Brady Pops Question With Diamond Solitaire

Star Couple Planning Wedding

BOSTON -- Tom Brady got down on one knee and proposed to girlfriend Gisele Bundchen in Los Angeles during the weekend, according to People's Web site.


Images: Tom & Gisele

The New England Patriots quarterback proposed to the 28-year-old super model on Friday. Brady, 31, gave Bundchen a diamond solitaire ring, and the couple is now planning their nuptials.

The couple is considering a wedding in Costa Rica, where Bündchen has a home, the magazine reported.A knee injury in the Pats' 2008 season-opening game sidelined the quarterback for the year. He underwent surgery in October.

Normal couple weds at Taco Bell

Jan 10th, 2009 | t NORMAL, Ill. -- Wedding bells meant Taco Bell for Paul and Caragh Brooks.

Customers inside the fast-food restaurant continued to order tacos and burritos as the couple sat Friday in an orange booth at Taco Bell and exchanged vows.

"It's appropriate," groom Paul Brooks said. "It's an offbeat relationship."

Employees displayed hot sauce packets labeled with the words "Will you marry me?" They decorated the restaurant with streamers and balloons.

The bride wore a $15 hot pink dress and the entire wedding cost about $200. Several dozen guests looked on as the couple's friend, Ryan Green of Normal, administered the vows while wearing a T-shirt. He was ordained online.

"This is the way to go -- there's no stress," said the groom's mother, Kathy Brooks.

Caragh Brooks, 21, of Australia, met Paul Brooks, 30, on an Internet dating Web site. They already had the same last name.

The couple wrote back and forth and talked on the phone for nine months before Caragh Brooks moved to the United States.

"We have the same brain, just in two bodies," Paul Brooks said. "We think alike in virtually every manner. We have the same interests, viewpoints."

He proposed on New Year's Eve and, because they like to spend time at the local Taco Bell, they decided to wed there.

"I would never have expected in my life in working here there would be a wedding," restaurant manager Carl Hamlow said.

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Information from: The Pantagraph, http://www.pantagraph.com

Nintendo game is adult-only

By JONATHAN WEINBERG

Not for kids ... Grand Theft Auto

A COMPUTER game featuring drugs and gangland killing has become the first title to be handed an adults-only rating so it can be sold for the family-friendly Nintendo DS console.

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars was awarded the 18+ certificate by the British Board of Film Classification on Friday.

It is made by a Leeds-based studio owned by US firm Rockstar, and will now go on sale on March 20.

On its website, the regulator advises it contains “very strong language and drug references” while packaging for the adventure - the latest in the controversial Grand Theft Auto series - shows images of guns, knives and swords.

Sam Houser, founder of Rockstar Games, said: "We are incredibly excited to share this enormous and uncompromising Grand Theft Auto experience with DS fans."

But its arrival on the Nintendo DS marks a major change for the handheld device.

It had previously been lauded for its universal appeal with everyone from young children to pensioners.

The vast majority of its games are suitable for under-12s and in 2008, sales of its titles in Britain rose by 28 per cent to 19.1 million.

The increase was thanks partly to the huge popularity of games which use puzzles and problem solving to enhance life skills, for example Professor Layton or the Brain Training series.

According to the BBFC's report, makers Rockstar did not need to make any cuts to the game after the finished product was submitted for classification, unlike the firm's previous release Manhunt 2.

It was twice refused a certificate by the BBFC before a compromise was found and it finally went into shops late last year.

But speaking about Chinatown Wars in September, Rockstar's co-founder Dan Houser told Edge magazine: "It can't be softened to make it family-friendly – that's not the game we're making. We've never not done well by sticking to our guns."

He added: "Nintendo wanted us to make GTA, and we wanted to make a game on their platform. They didn't want us to make a GTA for kids, and we weren't interested in making a game we wouldn't normally make."

Entertainment

Tim Ingham, Associate Editor of games industry magazine MCV, said: "The DS is a console that doesn't exclusively cater for children and families even though it provides a wealth of suitable entertainment for them.

"Nobody in the industry would like to see retail confused enough to put this into the hands of under-18s and therefore it being promimently labelled is a good thing.

"This is not a game for children and parents have over the past few years started to pay more attention to the age ratings on packaging.

"It is vital they continue to heed this advice."

The Grand Theft Auto games have long courted controversy. Versions for consoles such as the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 have in the past been slammed for their themes of gang violence, drug dealing, stealing cars and sleeping with prostitutes.

In 2006, Sega Casino for the Nintendo DS did go on sale with an 18+ rating but this was through the gaming industry's voluntary code of self-regulation rather than a legal requirement from the BBFC.

Nintendo and Rockstar Games both declined to comment.

New Zealand man surfs with killer whales

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – A New Zealand man surfed with three killer-whales at the weekend, saying the waves were too good to be put off by the predators, a local newspaper reported.

Craig Hunter, who has been surfing off New Zealand's North Island for almost 50 years, told the Dominion Post he spotted an adult orca and two young calves lurking just beyond the breakers as was surfing Saturday.

"There was no way I was going in because the waves were too good," Hunter said, adding that this was not the first time he had surfed with an orca. He said he was too old to be bothered by the possibility of being attacked.

"My outlook is they are big enough and quick enough. If they thought I was a seal, I'd be long gone." There have been no known cases of orca attacking humans, the Dominion Post said.

(Reporting by Adrian Bathgate, Editing by Mark Bendeich)

V

Thursday, Jan. 08, 2009

Photo-illustration for TIME by Andree Kahlmorgan; Images by istock Photo

Doctors used to have poetic names for diseases. A physician would speak of consumption because the illness seemed to eat you from within. Now we just use the name of the bacterium that causes the illness: tuberculosis. Psychology, though, remains a profession practiced partly as science and partly as linguistic art.

Because our knowledge of the mind's afflictions remains so limited, psychologists — even when writing in academic publications — still deploy metaphors to understand difficult disorders. And possibly the most difficult of all to fathom — and thus one of the most creatively named — is the mysterious-sounding borderline personality disorder (BPD). University of Washington psychologist Marsha Linehan, one of the world's leading experts on BPD, describes it this way: "Borderline individuals are the psychological equivalent of third-degree-burn patients. They simply have, so to speak, no emotional skin. Even the slightest touch or movement can create immense suffering."

