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Sunday, May 5, 2013
Kentucky Derby Betting: Will The New Qualification Format Impact ...
That?s the question that many horse racing experts are asking heading into the 2013 Kentucky Derby. Granted, most recreational horse players aren?t even aware that the qualification process for the Kentucky Derby has been altered but even they should understand at least the basic concepts of the changes if they?re looking to bet the race. The impact of the new qualification system is still being debate and probably won?t be fully determined until there?s a few races run under the new format. Since that won?t do you much good in terms of betting this year?s race we?ll summarize the changes and the arguments over how it?ll impact the race.
In the past the Kentucky Derby had a fairly wide open qualification process. A trainer showed up and paid the entry fee and his horse could run. Well, it?s not quite that simple?the horse could run provided that the field wasn?t ?oversubscribed? meaning if there wasn?t more horses than could be accommodated by the 20 entry limit in the Derby. At that point, eligible horses were ranked by the money they?d earned in graded stakes events. Not surprisingly, in recent years there has almost always been more than 20 horses looking to get into the field and connections were very cognizant of their chances of qualifying based on graded stakes earnings so if they weren?t ?in the hunt? they wouldn?t even bother.
For the first time this year there?s a more regimented process for qualifying for the Kentucky Derby via a NASCAR-esque ?points system? where horses earn points in designated prep races. In many ways this is a different way of achieving the same result but it does have it?s upsides, not the least of which is a stronger field and more urgency in many of the bigger prep events. There are some consequences?for example, under the new format the chances of a top flight filly like Rachel Alexandra or Zenyatta qualifying are slim and none. Some suggest this is a good thing.
But how will the new format impact the race itself? Noted handicapper Andy Beyer and others suggest that it will create a slower pace than in years past. Beyer?s theory is long on speculation and short on empirical examples but does make some sense?under the new format their are fewer sprinters looking to set insane fractions and more closers. Without insane front running speed a more manageable pace will materialize and make strong closing horses an event better bet.
Like just about everything else in horse racing there are proponents as well as detractors from this theory. Some suggest that Beyer?s ?insane sprinters? scenario is more fiction than fact and just hasn?t been borne out by the data of actual races. In any case, if you?re going to bet the Kentucky Derby you should be aware that the nature of the race may have changed due to the changes in the qualification process.
Source: http://maboot.com/will-the-new-qualification-format-impact-kentucky-derby-betting/
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Saturday, May 4, 2013
Job market resilience eases growth concerns
By Lucia Mutikani
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Employment rose faster than expected in April and hiring was much stronger than previously thought in the prior two months, a sign of resilience that should help the economy absorb the blow from belt-tightening in Washington.
Nonfarm payrolls rose by 165,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate fell to 7.5 percent, the lowest level since December 2008, the Labor Department said on Friday. The job counts for February and March were revised up by a net 114,000.
"This bolsters the case that the U.S. economy will be able to survive the combined headwinds of sequestration and a deepening recession in Europe," said Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West in San Francisco.
Investors on Wall Street cheered the data, which beat economists' expectations for a 145,000 jobs gain and a steady 7.6 percent reading on the unemployment rate.
U.S. stocks rallied, with the Standard & Poor's 500 index and the Dow Jones industrial average rising to intraday record highs. The dollar rose more than 1 percent against the yen, while Treasury debt prices fell.
Payrolls rose by 138,000 jobs in March, 50,000 more than previously reported, and job growth for February was revised up by 64,000 to 332,000, the largest increase since May 2010.
But the gains last month were far below the 206,000 jobs per month average of the first quarter, the latest evidence the economy is cooling, even if not as quickly as earlier feared.
Indeed, the data provided a number of signs of a loss of momentum.
Construction employment fell for the first time since May and manufacturing payrolls were flat. The length of the average workweek pulled off a nine-month high and a gauge of the overall work effort fell.
Economists pin the slowdown largely on higher taxes that took hold at the start of the year and $85 billion in federal government spending cuts, known as the sequester, that went into effect at the beginning of March. Economies overseas have also weakened, cutting into U.S. export growth.
While the U.S. economy grew at a 2.5 percent annual pace in the first quarter, data on construction spending, retail sales and trade suggested it ended the period with less speed.
