LOS ANGELES ? Television director John Rich, who won an Emmy Award for the memorable "All in the Family" scene showing Sammy Davis Jr. planting a kiss on Archie Bunker, has died in Los Angeles at 86.
Rich also won an Emmy for "The Dick Van Dyke Show."
Directors Guild of America spokeswoman Sahar Moridani tells the Los Angeles Times ( http://lat.ms/yg21r5) that Rich died Sunday morning at his Los Angeles home after a brief illness. There are no other details.
His 50-year Hollywood career included "I Married Joan," "Our Miss Brooks," "Gunsmoke" and "Bonanza." He also directed episodes or pilots of "The Twilight Zone," "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.," "Gilligan's Island," "The Brady Bunch," "Maude," "Good Times," "The Jeffersons," "Barney Miller" and "Newhart."
A man swims in Liujiang River in Liuzhou city, in southwestern China's Guangxi region, Friday, Jan. 27, 2012. The cadmium had polluted a 100 kilometer (60-mile) stretch of the Longjiang River, a tributary upstream of the Liujiang River, at a level more than five times the official limit of 0.005 milligrams per liter, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Monday, Jan. 30, 2012. (AP Photo) CHINA OUT
A man swims in Liujiang River in Liuzhou city, in southwestern China's Guangxi region, Friday, Jan. 27, 2012. The cadmium had polluted a 100 kilometer (60-mile) stretch of the Longjiang River, a tributary upstream of the Liujiang River, at a level more than five times the official limit of 0.005 milligrams per liter, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Monday, Jan. 30, 2012. (AP Photo) CHINA OUT
Workers labor in an emergency to connect the Liuzhou city's tap water pipeline to a grid that uses safer water sources after cadmium pollution tainted the Longjiang River in southwestern China's Guangxi region, Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012. The cadmium had polluted a 100 kilometer (60-mile) stretch of the Longjiang River at a level more than five times the official limit of 0.005 milligrams per liter, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Monday, Jan. 30, 2012. (AP Photo) CHINA OUT
SHANGHAI (AP) ? China's environmental authorities were redoubling efforts Monday to prevent a toxic cadmium spill from further tainting water supplies of cities downstream, as seven chemical company officials were reported detained in connection with the accident.
Official reports have provided little information about the exact cause of the spill, whose impact was first seen in fish kills in mid-January. The contamination initially was blamed on a mining company, but the official Xinhua News Agency reported late Monday that seven managers of chemical companies had been detained on suspicion of responsibility for unauthorized waste discharges.
Cadmium, used to make batteries, is poisonous and can cause cancer.
The spill prompted residents of Liuzhou, a city of 3.2 million in southwestern China's Guangxi region, to stock up on bottled water, though officials said efforts to neutralize the cadmium were keeping the water within safe levels and the city could use groundwater reserves if water from local rivers and reservoirs becomes too contaminated.
Chinese rivers, lakes and coastal waters are heavily polluted due to inadequate controls on industries, runoff from farms and urban sewage. The area near Hechi, the city upstream on the Longjiang River, where the cadmium was first detected, has seen repeated spills from smelters and miners operating in the area.
Many rural areas of central and southern China are heavily dependent on mining and smelting. Polluters are often state-owned companies with strong political influence that makes enforcement of pollution controls difficult at the local level despite top-level government pledges to improve environmental protection.
The Guangxi Jinhe Mining Co. initially was reported to be the suspected main cause of the contamination because its waste disposal continually failed to meet government standards despite repeated citations, the newspaper China Business News reported.
According to industry websites, the company, a subsidiary of Guangxi Nonferrous Metals Group, makes zinc ingots and zinc oxide used as white pigment for rubber, cosmetics, medicine, ceramics and glass. Cadmium naturally occurs in zinc ore and is a toxic byproduct of smelting.
But Feng Zhennian, a regional environmental official, named only one company ? Jinchengjiang Hongquan Lithopone Material Co. Ltd. in Hechi, in announcing the detention of the seven chemical company managers, Xinhua reported. Feng mentioned no other companies and did not name those detained, it said.
Lithopone is a mixture of barium sulfate and zinc sulfide that also is used as a white pigment.
The cadmium had polluted a 100 kilometer (60-mile) stretch of the Longjiang River at a level more than five times the official limit of 0.005 milligrams per liter, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Monday.
"It is a critical time right now as downstream drinking water safety is in jeopardy, so we will take every measure possible and optimize our strategies to bring down cadmium concentration levels," it quoted He Xinxing, Hechi's mayor, as saying.
TV reports and photos showed soldiers dumping into the river bags of bright yellow aluminum chloride, a neutralizing agent, into the river.
Seven factories and mines handling heavy metals were ordered to suspend operations as a precaution, according to reports on the website of the Ministry of Environmental Protection.
Top level provincial officials cited in those reports said that chemicals dumped into the river had helped reduce the cadmium contamination to safer levels, though some communities living near the spill were relying on barrels of water trucked in by the government.
Hechi and the surrounding area have been repeatedly singled out for inadequate controls on pollution by cadmium, lead, arsenic and other heavy metals. In 2006, a local "cleanup" campaign involving thousands of people, that did little more than move rocks from mine tailings around, drew national attention after some participants complained.
China has set a goal of reducing pollution by lead, mercury, chromium, cadmium and arsenic by 15 percent of 2007 levels by 2015.
The seminar was the first step after the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between QFCAuthority and Luxembourg for Finance last year, to promote cooperation between the two countries in financial services. Among the subjects discussed at the seminar were financial services opportunities in Qatar and the role of Luxembourg as an international hub for financial services in Europe.
The QFC Authority has refined a highly attractive and business friendly legal and regulatory environment, in which it is focusing on the three hubs of reinsurance, asset management and captive insurance. The strategy has resulted in growing recognition of Qatar as a financial centre. In 2011 Qatar won the award of Best Financial Centre in the Middle East from Global Investor magazine and was ranked highest in the Middle East by consultants Z/Yen Group.