Borderlines are the patients psychologists fear most. As many as 75% hurt themselves, and approximately 10% commit suicide — an extraordinarily high suicide rate (by comparison, the suicide rate for mood disorders is about 6%). Borderline patients seem to have no internal governor; they are capable of deep love and profound rage almost simultaneously. They are powerfully connected to the people close to them and terrified by the possibility of losing them — yet attack those people so unexpectedly that they often ensure the very abandonment they fear. When they want to hold, they claw instead. Many therapists have no clue how to treat borderlines. And yet diagnosis of the condition appears to be on the rise.

A 2008 study of nearly 35,000 adults in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry found that 5.9% — which would translate into 18 million Americans — had been given a BPD diagnosis. As recently as 2000, the American Psychiatric Association believed that only 2% had BPD. (In contrast, clinicians diagnose bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in about 1% of the population.) BPD has long been regarded as an illness disproportionately affecting women, but the latest research shows no difference in prevalence rates for men and women. Regardless of gender, people in their 20s are at higher risk for BPD than those older or younger.

What defines borderline personality disorder — and makes it so explosive — is the sufferers' inability to calibrate their feelings and behavior. When faced with an event that makes them depressed or angry, they often become inconsolable or enraged. Such problems may be exacerbated by impulsive behaviors: overeating or substance abuse; suicide attempts; intentional self-injury. (The methods of self-harm that borderlines choose can be gruesomely creative. One psychologist told me of a woman who used fingernail clippers to pull off slivers of her skin."

Click here for the rest of the TIME ARTICLE

No Jail for Madoff says Judge

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- A judge ruled Monday that Bernard Madoff would not be sent to jail pending trial, declining a request by prosecutors to revoke the bail of the financier accused in a $50 billion fraud case.

Madoff has been under house arrest since posting $10 million bail against his $7 million Manhattan apartment, where he lives with his wife, and his residence in France.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald Ellis of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York added conditions to the bail, including "restrictions of transfer of all property whatsoever, wherever located" belonging to Madoff.

The judge also ruled that Madoff compile an inventory of all "valuable portable items" in his Manhattan home. The judge required that prosecutors employ a security company to check the inventory every two weeks and to inspect outgoing mail.

Prosecutors have been trying to put Madoff behind bars since last week. That's when the U.S. Department of Justice filed documents to Ellis accusing Madoff of shipping five packages containing more than $1 million worth of diamond-studded jewelry to family and friends, in violation of bail.

Prosecutors said last Wednesday that Madoff was trying to protect these assets - which included 15 watches, four brooches, necklaces and rings - from seizure, preventing alleged victims from recovering their losses.

But Madoff's defense attorney, Ira Lee Sorkin, said Madoff didn't know he violated bail when he mailed these "sentimental" items, and that some of the packages were actually sent by his wife.

Prosecutors on Thursday urged the judge once again to revoke bail, accusing Madoff of planning to transfer up to $300 million worth of assets - including 100 signed and ready-to-send checks found in his office, totaling $173 million.

He was arrested in December and charged with one count of securities fraud for allegedly stealing up to $50 billion from investors. If convicted, the 70-year-old could face up to 20 years in prison and a $5 million fine.

Madoff's alleged scheme disrupted an already fragile financial system, affecting hedge funds and well-heeled investors from Wall Street, Palm Beach, Fla., and Europe. Alleged victims included Banco Santander (STD) in Spain and HSBC (HBC) in Britain, as well as director Steven Spielberg and actor Kevin Bacon.

In a Ponzi scheme, money from new investors is used to pay off early investors to create the appearance of legitimate returns.

A 42mpg Diesel Roadster- fun as it is efficient

Diesels are fuel efficient and practical, but they're dogged by a reputation for being about as much fun as a tax audit. VW's worked hard to change that perception with cars like the Jetta TDI, but it might be the sweet Concept BlueSport roadster that finally convinces Americans diesels are cool.

The mid-engined sports car made its world debut at the Detroit auto show, and although it's just a concept, there's no reason why VW couldn't - or shouldn't - build it. The car gets 42 mpg and emits about as much CO2 as a Toyota Prius, and it is emissions-legal in all 50 states so even car-crazy Californians could buy one.

BlueSport relies upon three technologies VW believes will become more prevalent as the auto industry develops cleaner, more fuel-efficient cars: turbocharging, automatic start-stop technology and regenerative braking. "The future of Volkswagen belongs to cars like this," company chairman Martin Winkerhorn said as he unveiled the car, which could appear in showrooms in 2011.

We sure hope so.

Volkswagen has been toying with the idea of a two-seat, mid-engined sports car since unveiling the Concept R in 2003. It rolled out another one, the EcoRacer, two years later at the Tokyo auto show. Such a car always seemed like a long shot, though given it would compete with the Audi TT and perhaps the Porsche Boxster. But VW keeps teasing us, and along comes the BlueSport, built with off-the-shelf parts to keep costs down - and raise our hopes that production might be financially feasible.

VW started with an aluminum chassis and body to minimize weight, then shaved more weight with an aluminum manual folding top, lightweight leather seats with one-piece backs and other tricks. As a result, the 13-foot-long car weighs just 2,640 pounds, making it about the same size and weight as a Honda Fit.

Propulsion comes from a 2.0-liter turbocharged common-rail TDI clean diesel similar to the mill in the 41-mpg Jetta TDI - named Green Car of the Year by Green Car Journal. VW says the engine produces 177 horsepower and a very respectable 258 pound-feet of torque. It's enough to propel the BlueSport to 60 mph in 6.2 seconds and a top speed of 140 mph. Power flows through a six-speed paddle-shifted DSG transmission with dual clutches. Start-stop technology helps improve fuel economy, and regenerative braking provides additional energy for on-board systems like air conditioning.

The styling, led by VW group design director Walter de'Silva, reflects the design language of the Scirocco and new Golf and looks like an angrier, more muscular Audi TT, though the front end also bears a similarity to the Honda S2000 - a car that, like the Lotus Elise and Miata, almost certainly would be the car's competitors should it see production.

