribution and possession of child pornography in South Carolina on Monday, court documents showed.

Rivas, who graduated from the Juilliard School of Music in New York City, is a Cuban-born composer, pianist, arranger and producer, according to the American Composers Forum in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Rivas has won two Emmy awards and a Grammy, and has composed music for the television show "Sesame Street" featuring singers including Celia Cruz, Gloria Estefan and Cyndi Lauper, a biography on his website said.

He has also composed for the Disney children's show Handy Manny, his website said.

Rivas was charged with producing child pornography and using a computer to transport child pornography across state and U.S. borders, according to court documents.

Rivas pleaded not guilty and was free on $300,000 bond, court documents showed.

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/crime/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111122/music_nm/us_fernandorivas

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Leaked Black Friday ad reveals Apple discounts

9to5 Mac

By Rosa Golijan

Each year, the day after Thanksgiving ? better known as Black Friday?? brings us a little gift from Apple: A one-day sale on popular gear. This year is no different and?? if a leaked ad turns out to be real?? the discounts are very similar to prior offerings.

The folks at 9to5 Mac have gotten their hands on what they believe is a list of Apple's Black Friday 2011 deals. We wouldn't be surprised if they turned out to be correct in that assumption as the leaked price breaks are on par with what we've seen in prior years.

The leaked ad suggests you'll be able to save $101 on an iMac, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Air. It lists discounts of $41-$61 on an iPad (depending on capacity), $11 on an iPod Nano, and $21-$41 on an iPod Touch (depending on capacity).

There are also?various deals on accessories such as $11 savings on the iPad 2 Smart Cover, Apple Wireless Keyboard, and Apple Wireless Magic Trackpad. Many third-party products will also see little price breaks.

Whether this leaked ad turns out to be the real thing or not, it's worth noting?Best Buy has confirmed?that it will offer a?$45 discount on the 16GB Wi-Fi-only iPad 2. In the meantime, we've reached out to Apple for confirmation of the ad's authenticity and will update if there is a response.

UPDATE: Apple responded to our query. The company confirmed there will be a one-day sale-price event, as in past years, but would not comment on this list of allegedly leaked deals.

Related stories:

Want more tech news, silly puns, or amusing links? You'll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on?Twitter, subscribing to her?Facebook?posts, or circling her?on?Google+.

Source: http://gadgetbox.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/23/8976498-leaked-black-friday-ad-reveals-apple-discounts

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ESPN's longtime boss Bodenheimer stepping away (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? Walt Disney announced a management shake-up at ESPN on Tuesday, saying longtime President George Bodenheimer would leave behind his day-to-day duties after 13 years in which he built the network into a sports powerhouse.

Disney tapped John Skipper, 55, to replace Bodenheimer, 53, as ESPN president and the co-chair of Disney Media Networks. Skipper will take over those roles on January 1, when Bodenheimer steps away from his day-to-day operating duties and moves into the position of ESPN executive chairman.

Skipper has been ESPN's executive vice president of content since October 2005.

The shift comes just weeks after the news that Disney Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger will step down as CEO in March 2015 after nearly a decade at the helm.

That announcement set off a guessing game over who would eventually take over the media giant, with many on Wall Street pointing to Chief Financial Officer Jay Rasulo and Tom Staggs, who heads the company's theme parks and resorts division.

Bodenheimer and his Disney Media Networks co-chair and ABC Networks president Anne Sweeney were also seen as possible future CEO candidates.

"I don't think Bodenheimer was in line to be CEO, it's going to either be Staggs or Rasulo, especially given the recent changes with Iger. Maybe Bodenheimer will take on more corporate Disney responsibility," Miller Tabak analyst David Joyce.

Insiders at ESPN, who spoke on background, were keen for Bodenheimer's move to be explained as a "move up and not out".

Iger said in statement Bodenheimer's move reflected the depth of executive talent at ESPN.