Further, factory data for April imply the economy braked further at the start of the second quarter, a thesis supported by a report on Friday that showed the pace of growth in the services sector in April was the slowest in nine months.
"We are probably going into a second-quarter soft patch, but it's not something that's going to derail the recovery," said Julia Coronado, chief North American economist at BNP Paribas in New York.
FED STILL IN PLAY
The 0.1 percentage point drop in the jobless rate reflected a gain in employment, rather than people leaving the workforce.
Indeed, more Americans entered the workforce than in any month since October. The labor force participation rate - the share of working-age Americans who have a job or are looking for one - held steady at a 34-year low of 63.3 percent.
While the pace of hiring was stronger than expected in April, it remained below the roughly 300,000 jobs a month that economists say are needed over a sustained period to put a significant dent in unemployment.
While the jobless rate has dropped 0.4 percentage point since January, employment is still 2.57 million jobs below where it stood in December 2007. At April's job growth pace, it would take about 16 months to make up that lost ground.
About 21.9 million people are either unemployed, working only part-time although wanting full-time work, or want a job but have given up the search.
Economists said the data did not appear strong enough to dissuade officials at the Federal Reserve from pressing forward with their bond-buying stimulus, given the immense slack still in the labor market. It did, however, dampen budding speculation the U.S. central bank might step up its purchases.
"It probably cools any expectations that the Fed is going to increase the asset purchases, especially with the unemployment rate declining," said Raymond Stone, chief economist at Stone & McCarthy Research Associates in Princeton, New Jersey.
All the job gains last month were in the private sector, which added 176,000 new positions. Gains were led by a rebound in retail employment, which had dropped in March after eight straight months of increases. Retail payrolls rose 29,300.
Temporary help, a harbinger of future hiring, increased by the most since February. It has now risen for seven straight months.
"That tells me payroll growth is going to continue to be on a decent pace," said Stone.
In a surprise, the construction sector shed 6,000 workers after 10 straight months of gains. Increases in residential construction were offset by declines in jobs for nonresidential builders and other construction workers.
Government payrolls dropped 11,000 after falling 16,000 in March. Most of the job losses last month came from the federal government, with big declines at the U.S. Postal Service, which is downsizing.
Average hourly earnings rose 0.2 percent. But with hours worked by private workers slipping to 34.4 hours from 34.6 hours, weekly earnings actually fell.
"The decline in income coupled with a low saving rate does not bode well for consumers," said Michelle Meyer, a senior economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York.
(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Tim Ahmann and Neil Stempleman)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-april-employment-data-point-sluggish-economy-042112467.html
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Columnist leaves DailyBeast after blog on gay NBA player
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Columnist Howard Kurtz left The Daily Beast on Thursday, the same day the website retracted one of his blog posts in which he mistakenly accused NBA player Jason Collins of hiding a previous engagement to a woman before declaring this week that he is gay.
A person close to the matter said Kurtz was fired because this was the latest in a series of high-profile errors, which detracted from the site's efforts to bolster the credibility of its news coverage. The gaffe also comes as The Daily Beast tries to succeed only online after dropping its print magazine, Newsweek, in December.
The person was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
A spokeswoman for CNN, where Kurtz hosts the TV show "Reliable Sources," said the network is reviewing the matter. Kurtz's CNN show is about "how journalists do their jobs and how the media affect the stories they cover," according to the website. Kurtz is a former media columnist with The Washington Post and was The Daily Beast's Washington bureau chief.
CNN is also looking into Kurtz's relationship with the website Daily Download, which lists him as being on its board of advisers. A Huffington Post story on Wednesday noted that Kurtz promoted the site with more than 120 links in April, compared with around 20 for The Daily Beast and fewer for his CNN show.
In the retracted Daily Beast post, titled "Jason Collins' Other Secret," Kurtz says Collins "didn't come clean" about the fact that he was engaged to be married to a woman before declaring he was gay.
But Collins does just that in the eighth paragraph of the Sports Illustrated piece that came out Monday.
"When I was younger I dated women. I even got engaged. I thought I had to live a certain way. I thought I needed to marry a woman and raise kids with her. I kept telling myself the sky was red, but I always knew it was blue," Collins wrote.