"It is the symbiosis of outstanding technology and timeless Volkswagen design that makes this car an exceptional sports car," de'Silva said. "Its styling is clear and is reduced to the essentials."

VW is among the few automakers that didn't take a beating last year. Although sales were down for the industry as a whole, VW sold 6.2 million cars last year, a 6 percent increase over 2007. "We all know 2009 is going to be a very difficult year for the auto industry," Winterkorn said. "So far Volkswagen group has handled the market well."

We'd wager VW would handle the market even better if it built the BlueConcept.

Denver Broncos to make Patriots' Josh McDaniels new coach

The Denver Broncos reached agreement with New England offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels on Sunday night to make him their new head coach.

ESPN senior NFL analyst Chris Mortensen first reported the hiring, which was confirmed by team spokesman Patrick Smyth. The team has called a 7 p.m. ET news conference.

McDaniels, 32, replaces Mike Shanahan, who was fired Dec. 30 after 14 years on the job. The team is expected to announce the deal on Monday.

Cornerback Dre' Bly was one of many Broncos players excited about the team's new head coach. "That's enthusiasm, man," Bly said, according to the Rocky Mountain News. "Coach Shanahan had a lot of respect. Guys looked up to him and had a good relationship. But with a guy like him, it's like with [Broncos assistant] Jeremy Bates -- exciting, enthusiasm. It's like what Mike Tomlin brings to Pittsburgh. He brings excitement to that team. It's good for our team. And I hope we respond to him." McDaniels reportedly already has started filling his staff with the Broncos. NFL.com reported that former 49ers head coach Mike Nolan is expected to join Denver as the team's defensive coordinator. Broncos owner Pat Bowlen sent COO Joe Ellis to Boston Thursday for a lengthy second interview with McDaniels, who, according to sources, was one of two finalists along with Vikings defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier.

McDaniels becomes the third member of Belichick's coaching staff to be named an NFL head coach in recent years, following Romeo Crennel, who took over Cleveland in 2005 and was fired after this past season, and Eric Mangini, who went to the Jets in 2006. Mangini was also fired after this season and has since been named to replace Crennel in Cleveland.

McDaniels has worked in the NFL for eight seasons, all with New England. He joined the Patriots on March 1, 2001 as a personnel assistant in the scouting department and assisted the defensive coaching staff for three seasons. He began serving as the Patriots' quarterbacks coach in 2004 and was named offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach on Jan. 20, 2006.

Josh McDaniels bio

• Won three Super Bowls in eight seasons with Patriots
• Patriots offensive coordinator/QB coach since 2006
• Patriots set NFL records for points, TDs scored in 2007
• Will be 12th head coach in Broncos history

McDaniels began his coaching career in 1999 as a graduate assistant at Michigan State, working under head coach Nick Saban.

The Broncos won it all in 1997 and '98 but have slipped into mediocrity, winning just one playoff game in the decade since John Elway retired.

Under McDaniel's tutelage, Tom Brady threw for a record 50 touchdowns last season and the Patriots came within a whisker of the first 19-0 season in NFL history.

McDaniels' reputation grew ever larger this year when Brady was lost with a knee injury in the opener and Matt Cassel, who hadn't started a game since high school, led the Patriots to an 11-5 record.

McDaniels will inherit an explosive offense that appears to be one healthy running back away from greatness and a dismal defense that needs another overhaul. That led many observers to believe defensive minds such as the Giants' Steve Spagnuolo or Frazier had the inside track for the job in Denver.

Frazier was unaware he was out of the running for the Broncos' job when contacted by the Associated Press on Sunday night. He's in the running for coaching vacancies in St. Louis and Detroit.

"It would mean a lot to have that opportunity," Frazier said. "I'm not going to lose any sleep. It would be a great opportunity, but we're close to doing something special here. We'll see what happens."

The other candidates were Raheem Morris of Tampa Bay, Rick Dennison of Denver, Jason Garrett of Dallas and Todd Bowles of Miami.

Jay Cutler, who broke several passing records this year and was selected for his first Pro Bowl, publicly criticized Bowlen's firing of Shanahan and the owner quickly reached out to his franchise quarterback, telling him he'd keep him in the loop on the search.

"Hopefully we can continue to improve. I'm hoping we can keep some of our offensive coaches, keep some of those guys around," wide receiver Brandon Stokley told AP on Sunday night. "I think we did a good job. Hopefully we can keep getting better and bring new ideas. We have a lot of young talent."

Even Shanahan suggested on his way out the door that his successor should keep the offensive staff intact. Cutler is particularly fond of his position coach, Jeremy Bates, who called the plays last season.

And Bowlen is high on running backs coach Bobby Turner, who helped turn Terrell Davis into an NFL great but whose masterpiece came in 2008, when he helped keep Denver in the playoff hunt despite losing an astonishing seven tailbacks to injured reserve.

McDaniels does have some defensive experience. He helped the defensive staff in New England for three seasons before moving to offense.

While the Broncos' offense is stocked with rising stars such as Cutler, Tony Scheffler, Brandon Marshall, Ryan Clady, Ryan Harris and Eddie Royal, the defense has been left bare by a series of personnel mistakes and dismal drafts under Shanahan.

Despite an injury epidemic in their backfield, the Broncos' offense ranked second in the NFL in yardage as Cutler set several franchise passing records in his third pro season.

The defense, on the other hand, ranked 29th, allowed an NFL-high 448 points and managed a measly 13 takeaways under Bob Slowik, Denver's third defensive boss in three years.

The result was an 8-8 record and a colossal collapse. They became the first team in NFL history to blow a three-game divisional lead with three weeks left, and Shanahan was fired 48 hours later.

The Broncos are 24-24 in three seasons since losing to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 2005 AFC Championship Game and their three-year playoff drought is their longest since 1980-82.

Chris Mortensen is a senior NFL analyst for ESPN.

Ridiculous Tottler Gymnast

Amazing Tottler Gymnast good enough to be in the olympics

Ridiculous Tottler Gymnast - Watch more Free Videos

Gene parents plan more breast cancer-free babies

Sarah-Kate Templeton Health Editor

The parents of the first British baby screened to be free of a breast cancer gene have spoken publicly about their “beautiful” daughter - and revealed that they plan to have more children free of the hereditary condition.

