Schumaker's HR off Arroyo helps Dodgers beat Reds

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Skip Schumaker's first career home run at Dodger Stadium couldn't have come at a more opportune time, especially now that he's playing for the home team.

Schumaker hit a tiebreaking two-run shot off longtime NL West rival Bronson Arroyo while filling in for the ailing Carl Crawford, Hyun-Jin Ryu gave up two hits over seven innings and retired his last 13 batters, and the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Cincinnati Reds 4-1 Saturday night.

"I grew up in L.A. going to Dodger games, so I've always thought about hitting a home run in Dodger Stadium ? and actually doing it is pretty incredible," Schumaker said. "It's kind of a surreal feeling. I get lucky every now and then. Every 200 at-bats or so, I run into one."

Ryu (9-3) had nine strikeouts, all in a span of 13 batters. The first came against Joey Votto, who took a called third strike after Chris Heisey hit his first triple of the season with two out in the third. Cincinnati's run came on a homer by Jay Bruce in the second.

The Dodgers increased their NL West lead to 1 1/2 games over Arizona.

Ryu faced South Korean countryman Shin-Soo Choo for the first time in the major leagues. The Reds' center fielder walked, grounded out to first base and struck out.

"I'm sure Choo was on his mind," catcher A.J. Ellis said. "I mean, it's a big deal. Choo is one of his best friends and one of his baseball idols. So with him facing him in America in an atmosphere like this, and also playing in front of a huge TV audience back in Korea, it's pretty neat to know you're a part of that. It was really cool to see those guys match up. You could hear the crowd on every pitch and every swing."

Kenley Jansen got the last three outs for his 14th save.

Crawford, who singled his first three times up in the Dodgers' 2-1 victory Friday night and then made a brief visit to an emergency room on Saturday to get checked on for a high temperature and fever, was held out of the lineup. Manager Don Mattingly replaced him with Schumaker, who came in with more plate appearances (53) and hits (18) against Reds starter Bronson Arroyo than anyone else on Los Angeles' roster.

"It's a good feeling when you have a situation like today where Carl wasn't able to play and Skip can step in and be a more than capable guy," Dodgers first baseman Adrian Gonzalez said. "He's a great veteran who battles every at-bat. That's what this team is built upon ? experience on the bench, experience on the field. And hopefully we'll take that all the way through."

Schumaker came through in the fifth, driving Arroyo's 1-0 pitch to center field for his second home run of the season and a 3-1 Dodgers lead after a leadoff single by Mark Ellis.

"If you look at the numbers, it says I have some hits off him. But a lot of those were bloop hits, lucky hits, and not too many were squared up," said Schumaker, who also doubled in the seventh inning and scored the Dodgers' fourth run on a two-out single by Gonzalez.

It was the 300th home run given up Arroyo (9-8), including a career-high and major league-worst 46 in 2011. The 14-year veteran right-hander was charged with three runs and eight hits in 5 1-3 innings, after going 4-0 with a 2.30 ERA in his previous six starts against Los Angeles. He was coming off a complete-game 11-0 victory at San Francisco on Monday.

The Dodgers got a run in the first on a two-out double by Hanley Ramirez after Yasiel Puig walked, advanced on a flyout and stole third without a throw. But the Reds tied it in the second when Bruce drove Ryu's 2-0 pitch into the right field pavilion for his 22nd home run. Since the start of the 2010 season, Bruce leads all left-handed batters with 42 homer against lefty pitchers ? including eight this season.

"I think it's helped him being around Joey Votto, and seeing how Joey hits lefties," manager Dusty Baker said. "Most guys, I think, have trouble with lefties because they don't see them (enough). I mean, it's hard enough to find a right-handed batting practice pitcher that can throw strikes ? and it's almost impossible to find a lefty to do it. But we've got two of them ? Mark Berry and Ronnie Ortegon. And we always travel with one, so I think that helps a lot.

"That's something that Barry Bonds always did in San Francisco," added Baker, who watched Bonds homer 125 times against lefties during the 10 seasons he managed baseball's career home run leader. "We always had a left-hander throwing to Barry in batting practice. So I took a page out of Barry's book, and I'd like to give Barry credit for that."

Bruce, the Reds' right fielder, also threw out Puig at first base in the fifth after the overaggressive rookie made a wide turn on his single toward the line. The play immediately followed Schumaker's homer. It was the hustle by catcher Devin Mesoraco that made it possible, because he ran up the line and took the throw.

In Thursday night's series opener, Puig made a similar wide turn around first on a single to center and ended up at third base after Choo threw the ball past first baseman Votto and the ball ended up in the stands for a two-base error.

