Musical memory deficits start in auditory cortex

Apr. 30, 2013 ? Congenital amusia is a disorder characterized by impaired musical skills, which can extend to an inability to recognize very familiar tunes. The neural bases of this deficit are now being deciphered. According to a study conducted by researchers from CNRS and Inserm at the Centre de Recherche en Neurosciences de Lyon (CNRS / Inserm / Universit? Claude Bernard Lyon 1), amusics exhibit altered processing of musical information in two regions of the brain: the auditory cortex and the frontal cortex, particularly in the right cerebral hemisphere. These alterations seem to be linked to anatomical anomalies in these same cortices. This work, published in May in the journal Brain, adds invaluable information to our understanding of amusia and, more generally, of the "musical brain," in other words the cerebral networks involved in the processing of music.

Congenital amusia, which affects between 2 and 4% of the population, can manifest itself in various ways: by difficulty in hearing a "wrong note," by singing "out of tune" and sometimes by an aversion to music. For some of these individuals, music is like a foreign language or a simple noise. Amusia is not due to any auditory or psychological problem and does not seem to be linked to other neurological disorders. Research on the neural bases of this impairment only began a decade ago with the work of the Canadian neuropsychologist Isabelle Peretz.

Two teams from the Centre de Recherche en Neurosciences de Lyon (CNRS / Inserm / Universit? Claude Bernard Lyon 1) have studied the encoding of musical information and the short-term memorization of notes. According to previous work, amusical individuals experience particular difficulty in hearing the pitch of notes (low or high) and, although they remember sequences of words normally, they have difficulty in memorizing sequences of notes.

In a bid to determine the regions of the brain concerned with these memorization difficulties, the researchers conducted magneto-encephalographs (a technique that allows very weak magnetic fields produced by neural activity to be measured at the surface of the head) on a group of amusics while they were performing a musical task. The task consisted in listening to two tunes separated by a two-second gap. The volunteers were asked to determine whether the tunes were identical or different.

The scientists observed that, when hearing and memorizing notes, amusics exhibited altered sound processing in two regions of the brain: the auditory cortex and the frontal cortex, essentially in the right hemisphere. Compared to non-amusics, their neural activity was delayed and impaired in these specific areas when encoding musical notes. These anomalies occurred 100 milliseconds after the start of a note.

These results agree with an anatomical observation that the researchers have confirmed using MRI: amusical individuals have an excess of grey matter in the inferior frontal cortex, accompanied by a deficit in white matter, one of whose essential constituents is myelin. This surrounds and protects the axons of the neurons, helping nerve signals to propagate rapidly. The researchers also observed anatomical anomalies in the auditory cortex. This data lends weight to the hypothesis according to which amusia could be due to insufficient communication between the auditory cortex and the frontal cortex.

Amusia thus stems from impaired neural processing from the very first steps of sound processing in the auditory nervous system. This work makes it possible to envisage a program to remedy these musical difficulties, by targeting the early steps of the processing of sounds and their memorization.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS).

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. P. Albouy, J. Mattout, R. Bouet, E. Maby, G. Sanchez, P.-E. Aguera, S. Daligault, C. Delpuech, O. Bertrand, A. Caclin, B. Tillmann. Impaired pitch perception and memory in congenital amusia: the deficit starts in the auditory cortex. Brain, 2013; 136 (5): 1639 DOI: 10.1093/brain/awt082

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/gIAYfMbGmWs/130430131346.htm

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PayPal Adds Mobile Support To Facebook Connect-Like Commerce Identity Login Technology

Back in 2011, PayPal debuted PayPal Access, a payments identity technology that would allow you to carry your payments identity to various retailers on the web. It's essentially a cross between Amazon?s payments platform and Facebook Connect. Today, the payments giant is announcing a new name for the product, Log In With PayPal, and adding a number of new features including mobile support.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/_pE2HxDalAA/

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World leaders love Twitter

Bill Clinton gets a Twitter lesson from Stephen Colbert. (AP/ABC OTUS News)

It?s not just celebrities who love Twitter: South American leaders, it turns out, heart to tweet. Some may even have gone overboard and may have over shared.

A Reuters story reports that when some 1 million protesters hit the streets to criticize the government of Argentina President Cristina Fernandez, she responded by posting 61 tweets over a nine-hour period.

According to the account, the posts from Fernandez ran the gamut from declaring herself ?stubborn,? to defending the benefits of a state-run literacy program, to admiring a fresco in her ?gorgeous? palace.

And in Venezuela, the candidates vying to succeed the late Hugo Chavez had a war of words on Twitter. The eventual winner of the election, Nicolas Maduro, who had been handpicked by Chavez, tweeted that his opposition was ?fascist.? The losing candidate, Henrique Capriles, posted that Maduro was ?an illegitimate president.?

Chavez, who had had his own TV show, had also taken to tweeting. He had 4 million followers when he died.

Being out of office hasn?t quieted the former president of Colombia, ?lvaro Uribe, who has ruffled feathers for apparently posting multiple tweets a day criticizing the current leader.

Over in France, public figures are only too aware of the impact a tweet can have. Valerie Trierweiler, the companion to the president of France, Francois Hollande, got in hot water for her impolitic post supporting the opponent of Hollande?s ex, who was running in a local election.

Maybe this explains former President Bill Clinton?s reluctance to try out the social medium. He only just joined with the encouragement of satiric news host Stephen Colbert, who first started Clinton with the Twitter handle @PrezBillyJeff.

Clinton officially introduced the more respectable @billclinton. Launched last week, the former president already has more than 500,000 followers.

Barack Obama, who famously would not give up his Blackberry when he got to the White House, rarely is the one tweeting from his account @BarackObama. If he does, the posts are signed ?bo.?

There is one leader who's definitely not a Twitter fan. According to Reuters, Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff, stopped tweeting after she was elected in 2010. An aide told Retuers, "She thinks it's a total waste of time."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/world-leaders-love-twitter-211835156.html

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Arbitrary iPad Swipes and Taps Make Accidental Art

When you check your email, when you play Temple Run, when you're selecting a song to listen to, you're making art. You just don't know it. In a series called Invisible Hieroglyphics, artist Andre Woolery highlights those hidden masterpieces you don't even mean to make.

Read more...