“She is a beautiful, healthy baby girl,” the child’s mother told The Sunday Times in her only interview. “She has 10 fingers and 10 toes. She’s 100% healthy.”

The parents are remaining anonymous to protect the baby, who was born last week. They are pioneers of a breakthrough in the fight against “hereditary” cancer. Though the parents could conceive naturally, they underwent IVF and genetic screening because three generations of women in the husband’s family had suffered from breast cancer. The procedure ensured that a gene associated with the cancer would not be present in the baby.

The 26-year-old mother said: “To be able to look at our daughter and to know that she doesn’t have the gene is a massive sigh of relief for us. We have eliminated that risk and that is priceless.”

She revealed that the couple have a stock of healthy embryos in storage which they plan to use to have more children without the hereditary condition.

Her husband’s mother, grandmother and sister have suffered breast cancer and endured gruelling chemotherapy and radiotherapy sessions in their battles against the disease.

The baby’s 28-year-old father said: “A massive amount of credit has to go to my wife for undergoing what was effectively an invasive procedure of IVF for a problem which wasn’t her own but was from my side of the family. Talking about how we felt about it probably brought us closer together.”

The couple produced 11 embryos, of which five were found to be free of the gene. The spare healthy embryos have been frozen and the couple hope to be able to have brothers and sisters for their daughter. They do not know whether the embryos in storage will be sufficient to complete their family.

“It depends how many kids we want and, when we implant the embryos, if they take,” the mother said.

The baby’s father said it was a great privilege to be able to pioneer the treatment and to know that he had spared any future children the blight of breast cancer.

“There are many pitfalls my children may go through in

life that I cannot predict for them. We do know about this one and that is why we felt a duty to do something about it.”

The couple hope their treatment, which has prompted a debate about the ethics of embryo screening, will help other families to avoid heartache and suffering.

The mother said: “Having watched my husband’s family go through what they have been through, knowing that [my daughter] doesn’t need to go through that, makes it all worthwhile. I hope this encourages others to do the same.”

Undergoing IVF, she said, was a small price to pay. In the treatment, which was conducted at the private assisted conception unit at University College London hospitals, the couple created embryos in vitro so that they could be screened for a faulty gene called BRCA-1, which ran in the father’s family. If they had conceived naturally there would have been a 50% chance of their child carrying the gene. A female carrier would then have faced an 80% chance of developing breast cancer and a 60% chance of ovarian cancer.

Though cure rates for breast cancer are improving, the illness can still exact a heavy toll on survivors.

The baby’s paternal grandmother, who has suffered from breast cancer, said: “Not everyone is fortunate enough to be cured of breast cancer and the treatments that women have along the way are horrific.

“I went through a year of chemotherapy and radiotherapy and this had a huge impact on our family. To know that this child, and the generation after her, will not have this cloud hanging over them is just wonderful.”

She said the couple’s treatment, called preimplantation genetic diagnosis, had removed the “sword of Damocles” that hung over the family.

Critics accuse doctors of pioneering a technology that leads science further down the road to “designer babies”. They point out that a female gene carrier may not develop breast cancer in adulthood and that, even if she does, the disease now has a high cure rate.

Paul Serhal, lecturer at University College London and medical director of the assisted conception unit, said: “This little girl will not face the spectre of developing this genetic form of breast cancer or ovarian cancer in her adult life.

“The parents will have been spared the risk of inflicting this disease on their daughter. The lasting legacy is the eradication of the transmission of this form of cancer that has blighted these families for generations.” The baby’s father said: “You never hear people who have been through breast cancer bringing up those points. It is a devastating illness.”

Serhal and colleagues at University College have been credited with pioneering the screening out of hereditary cancers, including genetic forms of bowel cancer and cancer of the retina.

It is understood that, since they have been working on this technology, babies have been born in America free of the breast cancer gene.

Last year an Israeli woman was reported to be in the advanced stages of pregnancy after her embryos were screened for it.

About 5% of the 44,000 cases of breast cancer in Britain each year are estimated to be caused by the BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 genes, both of which can be detected in embryos.

Many women who test positive for the gene have their breasts removed as a precaution.

EATING THE WORLD'S HOTTEST PEPPER

Badass Trailer for Neo-Noir Sci-Fi Franklyn

Source: IGN

by Alex Billington

Reality hasn't got a prayer. Franklyn is an awesome indie neo-noir sci-fi film that we've been following for more than a year. We first debuted a very bootlegged trailer for it last October that has since been removed, but IGN has finally delivered the first official trailer today and it truly kicks some serious ass. This could be one of those incredible sci-fi films that unfortunately goes unnoticed and becomes a cult classic that every film geek loves. While I do still hope that it becomes a hit, I've got a feeling it's probably going to stay off the radar. All I know is that this looks like the next phenomenal V for Vendetta. Thoughts?

Watch the badass trailer for Franklyn:

Preest is a masked vigilante detective, searching for his nemesis on the streets of Meanwhile City, a monolithic fantasy metropolis ruthlessly governed by faith and religious fervor. Esser is a broken man, searching for his wayward son amongst the rough streets of London's homeless. Milo is a heartbroken thirty-something desperately trying to find a way back to the purity of first love. Emilia is a beautiful art student; her suicidal art projects are becoming increasingly more complex and deadly.

Franklyn is both written and directed by Gerald McMorrow, who is making his directorial debut after writing and directing a sci-fi short in 2002 called Thespian X. The film already premiered at the London Film Festival last year, but doesn't have a US distributor yet. Hopefully it will find one soon, because it's already due out in theaters in England next month. Stay tuned for more on Franklyn in 2009!

Honda Insight is the Real Hybrid Champ

The new Honda Insight is smaller than the Toyota Prius, but a compact hybrid drivetrain and battery makes it just as roomy inside.

The new Honda Insight hybrid promises to revolutionize the hybrid market by making gas-electric cars affordable. But the five-door hatchback with a rock-bottom price isn't the Prius killer Honda might have hoped for.

Honda isn't saying exactly what the car unveiled today at the Detroit auto show will cost when it rolls into showrooms on April 22 (Earth Day) but it will undercut the Toyota Prius by several thousand dollars. That won't be enough to knock a car that's synonymous with hybrid technology from its pedestal, but the 2010 Insight poses the first credible threat to Toyota's dominance of the hybrid market.