NOTES: Ryu is 5-1 with a 1.83 ERA in 10 home starts. The Dodgers have won each of his last six outings, including three no-decisions. ... Arroyo has given up a franchise-record 238 home runs since joining the Reds in a March 2006 trade from Boston for Wily Mo Pena. ... Reds RHP Jonathan Broxton, on the disabled list since June 15 with an elbow strain, threw 20 pitches during early batting practice. Baker was noncommittal when asked about the best-case scenario for the former Dodger closer's return. ... Los Angeles pitching coach Rick Honeycutt rejoined the club after missing four games because of the death of his mother-in-law. ... Votto's consecutive game on-base streak ended at 38 after he went 0 for 3. That left Ramirez with the longest active streak in the majors at 35.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/schumakers-hr-off-arroyo-helps-dodgers-beat-reds-040517965.html

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Trends in biometric verification technology ~ TricksMode

As digital scanning and observation technologies improve and refine in tandem with increasingly powerful data recognition algorithms, the formerly nascent science of biometric identification is becoming something that holds a lot of promise for the near future and beyond.
Already the biometric technology is appearing in our identification documents, personal computing machines and is becoming increasingly common in many security and policing related areas. Soon we?re going to see biometrics hold an even more important role in all of these areas while it expands into completely new territories.
That said, let?s first take a deeper look at what exactly biometrics means before going into some of the details behind its emerging trends.
An Overview of Biometrics
Biometrics is not, strictly speaking, a highly modern science. Although many of us associate the word itself with high tech gadgets and eye scanners, by definition, biometrics is simply the process of sorting distinct individual physical traits in people and using them to identify a specific person amongst others. Thus, biometrics also includes fingerprint analysis, which has been in use by police for nearly 200 years and even further back before that by civilizations dating back to the Babylonians.
However, if we take this basic definition as explained above and join it with modern analysis technology, we get a far more diverse range of modern biometric techniques that can and do analyze highly individual specific qualities such as: fingerprints, body heat signatures, eyes (retinas or irises), walking gait, facial characteristics, vein patterns in the arms, voice sound prints and, of course, DNA.
The range of human body characteristics that can be biometrically indexed is expanding daily, although some such as fingerprints, eye features and DNA signatures are far more commonly utilized than other more exotic biometric measurement parameters. Now let?s get down to the latest in biometric trends!
Trends in Personal Computing
Personal computing is an area where the science behind biometrics has made only really limited inroads. Laptops and home PCs are now being made (and have been on the market for several years now) that can grant access only after their registered owner passes their finger through a small scanning device. However, beyond this, additional development really hasn?t gone very far.
One part of the problem lies in the fact that the most easy to use biometrics technologies for personal computing devices, which involve fingerprint recognition and eye or face scans, simply aren?t reliable enough under the tough, dynamic conditions that most users would be working with them under. This problem has been made even worse by the proliferation of tablets and smart phones as consumer substitutes to the far more stationary PC or laptop. Both of these are going to be used on noisy streets, in the rain and under dirty conditions ?all of which can lead to some serious problems with effective biometric workability. To GIVE just one example of what we?re describing: early efforts by companies like Nokia to create fingerprint scanning capacity on the screens of their touch phones became seriously screwy any time an owner touched the screen if it was wet or if that persons finders were dirty.
So far, we?re still seeing stagnant development in personal device biometrics, but the near future is looking interesting as both screen and mobile device camera technology becomes sharper. News stories such as Apple Computer?s fairly recent purchase of Biometric technology company Authentec for just under $400 million dollars are indicating some serious interest in better bio security on the part of major tech product players.
Trends In Police Forensics
In the area of Police forensics, biometrics has made a major splash. While police have been using fingerprint records to track convicted felons since at least the early 19^th century, modern police agencies have taken this old process and dramatically modernized it through heavy digitization of both fingerprint scanning and fingerprint record keeping. This has made the prints of potential criminals more widely accessible to cops worldwide.
But things don?t stop there: Biometrics is quickly becoming a police officer?s best friend and many police organizations now also use DNA and even eye scanning technology as another method of identifying potential suspects and keeping them registered for future evidence accumulation.
Even immigration police and military organizations are getting in on the biometric tech trend by deploying hand held iris scanning machines to their personnel in situations where either undocumented illegal immigrants or captured, undocumented rebel soldiers are rounded up and need to be quickly ID?d for future reference.
Next Generation ID Documents
Finally we come to the most obvious area of massive, and?widespread biometric technology deployment ?civilian population identification. Governments always like to keep track of their citizens in ways that keep certain people from easily stealing and assuming someone else?s identity or from simply slipping through the cracks and being hard to ID.
This is where biometrics comes in and in numerous countries it?s being used for both cross border traveler security and for general identification of an entire citizen population.
An example of the former can be found in the joint U.S/Canada NEXUS program, which offers special speeded up border crossing procedures to American or Canadian citizens who opt for a biometric ID tracker in their passports after they have been vetted as having clean personal records.
With the latter biometric ID use, involving general in-country populations, we have an enormous example in the Indian Government?s UID (Universal Identification) program, which is aimed at creating a fully encoded biometric ID card for every single one of India?s 1.2 billion citizens. When completed in the next few years, this will be the single largest application of biometric technology in the World.
As you can see, biometrics is here to stay. The technology behind it still needs some tweaking and existing identification procedures are still too well entrenched to disappear any time soon but the long term trends are clearly showing that the future of ID is in this powerful and secure system of identifying people.