Participants were welcomed by Mr. Abdulrahman Al Shaibi, Managing Director and Board Member, Qatar Financial Centre Authority and H.E.Luc Frieden, Minister of Finance, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg gave the keynote address. Shashank Srivastava, Acting CEO and Chief Strategic Development Officer, Qatar Financial Centre Authority, spoke about the financial services opportunities in Qatar. Mr FernandGrulms, CEO, Luxembourg for Finance, described how Luxembourg developed into a European financialhub.
In addition, a panel discussion explored the opportunities for cooperation between the two countries. The moderator of the panel was Mr Grulms, and the panelists included: Mr Fran?ois Pauly, CEO, Banque Internationale ? Luxembourg; Mr Jacques Peters, CEO, KBL European Private Bankers S.A.; Mr Marc Saluzzi, Chairman, Association of the Luxembourg Fund Industry; and Mr Salah Al Jaidah, Chairman - Islamic Finance, Vice Chairman MENA, Chief Country Office-Qatar, Deutsche Bank AG - Qatar Branch.
The QFC Authority, the commercial arm of the Qatar Financial Centre, jointly hosted the seminar with Luxembourg for Finance. The Luxembourg for Finance delegation consisted of more than 60 representatives of Luxembourg's financial and professional services sector.
H.E. Luc Frieden said, "Luxembourg is a modern, diversified financial centre that has a reputation for stability and for its openness to international markets. We look forward to developing the relationship between our two financial centres in the future."
Mr. Abdulrahman Al Shaibi, Managing Director and Board Member, Qatar Financial Centre Authority said: "Qatar and Luxembourg have already established close relations in the financial sector. I am sure this seminar will strengthen those relations further and open up fresh avenues for cooperation."
Last year Qatar and Luxembourg signed a number of cooperation agreements, including a Memorandum of Understanding on economic, trade and technical cooperation and an agreement on financial cooperation between the two countries. Since then,the Qatari investment fund Precision Capital agreed to buy Luxembourg-based KBL European Private Bankers, the private banking division of Belgium's KBC Group and has also been involved in the purchase of a significant stake in the private banking arm of Dexia Bank.
LIMA, Peru?? A fire swept through a private rehabilitation center for addicts in Peru's capital on Saturday, killing at least 26 people and injuring 10 as firefighters punched holes through walls to rescue residents trapped inside.
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One resident of the "Christ is Love" center for drug and alcohol addicts in Lima's eastern Zarate district said he was eating breakfast at 9 a.m. local time on the center's second floor when he saw flames coming from the first floor, where the blaze apparently originated.
Gianfranco Huerta told local RPP newsradio station that he leapt from a second floor window to safety.
"The doors were locked, there was no way to get out," he told the station.
Health Minister Alberto Tejada said the number of deaths had risen to 26 with 10 people injured.
Peru's chief fire fighter, Antonio Zavala, said the fire was of "Dantesque proportions." Firefighters had to punch a hole through a wall with an adjoining building to help the people trapped inside the rehabilitation center.
"We've had to use electric saws to cut through the metal bars of the doors to be able to work," Zavala said.
Television images showed relatives of center residents weeping in front of the building, located in a poor section of eastern Lima.
The cause of the fire is still not known, said Zarate police chief Clever Zegarra.
Local media reported that the "Christ is Love" rehabilitation center sought to use Biblical teachings to help treat addicts.
No representative of the center could be immediately reached for comment.
Peru's fire fighters are notoriously underfunded. All the South American country's firefighters are volunteer and the annual firefighting budget for the entire country is $19 million.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
DUBLIN (Reuters) ? An unemployed Irish artist has built a home from the shredded remains of 1.4 billion euros ($1.82 billion), a monument to the "madness" he says has been wrought on Ireland by the single currency, from a spectacular construction boom to a wrenching bust.
Frank Buckley built the apartment in the lobby of a Dublin office building that has lain vacant since its completion four years ago at the peak of an ill-fated construction boom, using bricks of shredded euro notes he borrowed from Ireland's national mint.
"It's a reflection of the whole madness that gripped us," Buckley said of what he calls his "billion-euro home."
"People were pouring billions into buildings now worth nothing," he said. "I wanted to create something from nothing."
A wave of cheap credit flowed into Ireland in the early 2000s after Ireland joined the currency zone fuelling a huge property bubble that transformed the country.
The bubble's collapse since 2007 plunged Ireland into the deepest recession in the industrialized world, forcing the former "Celtic Tiger" to accept a humiliating bailout from the EU and the IMF.
Buckley was given a 100 percent mortgage at the peak of the boom to buy a 365,000 euro home on the far reaches of Dublin's commuter belt, despite the fact he had no steady income.
He has separated from his wife who lives in the home, which has since lost at least one-third of its value.
Living in his "billion euro home" since the start of December, Buckley is working on adding a kitchen to the living room and hall.
The walls and floor are covered in euro shreddings and the house is so warm Buckley sleeps without a blanket.
Pictures made from notes and coins decorate the walls, including one of a house, made from Irish 5 pence pieces.
"There are houses in Ireland worth less than that," Buckley quips.
Buckley said he wants Europe's politicians to solve the eurozone debt crisis without destroying its currency. But if the currency ultimately fails, he will happily use the euro zone's defunct notes as fodder for future projects.
"Whatever you say about the euro, it's a great insulator."
($1 = 0.7704 euros)
(Reporting by Conor Humphries; editing by Carmel Crimmins and Paul Casciato)
Contact: Robert Bock or John McGrath bockr@mail.nih.gov 301-496-5133 NIH/National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Animal fat diet before conception may increase risk for pregnancy related condition
Women who consumed a diet high in animal fat and cholesterol before pregnancy were at higher risk for gestational diabetes than women whose diets were lower in animal fat and cholesterol, according to researchers at the National Institutes of Health and Harvard University.
Gestational diabetes is a form of diabetes seen during pregnancy. Gestational diabetes increases the risk for certain pregnancy complications and health problems in the newborn.
Women whose diets were high in total fat or other kinds of fatsbut not in animal fat or cholesteroldid not have an increased risk.