It's widely expected to cost no more than $20,000, and Honda almost certainly will sell every one of the 100,000 Insights destined for North America this year. Analysts say as many as half those sales could be siphoned away from Toyota. The next-generation Prius will debut during the show.

"The Insight has the potential to put the Prius in a world of hurt," says George Peterson, president of industry analysis firm AutoPacific.

But the Insight has more than a great price going for it. With its stellar fuel economy, snappy acceleration and clever interactive dashboard designed to help drivers maximize efficiency, the Insight is the world's first fun hybrid.

The Insight hybrid features Honda's Ecological Drive Assist System, an interactive dashboard display that offers real-time feedback on your driving style to help you maximize efficiency.

Honda spent more than two years developing the car, which draws its name from the funky two-seater Insight hybrid that was the first gas-electric vehicle sold in America when it was introduced in 1999. The car never quite caught on, and Honda could only watch as the Prius outsold Honda's hybrids by four to one. Honda discontinued the Insight in 2006 and pulled the plug on the Accord hybrid the following year.

Tired of watching from the sidelines as Toyota dominated the field, the company decided the best way to close the gap was to make hybrids as cheap as they are efficient. "We want to open up the market to consumers who might not have considered hybrids in the past because of price considerations," says company spokesman Sage Marie, noting that although the Prius starts at $22,000, they often go for several thousand more than that when you can find one.

The new Insight builds on the Integrated Motor Assist technology underpinning the Civic hybrid, which remains in Honda's lineup and is slightly larger than the Insight. It sandwiches a 13-horsepower electric motor between the 88-horsepower four-cylinder engine and the continuously variable transmission. The combination delivers 98 horsepower and enough torque to let you accelerate away from a traffic light with a grin.

Honda's system isn't quite as fuel efficient as Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive, but with an estimated 40 mpg in the city and 43 on the highway, it's pretty close to the EPA's figures for the 2009 Prius. The compact size and lower cost of Honda's technology offers other advantages though. While smaller than the Prius, the Insight offers almost as much interior room and actually has more cargo room, thanks to a smaller electronic control unit and more efficient 5.75-amphere-hour, 100-volt, nickel-metal hydride battery under the rear seat.

The Insight builds on the Integrated Motor Assist technology underpinning the Civic hybrid, and mates an 88-horsepower four-cylinder engine to a 13-horsepower electric motor driven by a nickel-metal hydride battery.

The interior has lots of clever touches -- an iPod holder, storage compartments that can be reconfigured about a bazillion ways and, in a stroke of genius, a storage slot under the cargo floor for the retractable cargo cover. Options include a navi system, Bluetooth and iPod integration, though including those will probably bump the price above 20 grand. But the coolest gadget comes standard in every model -- the interactive Ecological Drive Assist System.

Eco Assist uses a dashboard display and speedometer backlighting that effectively turn hypermiling -- the fine art of maximizing fuel efficiency -- into a videogame that coaches you on your driving style. There's also an Econ Mode that decreases throttle sensitivity, reduces air-conditioning demand and pulls a few other under-hood tricks to maximize fuel efficiency.

During a day behind the wheel last month, we managed an impressive 42.4 mpg without even trying. When we pushed the Econ Mode button and used Eco Assist to mind our hypermiling P's and Q's, the Insight returned an amazing 65.6 mpg. That's on par with the best figures we've seen from the Prius.

The irony is the Insight is the first hybrid with the driving dynamics that might encourage you to ignore your inner environmentalist and just have fun. While we didn't drag race a Prius, our seat-of-the-pants impression is the Insight has snappier acceleration, not to mention more responsive steering, better brakes and superior handling. The fully loaded EX version even offers shift paddles mounted on the steering wheel. The Insight isn't as sporty as, say, a Civic Si, but it's by no means a dull car.

Honda has packed a lot into the Insight's small and inexpensive package, and industry analysts say it may well usher in the "new era of affordability" for hybrids that company CEO Takeo Fukui promised last fall. Toyota and Hyundai already have plans to offer gas-electric models in the Insight's price range, industry watchers say, and it's only a matter of time before other automakers follow suit.

"Honda may set a new benchmark for others to shoot for with regard to cost, packaging and content," says Joe Langley, an auto industry analyst with CSM Worldwide. "We should start to see prices come down. This is the first step."

Killers in the ICU

A new system makes tracking healthcare serial killers easier

By Jessica Snyder Sachs Posted 01.12.2009 at 10:46 am 0 Comments

Poisoning?: iStockphoto

High on the back wall of the New Jersey Poison Center in Newark, beyond a display case filled with bottles of ant killer, antifreeze and other ingredients of noteworthy cases, hangs an electronic map of the state. It displays dozens of glowing red dots. Each marks the origin of a call received over the previous 24 hours. Updates sweep down the map every 10 minutes, and the staff knows where to expect clusters based on population. “This is one way that computerization can help us pick up unexpected hotspots,” says medical director Steven Marcus. “But it’s no substitute for the way a person can recognize suspicious patterns.”

Marcus is referring to how toxicologists got wind of New Jersey’s most infamous serial killer. In June 2003, a pharmacist at Somerset Medical Center in Somerville called the poison center after a patient nearly died of digoxin overdose. The woman wasn’t supposed to be on the heart medication at all, and the pharmacist wanted to know whether a Korean mushroom tea she had drunk might contain a botanical version of the drug. The poison-center staff ruled out that possibility. But they remembered that case when, a short time later, they got another call from Somerset, this time involving another life-threatening overdose.

“That’s when we asked, ‘What the hell is going on over there? Have you had any other unexplained overdoses?’ ” Marcus recalls. The hospital pharmacist admitted that there had been two insulin overdoses in the same intensive-care unit. “We told them they needed to call the police. They likely had an Angel of Death on their hands,” Marcus says. Hospital administrators waited another four months—and five more suspicious deaths—before they reported their fears about Charles Cullen, the nurse who later pled guilty to killing 29 patients at medical centers across New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

“Unfortunately, Charles Cullen was far from unique,” says forensic nurse Beatrice Yorker of California State University–Los Angeles. In the first tally of its kind, Yorker and her colleagues have documented 90 criminal prosecutions of health-care workers charged with serial killings of patients between 1970 and 2006 worldwide, 36 of them in the U.S. To date, 54 of the cases have resulted in convictions associated with more than 2,000 deaths.