About Author:
Stephan Jukic is a freelance writer who generally covers a variety of subjects relating to the latest changes in white hat SEO, mobile technology, marketing tech and digital security. He also loves to read and write about location-free business, portable business management and finance. When not busy writing or consulting on technology and digital security, he spends his days enjoying life?s adventures either in Canada or Mexico, where he spends part of the year. Connect with Stephan on LinkedIn.

Source: http://www.tricksmode.com/2013/07/trends-in-biometric-verification.html

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This week's Burlington Union: July 18, 2013 edition

This week's edition of the Burlington Union is available tommorow,? Thursday, July 18, There's plenty of content to read and consider, including:

Well, Burlington Union readers, you are in for a treat this week. The feature article is about a historical home in Burlington, built in 1732, known as the John Winn House (a/k/a The Hens and Chickens Tavern), which is privately owned by Tim and Tricia Lynch. Many thanks to the Lynch family for their warm hospitality and interesting tour of the house. Many of the original features remain and they have taken such good care of the property. During our interview, a neighbor and his son were visiting, and Tim Lynch's Mom Ruth stopped in, and the atmosphere is cozy and warm, and this house just has a really good vibe.

Andrew Cardinale catches us up on the latest selectmen's meeting and as promised, Part II on our Alzheimer's series-which is about a presentation given by Dr. Robert Stern, Boston University professor of neurology and overseer of all clinical research conducted at BU's Alzheimer's Center. He gave a talk audience members are probably still thinking about, titled, "Alzheimer's: A time for hope."

-We also offer you terrific Public Safety, Perspectives columns by Burlington residents Rich Caplan, Peter Copppola, and Judy Wasserman), Education, Health, Calendar, Beacon Hill Roll Call, and Your News, and the next installment of our local dining options series that focuses on interesting ethic cuisines and so much more. And if you're looking for events happening in Burlington this weekend and over the next few weeks, definitely check out the "Around Town" section on Page A2.

Read on!

To pick up a copy of the Burlington Union, visit one of these stores.

To subscribe, click here.

Source: http://www.wickedlocal.com/burlington/news/x1806125833/This-weeks-Burlington-Union-July-18-2013-edition?rssfeed=true

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Is peak oil dead? - headlines

Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Peak Oil is dead! Long live Peak Oil!
Noah Smith, Noahpinion
One of my favorite websites, The Oil Drum, is shutting down, and I am mad! Everyone is attributing the shutdown to the death of the "Peak Oil" meme, which in turn is attributed to fracking. The first is probably true; Peak Oil mania is over. But the second is false. Fracking has not killed Peak Oil. It just hasn't fit the narratives that many of the Peak Oilers spun.

The thesis of Peak Oil is simple: Global oil production will soon peak and begin to decline. But there were two possible stories that the Peak Oilers told about how this would happen:

"Good Peak Oil": In this case, we find something that's better than oil, and switch to that, just like we once transitioned away from whale oil. In this case, oil prices and production would both fall.

"Bad Peak Oil": In this case, we don't find something better than oil, and as oil becomes more scarce, the price would go up, while oil production and overall economic activity both contracted.

What we got was neither of these. Or more accurately, we got a little bit of both, coupled with something else that doesn't fit with either story.
(15 July 2013)

No Peak Oil Really Is Dead
Karl Smith, Forbes
... This is where the science gets ?cluttery.? None of this, so far,says anything about the vast kerogen cycle in general or what one might do to tap into it. It is only about these little pockets. Some Peak Oil enthusiast will acknowledge this by saying ?only the tiniest fraction of petroleum can be profitably extracted? Not to be too glib here but one?s response has to be ?how do you know, have you tried?? Because the answer is no, they haven?t tried. No one until recently tried. Because, why would you. We had not yet exhausted the over 100 year-old insight that a lot of this stuff gets trapped in little pockets. Not only that, but people were getting absurdly rich just by being the first one to find a new pocket. It was like a 100 year long gold rush.

To wit, the core of the Peak Oil hypothesis could be summed up as: sometime in the not so distant future we need to put some effort into finding new oil extraction techniques.
(17 July 2013)

Has Peak Oil Been Vindicated Or Debunked?
Matthew Yglesias, Slate
I will admit that I've always found the "Peak Oil" debate to be a little bit confusing, especially because both the words "peak" and "oil" turn out to have some ambiguity to them. But recently a couple of my favorite bloggers were debating the implications of the "unconventional oil" boom for the debate, with Karl Smith proclaiming peak oil dead while Noah Smith says it lives on. My approach would be to try to skip past some of these definitional issues and look at prices.