Moreover, the increased risk for gestational diabetes seen with animal fat and cholesterol appeared to be independent of other, dietary and non-dietary, risk factors for gestational diabetes. For example, exercise is known to reduce the risk of gestational diabetes. Among women who exercised, however, those who consumed higher amounts of animal fat and cholesterol had a higher risk than those whose diets were lower in these types of fat.
"Our findings indicate that women who reduce the proportion of animal fat and cholesterol in their diets before pregnancy may lower their risk for gestational diabetes during pregnancy," said senior author Cuilin Zhang, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D., of the Epidemiology Branch at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), one of three NIH institutes supporting the study.
The researchers concluded that changing the source of 5 percent of dietary calories from animal fat to plant-derived sources could decrease a woman's risk for gestational diabetes by 7 percent.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture website, ChooseMyPlate.gov, contains information on healthy eating for children and adults, as well as health and nutrition information for pregnant and breast feeding women.
First author Katherine Bowers, Ph.D., conducted the research with NICHD colleagues Dr. Zhang and Edwina Yeung, Ph.D., and with Deirdre K. Tobias and Frank B. Hu, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D., of Harvard University, in Boston.
Their findings appear online in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
The research was also funded by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
The researchers utilized information from more than 13,000 women participating in the Nurses' Health Study II. The women were 22 to 45 years old when they enrolled in the study. Every two years they responded to questions on their general health, pregnancy status, and lifestyle habits, such as consuming alcohol or smoking. In addition, every four years they completed a comprehensive survey about the kinds of food and drink they consumed.
About 6 percent of the participants reported having been diagnosed with gestational diabetes. The researchers calculated the amount of animal fat in participants' diets as a percentage of total calories and divided participants into five groups, or quintiles, based on those percentages. Then the researchers compared the risk for developing gestational diabetes for each group. Women in the highest quintile of intake had almost double the risk for gestational diabetes compared to women in the lowest quintile.
They also observed that women in the highest quintile for cholesterol consumption were 45 percent more likely to develop gestational diabetes than were women in the lowest quintile.
"This is the largest study to date of the effects of a pre-pregnancy diet on gestational diabetes," Dr. Bowers said. "Additional research may lead to increased understanding of how a mother's diet before and during pregnancy influences her metabolism during pregnancy, which may have important implications for the baby's health at birth and later in life."
###
About the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD): The NICHD sponsors research on development, before and after birth; maternal, child, and family health; reproductive biology and population issues; and medical rehabilitation. For more information, visit the Institute's website at http://www.nichd.nih.gov/.
About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov.
NIHTurning Discovery into Health
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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.
Contact: Robert Bock or John McGrath bockr@mail.nih.gov 301-496-5133 NIH/National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Animal fat diet before conception may increase risk for pregnancy related condition
Women who consumed a diet high in animal fat and cholesterol before pregnancy were at higher risk for gestational diabetes than women whose diets were lower in animal fat and cholesterol, according to researchers at the National Institutes of Health and Harvard University.
Gestational diabetes is a form of diabetes seen during pregnancy. Gestational diabetes increases the risk for certain pregnancy complications and health problems in the newborn.
Women whose diets were high in total fat or other kinds of fatsbut not in animal fat or cholesteroldid not have an increased risk.
Moreover, the increased risk for gestational diabetes seen with animal fat and cholesterol appeared to be independent of other, dietary and non-dietary, risk factors for gestational diabetes. For example, exercise is known to reduce the risk of gestational diabetes. Among women who exercised, however, those who consumed higher amounts of animal fat and cholesterol had a higher risk than those whose diets were lower in these types of fat.
"Our findings indicate that women who reduce the proportion of animal fat and cholesterol in their diets before pregnancy may lower their risk for gestational diabetes during pregnancy," said senior author Cuilin Zhang, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D., of the Epidemiology Branch at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), one of three NIH institutes supporting the study.
The researchers concluded that changing the source of 5 percent of dietary calories from animal fat to plant-derived sources could decrease a woman's risk for gestational diabetes by 7 percent.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture website, ChooseMyPlate.gov, contains information on healthy eating for children and adults, as well as health and nutrition information for pregnant and breast feeding women.
First author Katherine Bowers, Ph.D., conducted the research with NICHD colleagues Dr. Zhang and Edwina Yeung, Ph.D., and with Deirdre K. Tobias and Frank B. Hu, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D., of Harvard University, in Boston.
Their findings appear online in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
The research was also funded by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
The researchers utilized information from more than 13,000 women participating in the Nurses' Health Study II. The women were 22 to 45 years old when they enrolled in the study. Every two years they responded to questions on their general health, pregnancy status, and lifestyle habits, such as consuming alcohol or smoking. In addition, every four years they completed a comprehensive survey about the kinds of food and drink they consumed.
About 6 percent of the participants reported having been diagnosed with gestational diabetes. The researchers calculated the amount of animal fat in participants' diets as a percentage of total calories and divided participants into five groups, or quintiles, based on those percentages. Then the researchers compared the risk for developing gestational diabetes for each group. Women in the highest quintile of intake had almost double the risk for gestational diabetes compared to women in the lowest quintile.
They also observed that women in the highest quintile for cholesterol consumption were 45 percent more likely to develop gestational diabetes than were women in the lowest quintile.
"This is the largest study to date of the effects of a pre-pregnancy diet on gestational diabetes," Dr. Bowers said. "Additional research may lead to increased understanding of how a mother's diet before and during pregnancy influences her metabolism during pregnancy, which may have important implications for the baby's health at birth and later in life."
###
About the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD): The NICHD sponsors research on development, before and after birth; maternal, child, and family health; reproductive biology and population issues; and medical rehabilitation. For more information, visit the Institute's website at http://www.nichd.nih.gov/.
About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov.
NIHTurning Discovery into Health
[ | E-mail | 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.
Dancing with the Stars' Maksim Chmerkovskiy is planning on throwing a birthday party fit for a professional dancer such as himself.