On Thursday, The Daily Beast retracted Kurtz's post but left an amended version online, saying it "sincerely regrets Kurtz's error."
In the amended version, the website replaces the words "didn't come clean" with Kurtz saying Collins "downplayed" the engagement and "didn't dwell on it."
In 2011, Kurtz misquoted U.S. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi criticizing the White House, which The Daily Beast attributed to him misreading a colleague's notes. A year earlier, he mistakenly attributed quotes in a story to U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, after actually speaking to his spokesman, Kurt Bardella, on the phone.
On Twitter, Kurtz did not acknowledge any link between the most recent retraction and his departure, although he did apologize.
"Apologies: Jason Collins did mention his engagement in SI article. But he didn't tell the full story--his ex says she just learned he's gay," Kurtz tweeted.
He didn't respond to a phone message seeking comment.
Kurtz also tweeted that "as we began to move in different directions, both sides agreed it was best to part company." He added "this was in the works for some time" and that it was time for him to "move on to other opportunities."
Daily Beast Editor-in-Chief Tina Brown tweeted that Kurtz and The Daily Beast had "parted company ... we wish him well."
A statement from Brown highlighted moves the website is taking to bolster its coverage of Washington, including with new columnists such as Jon Favreau, Joshua Dubois and Stuart Stevens. It also mentions the site won a Webby Award for Best News site this week.
___
AP Television Writer David Bauder in New York contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kurtz-leaves-dailybeast-retracted-blog-post-204748611.html
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'Bug's eye' camera inspired by nature
A new camera was modeled on the compound eyes of insects. As such, it has a curved rather than flat lens. This enables a 160-degree field of view, making it well-suited for security cameras or drones.?
Image of a digital camera with a hemispherical, compound design inspired by eyes found in the insect world.
University of Illinois and Beckman Institute
EnlargeBug eyes, bird eyes and human eyes all have one thing in common: They're round. Almost every ocular organ found in nature has some kind of curvature.
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So why do all man-made cameras use flat lenses and inflexible silicon chips?
Taking nature as their guide, several scientists have developed a "bug's eye" digital camera directly modeled after those of insects, such as flies, ants and beetles.
The compound eyes found in most insects consist of long, cylindrical units called omatidia: a cornea connected to a photosensitive organ and surrounded with a dark pigment to prevent light from one lens leaking into neighboring lenses. These omatidia are clustered together in a dome shape with the lenses facing outward, and collectively, they form the compound eye of the insect.
"If you look at the design of the compound eye in the insect world and look at our device, there are really strict and explicit analogies between all the component parts," said John Rogers, a professor at the University of Illinois, explaining the process he and his fellow researchers used to creating their "bio-inspired" camera.
The finished camera's "omatidia" consist of a tiny microlens connected to a photoreceptive computer chip by an elastomer, or molecular compound with elastic properties.
Between 200 and 500 of these artificial omatidia are embedded in a sheet of curved and flexible rubber. "That corresponds to the number [of omatidia] you find in an ant or a common bark beetle," Rogers explained. "That's the low end of what you find in insects. The high end would be something like a praying mantis or a dragonfly, where the range [of omatidia per compound eye] is 10,000 to 20,000."
Producing a bug's eye camera of that resolution is possible, Rogers says, but it would require a finesse that the team simply couldn't achieve from their academic lab. Creating cameras with resolutions of "dragonfly and beyond," as Rogers puts it, would require the type of specialization available at state of the art manufacturing facilities.
The team's insect-inspired camera has multiple advantages over its flat-lens man-made counterparts, particularly when it comes to photographing multiple subjects simultaneously. With a field of view of 160 degrees, the camera can also capture landscape views without the peripheral distance and light distortion that are common in traditional wide-capture lenses.
Another of the camera's advantages is that the plastic sheet in which the omatidia are embedded is flexible, meaning it can be placed on both flat and curved surfaces or even blown up like a balloon to adjust its range of capture.
These features make the bug's eye camera well-suited to surveillance purposes such as security cameras or drones, Rogers suggested.