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/1SJoSoa0pDo/arbitrary-ipad-swipes-and-taps-make-accidental-art-484494160

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Still stuck on central-bank life support

By Alan Wheatley, Global Economics Correspondent

LONDON (Reuters) - Five years after the onset of the global financial crisis, the world economy is in such a chronic condition that the European Central Bank might cut interest rates this week and the Federal Reserve is likely to indicate no let-up in the stimulus it is providing the U.S. economy.

With the euro zone economy in recession, momentum is building for the ECB to lower interest rates for the first time since July 2012, according to senior sources involved in the deliberations.

If the bank does not act on Thursday, a quarter-point cut in June is considered a racing certainty.

The ECB is the most conservative of the world's main central banks. Its main short-term rate, now at 0.75 percent, is higher than the equivalent rate of the Fed, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan. And unlike its peers the ECB has not engaged in quantitative easing - printing new money to buy bonds.

But the ECB seems to be softening. "I would argue that the ECB should be thinking of easing policy; whether they are currently is more debatable," said Stephen King, global chief economist for HSBC in London.

Only a small majority of 76 economists polled by Reuters expected a cut as early as this week.

The swing factor for King is what is happening to Germany, the euro zone's largest economy. Until recently, Germany had been showing resilience thanks to its export sector. But April's survey of purchasing managers and the Munich IFO institute's monthly poll were distinctly soft.

"Germany is becoming more like everybody else. It is being dragged down, whether it likes it or not, through weakness in southern Europe, slowing growth in China and the depreciation of the Japanese yen," he said.

"None of these things are good for Germany. So the weaker Germany becomes, the easier it is to agree on a common monetary policy," he added.

China's official purchasing managers' survey for April, to be released on Wednesday, is likely to provide more evidence that the world's second-largest economy is shifting down to a lower trend rate of growth after three decades of averaging around 10 percent a year.

Economists polled by Reuters expect the index derived from the survey to have edged up to 51.0 from 50.9 in March, holding above the threshold of 50 that demarcates month-on-month expansion from contraction.

Jian Chang, who tracks the Chinese economy for Barclays in Hong Kong, prefers to describe the economy as being in a stabilisation rather than a recovery phase.

"As long as the PMI comes in above 50 it will show that modest, slow growth is continuing," she said.

Global markets have become addicted to the drug of super-fast Chinese growth and tend to react badly to signs of softness. But Chang said the authorities in Beijing, intent on guiding the economy to a more sustainable growth rate, are not panicking.

There has been no big investment package, for example, to support the government's urbanization drive.

Policymakers will be comfortable as long as growth for the year as a whole comes in above their target of 7.5 percent, she said. Barclays is forecasting an outcome of 7.9 percent.

Whether that target is met will depend in part on an improvement in exports to the European Union and to the United States, which on Friday reported a disappointingly soft first-quarter gross domestic product growth rate of 2.5 percent.

The pace of expansion has averaged just 1.4 percent over the last two quarters and 1.8 percent over the past year, noted Jay Feldman, director of U.S. economic research at Credit Suisse in New York.

"All in all, growth is persistent, but decidedly underwhelming. At this trajectory, achieving a labor market recovery beyond the fits-and-starts progress of the last few years will be a challenge," he told clients.

Figures this week are likely to fit into the same pattern.

The Institute of Supply Management's April manufacturing survey is forecast to dip to 51.0 from 51.3 in March, while the economy is likely to have generated 150,000 jobs in April, up from just 88,000 in March but not enough to reduce the jobless rate from 7.6 percent.

Because the Fed has pledged to stick to its super-loose policy until unemployment falls to 6.5 percent, the central bank is expected to confirm at this week's policy meeting that it will keep buying $85 billion in bonds every month to keep bond yields low and encourage investment.

Talk had started to grow that the Fed might start to wind down, or taper its quantitative easing program. But after the latest economic data, the central bank's tone is likely to change, according to Steve Ricchiuto, chief U.S. economist for Mizuho Securities in New York.

"They're going to come out of this meeting with a more balanced view on tapering and say, ?we could increase or we could taper'," he said.

Indeed, price pressures are so muted because of slack in the economy that some Fed policymakers have raised the prospect of injecting even more stimulus.

The core personal consumption expenditure deflator, the Fed's favorite inflation gauge, rose just 1.3 percent in the year to March, Friday's GDP report showed.

"Low inflation leaves that much more leeway for the Fed to focus on growth and jobs. If the core PCE index falls much farther, look for ?inflation being too low' to show up in more Fed communications," Feldman said.

(Editing by Greg Mahlich)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/still-stuck-central-bank-life-support-190605149.html

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What Happens When Ice Gets Pushed and Shatters On the Shore

In one word: LOUD. In two words: Shattered glass. In three words: What the hell? As spring finally decides to replace winter, some weird phenomena is happening on the lake shores of Minnesota. It's an ice shattering shriek known as chandeliering, large piles of ice splinter into shards of glass and create a helluva noise with it.

The video, which was captured by Nadalie Thomas as she was visiting the shores of Medicine Lake in Plymouth, Minnesota, shows the ice breaking down into little pieces. The constant shrill is not unlike hearing glass spill all over the floor.

Supposedly, the ice leftover from the winter is at such a weakened state because of the warm temperature that it can easily splinter. That splintering is the cause of the noise. Nature, you never fail to impress me. [KARE 11]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/what-happens-when-ice-gets-pushed-and-shatters-on-the-s-485150520

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Analysis: Italy's politics turned upside down by election aftermath

By Barry Moody

ROME (Reuters) - Five months ago, Silvio Berlusconi was in steep decline and his party was in shambles. His center-left enemies looked triumphant and sat on a 15-point opinion poll lead.

Today that situation has turned 180 degrees. The center-left is devastated by divisions and the 76-year-old media tycoon has an opinion poll lead ranging from five to eight points.

The extraordinary upset is the result of powerful aftershocks from an electoral earthquake in February when the populist 5-Star Movement swept up a huge protest vote against Italy's politicians and grabbed an unprecedented 25 percent to become the third force in parliament.

Now that the dust is starting to settle with the inauguration of a new broad-based coalition government led by center-left politician Enrico Letta, it is possible to see more clearly the winners and losers from one of the most turbulent periods in recent Italian political history.

One of the winners is Berlusconi.

He has gone from a pale, indecisive figure last autumn to a position of strong influence over Letta's government, helped greatly by the implosion of the center-left and his own astonishing resurgence since he was forced from power in November 2011 as Italy faced a major financial meltdown.