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SciTech, Jessica Snyder Sachs, forensics, health, january 2009, medicine, poison, toxicology, DMD

At Indiana-Purdue University Indianapolis, criminologist Kenna Quinet estimates that America’s serial medical killers murder between 500 and 1,000 patients a year. Next to Cullen’s 16-year killing spree, Quinet cites the long run of Michael Swango, an American physician suspected in as many as 60 murders and convicted in 2000 of three.

These dark angels aren’t practicing euthanasia, adds Katherine Ramsland, a forensic psychologist at DeSales University and the author of Inside the Minds of Healthcare Serial Killers. They kill to ease only their own pain. “Cullen’s murders clearly increased whenever he was going through a difficult situation in his personal life,” she says. “As with so many serial killers, he seemed to empower himself with his murders.”

Cullen had been fired multiple times from other hospitals; each time, he simply moved on to a nearby facility. Once he was caught, his case sparked a flurry of attention and calls for reform. New Jersey passed laws mandating that hospitals report disciplinary actions to state medical boards, and New Jersey senators Jon Corzine (now the state’s governor) and Frank Lautenberg sent a letter to the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration demanding that it begin to register such disciplinary information in a National Practitioner Data Bank. The American Hospital Association convened a task force to produce guidelines to assure greater patient safety.

Yet four years later, the task force hasn’t produced the promised guidelines, AHA spokesman David Allen says. And the Health Resources and Services Administration has drawn up plans but hasn’t implemented them.

So what’s a hospital—or patient—to do? Various proposals have been floated, such as “death radar” software that would flag high death rates associated with a given employee, or restrict access to potentially lethal medications. But Yorker argues that the best tool is a well-trained staff. “What I teach nurses is how hospitals can be crime scenes,” she says of her forensic-nursing courses. Adds Quinet, “It’s quite common for colleagues to have long-standing nicknames like ‘Dr. Death’ for some of these killers. But still they refuse to believe that the person is actually capable of murder.” One even jokingly referred to himself as an “Angel of Death” when others noticed that his shifts appeared jinxed.

As for protecting yourself the next time you’re in the hospital? “Call me paranoid,” says Marcus, “but when I’m in that hospital bed and someone comes in with a drug, I want to know what it is and what it’s for.”

Stealth Bomber/Fighter Reborn

The Air Force wants a new bomber equipped with 21st-century technology. That could mean stealthier surface materials and laser weapons—and it might even skip the pilot

By Dawn Stover Posted 01.09.2009 at 10:58 am 3 Comments

Bomb Squad: A Boeing–Lockheed Martin coalition is competing with Northrop Grumman to build the Next Generation Bomber, a mid-range stealth aircraft set to arrive in 2018. Northrop’s concept, seen here, has a kite-like shape similar to the company’s X-47B Navy attack drone. Nick Kaloterakis (See it bigger!)

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The B-2 stealth bomber, assisted by midair refuelings, can fly a 44-hour mission to the other side of the world, take out targets using laser-guided smart munitions, then sneak out of enemy territory undetected. Yet it runs on Intel 286 processors -- state of the art in 1982, but these days, not so much.

Yes, the Air Force's stealth-bomber fleet is aging. By 2037, the Air Force plans to build a large, supersonic stealth bomber that can relieve the B-2 of duty. In the meantime, though, the military needs a stopgap, which is why it wants to build about 100 aircraft like the one you see here: the Next Generation Bomber, set to arrive in 2018.

Boeing and Lockheed are currently working together on a design for the bomber, in competition with Northrop Grumman. The Air Force won't announce the full list of final specifications for the new plane until later this year, but the basics are clear. This should be a subsonic craft capable of flying up to 2,000 miles before refueling from an airborne tanker, while carrying between 14,000 and 28,000 pounds of ordnance, possibly including nuclear weapons.

The bomber will use the same bat-wing shape of a B-2, which means no tail to reflect radar signals, and improvements in two key areas -- surface design and surface coating -- could give the new bomber a radar signature as small as one tenth that of a mosquito. (Today's stealth bombers are believed to appear on radar screens as being about the size of a small bird.) Advanced computer modeling will make it possible to design shapes (sure to be kept classified) that can disappear even more effectively from radar screens. Then there's the plane's surface. The B-2 uses a rubbery skin that contains tiny beads coated with ferrite; radar waves induce a magnetic field in the coating that converts the radio energy to heat. The problem is, this coating is fragile and easily damaged by bad weather. The Next Generation Bomber will have a radar-absorbent coating that can withstand rough flight conditions.

The new craft could also have a major defensive advantage over today's bombers -- fighter-jet capabilities drawn from the F-22 Raptor. Air-to-air missiles would defend the bomber from attacking aircraft. Possible onboard microwaves or laser weapons could destroy incoming missiles or radar stations on the ground. For particularly dangerous missions in which stealth is less of a concern, the bomber could fly at the center of a protective "wolf pack"; this group of fighter jets, drones and guided missiles will travel in formation around the bomber, organizing automatically by sending signals to one another using radar and satellites.

The most intriguing possibility of all, though, is the persistent rumor that the Next Generation Bomber is actually cover for a secret "black" program to develop an unmanned nuclear-capable bomber. Last spring, Aviation Week laid out the case: Funding for the Next Generation Bomber is nowhere to be found in the most recent Air Force budget, yet financial results released by Northrop last April show $2 billion in new "classified programs" at the company's aircraft division. Northrop, which built the B-2, more recently won the contract to build the X-47B, a Navy demonstrator drone that will fly later this year. Because the company had previously proposed building a bigger version of the X-47, many experts believe that the black bomber rumored to be under development at Northrop is an unmanned aircraft derived from both the X-47 and the B-2 -- like, say, an unmanned variation on the Next Generation Bomber. For Boeing's part, its president of advanced systems, Darryl Davis, told the Seattle Times last January that his company was "agnostic" about whether the plane would be manned or unmanned.