On January 27, Maksim, along with his younger brother Valentin Chmerkovskiy and fellow DWTS alum Tony Dovolani, will throw a bash at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City to celebrate his 32 birthday. The dancing pro, whose actual birthday was on January 17, will perform a ballroom dance number to tell his life story, from his humble beginnings in Odessa, Ukraine to his current success on the hit primetime show.
In addition to the grand birthday celebration, a percentage of the proceeds will be donated to St. Mary's Healthcare System for the children. For tickets and more information, visit www.dancewithmeusa.com.
Written by Daniel Kennedy, Research Director for Information Security
When we review our technology roadmaps, with their dark-blue in use and dark-orange not in plan bars, we often look most closely at those technologies that show a robust planning band in the middle, with the preference of course going to those technologies in the short-term implementation plans of network engineering managers. When it comes to the voice and video category in our Wave 9 Networking Study preview data, Unified Communications (UC) solutions is showing the best ongoing integration year-over-year as well as a robust planning band in the next year and a half. Twenty-five percent (25%) of respondents have UC solutions in their short-term plans, and 14% mark it as on the horizon for implementation.
This robust planning band shows 39% of respondents moving toward solutions primarily provided by Cisco and Microsoft, with Avaya a distant third in our preview data.
A sampling of narratives around project initiatives supports this projected growth:
?We decided to move unified communications to Microsoft.?
?We are putting a huge amount of bandwidth to cover unified communications.?
?People comment, it?s like, they access their files much faster, being driven by the unified communications, when we go in and put in unified communications you have to put in new switches, gig switches, everyone gets a gig port, everyone notices. It?s many times better accessing their files.?
?Unified communications may result in the need for more bandwidth at satellite offices.?
?HP just has a better vision than Cisco does. The downside, they are late to the game with unified communications.?
?Avaya has some cool stuff around unified communications.?
ScienceDaily (Jan. 23, 2012) ? Might a penguin's next meal be affected by the exhaust from your tailpipe? The answer may be yes, when you add your exhaust fumes to the total amount of carbon dioxide lofted into the atmosphere by humans since the industrial revolution. One-third of that carbon dioxide is absorbed by the world's oceans, making them more acidic and affecting marine life.
A UC Santa Barbara marine scientist and a team of 18 other researchers have reported results of the broadest worldwide study of ocean acidification to date. Acidification is known to be a direct result of the increasing amount of greenhouse gas emissions. The scientists used sensors developed at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego to measure the acidity of 15 ocean locations, including seawater in the Antarctic, and in temperate and tropical waters.
As oceans become more acidic, with a lower pH, marine organisms are stressed and entire ecosystems are affected, according to the scientists. Gretchen E. Hofmann, an eco-physiologist and professor in UCSB's Department of Ecology, Evolution & Marine Biology, is lead author of the recent article in PLoS ONE that describes the research.
"We were able to illustrate how parts of the world's oceans currently have different pH, and thus how they might respond to climate changes in the future," said Hofmann. "The sensors allowed us to capture that." The sensors recorded at least 30 days of continuous pH values in each area of the study.
Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, human activities have accelerated the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide mixes with water. The two molecules combine to become carbonic acid, making seawater more acidic. As billions of molecules combine and go through this process, the overall pH of the oceans decreases, causing ocean acidification.
Acidification limits the amount of carbonate forms that are needed by marine invertebrates, such as coral, urchins, snails, and shellfish, to make their skeletons. As the concentration of carbonates decreases in acidified water, it is harder to make a shell. And, the structures of some organisms may dissolve when water chemistry becomes too unfavorable.
"The emerging pH data from sensors allows us to design lab experiments that have a present-day environmental context," said Hofmann. "The experiments will allow us to see how organisms are adapted now, and how they might respond to climate change in the future." Hofmann researched the Antarctic, where she has worked extensively, as well as an area of coral reefs around the South Pacific island of Moorea, where UCSB has a Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) project. She also studied the coastal waters of Santa Barbara, in conjunction with UCSB's Santa Barbara Coastal LTER. The research team provided 30 days of pH data from other ocean areas around the world.
The researchers found that, in some places such as Antarctica and the Line Islands of the South Pacific, the range of pH variance is much more limited than in areas of the California coast that are subject to large vertical movements of water, known as upwellings. In some of the study areas, the researchers found that the decrease in seawater pH being caused by greenhouse gas emissions is still within the bounds of natural pH fluctuation. Other areas already experience daily acidity levels that scientists had expected would only be reached at the end of this century.
"This study is important for identifying the complexity of the ocean acidification problem around the globe," said co-author Jennifer Smith, a marine biologist with Scripps. "Our data show such huge variability in seawater pH, both within and across marine ecosystems, making global predictions of the impacts of ocean acidification a big challenge."
Todd Martz, a marine chemistry researcher at Scripps, developed the sensor. "When I arrived at Scripps, we re-engineered my prototype design, and since then I have not been able to keep up with all of the requests for sensors," said Martz. "Because every sensor used in this study was built at Scripps, I was in a unique position to assimilate a number of datasets, collected independently by researchers who otherwise would not have been in communication with each other. Each time someone deployed a sensor, they would send me the data, and eventually it became clear that a synthesis should be done to cross-compare this diverse collection of measurements." Hoffman worked with Martz to put together the research team to create that synthesis.
The team noted that the Scripps sensors, called "SeaFET" and "SeapHOx," allow researchers to continuously and autonomously monitor pH from remote parts of the world, providing important baselines from which scientists can monitor future changes caused by ocean acidification.
Despite surveying 15 different ocean regions, the authors noted that they only made observations on coastal surface oceans, and that more study is needed in deeper ocean regions farther away from land.
Hofmann is the director of the Center for the Study of Ocean Acidification and Ocean Change, a UC multi-campus initiative. Hofmann participated in writing a report on ocean acidification while on the National Research Council's Ocean Acidification Committee, and she is currently participating as a lead author on the National Climate Assessment. Hofmann is a member of the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs Advisory Panel, and she is an Aldo Leopold Fellow.
