Samsung confirms Galaxy S 4 Mini: 4.3-inch display, 1.7 GHz dual-core processor

So, it might not be a surprise that it was in the works, but its official announcement today almost caught us off guard. Here it is, the Samsung Galaxy S 4 Mini. Now we can say for sure that there's a (yet to be specified) 1.7 GHz dual-core processor, Android 4.2.2, GPS, GLONASS, WiFi, 8GB internal memory (expandable up to 64), and 1.5GB of RAM. The display is a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED qHD affair, which will be kept going by a 1,900 mAh battery, with the shooters coming in 8- and 1.9-megapixel resolutions. There's LTE support -- as you'd hope -- in 6 band sets, plus single and dual-SIM 3G versions for certain markets. Color choices are white and black (for now), with no official word on price and availability at this time. Mini, just got bigger it seems.

Gallery: Galaxy S 4 Mini

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung

Comments

Source: Samsung

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/71kQ8F5u6hc/

arsenic and old lace dionne warwick leslie varez ward solar storms uganda the parent trap

94% Stories We Tell

All Critics (53) | Top Critics (26) | Fresh (50) | Rotten (3)

Sarah might have wrapped up this documentary after her parentage is revealed about 70 minutes in, yet it continues for another 50 as she ruminates over the tale,... her engrossing personal story gradually devolving into an exercise in self-regard.

Stories told again and again have a way of neatening things up. Stories have a way of ironing out the wrinkles. Polley lets the wrinkles remain.

Sarah Polley's documentary is a startling mixture of private memoir, public inquiry, and conjuring trick.

Polley was right to follow her instincts, though, in not attempting to tie everything up. She recognizes that family histories are necessarily contradictory, crazymaking, and essentially unfathomable.

What unfolds is a riveting drama that grows even more so as it plays out.

Don't be fooled by its deceptively simple title or the hesitant, unassuming way it begins. Writer-director Sarah Polley's "Stories We Tell" ends up an invigorating powerhouse of a personal documentary, adventurous and absolutely fascinating.

With Stories We Tell, actress-turned-director Sarah Polley has proven herself a consummate filmmaker, transforming an incredible personal story into a playful and profound investigation into the nature of storytelling itself.

Eventually, the formalistic strictures of the documentary fall away and Polley - her entire family, really - is left facing the reality of the past as the cameras roll.

Polley imaginatively fills in the past through a hybrid of documentary and fiction [for] knowing relevance to oral history, testimonial evidence, and what makes a family.

What I can say is that the movie is dramatically compelling, journalistically fascinating, cinematically profound, and intellectually challenging.

Sheds fascinating light on Polley's art.

Polley mines her own life to strip naked the essence of storytelling, and what it is about folklore that makes it so essential in shaping our perceptions about who we are and where we come from.

Stories We Tell starts out as a simple investigation into the life of a mother that director Sarah Polley barely knew and slowly turns into a documentary that is as good as any movie you will see this year.

Where Polley's work goes from mere family movie to something much greater is in how she uses her own quest for answers to illuminate why & how we tell stories in the first place, especially in the form of film.

Polley's compassion and curiosity again mark her as both a heartfelt and unforgiving filmmaker.

Suspenseful, unpredictable, mature, tender and funny. A triumph.

The movie is convincingly built around the essential truth that we are ultimately defined by our loved ones' memories and perceptions.

No quotes approved yet for Stories We Tell. Logged in users can submit quotes.

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/stories_we_tell/

miami heat blackhawks Keyshawn Johnson Mara Wilson heat Cullen Finnerty LA Kings

Dana Blankenhorn: What is Urban Wildlife

by Robin Blankenhorn

Many of you are probably asking one of two questions right now, what is Urban Wildlife? Is it the same thing as Pest Control? To the first question it is exactly what it sounds like: wildlife that can be found in urban or city areas.

For the second question, personally I would say n o. Pest control deals with wildlife that has become a nuisance or a pest. In this instance we often think of raccoons or feral cats. Yet working with urban wildlife is completely different.

As a child I thought that I never really encountered wildlife unless I was outside of the city. As I grew older I figured out that I had encountered wildlife everyday of my life.

Animals that we consider to be staples of city life, yet were never meant to live here. They have just adapted to this life because it provides them with more protection than there natural habitats, and, more importantly for them, food. Some examples are squirrels, pigeons, and water fowl.

Squirrels originally lived in the trees of forests. Hiding from owls, hawks, and other birds of prey that would make meals out of them.

The pigeons that we see are descended from birds called Rock Doves, and are originally from the Middle East. While the geese, swans and ducks that we see in our parks have found that they are protected from their natural predators at the lakes inside our city parks.

More than that, we habituate them towards humans by giving them food and keeping them safe.