There's also room in the commercial camera market for cameras that eschew the traditional flat lens design. "One size does not fit all [when it comes to cameras], and the same thing will be true for man-made cameras ? There may be opportunities for applications that require extremely wide field of view, which the insect world has mastered," Rogers told TechNewsDaily.
It'll probably be a couple of years before something like the bug's eye camera is available in commercial outlets. Meanwhile, Rogers hopes find new ways to apply nature's optical imaging systems to man-made technology. Lobsters and shrimp, for example, have eyes made of box-shaped receptors that help them gather visual information even in extremely low-light conditions.
You can read the research team's full report on their bug's eye camera?in Nature scientific journal, published May 2.
Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/SJROrvghxiI/Bug-s-eye-camera-inspired-by-nature
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NASA high school STEM challenge announces winning team
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Public release date: 3-May-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Rob Gutro
Robert.j.gutro@nasa.gov
301-286-4044
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Students to present challenge ideas at NASA Goddard
The NASA RealWorld-InWorld Engineering Design Challenge, an integrated science, technology, engineering and mathematics program focused on NASA's forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope, has named the 2012-2013 first place team. The team, which consisted of high school juniors and seniors participating in the NASA INSPIRES program, included: Abigail Radford of Ashville, N.C.; Joshua Dijamco of Jackson, N.J.; Jonathan Hernandez of Elizabeth, N.J.; Katherine Denner of Horsham, Penn.; and Jim Gerard of Merritt Island, Fla.
The team will travel to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., May 6 for a daylong VIP event. They will present their winning engineering design concept to Dr. John Mather, senior project scientist for the Webb telescope mission and 2006 Nobel Prize winner, and other engineers and scientists working on the mission.
"The RealWorld-InWorld Engineering Design Challenge is an amazing way to connect students with real NASA engineers and scientists, which allows them to study a real NASA engineering project in an immersive way," said Maggie Masetti of the NASA Webb telescope education and public outreach team at Goddard. "I was able to watch some of the students present their final projects, and it was rewarding to see what they'd learned, especially about how to coordinate a team (whose members were often separated by great physical distance) to achieve a goal."
The team was evaluated by graduate engineering students and professionals of various relevant disciplines and selected among a group of five finalist teams. Evaluators included a professor of engineering from the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, K-12 STEM educators, graduate students from engineering and multiple related disciplines, as well as past RWIW team leaders.
Students on the team, all high school sophomores or juniors, collaborated virtually from their respective locations. The team was led by Marco Balducci, a graduate research assistant at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who currently works in the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research.
This marked the third year of the NASA RWIW Engineering Design Challenge. For the 2012-2013 run, the program asked grade 8-12 students to develop engineering design solutions to one of two real-world NASA Webb telescope challenges. Students chose to either re-design a shield to keep Webb telescope cold enough to "detect infrared light from faint sources such as distant galaxies and extrasolar planets" or to re-design a mirror assembly so that Webb telescope may produce images that are "sufficiently bright and sharp to look back in time to when galaxies were young."
RWIW earns its name due to the two phases of the program. Phase one, "RealWorld," requires "paper and pencil," and guides students through the design process inside participating classrooms or other formal and informal learning environments. Phase two, "InWorld," takes place within a digital universe created within the Activeworlds, 3-D multiuser, PC-based system. There, students from across the United States interact with peers and university-student mentors, using interactive collaborative tools and professional-level modeling and simulation software to develop engineering design solutions.
The program is a collaboration between the James Webb Space Telescope education and public outreach group, NASA Goddard, NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.,USA TODAY Education and the National Institute of Aerospace.
###
For more information about the NASA RealWorld-InWorld Engineering Design Challenge, visit:
http://www.NASArealworldinworld.org
For more information about the James Webb Space Telescope, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/webb http://www.jwst.nasa.gov
To learn more about the National Institute of Aerospace, visit:
http://www.NIAnet.org
[ | 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.