Why would the Air Force prefer to skip the pilot? Simple: An unmanned craft would be smaller, cheaper, and have almost unlimited endurance. "Without a pilot, you can remain over the target area for days at a time," says John Pike, director of the Virginia-based think tank GlobalSecurity.org. "You've always got air power on call." Pike says the Air Force "got religion" about unmanned planes in Iraq, where more than 1,000 smaller drones have been successfully used for reconnaissance and air strikes. This year marks the first time in history that the Air Force will buy more unmanned planes than manned ones.

That said, it's one thing to have a small unmanned plane carry conventional bombs and missiles but quite another to load up a robot plane with 28,000 pounds of nuclear weapons. As a recent congressional report put it, a nuclear-equipped robot bomber is likely to be controversial at best. If this is what the Air Force has in mind, no wonder it's keeping it a secret.

Boeing's Bomber: Preliminary designs for the Boeing-Lockheed bomber show a large center section, long, slender wings, and slit-like air inlets for the engines. The plane’s belly is deep enough for a large weapons bay. Nick Kaloterakis

PILOT LIGHT?
Boeing has said that it is "agnostic" about whether the bomber will be manned or unmanned. Doing away with a pilot would extend the potential length of missions -- but a robot plane filled with nuclear warheads is sure to raise eyebrows among lawmakers.

LOW PROFILE
The Next Generation Bomber could have a radar signature one tenth that of a mosquito thanks to sleek lines that don't reflect radar signals.

OFFENSE AND DEFENSE
Heavy munitions can take out buried or hardened targets such as bunkers and weapons caches. The bomber will carry 14,000 to 28,000 pounds of payload. And unlike today's stealth bombers, the new craft could carry air-to-air missiles for self-defense. If necessary, it could even fly at the center of a "wolf pack" that includes fighter planes and guided missiles.

Disney Rejection Letter From 1938

Weakened Algorithm Threatens Online Identity

Necessary firepower: Security researchers undermined the certificate system that secures sensitive online transactions. To perform the necessary calculations, the researchers used a cheap cluster of 200 PlayStation 3 machines. The multiple cores of the PlayStation 3 are particularly suited to performing the kinds of calculations needed for the attack, the researchers say. Credit: Alexander Sotirov, Marc Stevens, Jacob Appelbaum, Arjen Lenstra, David Molnar, Dag Arne Osvik, Benne de Weger. The cluster was sponsored by EPFL DIT and by a matching equipment grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Most people know to look for a padlock icon in the corner of their browsers when banking or conducting other sensitive transactions online. In part, this means that the site has a certificate that has been verified by a higher authority to confirm its identity. Recently, however, a team of security researchers found that a critical security system can be undermined by taking advantage of the outdated algorithms that some companies used to create these certificates. A loose-knit group of security researchers from the United States and Europe presented details of the attack at the 25th Annual Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin at the end of December.

The padlock is part of the key online security protocol called SSL (Secure Socket Layer), and it appears as an assurance that a transaction is safe from eavesdropping, tampering, or forgery. A hacker can easily create a banking website that looks like the real thing, but it's much harder to forge the digital certificate that accompanies the site. This is because SSL uses a clever trick to create each certificate: two mathematically linked keys, one of which is kept secret while the other is published openly on the Internet.

A select group of trusted higher powers--known as certificate authorities--can verify the identity of a website. An authority does this by checking that the site is genuine before combining its private key with the website's public key to create the certificate. A main part of the procedure also involves applying what's known as a hash function to generate a unique signature for the certificate. Anyone who visits that site can verify that this certificate is genuine by checking the signature and referring back to the certificate authority's public key.

All this happens behind the scenes, and popular browsers such as Internet Explorer and Firefox have built-in trust for certain certificate authorities, explains Paul Kocher, president and chief scientist of the security company Cryptography Research, who was involved in creating the latest version of SSL. Any certificate that can be traced back to one of those authorities is automatically trusted by the browser. "The entire browser trust model relies on all of the certificate authorities acting well," Kocher notes.

However, some certificate authorities still use a hash function called MD5 to produce certificate signatures. Most authorities have abandoned MD5 because researchers have shown it to be vulnerable to what is called a collision: under certain circumstances, it's possible to produce two certificates that will generate exactly the same digital signature.

A hash function's value disappears if it's easy to produce two certificates with exactly the same fingerprint, explains Marc Stevens, a PhD student in the cryptology and information security group at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, in the Netherlands, whose work on MD5 was crucial to the research. Stevens has been producing collisions using MD5 for several years, enlisting the computing power of 200 PlayStation 3 consoles. The architecture of these machines' microprocessors is well-suited to the kinds of calculations needed for his work. Stevens says that it would take about 8,000 PCs to equal the power that the PlayStations provide. Using the hardware, the team was able to perform the calculations needed for the attack in the space of a weekend.

To pull off the attack, the team created a normal certificate and had it signed by a certificate authority that still uses MD5. However, the team engineered a collision to create a second certificate--an "evil twin"--that matched the signature of the first and also seemed to say that the original certificate authority had delegated its certificate-signing powers to the owner of the evil twin.

The evil-twin certificate could then be used to create certificates for any website on the Internet, allowing a malicious individual to impersonate trusted banking websites, padlock icon and all, without raising any of the alarms meant to protect users.

RapidSSL, a certificate authority owned by Verisign, issued the MD5 certificates that the team exploited. Independent security researcher Alexander Sotirov, who helped turn the theoretical work on MD5 into the real attack, says that the attack was possible not only because of MD5, but because of lax security in the way that RapidSSL issues certificates, which made it easy to produce a collision.

Just six hours after the researchers gave their presentation, Verisign announced that RapidSSL had moved to a more secure hash function. Tim Callan, vice president of product marketing for Verisign, explains that the company had been working on the move since it bought RapidSSL in 2006. However, he says, the company was proceeding cautiously because it didn't want to disrupt the SSL services already offered to its partners. "If you are arbitrary or capricious with that, then what happens is that people will respond by using lower-security alternatives," Callan says.