The four-times former premier's unrivalled political and communication skills, despite the reputational damage from a string of sex and corruption scandals, are in stark contrast to the bungles of hapless center-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani.

Berlusconi had consistently said since the election that a grand coalition was the only way out of a vote that ended with parliament divided three ways and no group able to govern alone.

He was also one of those pushing hardest for the re-election of President Giorgio Napolitano against the 87-year-old head of state's own wishes, as the only way to end a two-month impasse since the election.

Berlusconi's loyal prot?g? Angelino Alfano is Letta's deputy and the billionaire businessman has effective power of life and death over the government, giving him strong leverage to push through the center-right's policies led by abolition of a hated housing tax.

In his inaugural speech on Monday, Letta quickly nodded to this demand by blocking the next installment of the tax in June although he did not commit to abolishing it.

"Berlusconi can kill the government from one day to the next," respected commentator Sergio Romano told Reuters.

This power is not unqualified, however.

Berlusconi has resisted heavy pressure from his own party hardliners to go straight to elections, because doing so with the current flawed electoral law could end up with him in the same situation as the center-left, which won a whisker thin majority in February but was then left unable to rule.

In addition, Berlusconi seems intent on projecting an image of statesmanlike restraint and responsibility.

The electorate is bitterly angry at the economic pain of a deep recession and demands immediate action to relaunch the economy rather than a return to uncertainty and electioneering.

Romano says Berlusconi has also not given up his ambition to be the next Italian president, with Napolitano very unlikely to continue for a full 7-year term.

BERSANI IS BIG LOSER

Undoubtedly the biggest loser is the colorless and uninspiring Democratic Party (PD) leader Bersani, who has resigned after seeing party rebels sabotage his two choices for president.

Bersani had already thrown away a commanding lead before the election and then obstinately pursued a policy of forging an alliance with Grillo, despite repeated rebuffs.

Bersani's problem is at the core of why the center-left is falling apart. Its former communist left wing would not swallow the idea of allying with its traditional enemy Berlusconi and although it is now apparently reconciled to the Letta government, the party could still collapse at any time.

The biggest winner of all is President Napolitano, who has succeeded in fending off further uncertainty in a snap new election and installing the coalition government he wanted as a bulwark against Grillo's anti-establishment party.

"Napolitano has been decisive. If it had not been for him we would now be in a major constitutional crisis," Professor Gianfranco Pasquino of Johns Hopkins University told Reuters.

The former communist, dubbed "King George", has reinforced his status as Italy's most popular politician by far.

The whole formation of the Letta government is down to Napolitano's protection and the assurances he wrung from the parties in exchange for his agreement to stay on as president.

Castigating politicians for their failures in his own inaugural speech a week ago, Napolitano clearly threatened to resign if they did not act responsibly and form a government.

Beppe Grillo's storming success in February's election may have been diluted since, although he remains a danger to the traditional politicians.

A series of missteps during the latest stage of the crisis, including some ill-judged inflammatory statements, may have lost him support and the formation of a credible government by establishment parties looks like a setback for him.

"Grillo is now sliding towards the losing side because he has not really used the parliamentary power he has in a very skilful way ... he is losing popularity. It is not a good moment for him," Pasquino said.

Success by Letta could further undermine Grillo.

Letta, 46, has always operated very much out of the limelight but he is a respected, pro-European politician from the Democratic Party's right wing and his government does appear to meet many of the electorate's demands for change.

He is the third youngest Italian prime minister, and his cabinet line-up has an average age of 53 in contrast to the much older composition of most governments. It also has a record number of 7 women ministers out of 21.

It contains many lesser known faces, meeting voters' demands for the end of dominance by a corrupt political "caste."

If Letta succeeds in maintaining unity in the uncomfortable left-right coalition, pushes through pro-growth policies, repeals the electoral law and makes other vital constitutional changes, he could pick up powerful momentum that would be bad news for Grillo.

"I am convinced Grillo's votes are borrowed votes, protest votes, votes denied to somebody else. If the government does well, if the situation improves, if they change the trend of unemployment and Letta gains popularity, Grillo's votes will melt away," Romano said.

Letta's momentum could also be bad news for Florence mayor Matteo Renzi, 38, who had seemed set to be the center-left's candidate in new elections but faces a far more difficult potential target in Letta than Bersani, as long as the new prime minister survives.

While Renzi remains a potential game changer as a dynamic and articulate politician, he may now have to wait longer before he can move to center-stage although he is still in pole position to take over the PD leadership from Bersani at a vote in the autumn.

(Editing by Giles Elgood)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-italys-politics-turned-upside-down-election-aftermath-154854706.html

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Travel & Leisure Blog's: Planning An Alaska Fly Fishing Trip

By Janelle Burnett

Anyone focused on planning a trip of some is generally required to focus on a large number of challenges and obstacles to work through. There are many instances where travelers decide to enjoy a particular part of the world or beloved activity while away from home as part of trying to make their experiences more enjoyable. Anyone considering this process should know what to concentrate on when planning an Alaska fly fishing trip to ensure they have as much fun as possible.

Fly fishing is a unique form of catching that is continually more popular among people that appreciate this general hobby. People often learn that participating in this unique activity is often best completed with the use of specific regions and bodies of water where fish are more plentiful and able to actually be caught with relative ease. Planning an entire trip around this activity is quite common among enthusiasts.

Alaska has long been known as providing an incredible source of fun when this particular event is being considered. Many consumers are unclear about what factors should even be focused on when attempting to be assured that their stay is fun and productive at the same time. Keeping several organizing tips in mind is quite useful to anyone in their efforts.

Travelers begin their organizing efforts by determining what particular seasons are the most productive to perform this process in. There are many instances where water temperatures and other seasonal factors are more prevalent than others in regard to how successful people are in being able to make a catch. This information is uncovered by completing even a basic amount of research and is quite helpful in coordinating the entire trip.

The actual location one is interested in should receive careful consideration as well. There are many travelers that simply focus on the sport they are interested in and forget to determine their proximity to restaurants and local attractions to provide entertainment beyond the rods. Researching the most lively and traveler based areas creates an overall enjoyable experience for travelers to enjoy their time away from home.

Hiring a guide is also considered as being an essential facet of review when coordinating the entire trip. Charter companies and direct guides are quite knowledgeable about the best waters and times to fish along with unique tactics that are known to produce great results. There are even instances where consumers are offered the equipment needed for their day which can be quite helpful.