Public release date: 3-May-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Rob Gutro
Robert.j.gutro@nasa.gov
301-286-4044
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Students to present challenge ideas at NASA Goddard
The NASA RealWorld-InWorld Engineering Design Challenge, an integrated science, technology, engineering and mathematics program focused on NASA's forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope, has named the 2012-2013 first place team. The team, which consisted of high school juniors and seniors participating in the NASA INSPIRES program, included: Abigail Radford of Ashville, N.C.; Joshua Dijamco of Jackson, N.J.; Jonathan Hernandez of Elizabeth, N.J.; Katherine Denner of Horsham, Penn.; and Jim Gerard of Merritt Island, Fla.
The team will travel to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., May 6 for a daylong VIP event. They will present their winning engineering design concept to Dr. John Mather, senior project scientist for the Webb telescope mission and 2006 Nobel Prize winner, and other engineers and scientists working on the mission.
"The RealWorld-InWorld Engineering Design Challenge is an amazing way to connect students with real NASA engineers and scientists, which allows them to study a real NASA engineering project in an immersive way," said Maggie Masetti of the NASA Webb telescope education and public outreach team at Goddard. "I was able to watch some of the students present their final projects, and it was rewarding to see what they'd learned, especially about how to coordinate a team (whose members were often separated by great physical distance) to achieve a goal."
The team was evaluated by graduate engineering students and professionals of various relevant disciplines and selected among a group of five finalist teams. Evaluators included a professor of engineering from the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, K-12 STEM educators, graduate students from engineering and multiple related disciplines, as well as past RWIW team leaders.
Students on the team, all high school sophomores or juniors, collaborated virtually from their respective locations. The team was led by Marco Balducci, a graduate research assistant at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who currently works in the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research.
This marked the third year of the NASA RWIW Engineering Design Challenge. For the 2012-2013 run, the program asked grade 8-12 students to develop engineering design solutions to one of two real-world NASA Webb telescope challenges. Students chose to either re-design a shield to keep Webb telescope cold enough to "detect infrared light from faint sources such as distant galaxies and extrasolar planets" or to re-design a mirror assembly so that Webb telescope may produce images that are "sufficiently bright and sharp to look back in time to when galaxies were young."
RWIW earns its name due to the two phases of the program. Phase one, "RealWorld," requires "paper and pencil," and guides students through the design process inside participating classrooms or other formal and informal learning environments. Phase two, "InWorld," takes place within a digital universe created within the Activeworlds, 3-D multiuser, PC-based system. There, students from across the United States interact with peers and university-student mentors, using interactive collaborative tools and professional-level modeling and simulation software to develop engineering design solutions.
The program is a collaboration between the James Webb Space Telescope education and public outreach group, NASA Goddard, NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.,USA TODAY Education and the National Institute of Aerospace.
###
For more information about the NASA RealWorld-InWorld Engineering Design Challenge, visit:
http://www.NASArealworldinworld.org
For more information about the James Webb Space Telescope, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/webb http://www.jwst.nasa.gov
To learn more about the National Institute of Aerospace, visit:
http://www.NIAnet.org
[ | 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.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-05/nsfc-nhs050313.php
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Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Yahoo announces six original shows, WWE streaming partnership
It's been just under a week since Yahoo scored exclusive rights to stream Saturday Night Live clips, but the old guard of search has just divulged more of its video plans at its Digital Content NewFront event. Taking a page from Netflix's playbook, the firm announced its original comedy lineup will be released in a "binge-viewing" style á la House of Cards this fall, and added Tiny Commando, We Need Help and Losing Your Virginity with John Stamos to its humor roster. Mayer and Co. also revealed a trio of lifestyle programs called Fashion Recipe, Cinema & Spice and Grill Girls, which are headed online at some point later this year.
In addition to its in-house programming, Yahoo's partnered with the WWE to create an online wrestling hub starting this summer, which will include clips, a 30-minute Monday Night Raw pre-show, two original weekly shows with 50 episodes per year, an archive of full historic matches and more. The folks in Sunnyvale are also set to stream video content from Conde Nast Entertainment, and expand their relationship with ABC News thanks to World News Behind the Headlines, Nightline: Online and GMA Live. News junkies will also be able to tune into the CNBC's Talking Numbers. For descriptions of the outfit's original shows -- and how it'd like to catch your attention with ads -- hit the jump for the full press release.
[Image credit: Yodel Anecdotal, Flickr]
Source: Yahoo
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