In addition to Hofmann, Martz, and Smith, co-authors include Emily B. Rivest and Pauline Yu of UCSB; Uwe Send, Lisa Levin, Yuichiro Takeshita, Nichole N. Price, Brittany Peterson, and Christina A. Frieder of Scripps; Paul Matson and Kenneth Johnson of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute; Fiorenza Micheli and Kristy Kroeker of Stanford University; Adina Paytan and Elizabeth Derse Crook of UC Santa Cruz; and Maria Cristina Gambi of Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn in Naples, Italy.
Funding for instrument development and related field work came from several sources, including the National Science Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the University of California, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Nature Conservancy, the WWW Foundation, Scott and Karin Wilson, the Rhodes family, and NOAA.
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STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- Penn State's football coach says following Joe Paterno in the job is an honor.
Bill O'Brien said in a statement Sunday after Paterno died that the school and all college football have suffered a great loss.
Paterno, who won more games than any other major college coach, was fired in November in the midst of a child sex abuse scandal that centered on a retired Penn State assistant coach. The school hired O'Brien, the New England Patriots offensive coordinator, this month.
He says Penn State is one of the game's iconic programs because "it was led by an icon in the coaching profession."
He also offers condolences to Paterno's family on behalf of the team.
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Changes to the way autism is diagnosed may make it harder for many people who would no longer meet the criteria to get health, educational and social services, researchers say.
JERUSALEM (AP) -Throughout its history, the Beitar Jerusalem football club has won 13 trophies, counted prime ministers among its fans and played in numerous European competitions. One thing the club has yet to do: Include an Arab player on its roster.
As the only major Israeli team never to integrate, Beitar Jerusalem is now under heavy pressure - particularly after a series of run-ins with local football authorities over racist behavior by its fans.
That may not be easy. Club management says its hands are tied by a hardcore base of fans who wield significant clout over personnel decisions. It has even called on police to rein in the worst offenders - an infamous group known as "La Familia."
"We are against racism and against violence and we pay a price for our fans," said Assaf Shaked, a team spokesman. "But we aren't going to bring an Arab player just to annoy the fans."
Beitar - which has won six league championships and seven cup titles in its 76-year history - has historically been strongly aligned with Israel's nationalist right wing. Its name, Beitar, comes from the Zionist youth movement that is linked to the ruling Likud Party. For decades, the team, like the Beitar movement, viewed itself as a perennial outsider while the establishment was controlled by the dovish Labor party and its offshoot in the sports world - the various Hapoel, or "workers," teams.
In 1976, Beitar finally won its first cup championship, and the following year Likud rose to power for the first time, ushering in a sea change in Israeli politics and sports. The team and its fans have since been a steady source of support for Likud politics.
A string of politicians have served as team chairman. Prime ministers with Likud roots - from Ariel Sharon to Ehud Olmert to Benjamin Netanyahu - have called themselves fans and made pilgrimages to the club's Teddy Stadium.
Beitar's fans are notoriously - and proudly - abusive toward opposing players, and routinely taunt them with racist and anti-Arab chants.
The Israeli Football Association says it has had enough. It recently ordered Beitar to play before an empty stadium and docked it two points in the standings after fans made monkey noises toward Hapoel Tel Aviv's Nigerian-born striker Toto Tamuz, a former Beitar player and fan favorite.
"Give Toto a banana!" they shouted.
League spokesman Amir Ephrat said the Beitar fans have pushed things too far, and the team has to take a tougher stand.
"This kind of extremism has to be dealt with before it expands," he said. "It has to be quashed when it is still small, because when it gets bigger it becomes a lot harder to stop."
Beitar's history of shunning Arab players has become especially noticeable in recent seasons. Arabs, who make up about 20 percent of Israel's population, now star on the Israeli national team and on every first division team besides Beitar. This year, the league's top two goal scorers are Arabs.
The league's battle with Beitar - and the team's own struggle with its rogue fans - comes as world football is cracking down on racism.
Earlier this month, a British parliamentary committee announced it would investigate racism in sports following a number of high-profile cases. Racism cases involving players and fans are being dealt with in France, Bulgaria and Spain as well.
As the Likud party has become more mainstream after years in government, the Beitar team's die-hard fans have gone the other direction.
In 2005, the "La Familia" organization was created, and it quickly became the team's loudest and most visible supporters. The fans routinely wave huge flags of the outlawed racist Kach party, whoop like monkeys when opposing black players touch the ball and chant "death to Arabs" and other racist slogans toward Arab players.
The club has been penalized numerous times for the behavior of its fans, which has included booing during a moment of silence for slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, singing songs deriding the Prophet Muhammad and physically assaulting Arab maintenance workers in stadiums.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said police were responsible for security outside the stadiums and for enforcing general public order - not fan behavior.
For years, the club's Russian-Israeli owner Arkady Gaydamak refrained from intervening. In fact, he backed the group financially and glowed in their adoration. After a failed attempt to run for Jerusalem mayor, Gaydamak fled the country in 2008 amid financial scandals in Israel and Europe.
Since then, Gaydamak has drastically cut funding to the team and tried to sell it.
First it was Brazilian-American millionaire Guma Aguiar who stepped in with a $4 million investment - before he checked himself into a psychiatric hospital because of increasingly erratic behavior that included plans to rebuild the biblical Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.
Last year, a pair of American businessmen agreed to buy the club - only to back out at the last moment. The team finished the season in 11th place in the 16-team league, narrowly avoiding relegation to the second division. This year, Beitar Jerusalem has fallen even further and is currently in danger of relegation.
In this environment, the fans' anger has grown. It is now no longer aimed solely toward Arabs - but against team management as well.
Most of the ire is directed toward general manager Itzik Kornfein, a former Beitar goalkeeping legend who has spoken out against racism. Fans often curse at him outside team practices. Some have even attempted to attack him physically.
Shlomi Barzel, the sports editor of Haaretz and a lifelong Beitar fan, said the radicalization of the fans reflects the weakness of team management.
"'La Familia' is a small, extreme group that numbers no more than a few hundred. The real problem is what happened to the quiet majority? There is no one countering them and the team is too weak to do anything about it," he said.