"We've focused on succession at all levels of Disney for some time now, and consistent with that approach, George initiated conversations last spring that led to today's announcement," said Iger.

Bodenheimer had built ESPN into an enviable powerhouse in sports programing and cable in general. U.S. cable distributors pay ESPN the highest carriage fees in the business at around $4 a subscriber. Cable and satellite distributors frequently highlight ESPN's fees as a reason for consumers' rising cable bills.

(Reporting by Paul Thomasch and Yinka Adegoke in New York; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn, Bernard Orr)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/enindustry/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111122/media_nm/us_espn

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Implanted neurons, grown in the lab, take charge of brain circuitry

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Among the many hurdles to be cleared before human embryonic stem cells can achieve their therapeutic potential is determining whether or not transplanted cells can functionally integrate into target organs or tissues.

Writing today (Monday, Nov. 21) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of Wisconsin scientists reports that neurons, forged in the lab from blank slate human embryonic stem cells and implanted into the brains of mice, can successfully fuse with the brain's wiring and both send and receive signals.

Neurons are specialized, impulse conducting cells that are the most elementary functional unit of the central nervous system. The 100 billion or so neurons in the human brain are constantly sending and receiving the signals that govern everything from walking and talking to thinking. The work represents a crucial step toward deploying customized cells to repair damaged or diseased brains, the most complex human organ.

"The big question was can these cells integrate in a functional way," says Jason P. Weick, the lead author of the new study and a staff scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Waisman Center. "We show for the first time that these transplanted cells can both listen and talk to surrounding neurons of the adult brain."

The Wisconsin team tested the ability of their lab grown neurons to integrate into the brain's circuitry by transplanting the cells into the adult mouse hippocampus, a well-studied region of the brain that plays a key role in processing memory and spatial navigation. The capacity of the cells to integrate was observed in live tissue taken from the animals that received the cell transplants.

Weick and colleagues also reported that the human neurons adopted the rhythmic firing behavior of many brain cells talking to one another in unison. And, perhaps more importantly, that the human cells could modify the way the neural network behaved.

A critical tool that allowed the UW group to answer this question was a new technology known as optogenetics, where light, instead of electric current, is used to stimulate the activity of the neurons.

"Previously, we've been limited in how efficiently we could stimulate transplanted cells. Now we have a tool that allows us to specifically stimulate only the transplanted human cells, and lots of them at once in a non-invasive way," says Weick.

Weick explains that the capacity to modulate the implanted cells was a necessary step in determining the function of implanted cells because previous technologies were too imprecise and unreliable to accurately determine what transplanted neurons were doing.

Embryonic stem cells, and the closely related induced pluripotent stem cells can give rise to all of the 220 types of tissues in the human body, and have been directed in the lab to become many types of cells, including brain cells.

The appeal of human embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent cells is the potential to manufacture limitless supplies of healthy, specialized cells to replace diseased or damaged cells. Brain disorders such as Parkinson's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more widely known as Lou Gehrig's disease, are conditions that scientists think may be alleviated by using healthy lab grown cells to replace faulty ones. Multiple studies over the past decade have shown that both embryonic stem cells and induced cells can alleviate deficits of these disorders in animal models.

The new study opens the door to the potential for clinicians to deploy light-based stimulation technology to manipulate transplanted tissue and cells. "The marriage between stem cells and optogenetics has the potential to assist in the treatment of a number of debilitating neurodegenerative disorders," notes Su-Chun Zhang, a UW-Madison professor of neuroscience and an author of the new PNAS report. "You can imagine that if the transplanted cells don't behave as they should, you could use this system to modulate them using light."

###

University of Wisconsin-Madison: http://www.wisc.edu

Thanks to University of Wisconsin-Madison for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/115375/Implanted_neurons__grown_in_the_lab__take_charge_of_brain_circuitry

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"DWTS" finale: How Chaz Bono shook off his haters (Reuters)

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) ? The announcement in August that Chaz Bono would would be a "Dancing With the Stars" contestant made him the highest-profile transgender person in the country -- and with that came some ugly feedback.