... We can see the impact of the unconventional oil, which has created this anomalous gap between the WTI price and the Brent price. It's a big gap. This is nothing to sneer at. Not only is it causing an economic boom in North Dakota and select portions of Texas, but it plausibly explains some of why America's overall economic performance has been so much better than Europe's. But even so, America's oil boom hasn't pushed U.S. oil prices back down to mid-aughts levels and it certainly hasn't pushed U.S. oil prices back down to 1990s levels. The good old days of genuinely abundant liquid fuel really do appear to be behind us.
(18 July 2013)

Is Peak Oil Dead or Just Postponed?
Keith Kloor, Discover
Several months ago, I wondered if the media?s fascination with peak oil, which crested in the mid-2000s, had ended. A big concern of many in the energy/sustainability nexus had found expression in popular culture

... Personally, I found much value in the high-level discussions on natural resources and energy that were a staple of The Oil Drum, even if the overall slant was one I disagreed with. So I?m sorry to see the site close down. Others are chortling and seeing its demise as further proof of peak oil?s demise.
But what if the peak oil eulogies are premature?
text.
(18 July 2013)

Peak oil, not climate change worries most Britons: Kemp
John Kemp, Reuters
Most people in Britain want to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, but due more to fears of shortages and rising prices than to fears about climate change, according to a poll developed by researchers at Cardiff University and funded by the UK Energy Research Centre.
(18 July 2013)

5 Companies That Brought Down Peak Oil
Matt DiLallo, Motley Fool
Peak Oil is dead -- or at least the website dedicated to educating the world on the theory is, as the popular Oil Drum website will cease publishing new content at end of the month. The theory just doesn't seem to have much relevance these days, when North America is in the midst of a massive energy production boom. While we are a long way from celebrating Energy Independence Day, we've at least pushed back the date when Peak Oil will again become a major topic of conversation. With that as context, let's look at five of the companies that have made Peak Oil no longer relevant.
(14 July 2013)

Source: http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-07-18/is-peak-oil-dead-headlines

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Tech News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Source: http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/techblog

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Connors Wins $50,000 Grant to Promote Financial Literacy ...

July 17, 2013

Connors State College has received a $50,000 grant to enhance the financial literacy of its students with the aim of increasing graduation and student loan repayment rates.

USA Funds, a nonprofit organization that helps American families benefit from postsecondary education, is providing the funds to the college under its endowment for student success. The endowment supports funding and in-kind services to colleges and universities to help them promote the success of their students. Jennifer Watkins, CSC Financial Aid Director and staff members have been working with USA Funds Consultant Bonnie Weaver to develop a student loan default prevention plan and carry on outreach to its student loan borrowers to counsel them as they pay back their loans.

?The USA Funds grant gives Connors the opportunity to actively prepare more students to enroll and succeed in college-level courses, while also educating them on financial responsibility,? said Dr. Tim Faltyn, CSC President. ?We?re excited about the opportunity to better educate our students on their financial responsibilities and student loan debt management.?

?

CSC will use the grant funds to provide financial literacy information to students and former students when they initially request a student loan, as they prepare to graduate, or if they encounter problems paying back their student loans. The college will use members of its President?s Leadership Class to serve as trained peer mentors, delivering personal finance information to their classmates.

In addition, the grant will fund training of CSC Financial Aid staff to better assist students with the repayment of their loans, as well as an analysis of the characteristics of former students who fail to repay their loans. The analysis will help the staff tailor programs to prevent student loan defaults.

?Helping our students more effectively manage their time and money prepares them for the repayment of the loans that helped pay for their education and increases their prospects for completing their academic programs,? said Watkins. ?Financial problems are among the leading reasons why students drop out and fail to earn their degrees.?

The activities were recommended in a default prevention plan that Watkins and the financial aid staff completed In February. The college also conducts a program of regular contact with former students to assist those having trouble paying off their student loans. CSC also plans to implement an online personal finance curriculum, dealing with budgeting, saving and spending, goal setting and achievement, and managing credit.

For more information on USA Funds, visit www.usafunds.org.

Source: http://connorsstate.edu/connors-wins-50000-grant-to-promote-financial-literacy/

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21 children die after eating school lunch in India

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Source: hosted.ap.org --- Wednesday, July 17, 2013
PATNA, India (AP) -- At least 21 children died and more than two dozen others were sick after eating a free school lunch that was tainted with insecticide, Indian officials said Wednesday.... ...

Source: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_INDIA_SCHOOLCHILDREN_DEATHS?SITE=CODUR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

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