Barzel said that at the height of Gaydamak's popularity the owner tried to sign an Arab player, only to be overwhelmed by the fans' opposition.
"If he couldn't do it, no one can," he said.
The Beitar policy of shunning Arab players resurfaced last month when Maccabi Haifa striker Mohammed Ghadir said he would be willing to transfer to Beitar. Even before Beitar fans had their say, Ghadir withdrew the suggestion after Arab fans accused him of being a traitor.
"We would love to bring an Arab player on board but the conditions are not yet ripe - not as far as a player is concerned and not as far as the fans are concerned," said Shaked, the team spokesman.
He said fans need to go through "a learning process" before an Arab player could be added. He appears to be correct.
"Beitar is a team of Jews. Just like the army won't bring in a Chinese soldier, Beitar won't bring in an Arab player, because when there is a war and you have to give your all, they will run," said Shahar Darly, an-18-year-old fan. "We represent Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, the state of the Jews, not the Arabs ... if they try to bring an Arab player, we won't let them."
? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Cleaning your pad is a chore, but it doesn't have to suck up your entire day. Apartment Therapy suggests tackling a different area of your home every day for 20 minutes and offers a 30-day sample schedule you can adopt.
The 30 Day list breaks down different areas into manageable chunks. For example, these are the first five days:
1. Surface clean living room and kitchen (pick up stray items, dust, sweep, vacuum)
4. Surface clean "extra" rooms (basement, office, play room)
5. Surface clean living room and kitchen
So you're not doing the entire room in those 20 minutes. On day 6, you do the other area of the bathroom that you didn't do on day 2. Check out the article for the full list of cleaning tasks.
Of course, you don't have to do these in order, and you can add or customize tasks as you like. The idea is to each day break up your cleaning into a reasonable thing you can do for twenty minutes. Perhaps you can take 30 index cards and write a cleaning task on each, then randomly select one to do each day.
Note: If you only have 10 minutes, that's still enough time to get your bedroom clean. What's your strategy for keeping the chaos and dirt at bay?
Photo by Melissa Barrett
How to Clean Your House in 20 Minutes a Day for 30 Days | Apartment Therapy
Cloud storage has become big business over the last year or so. Being able to save, share and transfer files over the Internet provides users with a great deal of flexibility, security and extra storage space. I have been using cloud storage for years, and find the service invaluable. Being able to access files over my phone, laptop, desktop and now Android tablet is important.
Right now there are many, many different cloud storage options available to you. Which should you choose? It depends on what you need it to do. I have tried a number of them. None are perfect but some do stand out.
Dropbox is the perfect choice for personal use. A free account comes with 2GB of storage. You can also earn free space from their referral program (up to 8GB). If you need more, you can purchase 50GB for $9.99/mo. Desktop installation is very simple. It creates a shared folder on your computer that connects to your Dropbox cloud. Simply put a file in the box and it is automatically synced to the cloud and all devices currently connected. You can share files and folders and does provide you with a file history.
Dropbox does have an Android app. It is a basic app and is easy to view, download, access and share files with it. A recent update made the interface better but there is still room for improvement. What won me over is the auto sync feature, plus the lack of having to open a new program to access the cloud. I need to easily move files from my PC to my tablet and phone.
Note: There are a number of other services which offer similar services such as, SugarSync, Goaruna, Wuala. Many have a free account, so you can try them.
Box (Free)
Box is probably the best choice for the business user. Yes, they do have a free account (5GB) but what stands out is the number of options available. With Box, you can share secure files, it allows for feedback (adding comments) to files, has an auto sync feature, and what they call a sales force area which is a project management section. Of course there is a monthly fee for all of this.
They have an Android app, which is very basic. It allows for viewing and sharing files. You can work on these files also, if you have the appropriate program. Nothing super fancy here, since most of the key features only accessible from the desktop.
ASTRO File Manager is probably the most popular file management system out there for Android devices. They just recently added a new option to their app, ASTRO Backup. Right now, you will need to sign up for the service but if you use ASTRO file management, it is worth it. With their cloud service, you can backup single or multiple files from your Android device and of course view them. The neatest feature is the Cloud Trash Can. When you delete a file via ASTRO, it will go to your trash can in your cloud. So if you accidentally deleted a file, you can easily recover it. I wish I had that a while back when I lost some photos. ?Being able to delete files from your phone or tablet without worry is big. Right now it appears you are limited to 200MB. The app is free and ad-supported.
This is probably the most unique service I have found for cloud management. ZeroPC is a service that will allow you to access all of your cloud services under one roof: Dropbox, Google Docs, Evernote, Box, Flickr, Picasa, SugarSync and more! Being able to access all with one account is cool. The system runs in the browser on your PC and creates what they call a virtual desktop. You can simply drop and drag files to move them. You can setup your email in the system and use ThinkFree Office also from within the desktop. Once you log into the various services, your files will be accessible from ZeroPC.
You can sign up for a free account which allows you 39GB of storage space from your current cloud services, plus 1GB of their storage. There is also a limit on file size: 25MB. You can, of course, upgrade the account via their credit system, but is seems very reasonable.
The ZeroPC Android app is only available for Android tablets. The app is optimized for the large tablet screen and is very nicely done. The interface is easy to use and you can quickly find files from your different services. No need for multiple cloud apps on your tablet with ZeroPC! This service is pretty new so we will see how it grows.
Cloud services are very handy for storing and sharing files. Most do provide a free basic account, but there are differences and you should spend some time researching what you want to do with your cloud and then see which service will help you accomplish that goal. Accessing your cloud via Android is an option but from what I have seen there is room for growth.
The Daily Show and Colbert Reportfamously rely upon SnapStream's high-power Windows DVR software to monitor the insanity at the fringes of America's cable spectrum. The media-monitoring software is also used by news services, educators and shadowy government agencies to keep tabs on the subjects discussed on TV. The latest edition (version five) opens the platform up to OSX users, enabling them to run it in Firefox without messy virtualization. The OSX web player comes with a plugin to watch MPEG-2 streams that'll happily sit on top of Snow Leopard or Lion and will even let you set up customized alerts for whenever inappropriate euphemisms emerge from Oprah's mouth.