Accommodations should be carefully plotted against any areas of interest one wishes to enjoy their days of catching. Finding a hotel or other kind of lodging that is on or near the water while still being within close proximity to everything else keeps the trip efficient and enjoyable without the added commuting stress that could be present. This part of the process is readily completed with the use of mapping software.

An Alaska fly fishing trip is also considered based on the setting a realistic budget. Cost control is essential for any trip as people wish to ensure that they enjoy their time away without creating financial hardship. Finding travel deals and packages is often what creates the most cost effective solutions for consumers in need.

About the Author:

Read more about Organizing An Alaska Fly Fishing Trip visiting our website.

Source: http://travel-leisure-blogs.blogspot.com/2013/04/planning-alaska-fly-fishing-trip.html

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'Guntucky' puts family-run gun range on the map

Getaways

Dana McMahan NBC News contributor

April 28, 2013 at 6:11 AM ET

CMT

The Sumner family and their gun range are the stars of CMT's new reality show, "Guntucky."

The Sumner clan is getting a national boost thanks to "Guntucky," a new reality show on CMT, but the stars of the family-run Knob Creek Gun Range has been famous among gun lovers for years.

The word started spreading in 1963 when Biff Sumner, Sr., first bought land on the edge of the woods surrounding Fort Knox Army Base about 20 miles south of Louisville, Ky., and invited a few friends over to fire off machine guns into the trees. Now, more than 16,000 people choke the gravel entrance to the property during its bi-annual Machine Gun Shoot, traveling from around the world to squeeze exotic triggers.

?Everybody likes to see something blow up,? the burly and mohawked Steven Sumner, 54, Biff Jr.'s son and the Knob Creek range supervisor, told NBC News in a phone interview this week. ?They're not into paper targets.?

Dana McMahan for NBC News

I was terrified inside my pink pullover Under Armour jacket as I grasped the Tommy Gun under the eye of the range officer when I attended one of Knob Creek's recent shoots. Living less than an hour away, I had been curious to see what all the fuss was about.

I reluctantly put my finger on the trigger of the Tommy gun. Then I squeezed a spray of bullets in the general direction of some old boats and cars they use as targets.

I emptied the $40 magazine in seconds, but I was shaking with peak levels of adrenaline. I was exhilarated as I stepped away and the next person in the more than two-hour-long line, nearly all men, stepped up. Brass from the dozens of different machine guns and semi-automatics available -- like water-cooled Brownings, AK-47s, MG-42s, M-16s, belt-fed Vickers guns, Uzis, and MP5s -- piled up on the Bullitt County dirt. There was also a cannon.

CMT

Steven Sumner behind the counter at the Knob Creek gun range store.

As seen on the TV show, during regular business hours the range works hard to accommodate requests from customers who travel a mile down from Highway 44 with requests for very specific things they want to shoot up. That can include bargaining for Civil War era weapons and rigging up a zombie apocalypse shootout. They've even staged a "shotgun wedding," marrying a couple on the firing line.

?As long as it's not illegal or doesn?t interfere with the neighbors, we're up for it,? said Steven.

Still, the range has strict controls. No gun may be carried loaded. Each gun must be zip-tied and declared before entry. Steven carries a metal coin in his pocket, its silver-dollar heft a constant reminder of the importance of the word SAFETY stamped on one side. But within the confines of the scrupulously-followed rules, and under the supervision of range control officers ready to intervene in a split-second, the bullets from high-speed assault weapons fly freely. Tucked in among the edges of the Army base, local government land, and one private neighbor, nobody pays them much mind.

CMT

The family wouldn't discuss how much they were getting from the show but they don't plan on changing much with the earnings. Maybe expand the store a bit, and put in a double-lane bridge over the creek.

Amidst the national debate on gun control, Steven is matter-of-fact about the family business which also employs his daughter Stephanie, 22, as office manager, teenage son Payton as maintenance clerk, and his cousin Chad as sales manager. His dad owns it and his brother Kenny runs day-to-day operations.

?We're just average believers in the Second Amendment,? said Steven. ?It doesn't matter how long that gun sits in a corner, it will never kill anyone. It takes an irresponsible operator.?

Dana McMahan for NBC News

If you go...

Machine Gun Shoot admission is $10 a day, $5 for kids under than 12. Bring eye protection and earplugs, and don't count on much conversation. Camping with no water or electricity is available on-site for $50/person for the week.

Dana McMahan for NBC News

Down the road in Shepherdsville is a clutch of hotels and places to eat. Lil' Biff's Motel, run by Grandpa Sumner, is nearby at 12706 Dixie Hwy, with singles for $44 and doubles for $64/night.

While you're there, consider keeping with the theme and eat at Bonnie & Clyde's pizza parlor, 7611 Dixie Hwy, cash only.

Source: http://www.today.com/travel/reality-tv-show-guntucky-puts-family-run-gun-range-map-6C9624835

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DNA at 60: Still Much to Learn

On the diamond jubilee of the double helix, we should admit that we don't fully understand how evolution works at the molecular level, suggests Philip Ball

By Philip Ball and Nature magazine

Image: Wikimedia Commons/Yikrazuul

This week's diamond jubilee of the discovery of DNA's molecular structure rightly celebrates how Francis Crick, James Watson and their collaborators launched the 'genomic age' by revealing how hereditary information is encoded in the double helix. Yet the conventional narrative ? in which their 1953 Nature paper led inexorably to the Human Genome Project and the dawn of personalized medicine ? is as misleading as the popular narrative of gene function itself, in which the DNA sequence is translated into proteins and ultimately into an organism's observable characteristics, or phenotype.

Sixty years on, the very definition of 'gene' is hotly debated. We do not know what most of our DNA does, nor how, or to what extent it governs traits. In other words, we do not fully understand how evolution works at the molecular level.

That sounds to me like an extraordinarily exciting state of affairs, comparable perhaps to the disruptive discovery in cosmology in 1998 that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating rather than decelerating, as astronomers had believed since the late 1920s. Yet, while specialists debate what the latest findings mean, the rhetoric of popular discussions of DNA, genomics and evolution remains largely unchanged, and the public continues to be fed assurances that DNA is as solipsistic a blueprint as ever.