Sotirov credits Verisign for acting quickly in response to the attack, but says that the current infrastructure for certificates "is not working very well at all." He adds, "It's worrisome that so many certificate authorities are equally trusted," particularly when different authorities use different standards to verify the identity of potential clients and to secure the certificates that they issue. He says that market forces, which reward certificate authorities for fast response times and low prices rather than for good security, are creating a "race to the bottom" that increases the chance of security issues in the future.

Sam Curry, vice president of product management for security company RSA, which abandoned MD5 in its certificate authorities about a decade ago, says that he thinks it's important for companies to stay on top of theoretical attacks before they become real ones. "I'm thrilled, in a way, when people find these theoretical weaknesses because it means that we're actually doing real testing and real, deep thinking about it," Curry says. "I'm not thrilled when the practical ones roll out, because that's when people get hurt."

But Kocher says that it's unlikely that average users will be affected. While certificate authorities should pay serious attention to the researchers' attack, he says that, unfortunately, there are much easier ways to scam users online.

Sign Language Translator

Searching by sign: Researchers in Boston are designing the first sign-language dictionary searchable by gesture. A signer (pictured) sits in a studio equipped with high-speed cameras that capture hand motions and facial expressions. Videos on a laptop prompt her to make particular signs. Video of the signer will be used to train algorithms to identify gestural patterns. Credit: Devin Hahn, BU Productions

Multimedia Watch the sign language device in action.

Bilingual dictionaries are usually a two-way street: you can look up a word in English and find, say, its Spanish equivalent, but you can also do the reverse. Sign-language dictionaries, however, translate only from written words to gestures. This can be hugely frustrating, particularly for parents of deaf children who want to understand unfamiliar gestures, or deaf people who want to interact online using their primary language. So Boston University (BU) researchers are developing a searchable dictionary for sign language, in which any user can enter a gesture into a dictionary's search engine from her own laptop by signing in front of a built-in camera.

"You might have a collection of sign language in YouTube, and now to search, you have to search in English," says Stan Sclaroff, a professor of computer science at BU. It's the equivalent, Sclaroff says, of searching for Spanish text using English translations. "It's unnatural," he says, "and it's not fair."

Sclaroff is developing the dictionary in collaboration with Carol Neidle, a professor of linguistics at BU. Once the user performs a gesture, the dictionary will analyze it and pull up the top five possible matches and meanings.

"Today's sign-language recognition is [at] about the stage where speech recognition was 20 years ago," says Thad Starner, head of the Contextual Computing Group at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Starner's group has been developing sign-language recognition software for children, using sensor-laden gloves to track hand movements. He and his students have designed educational games in which hearing-impaired children, wearing the gloves, learn sign language. A computer evaluates hand shape and moves on to the next exercise if a child has signed correctly.

Unlike Starner's work, Sclaroff and Neidle's aims for a sensorless system in which anyone with a camera and Internet connection can learn sign language and interact. The approach, according to Starner, is unique in the field of sign-language recognition, as well as in the field of computer vision.

"This takes a lot of processing power, and trying to deal with sign language in different video qualities is very hard," says Starner. "So if they're successful, it would be very cool to actually be able to search the Web in sign language."

To tackle this stiff challenge, the BU team is asking multiple signers to sit in a studio, one at a time, and sign through 3,000 gestures in a classic American Sign Language (ASL) dictionary. As they sign, four high-speed, high-quality cameras simultaneously pick up front and side views, as well as facial expressions. According to Neidle, smiles, frowns, and raised eyebrows are a largely understudied part of ASL that could offer strong clues to a gesture's meaning.

As the visual data comes in, Neidle and her students analyze it, marking the start and finish of each sign and identifying key subgestures--units equivalent to English phonemes. Meanwhile, Sclaroff is using this information to develop algorithms that can, say, distinguish the signer's hands from the background, or recognize hand position and shape and patterns of movement. Given that any individual could sign a word in a slightly different way, the team is analyzing gestures from both native and non-native signers, hoping to develop a computer recognizer that can handle such variations.

The main challenge going forward may be taking into account the many uncontrollable factors on the user's side of the interface, says Sclaroff. For example, someone using a gesture to enter a search query into a laptop will have a lower-quality camera. The background may be more cluttered than the carefully controlled studio environment in the database samples, and the computer will have to adjust for variables like clothing and skin tone.

"Just to produce the sign and look it up--that's the real novelty we're trying to accomplish," says Neidle. "That would be an improvement over anything that exists now."

How to hallucinate with ping-pong balls and a radio

Hack your brain

Text by Johan Lehrer, graphics by Javier Zarracina

DO YOU EVER want to change the way you see the world? Wouldn't it be fun to hallucinate on your lunch break? Although we typically associate such phenomena with powerful drugs like LSD or mescaline, it's easy to fling open the doors of perception without them: All it takes is a basic understanding of how the mind works.

The first thing to know is that the mind isn't a mirror, or even a passive observer of reality. Much of what we think of as being out there actually comes from in here, and is a byproduct of how the brain processes sensation. In recent years scientists have come up with a number of simple tricks that expose the artifice of our senses, so that we end up perceiving what we know isn't real - tweaking the cortex to produce something uncannily like hallucinations. Perhaps we hear the voice of someone who is no longer alive, or feel as if our nose is suddenly 3 feet long.

Man takes 26 years to solve Rubik’s Cube

Finally done: Graham Parker with his cube

It has taken most of his life – but, after 26 years, builder Graham Parker has finally solved the puzzle of the Rubik's Cube.

When he bought the toy in 1983, Yuri Andropov was leader of the Soviet Union, breakfast TV was a novelty and music CDs were in the shops for the first time.

'I cannot tell you what a relief it was to finally solve it,' the 45-year-old from Portchester, Hampshire, said. 'It has driven me mad over the years – it felt like it had taken over my life.

'I have missed important events to stay in and solve it and I would lie awake at night thinking about it.

'I have had wrist and back problems from spending hours on it but it was all worth it. When I clicked that last bit into place and each face was a solid colour, I wept.'

Wife Jean, 47, said it had felt like there had been three people in their marriage.

'When I met Graham, he was already obsessed with the cube – spending hours on it every day,' she said. 'I have often thought about getting rid of it but I knew he would not rest until he had solved it.'

A spokesman for the governing body for competitions involving the puzzle, the World Cube Association, said it was 'definitely the longest it has taken' to finish the cube.