WASHINGTON ? President Barack Obama pledged Tuesday to cooperate closely with Jordan, a key ally in the Middle East, in order to push Israel and the Palestinians to negotiate a peace accord in a "serious fashion," even as a fresh attempt at talks shows little signs of progress.
Jordan's King Abdullah II, whose country has hosted three meetings this month between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, emphasized that the talks were in the early stages.
"We have to keep our fingers crossed," Abdullah said after an Oval Office meeting with Obama.
The Jordan meetings are taking place under the auspices of the international Quartet of Mideast peace mediators ? the U.S., United Nations, European Union and Russia. The Quartet hopes to broker a peace deal by the end of this year.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tamped down the prospect of progress this week, charging that the Palestinians "have no interest in entering peace talks."
"I'm ready to travel now to Ramallah to start peace talks with Abu Mazen, without preconditions. But the simple truth is that Abu Mazen is not ready," Netanyahu said Monday.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is widely known as Abu Mazen.
Talks have been stalled for more than three years over the issue of Israeli settlement construction.
Abbas says the Palestinians will not resume talks unless Israel stops building in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in the 1967 war from Jordan and claimed by the Palestinians as parts of their future state. Israel maintains that the issue of settlements would be solved automatically once there are agreed-upon borders, and it rejects any preconditions to negotiations.
In statements following their White House meeting, Obama and Abdullah gave no indication that the Israelis and Palestinians were any closer to ending the stalemate. Instead, they simply reiterated their desire to see progress on the seemingly intractable issue.
"We talked about the importance of us continuing to consult closely together to encourage the Palestinians and Israelis to come back to the table and negotiate in a serious fashion a peaceful way forward," Obama said.
Obama said the two leaders also discussed developments in Iraq and Iran, and in Syria, where the government has waged a deadly, 10-month crackdown against opponents of President Bashar Assad.
Abdullah was the first Arab leader to call for Assad to leave power, and Obama praised him for his "willingness to stand up."
Abdullah, a favorite of Western leaders, faced some protests last year, though on a lesser scale than other "Arab Spring" movements that sprang up throughout the region. The king announced a series of political reforms in response, including parliamentary elections this year. Jordan's opposition parties alleged that elections for parliament in 2010 were flawed.
Obama said Tuesday that Abdullah has been "ahead of the curve in trying to respond to the legitimate concerns and aspirations, both politically and economically, of the Jordanian population."
He pledged U.S. support to help Jordan continue its reforms.
___
Julie Pace can be reached at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) ? Deaf children who already had one cochlear implant had improvements in speech, hearing and related quality of life measures after a second was implanted in the other ear, researchers from the Netherlands reported this week.
And the degree of improvement didn't depend on how old kids were when they got their second implant, according to the study, published in the Archives of Otolaryngology--Head & Neck Surgery.
An improved quality of life after a second implant "is not surprising," said Betty Loy, who studies deafness and cochlear implants at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
"I definitely would expect that to improve over time as the brain adjusts to that second implant. You're going to get better and better and better at doing all the things that bilateral hearing allows you to do," added Loy, who was not involved in the new study.
Cochlear implants transmit sound directly to the auditory nerve. Getting an implant requires surgery on the ear, and costs of the procedure and follow-up care can exceed $50,000. There's also the possibility of complications from infection or damage to the device -- but those are relatively rare.
Because of the costs and risks, Loy said that doctors were initially hesitant to give young kids cochlear implants in both ears. But over time, she added, that trend has changed in the United States, and studies have shown that deaf children with two implants do better on hearing tests than those with a single implant.
Recently, Canadian researchers also provided reassuring news on cochlear implants, reporting that only a small fraction of children they operated on in the last 20 years had technical problems with their cochlear implants and needed new ones (see Reuters Health story of December 21, 2011.)
For the current study, researchers tracked 30 children who already had one cochlear implant and were getting a second one put in at the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre.
Marloes Sparreboom and colleagues gave parents general and hearing-specific questionnaires related to their kids' quality of life before the second implant was put in, and one and two years after implantation. On average, kids were five years old when they had their second procedure.
On general health and quality of life questionnaires, there was no change in kids' scores after the second implant. Those scores were generally within the healthy range for hearing kids anyway, according to the researchers.
But on questionnaires that specifically asked how well the children were able to listen to speech in a noisy environment, and other quality of life measures related to hearing and speaking, kids improved both one and two years after getting their second implant.
For example, on the Speech, Spatial, and Qualities of Hearing Scale, scored here from 0 to 1, children had an average score of 0.48 before getting their second implant, 0.60 a year after getting it and 0.62 after two years.
Children in the study were as old as eight and a half when they got their second implant, and age didn't seem to factor into their improvement after the procedure.
A comparison group of kids who still had a single cochlear implant didn't improve on hearing-related quality of life measures over a one-year period.
"The results imply that the second implant causes the effect on the hearing-specific (quality of life) and not simply maturation," Sparreboom told Reuters Health in an email.
Sparreboom said the findings show that having implants in both ears can be beneficial for listening as measured by doctors and in daily life.
"Classrooms are noisy even for typical-hearing children," said Loy. "Teachers turn away when they're writing on the blackboard, you can't read their lips. The situations that hearing-impaired children find themselves in are difficult even under the best circumstances."
With multiple implants, Loy added, "You're going to learn how to localize sound better, you're going to learn how to focus better on the speech in noise...and you get better at that over time. If you can hear, and you know what's going on, your quality of life is better."
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/xhoaXW Archives of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, online January 16, 2012.
Despite the downgrade of nine European nations on Friday, stocks continue to rally. CNBC's Brian Sullivan points to four reasons for the bull run, with CNBC's Bob Pisani.
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Business & financial news headlines from msnbc.com
As LTE is exapanding rapidly, perhaps more rapidly then some would have thought - it's up to manfacturers to go ahead and exapand their device line-ups to include LTE-capable devices as well. LG is fully aware of this and their latest announcement introduces the first LTE-capable tablet from them into the market - the LG Optimus Pad LTE.