The more complex picture now emerging raises difficult questions that this outsider knows he can barely discern. But I can tell that the usual tidy tale of how 'DNA makes RNA makes protein' is sanitized to the point of distortion. Instead of occasional, muted confessions from genomics boosters and popularizers of evolution that the story has turned out to be a little more complex, there should be a bolder admission ? indeed a celebration ? of the known unknowns.

DNA dispute
A student referring to textbook discussions of genetics and evolution could be forgiven for thinking that the 'central dogma' devised by Crick and others in the 1960s ? in which information flows in a linear, traceable fashion from DNA sequence to messenger RNA to protein, to manifest finally as phenotype ? remains the solid foundation of the genomic revolution. In fact, it is beginning to look more like a casualty of it.

Although it remains beyond serious doubt that Darwinian natural selection drives much, perhaps most, evolutionary change, it is often unclear at which phenotypic level selection operates, and particularly how it plays out at the molecular level.

Take the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project, a public research consortium launched by the US National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. Starting in 2003, ENCODE researchers set out to map which parts of human chromosomes are transcribed, how transcription is regulated and how the process is affected by the way the DNA is packaged in the cell nucleus. Last year, the group revealed that there is much more to genome function than is encompassed in the roughly 1% of our DNA that contains some 20,000 protein-coding genes ? challenging the old idea that much of the genome is junk. At least 80% of the genome is transcribed into RNA.

Some geneticists and evolutionary biologists say that all this extra transcription may simply be noise, irrelevant to function and evolution. But, drawing on the fact that regulatory roles have been pinned to some of the non-coding RNA transcripts discovered in pilot projects, the ENCODE team argues that at least some of this transcription could provide a reservoir of molecules with regulatory functions ? in other words, a pool of potentially 'useful' variation. ENCODE researchers even propose, to the consternation of some, that the transcript should be considered the basic unit of inheritance, with 'gene' denoting not a piece of DNA but a higher-order concept pertaining to all the transcripts that contribute to a given phenotypic trait.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=b43728617daeef985e3c312dca61a38a

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Best & Worst-Dressed at White House Correspondents' Dinner

From the good to the pretty bad, check out the celebrity fashion from the White House Correspondents' Dinner!

Source: http://www.ivillage.com/white-house-correspondents-dinner/1-a-534563?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Awhite-house-correspondents-dinner-534563

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Install Shelves That Make Your House Look Windy

These shelves throw caution to the wind. They'll blow you away. They're a breeze. Can't. Stop. Puns. Everywhere. Look, the point is that paper scattering in the wind is a great motif for shelves and these are super pretty. Okay? Fine. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/QsklJQ6tPt8/install-shelves-that-make-your-house-look-windy

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Bomb damages police station in Libya's Benghazi, no injuries

BENGHAZI (Reuters) - A bomb exploded outside a police station in the restive eastern Libyan city of Benghazi on Saturday causing extensive damage to the building but no injuries.

A spate of bombings and assassinations in Benghazi, cradle of the 2011 uprising that ousted dictator Muammar Gaddafi, has been attributed to Islamic militants.

"Around six o'clock this morning, an explosive device placed under one of the windows of the building exploded, causing severe damage," said station commander Colonel Matar Mohammer. He said he had no information on who carried out the attack.

Gunmen hit a different police station in Benghazi last week freeing a number of detainees, following a similar attack in the Libyan capital of Tripoli in early April.

On Tuesday a bomb at the French embassy in Tripoli injured several people, and, one diplomat said, the Radisson Hotel in the capital was evacuated on Friday after a bomb threat, as the spread of insecurity from the east intensifies.

(Reporting by Feras Bosalum in Benghazi, Ghaith Shennib and Jessica Donati in Tripoli; Writing by Jessica Donati; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/bomb-damages-police-station-libyas-benghazi-no-injuries-123001681.html

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Israel responds to Gaza rocket fire with airstrike

JERUSALEM (AP) ? Israel responded to rockets fired from the Gaza Strip with airstrikes on sites used by Islamic militant group Hamas, which rules the Palestinian territory, the military said on Sunday.

It said its jets struck "a terrorist weapon storage facility and a Hamas training installation" after rockets landed in southern Israel the night before. It also closed a closed a key border crossing with the territory. Gaza health officials said nobody was hurt in the strikes.

On Saturday, thousands of Israelis had been outside in parks and forests celebrating the Jewish holiday of Lag Baomer with traditional bonfires. The rockets exploded in open areas and caused no injuries.

Rocket fire from Gaza has declined since a military campaign in November, before which militants were firing rockets on an almost daily basis and launching other attacks on Israeli towns across the border. Sporadic fire still persists however.

The military said it "will not tolerate any attempt to harm Israeli civilians" and that it will not allow the situation to return to where it stood before the November campaign.

Israel holds Gaza's militant Hamas rulers responsible for all attacks from the territory. No group claimed responsibility for the latest rocket attacks.

A shadowy extremist Muslim Salafi group was behind recent attacks, including one last month where rockets were fired from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after that attack that the perpetrators will "pay a heavy price."

Hamas sees the Salafis as a threat to its rule and routinely arrest members of the ultraconservative movement in Gaza. Salafis view even Hamas's hardline interpretation of Islamic law as too moderate and the two groups have clashed violently in the past.

Along with the airstrikes, Israel responded to Saturday's rocket fire by closing the Kerem Shalom crossing with Gaza. It said another terminal will be open for humanitarian cases.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/israel-responds-gaza-rocket-fire-airstrike-050848643.html

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In Ala., GOP dictates new landscape for education

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) ? Self-declared education reformers have had considerable success across the country over the past few decades, from charter school expansion and private school tuition vouchers to new limits on teachers' job protections. But perhaps nowhere have the triumphs marked a bigger political upheaval than in Alabama, where the new Republican supermajority is dominating the state teachers' organization that was long the epicenter of power.

Alabama Education Association chief Henry Mabry accuses Republicans of hurting public schools with changes to teacher tenure, tax breaks for private school tuition, and limits on AEA collecting dues through the state payroll system.

"There seems to be an unspoken agenda to change the public education system to where it's not even recognizable," Mabry said. He called it "right out of the playbook" of a national movement to eviscerate government in favor of private and for-profit enterprises.

GOP leaders frame their efforts as improving a broken system more concerned with public employees than with children. "It's not that we're punitive toward AEA," House Speaker Mike Hubbard said. "We're just doing the right thing by the taxpayers, and they don't like that."