This is something that we can see in history. Before the Europeans came to America there were the Native Americans. While Archeology has shown that they did have a few settlements that we would call cities, with around 3,000-5,000 people living there. However, they rarely lived in groups of more than a few hundred. After that Europeans came and brought with them this idea of keeping unwanted animals out. We as Americans kept that idea going. However, over the last few decades there has been a shift because on some level, at least I believe, we have come to realize that there are some animals who would not survive anywhere else.

When these animals become a problem the first person you call is Pest Control. What many people don't realize is that over the last few years more and even bigger wildlife have started to make their way into the city. Just yesterday I read an article from Fort Worth, Texas that asked residents to be on the look out for an escaped Barn Owl. What was interesting was that they also mentioned that Barn Owls are found in that city, and if anything are common.

Back in January there was a story about a one year old in Britain that had a finger bitten off, in her parents back yard, by a Fox. A few years ago I can even remember reading an article on two coyote bodies found inside the Perimeter of Atlanta, Georgia. They were killed by cars, but what was scary was that one was found near an Elementary school in Midtown.

Then you have those places that have become synonymous with wildlife and people come from all over the world to see them. How many stories have you read of motorists stopping to let duck cross the road? Being helped by security to get onto the White House lawn?

Anyone hear of the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas?

Even talking to a friend a few days ago brought up a story that is becoming more and more common over the years, deer eating the plants from your front yard.

The fact is that in this day in age, many more wildlife are finding ways to live in the city with us. They are changing there habits to not only live with us, but also thrive. However, there are still many more problems that are going to need to be addressed. What happens when you hit a deer in the city and it kills another motorist? Are you still at fault? If you are attacked by a bird of prey do you get compensated by the city? Should it even be legal to feed deer or other wildlife inside a city limit?

There are so many questions that we just do not have the answers to and soon people are going to be demanding these answers. This is Urban Wildlife and this is the field that I want to go into. I want to find these answers that people will need and then work with them to understand not only how the animal works, but also why the animals are the way they are. Finally I want to be able to help you still enjoy the wildlife that is all around you, just being a little safer.

Source: http://www.danablankenhorn.com/2013/05/what-is-urban-wildlife.html

mlb trade rumors Misty May And Kerri Walsh Jake Dalton London 2012 field hockey Missy Franklin Hunter Pence NBCOlympics

Palm problem: Deforestation plants the seeds of rapid evolution in Brazil

Edson Endrigo

A toucanet eats a palm fruit in Brazil's Atlantic Forest. Toucanets, like toucans and other large birds, disperse big seeds over wide distances.

By Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience

The deforestation of the Brazilian rain forest has created a hidden consequence: The seeds of palm trees have evolved rapidly to be smaller.

The change is the result of a domino effect that begins with human agriculture and hunting, which have devastated large bird populations in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil. With these birds, which include colorful?toucans?and cotingas, locally extinct or barely hanging on, the palm trees have no way to disperse their largest seeds. As a result, seed sizes are smaller in parts of the rain forest where large birds are missing, according to a study detailed in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

Combined with climate change, the result could be devastating for palms, said study leader Mauro Galetti, an ecologist at Paulista State University in Brazil.

"If we think about?climate change, we will have less rainfall, and we know that for smaller seeds, they lose more water than large seeds," Galetti told LiveScience. "That's a major problem for this palm." [Images: Palm Trees and Lost Birds of Brazil]

Shrinking seeds
The Atlantic Forest runs along the coast of Brazil, starting at the easternmost tip of South America and continuing approximately to the country's southern border. The region has been heavily altered by human agriculture, with only about 12 percent of the original forest remaining. Of that area, about 80 percent is disjointed fragments too small to support large animals. As a result, large fruit-eating birds have vanished or nearly vanished from much of the forest. These birds swallow fruit seeds and spread them through their droppings over many miles, making the animals?crucial to the forest ecosystem.

Galetti and his colleagues studied seed sizes in 22 populations of palm trees ??some in fragments where hardly any large birds survive, and others where bird populations are relatively robust.?

They found that seeds are consistently smaller in sites without large birds. Seed sizes vary, but in areas with few or no large birds, common sizes range from about 0.3 to 0.4 inches (8 to 10 millimeters) in diameter, with almost no seeds a half-inch (12 mm) in diameter. In areas with robust large-bird populations, half-inch seeds are common, with some seeds reaching 0.55 inches (14 mm). In sites without large birds, the researchers found that seeds with a diameter of a half-inch or larger had nearly no chance of being dispersed away from their parent tree.

Other factors ? such as soil fertility, forest cover and climate ? could not explain the change in seed size, the researchers reported.

Human action
Using genetic data from the seeds, Galetti and his colleagues created computer models to figure out how long it would have taken trees to?evolve?smaller seeds in bird-free zones.