“With tablets generating five times more traffic than the average smartphone, it’s not a huge jump to assume that tablet users need and want faster connectivity,” said Dr. Jong-seok Park, President and CEO of LG Mobile Communications Company. “The combination of LG’s LTE technology with the tablet form factor is a clear advantage for consumers who use a tablet as their primary consumption device when on the move.”
The LG Optimus Pad LTE will be launching in Korea intially and moving out from there. It will come equipped with a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor running Android 3.2 Honeycomb OS, a 1280 x 720 True HD IPS display and 8 megapixel camera for shooting HD video on the back with a 2MP camera on the front. Plus, HDMI and DLNA support are on board as well as SD Card support for up to 32GB of additional storage. LG hasn't given any pricing or launch details as of yet but you can check out their full press release past the break.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) ? Hollywood prepared for its annual party and prize giveaway, the Golden Globe Awards, on Sunday but as much as Tinseltown's eyes will be fixed on which films and stars will be honored, its ears will be listening for barbs from show host Ricky Gervais.
The British comedian returns to the Golden Globe stage for the third straight year to host the champagne-soaked bash where prizes are given for best films, TV shows, actors and actresses in precursor of the more staid Oscars. A-list stars from George Clooney to Angelina Jolie are expected to attend.
But last year Gervais ruffled the feathers of many stars in attendance, making fun of poor choices among several nominees, like box office bomb "The Tourist," by the very group that gives out the honors and hired him to entertain -- the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA).
His often disparaging comments earned the wrath of some celebrities and critics, and initially the HFPA said he would not return. But Gervais was eventually hired back by the organization's chief who cheekily observed that he'd been a very "naughty boy" in 2011. Now, Hollywood is both wary and excited at the prospect of what he might say.
While Gervais hasn't given away any of his jokes yet, he did tell reporters at a gathering of TV critics this past Friday in Los Angeles that his verbal jabs were already written down.
"I have specific targets. I've written the gags, although targets isn't the word I'd use -- subjects maybe," he said.
"I've got nothing against anyone in the room, I've worked with many of them, I like many of them, I admire most of them. They're just gags. I'm not trying to hurt anyone's feelings or give them a bad name or undermine the moral fabric of America. I'm a comedian, I rather they laugh than gasp but I'll cherish the laughs along with the gasps," Gervais added.
The Golden Globe Awards are given out by the roughly 90 HFPA members at a gala dinner and ceremony in Beverly Hills that is annually among the key events during Hollywood's awards season because of the media exposure it brings.
OSCAR INFLUENCE?
Honors bestowed on TV shows often lure audiences that can turn a little-seen program into a hit, and films and stars that are declared Golden Globe winners often go on to compete for Oscars, the world's top movie prizes given out later this year.
But veteran Hollywood awards watcher Tom O'Neil of website Goldderby.com notes that in recent years, as more awards shows have aired on TV and Oscar organizers have made changes to their nomination process, the HFPA's influence has waned.
"Six of the last seven years they haven't picked the same best movie. 'Slumdog Millionaire' is the only one," said O'Neil.
Silent-era film "The Artist," a romantic tale shot in the style of old Hollywood, heads into Sunday night's ceremony with six nominations, more than any other film, including best comedy or musical. Late last week, it was named 2011's best movie at the Critics' Choice Awards and appears a good bet to take the Golden Globe for best musical or comedy.
HFPA voters also pick a winner of best film drama, and "The Descendants," starring Clooney as a father trying to keep his family together during a crisis, has the strongest shot at walking off a victor, O'Neil said. Although civil rights drama "The Help" also has been well-received in Hollywood this year.
Among actors and actresses, Meryl Streep looks to be a good pick to claim the trophy for best actress in a drama playing former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in "The Iron Lady." She faces a challenge from Viola Davis in "The Help," after Davis also picked up the Critics' Choice trophy.
Michelle Williams competes for best actress in a movie musical or comedy in "My Week with Marilyn" against the likes of "Saturday Night Live" comedian Kristen Wiig for "Bridesmaids."
Clooney with "Descendants" takes on Leonardo DiCaprio for "J. Edgar" and Brad Pitt in "Moneyball" in the best drama actor category, and "Artist" star, Frenchman Jean Dujardin, is the odds-on bet for best actor in a film musical or comedy.
Among TV shows, thriller "Homeland" is one of the new shows competing for best drama, taking on others such as "American Horror Story" and "Game of Thrones." Best comedy nominees feature past favorites such as "Glee" and "Modern Family."
The three-hour Golden Globe Awards show airs live on NBC on Sunday night, starting at 8 p.m. EST (0100 GMT on Monday).
(Reporting By Bob Tourtellotte; Editing by Sandra Maler)
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Public release date: 25-Jan-2012
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Cleaning your pad is a chore, but it doesn't have to suck up your entire day. Apartment Therapy suggests tackling a different area of your home every day for 20 minutes and offers a 30-day sample schedule you can adopt. 
Dropbox is the perfect choice for personal use. A free account comes with 2GB of storage. You can also earn free space from their referral program (up to 8GB). If you need more, you can purchase 50GB for $9.99/mo. Desktop installation is very simple. It creates a shared folder on your computer that connects to your Dropbox cloud. Simply put a file in the box and it is automatically synced to the cloud and all devices currently connected. You can share files and folders and does provide you with a file history.
ASTRO File Manager is probably the most popular file management system out there for Android devices. They just recently added a new option to their app, ASTRO Backup. Right now, you will need to sign up for the service but if you use ASTRO file management, it is worth it. With their cloud service, you can backup single or multiple files from your Android device and of course view them. The neatest feature is the Cloud Trash Can. When you delete a file via ASTRO, it will go to your trash can in your cloud. So if you accidentally deleted a file, you can easily recover it. I wish I had that a while back when I lost some photos. ?Being able to delete files from your phone or tablet without worry is big. Right now it appears you are limited to 200MB. The app is free and ad-supported.