Alabama's statehouse dynamic has turned on its head since Republicans won legislative supermajorities in 2010, giving them legislative control for the first time since Reconstruction. Soon after, longtime AEA leader Paul Hubbert, who spent more than four decades amassing a reputation as the state's most powerful lobbyist, retired and gave way to Mabry.

"For so long, AEA controlled everything, and they don't anymore," Hubbard said. "They're having a really hard time adjusting to that."

Hubbert, who still lives in Montgomery, said AEA was a predictable target for Republicans because it "had primarily supported Democrats."

The Alabama legislative battles haven't produced the kind of protests seen in Wisconsin after Republican Gov. Scott Walker gutted his state's public unions, but they underscore how quickly public policy can turn after watershed elections. They've also had considerable political ripple effects. The state Democratic Party, once dependent on AEA's organizational muscle, is reeling. Republicans must deal with the realities of a supermajority: Old two-party battles are sometimes reprised as internal party struggles. Both sides say those issues will figure prominently in the 2014 elections.

Immediately, the new GOP Legislature tried to block AEA from collecting money from its 100,000 or so members through the automatic deductions in the state payroll system. The law remains tied up in court, but it would change how AEA collects money, potentially cutting into the estimated $7 million to $8 million that Mabry says it spends each election cycle.

Republicans made it easier to fire teachers and blocked them from being paid during appeals. The party also wants the state to provide liability insurance for teachers ? a key benefit teachers get from AEA. The state already provides similar insurance for non-education employees.

The biggest GOP victory came earlier this year when legislators passed the Alabama Accountability Act with provisions championed by school-choice advocates, including a private-school tuition voucher program for students from low-income households and tax breaks for private school tuition paid by families zoned for poorly performing public schools.

Those ideas have been implemented elsewhere. The tuition scholarship-voucher fund is modeled after a program Jeb Bush enacted as governor of Florida. Other provisions closely track model legislation offered by the American Legislative Exchanges Council, a consortium of conservative state legislators backed mostly by corporate contributions.

Mabry calls the tuition grants and tax breaks "once-in-a-lifetime goodies" for private schools and many parents who already send their children to them. Republicans estimate that the tax credits will divert about $50 million from public school appropriations, but AEA says the number will be much higher. Mabry blasts Hubbard's argument that supporting public schools is different from backing public school employees.

Hubbard spent more than a decade in the minority protesting Hubbert's influence. Hubbard and Senate GOP leader Del Marsh both refer to AEA as "the union," though AEA doesn't have collective bargaining rights and cannot strike. Statehouse lore holds that Hubbert could sit in the gallery and determine the outcome of budget amendments by showing lawmakers a thumbs-up or thumbs-down ? though Hubbert disputes the account.

AEA was an unquestioned success in an otherwise unfriendly state for organized labor. National teachers' union officials recognize it as among the most influential state associations without collective bargaining power. Unlike several other Southern states that have multiple groups, AEA is the product of an integration-era merger of a white group and black group. Hubbert ran AEA for decades with Joe Reed, who is black, as his top deputy.

Both men were longtime executive officers of the state Democratic Party. Hubbert won the Democratic nomination for governor in 1990 but lost the general election. AEA usually took the lead on recruiting candidates, often choosing education employees and administrators. Republicans lambasted the "double dipping" because the officeholders got two state paychecks, and some AEA-backed Democrats were convicted of fraud after a federal investigation found they got paychecks and contracts from state two-year colleges without doing the work.

An enduring example of AEA's old power is the fact that Alabama passes two budgets annually: one for education and the General Fund budget for everything else. Earmarks direct the overwhelming majority of state tax revenues to the education budget. In a state where anti-tax sentiment has always been strong, AEA saw to it that public schools ? and their employees ? got most of the pie.

Hubbert and Mabry say that's the way the electorate wants it. They attribute Republicans' 2010 sweep to a national election centered on President Barack Obama and the economy, not on GOP education policy.

AEA has begun recruiting candidates for 2014 on both sides of the aisle, Mabry said. New district lines give Republicans a decided advantage, particularly in the few remaining district represented by white Democrats. Mabry argued that Republican voters are sympathetic to AEA's positions, particularly on vouchers and tax credits. He noted that some Republicans in Indiana and Ohio were ousted in 2012 after a similar approach.

Hubbard and Marsh said they can win the "school choice" argument on merit. Hubbard's old nemesis, meanwhile, gives him reason not to worry anytime soon. The bottom line, according to Hubbert, is that AEA's philosophy and Republican priorities don't match. "AEA will change with the times, I'm sure," Hubbert said. "But will it be a major player inside the Republican Party? I doubt it."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ala-gop-dictates-landscape-education-153449845.html

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New robots crawl like sea turtles

Researchers have designed a new type of robot modeled on sea turtles known as FlipperBot. This is the first robot to use flippers against pliable surfaces and has moved the work toward amphibious robots forward.

By Charles Q. Choi,?TechNewsDaily / April 24, 2013

Georgia Tech associate professor Daniel Goldman and researcher Nicole Mazouchova watch FlipperBot move through a bed filled with poppy seeds.

Georgia Tech/ Gary Meek

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Flippered robots inspired by sea-turtle hatchlings could shed light on how the ancestors of terrestrial animals first evolved to crawl on land, researchers say.

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Such research could also lead to amphibious robots that can tackle both land and sea, investigators added.

Scientists are designing robots that can go where humans cannot or should not go, and often rely on inspiration from nature to do so. For instance,?snakelike robots?could, in principle, slither into crevices to help find disaster victims.

Challenging environments for robots to cross include?sand, gravel, soil, mud and other unstable granular surfaces?that can deform around legs in complex ways. To learn new ways to navigate such ground, Daniel Goldman, a physicist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, and his colleagues investigated sea-turtle hatchlings.

"These little turtles are remarkably effective at moving over solid ground, with limbs designed for moving in fluid," Goldman told TechNewsDaily.

The researchers analyzed 25 baby loggerhead sea turtles from nests on Jekyll Island, one of Georgia's coastal islands, at night. They investigated how the turtles crawled on tracks of beach sand housed in a truck parked near the beach, video-recording them as they moved in the darkness toward a light that simulated the moon. [See also:?10 Animal-Inspired Robots]

Goldman and his colleagues Nicole Mazouchova and Paul Umbanhowar were surprised to learn the hatchlings moved about as quickly on soft sand as they did on hard sand.