But Bono, who will return this week for the "Dancing" finale, said he didn't pay attention to people who bashed him on Internet message boards and elsewhere.

"I didn't watch any of that or look at any of those things," he told TheWrap. "I've been doing LGBT activism for a long time now, since 1995, and I've gone up against people like Jerry Falwell and stuff like that. So dealing with that kind of controversy isn't really new to me, and it's pretty easy to just let it roll off my back."

The response to Bono's performance on the show was largely positive: He made it far into the competition before voters sent him home.

But when his casting was first announced, some viewers complained -- within the anonymity of the Internet -- that they didn't think a man who had undergone gender reassignment surgery should appear on a family program. His mother, Cher, took to Twitter to call out his attackers as "bigots."

Rather than feel pressured by the insults, Bono said, he felt pressure not to disappoint his supporters.

"Any pressure I felt (was) because of the support that I was getting," he said. "I wanted to do a good job because I knew many people were supporting me and were there for me, and I didn't want to let anybody down."

Bono said he had no way of knowing whether some people voted for or againt him because he is transgender.

"People vote for you because they like you," he said. "Whether it's personal or your dancing or whatever, they vote because they want to see you next week."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tv/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111120/tv_nm/us_chazbono

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Black Friday backlash: Some retailers pull back

Michael Nagle / Getty Images file

Shoppers look for bargains at Toys "R" Us last year. The big-box chain is opening at 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving this year.

By Marisa Taylor

Call it Black Friday fatigue.

With stores racing to open ever earlier on Thanksgiving (Wal-Mart?s doors will open at 10 p.m.!), a backlash is growing, with some retailers and analysts questioning the madness.

?The lunacy of opening at 12 midnight or even earlier on Thanksgiving evening shows that this whole Black Friday thing has run out of legs,? said IDC Retail Insights program director Greg Girard. ?Black Friday is a race to the bottom, and it?s just become another ad avenue.?

Other analysts think this year's extended hours are meant to distract shoppers from a lack of exciting inventory.

?If you build it, they will come,? said NPD Group chief industry analyst Marshal Cohen, ?but they won?t come in the dead of night. To me, you?re not going to sell more product just because you?re open more hours. It?s more of a smoke screen than it is a solution to the issue.?

This year, some stores are choosing not to take extreme measures to lure in bargain-hungry customers as they kick off a season that is expected to bring in about $465.6 billion in sales, a modest 2.8 percent increase over last year.

Sears, for one, has decided to pass on the trend for midnight openings set by big-box retailers including Best Buy, Kohls and Target. Toys 'R' Us is opening at 9 p.m. Thanksgiving night, an hour ahead of Wal-Mart.

Last year, Sears chose to keep its doors open on Thanksgiving from 7 a.m. until noon, with the idea that shoppers would come in early to rack up a few deals and then head home to their families for a midday meal.

But while the company did have good numbers that day, ?The customer feedback was very clear,? said Sears spokesman Tom Aiello. ?The customers liked the deals, but they didn?t like the idea of Thanksgiving shorted as a holiday.?

So the chain will revert to its original plan to open at 4 a.m. on Friday. ?I think there?s a group of customers that don?t aspire to get up in the middle of the night,? Aiello said.

Retail chain JC Penneyalso decided to stick with a 4 a.m. opening time this year so employees can spend Thanksgiving with friends and family, according to a company spokesman.

Employees at Target and Best Buy have launched petition drives on the website change.org protesting the early openings. ?A midnight opening robs the hourly and in-store salary workers of time off with their families on Thanksgiving Day,? wrote petition creator Anthony Hardwick, who identifies himself as a Target employee.

Some local retailers are still undecided on their Black Friday hours and will make last-minute decisions, according to Cohen.