"For the plants that we studied, it was 50 to 75 years," Galetti said. "It's quite fast."

Human deforestation in the Atlantic Forest dates back to the 1800s, more than enough time for the observed changes to evolve.

The researchers plan to study other plant species, and to take a deeper look at the genetics of the seeds, to understand how forest fragmentation might be affecting heredity.

The only way to turn the tide against the changes, Galetti said, is reforestation and conservation.

"First of all, we have to replant the forest and put back animals that are important, and stop hunting," he said.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook and Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

Copyright 2013?LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653377/s/2ca45ae8/l/0Lscience0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A50C30A0C186370A0A10Epalm0Eproblem0Edeforestation0Eplants0Ethe0Eseeds0Eof0Erapid0Eevolution0Ein0Ebrazil0Dlite/story01.htm

earthquake Bbc News UFC 160 criminal minds London attack Doodle 4 Google Sergio Garcia

iNFORMATiON FARM: Soylent | Replace Food With Fuel

ion

ion radio shows

?We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.? said the Cat. ?How do you know I'm mad?? said Alice. ?You must be?, said the Cat, ?or you wouldn't have come here.?

archive

contact

translate

search

donate

subscribe to information farm

petraeus blog

categorically speaking

Source: http://informationfarm.blogspot.com/2013/05/soylent-replace-food-with-fuel.html

Kinesio tape randy travis Allyson Felix Kourtney Kardashian Baby Girl Ashton Eaton London 2012 basketball London 2012 Slalom Canoe

France analyzing samples of suspected Syrian chemical weapon elements

By John Irish

PARIS (Reuters) - France is testing samples of suspected chemical weapon elements used against Syrian rebel fighters and smuggled out by reporters from Le Monde newspaper and will divulge the results in the next few days, a senior French official said on Monday.

The official also said Paris recently carried out its own tests on other samples it had obtained that had indicated the use of battlefield gas.

"Samples were handed to our intelligence services by the Le Monde journalists," the senior official said on condition of anonymity. "Tests will be done on these samples and the results made known in the coming days."

The newspaper, in a report issued on its website earlier on Monday, said one of its photographers had suffered blurred vision and respiratory difficulties for four days after an attack on April 13 on the Jobar front, just inside central Damascus.

President Bashar al-Assad's government and the rebels fighting to oust him have accused each other of using chemical weapons. U.N. investigators have been ready for weeks, but diplomatic wrangling and safety concerns have delayed their entry into Syria.

Undercover in and around the Damascus area for two months alongside Syrian rebels, a Le Monde reporter and photographer said they witnessed battlefield chemical attacks and also talked to doctors and other witnesses about their aftermath.

The French official, who was speaking after talks among U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius in Paris, said the three ministers had agreed that any use of chemical weapons would be a game changer.

"The question of chemical weapons can create a different situation because the divisions on that are not the same as on the Syrian conflict," the official said.

"If we have enough elements that converge to say that chemical weapons were used, then we will have to take a decision with our partners to examine the possible consequences."

Syria, which is not a member of the anti-chemical weapons convention, is believed to have one of the world's last remaining stockpiles of undeclared chemical arms.

The French official said the three men discussed the chemical weapons issue and the latest developments on the Syrian peace talks over dinner in a Paris restaurant after Lavrov and Kerry met earlier in the day.

"All three countries want the talks to take place," the official said. "We move forward, but it remains very difficult. If we want to meet by June 10 in Geneva, then there has to be serious advance. We're hoping as soon as possible, but there are a number of subjects that still need to be resolved."

The proposed conference reflects the first serious diplomatic effort in nearly a year to end the conflict in which more than 80,000 people are believed to have died and millions have fled their homes.

But the official said the opposition coalition still refused to negotiate with names put forward by Assad's government, there had yet to be an accord on whether Iran or Saudi Arabia would be represented at the talks, and what exactly the conference aimed to achieve.

(Reporting By John Irish; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/france-analyzing-samples-suspected-syrian-chemical-weapon-elements-003355330.html

chris carpenter chris carpenter dick cheney hcg drops reason rally mad hatter azerbaijan

Obama says gov't behind Oklahoma 'all the way'

MOORE, Okla. (AP) ? President Barack Obama flew to tornado-ravaged Oklahoma Sunday, offering moral and monetary support to people still reeling from lost lives and shattered neighborhoods. He told survivors, "You've got folks behind you" across America.

Standing with Gov. Mary Fallin and other state and federal officials amid the devastation wrought by a monstrous EF5 tornado, Obama said, "A picture's worth a thousand words." He said rebuilding job will be enormous and "we're going to be with you all the way."

"Our hearts go out to you," Obama said, noting the loss of life and some 1,200 homes. He urged the American people to pitch in and help, saying that in instances such as this, the president serves as a "messenger" for all citizens, bringing words of condolence, promises of government assistance and pleas for private contributions.