"The turtles insert their flippers just deep enough into soft sand so that the material does not yield behind the flipper as they move," Goldman said. "That means the sand doesn't flow around the flippers, and they don't slip ? so they can propel themselves."

The key to performing well, regardless of the conditions of the sand, seemed to lie in how the turtles controlled their wrists.

"On hard ground, their wrists locked in place, and they pivoted about a fixed arm," Goldman said. "On soft sand, they put their flippers into the sand, and the wrist would bend as they moved forward. We decided to investigate this using a robot model."

These findings led to the development of FlipperBot, the first robot to employ flippers against malleable surfaces. The small droid is about 7.5 inches (19 centimeters) long, weighs 2 lbs. (970 grams), and has two motor-driven flippers with flexible wrists similar to sea turtle wrists

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/4vJsgtTY6gE/New-robots-crawl-like-sea-turtles

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Calif. cops describe intruder suspected of fatally stabbing 9-year-old

By Daniel Arkin, Staff Writer, NBC News

Police in the Northern California town of Valley Springs on Sunday released information about the man they suspect fatally stabbed a 9-year-old girl at her home over the weekend.

The Calaveras County Sheriff?s office in a statement described the intruder as a ?muscular? white or Hispanic male approximately six feet tall.

Authorities warned residents in the area to lock their doors as the suspect is considered armed and dangerous.

The victim?s 12-year-old brother reportedly encountered an intruder in his home and witnessed the man flee the residence. The boy then checked on his sister and found she had been stabbed, according to NBC?s Sacramento affiliate KCRA.

The girl was later pronounced dead at a local hospital.

The Sheriff?s office has declined to disclose details of the murder, but they plan to release more information Sunday afternoon.

Sheriff?s investigators are scouring Valley Springs and interviewing several people of interest, according to the police statement.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653381/s/2b4698dc/l/0Lusnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A40C280C1795740A20Ecalif0Ecops0Edescribe0Eintruder0Esuspected0Eof0Efatally0Estabbing0E90Eyear0Eold0Dlite/story01.htm

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Sarah Palin: White House correspondents' dinner 'pathetic' (Washington Post)

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HTC posts factory image for HTC One Developer Edition

A factory restore image is your way back to stock when you need it the most, so be sure to grab it and keep it handy

HTC has posted the 1.29.1540.3 factory restore images for the unlocked Developer Edition HTC One on the HTCdev site. Available in two flavors -- a zip file and a Windows RUU executable -- these files will allow anyone to restore their phone back to an out-of-the-box condition as long as there is access to the bootloader. That means no matter how bad you've screwed the system firmware up from monkeying around with it, you have an easy path back to stock settings. Then you can do it all over again. 

Posting two different versions is pretty nice, too. The Windows only RUU is simple to use for folks running Windows (just plug in the phone and run the program), but not everyone uses Windows. For those folks who use a Mac or Linux computer, the zip file and fastboot makes it easy to go back without building a VM with Windows to do so. 

Be aware that these images are only for the unlocked Developer Edition, so don't try to just flash them to your carrier model. Your favorite ROM developer will have something for you instead. It's recommended that everyone with one of the Developer Edition models have these files in a safe place "just in case", so grab the 980MB file at the link below.

Source: HTCdev

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/9lLwwpqCFSg/story01.htm

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Horford leads Hawks to 90-69 rout of Pacers

ATLANTA (AP) ? As Al Horford led a lumbering fast break, David West doled out a flagrant blow that sent the Atlanta center tumbling to the court.

This time, the Hawks didn't back down.

Jeff Teague came up from behind to give West a shove, a play that epitomized a resurgent team intent on making this a series. That the Hawks did, stunning the Indiana Pacers with a dominant first half on the way to a 90-69 rout in Game 3 on Saturday night.

Horford had 26 points and 16 rebounds to help the Hawks narrow the Pacers' lead to 2-1.

But everyone played with more energy that they did in two double-digit losses at Indianapolis.

"We wanted to show them we're here to play," Teague said. "We were not going to back down to them."

This one was over by halftime, the Hawks racing to a 54-30 lead that set a franchise record for fewest points allowed in the first half of a playoff game, and matching Indiana's worst effort in a postseason opening half.

Game 4 in the best-of-seven series is Monday night in Atlanta, where the Hawks have won 12 straight over the Pacers dating to 2006.

"This team did something they've done all year long," coach Larry Drew said. "They responded."

The Hawks changed up their lineup ? inserting 7-footer Johan Petro at center and bringing 3-point specialist Kyle Korver off the bench ? after getting manhandled on the road. With more favorable matchups and a lot more energy, Atlanta suddenly looked like a team that can challenge the Pacers.

"We were ready to go," Drew said. "Before the game, I went in the locker room to give my speech and it was quiet in there. That told me they were focused."

Indiana, which was so dominant on its home court, was a totally different team after heading south. David West led the Pacers with 18 points. Paul George, who averaged 25 points in the first two games, was held to 16 on 4-of-11 shooting.

The Pacers connected on a dismal 27 percent (22 of 81) from the field. Taking Smith and George out of the mix, they were 11 of 56.

"We're a very young team," coach Frank Vogel said. "There's going to be some growing pains. We're going to feel this, experience this, and get better from it."

Josh Smith added 14 points for the Hawks, and Teague had 13. But that's only part of the story. Smith was able to take George out of his comfort zone, while Teague put the clamps on George Hill, who had surprisingly averaged 20 points in the first two games. The Pacers guard was held to three on 1-of-8 shooting.

"They came out with a lot of energy, put us on our heels early, and the rest is history," Hill said. "We turned the ball over a lot and we weren't getting to the places that we want to get to on offensive end."

Drew started the little-used Petro at center in hopes of cutting into the Pacers' size advantage, a move that had a ripple effect on Horford and Smith, providing more favorable defensive matchups all along the front line. Horford was able to shift to power forward, while Smith moved over to small forward.

But, after getting manhandled in the first two games at Indianapolis, the Hawks' turnaround wasn't really propelled by a great strategic move.

Petro played only 14 minutes. Korver, who started the first two games, still got the bulk of the playing time with 29 minutes. Instead, this was more about the Hawks coming out with a lot more passion, the very things Drew had been preaching since the start of the series.