Others are resisting the bonanza that is Black Friday altogether?or at least, they engage in more subtlety. Seattle-based retail chain Nordstrom has avoided opening its doors on Thanksgiving throughout the company?s history and in recent years has posted signs in its stores that read, ?One holiday at a time.?

Nordstrom waits until the morning of Black Friday to unveil its Christmas decorations, though it will open doors early that morning in some locations.

?It?s not as in your face,? said Forrester vice president and senior analyst Sucharita Mulpuru, ?but there?s a reason that Thanksgiving weekend that people work longer hours and [the stores] pull out all the stops as far as offering sales and promotions?because that?s the nature of that weekend.?

Analyst Greg Girard of IDC said?Black Friday is virtually absent from the websites of brand-oriented stores like Gap, Nordstrom and Lord & Taylor.

"And they?re doing something much more surgical in that they?re moving towards direct communications, like text messaging to consumers," he said. "They?re getting to consumers with whom they have a longer lifetime relationship."

Nordstrom, like many higher-end stores, doesn?t rely as heavily on Black Friday to make or break its sales year. Black Friday ?is among our most high volume days. But it isn?t our largest sales day of the year, unlike many retailers,? said Nordstrom spokesman Colin Johnson.

Do you plan to shop Black Friday?

With some major chains opening the doors on Thanksgiving for "Black Friday" sales, retail employees are beginning to publicly complain about sales creeping into their Thanksgiving holiday. KNSD's Bob Hansen reports.

?

Source: http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/18/8863885-some-retailers-pull-back-from-black-friday-arms-race

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Chicago mayor visits Iowa to campaign for Obama (AP)

DES MOINES, Iowa ? Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel will launch an ardent defense of President Barack Obama to Iowa Democratic activists, warning that "we just can't cut our way to prosperity."

Emanuel was scheduled to speak Saturday night at the Iowa Democratic Party's biggest annual fundraiser. Excerpts from his remarks were provided to The Associated Press in advance.

In them, Emanuel says Obama has made crucial and tough decisions based on his principles, and not to lay the groundwork for a second term in office.

"In the next four years, there will be more challenges and more crises that will determine the economic vitality of the middle class and the economic future of this country," Emanuel says. "Whose character, whose judgment do you want in that office?"

Before winning election as mayor, Emanuel was a top aide for Obama and he's been a vocal advocate for the president. Emanuel says he expects voters to focus on the character of the candidates during the upcoming campaign.

The deficit reduction debate in Washington has centered on a fight between Obama and Democrats, who argue the solution is a combination of spending cuts and tax increases. Republicans argue for sole reliance on spending cuts.

"To create true middle-class security, we can't just cut our way to prosperity," Emanuel says. "We must out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the world."

Emanuel was to be the featured speaker at the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in Des Moines, the largest annual fundraiser for the Iowa Democratic Party. His appearance was expected to give the party a chance to grab attention from Republican presidential candidates making their case to social conservatives just across town.

While polls show next year's election will likely be competitive, there's a debate about tactics among some Democrats. Some argue Obama benefits from a long and heated Republican primary season in which candidates are burning GOP money and attacking each other. Others warn Republicans are getting all of the media attention and that Obama will be better off when he has a single opponent with whom he can draw contrasts.

In recent weeks, Obama has sharpened his populist message as he shifts to election mode. Emanuel is echoing that theme as he seeks to rally activist Democrats.

"President Obama believes in an America where hard work pays off, where responsibility is rewarded," Emanuel says. "He believes in an America where we don't have two rule books, one for those at the top and another set for everyone else. President Obama believes in the idea that our country prospers when we're all in it together."

Obama has a long history in Iowa. His surprising win in the state's precinct caucuses four years ago launched him on the road to the White House and he easily carried the state in the 2008 general election. Polls have shown the state to be competitive in this election cycle.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/democrats/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111119/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_iowa_democrats_emanuel

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