Twenty-four people, including 10 children, died when the nearly tornado hit with little notice last Monday afternoon.

The White House said before his arrival Sunday that Obama wanted a firsthand look at the destruction and recovery efforts.

Shortly after his arrival on a partly cloudy day, Obama road in his motorcade past grassy fields strewn with scattered debris, witnessing devastation so awesome that it appeared as if garbage had literally rained from the sky. His first stop was the demolished site of the Plaza Towers Elementary School, where seven students were killed when the tornado turned the one-story building into a heap of bricks, broken concrete and twisted metal.

Obama walked along Eagle Drive, with the demolished school on his left and on his right, homes reduced as far as the eye could see to piles of rubble. Vehicles were turned upside down and toys like doll carriages and children's books were strewn with furniture and ripped out wall insulation.

"I know this is tough," he told one school official.

He met the Lewis family, who lost their home behind the school, telling them the important thing is they survived and could replace their things.

"What a mess," he told their son Zack, a third grader at the shattered school. Zack's father, Scott, ran into the school just before the storm hit and ran with his terrified son back to their home's storm shelter.

"You've got some story to tell," Obama told the boy. "This is something you'll remember all your life."

Obama flew from Washington into Tinker Air Force Base and shook hands with personnel whose homes off base were lost or damaged.

Fallin, the first to greet the president as he got off the plane, said she appreciates the visit, but the state also needs quick action from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help the ravaged town of 41,000 people.

The Republican governor said so far, the agency has done a great job of speeding relief and cash assistance to affected families, but she's concerned about the long run.

"There's going to come a time when there's going to be a tremendous amount of need once we begin the debris clearing, which we already have, but really get it cleared off to where we need to start rebuilding these homes, rebuilding these businesses," she said on CBS' "Face the Nation." ''And we know at different times in the past, money hasn't come always as quickly as it should."

Obama offered prayers for residents from the White House in recent days and has promised to support the rebuilding for as long as it takes. "They have suffered mightily this week," Obama said Wednesday. "And while the road ahead will be long, their country will be with them every single step of the way."

White House spokesman Josh Earnest, speaking to reporters accompanying the presidential party on Air Force One, said Obama wanted to make the trip to offer condolences and reiterate his and the nation's commitment to rebuild.

"This is the greatest nation on Earth, and we're going to dedicate this nation's time, attention, resources and expertise to help our people in their time of urgent crisis," the spokesman said.

Earnest touted the federal contributions so far, including Obama's signing of a disaster declaration within hours of the storm to speed aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Earnest said that 450 FEMA personnel were working on the ground in Oklahoma and have delivered 43,000 meals, 150,000 liters of water and thousands of cots, blankets and tarps. He said 4,200 people have applied for disaster assistance, and $3.4 million in payments have been approved.

Fallin said the money is particularly vital for the victims. "A lot of people lose their checkbooks, they lose their credit cards, they lose their driver's license, their birth certificates, their insurance papers, they lose everything, and they have no cash. And some of the banks were even hit, the ATM machines, so people need cash to get immediate needs," she said on CBS.

Earnest also said that forecasters from the National Weather Service had worked ahead of the storm to prepare communities that it threatened. He said they issued a warning 36 minutes before the tornado entered Moore, earlier than the 12-minute average warning. Twenty-four people perished in the tornado, including 10 children.

"These advancements, made by government scientists in the field of weather forecasting at these agencies are dramatic and they're saving lives," Earnest said. He said Sunday wasn't a day for a partisan political debate, adding that "it is evident to any impartial observer here what an important role the federal government can play in providing assistance to our people at their time of urgent need."

Among the tornado victims were 10 children, including two sisters pulled by the strong winds out of their mother's grasp, an infant who died along with his mother trying to ride out the storm in a convenience store and seven students at Plaza Towers. Many students were pulled from the rubble after the school was destroyed.

Fallin noted that some 100 other schools in Oklahoma have safe rooms for children to seek shelter in tornados.

"Schools that have been lost in the past, many of them have rebuilt rooms of some sort as a safe room in their school, and we're certainly going to encourage that," she said.

"Any death is very unfortunate, but it's truly incredible that we had only 24 deaths at this site, because if you look at all the debris field and how wide it is, I don't know how anybody survived this tornado," she said on CBS.

The White House said that FEMA has already provided $57 million in rebates and incentives to help build about 12,000 storm shelters in Oklahoma. "These storm shelters can be the difference between life and death," Earnest said.

___

Follow Nedra Pickler on Twitter at https://twitter.com/nedrapickler

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-says-govt-behind-oklahoma-way-182719086.html

leann rimes pearl harbor Jacintha Saldanha Butch Jones thursday night football japan earthquake Star Trek Into Darkness