"We were ready," Smith said.

After falling behind 8-1 in the opening minutes and calling a quick timeout, Atlanta dominated the rest of the opening half with a display that had the crowd on its feet time and time again, while the Pacers stood around in a state of shock.

As good as the Pacers were in the first two games, averaging 110 points and a 16-point margin of victory, they were that bad in Game 3. They made four of their first six shots ? then missed 30 of their next 36 before halftime, many of them the forced, ugly efforts of a team that turned increasingly desperate as the Hawks seemed to get to every loose ball just a little quicker.

Roy Hibbert missed all four of his shots in the first half. The backcourt duo of Hill and Lance Stephenson each went 1 of 6. The Atlanta defense, which was largely nonexistent in the first two games, contested every shot this time. Not only did Petro bring a more physical presence, Ivan Johnson came off the bench to provide plenty of bruising, quality minutes ? not to mention some fierce staredowns when Indiana did manage a rare basket.

But nothing was more telling that when Horford went down in the second quarter, and Teague came to his defense. After a bit more shoving and jawing, the teams were separated. The officials reviewed the video and stuck with their original call ? a flagrant foul on West, a technical on Teague.

"I don't think it was a dirty play. It was a hard foul. It's playoff basketball," Horford said.

Still, he was impressed by Teague's reaction.

"I was very surprised," Horford said. "I was like, 'Was that you?' I was happy. I was proud. He had my back out there."

For the most part, the game lived up to the nickname the Hawks' PR department has tried to push on the team for years. This was, indeed, the Highlight Factory ? most notably late in the first half, when Devin Harris took off on a fast break, glanced over his left shoulder and spotted Smith sprinting up from behind. Harris delivered a perfect behind-the-back pass, and Smith unleashed a thunderous left-handed slam that would've scored a perfect "10" in a dunk contest.

The Pacers, in fact, spent most of the night in a defensive fog. Stephenson fouled Harris on a desperation 3-pointer with the shot clock winding down, and the Atlanta player knocked down all three free throws. Then, after the Pacers made a couple of free throws with 6 seconds left in the half, Harris let the inbounds pass roll nearly to midcourt to save time, then scooped it up and took off for an uncontested layup that sent the Hawks to the locker room with their 24-point lead.

Notes: The Pacers' last win in Atlanta was a regular-season triumph Dec. 22, 2006. ... The Hawks missed six of their first 10 free throws, extending the troubles they had in the first two games. But they bounced back to make 14 of their last 18. ... Petro finished with six points and four rebounds.

___

Follow Paul Newberry on Twitter at www.twitter.com/pnewberry1963

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/horford-leads-hawks-90-69-rout-pacers-015137831.html

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After near-stall in late 2012, US economy picks up

In this Monday, Feb. 25, 2013 photo, Jack Yonally rings out a customer at Lodge's store in Albany, N.Y. U.S. consumers earned more and spent more in February, helped by a stronger job market that offset some of the drag from higher taxes, according to the Commerce Department, Friday, March 29, 2013. (AP Photo/David Duprey)

In this Monday, Feb. 25, 2013 photo, Jack Yonally rings out a customer at Lodge's store in Albany, N.Y. U.S. consumers earned more and spent more in February, helped by a stronger job market that offset some of the drag from higher taxes, according to the Commerce Department, Friday, March 29, 2013. (AP Photo/David Duprey)

Graphic shows U.S. quarterly gross domestic product

WASHINGTON (AP) ? After nearly stalling in late 2012, the American economy quickened its pace early this year despite deep government cutbacks. The strongest consumer spending in two years fueled a 2.5 percent annual growth rate in the January-March quarter.

The question is: Can it last?

Federal spending cuts, higher Social Security taxes and cautious businesses are likely to weigh on the economy in coming months.

Most economists say they think growth, as measured by the gross domestic product, is slowing in the April-June quarter to an annual rate of about 2 percent. Many predict growth will hover around that subpar level for the rest of the year.

Friday's Commerce Department report on GDP showed that consumers stepped up spending at an annual rate of 3.2 percent in the January-March quarter ? the biggest such jump since the end of 2010. Growth was also helped by businesses, which responded to the greater demand by rebuilding their stockpiles. And home construction rose further.

Government spending sank at a 4.1 percent annual rate, led by another deep cut in defense.

Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets, foresees more improvement in the second half of the year.

"The second-half acceleration will be supported by improved household finances, pent-up demand for autos and the ongoing recovery in housing," Guatieri says. "We are seeing significant housing-related consumer purchases in such areas as furniture."

GDP is the broadest gauge of the economy's health. It measures the total output of goods and services produced in the United States, from haircuts and hamburgers to airplanes and automobiles.

The government will provide two updated estimates of first-quarter growth based on more complete data. Whatever the revised data show, estimated first-quarter growth will likely remain far above the economy's scant 0.4 percent growth rate in the October-December quarter.

In a healthy economy, with an unemployment rate between 5 percent and 6 percent, GDP growth of 2.5 percent or 3 percent would be considered solid. But in today's still-struggling recovery, with unemployment at 7.6 percent, the economy needs faster growth to generate enough jobs to quickly shrink unemployment.

Since the Great Recession officially ended in June 2009, growth has remained weaker than usual after a severe downturn. In part, that's because the recession followed the worst financial crisis since Great Depression. The economy expanded just 2.4 percent in 2010, 1.8 percent in 2011 and 2.2 percent in 2012.

This had been expected to be the year when growth would finally reach a more robust 3 percent to 4 percent pace. But across-the-board government spending cuts, which began taking effect March 1, have made that unlikely. The cuts are forcing agencies to furlough workers, reducing spending on public projects and making businesses nervous about investing and hiring.

Unless Congress and the White House reach a deal to reverse them, the government spending cuts will continue through the end of the year and beyond.

Consumers' take-home pay has also fallen because President Barack Obama and Congress allowed a Social Security tax cut to expire. A person earning $50,000 a year has about $1,000 less to spend this year. A household with two high-paid workers has up to $4,500 less. Consumers' take-home pay is crucial to the economy because their spending drives roughly 70 percent of growth.

Americans appeared to shake off the tax increase at the start of the year. They spent more in January and February, powered by a stronger job market.

But hiring slowed sharply in March. And consumers spent less at retail businesses, a sign that many were starting to feel the effects of the Social Security tax increase. Economists expect spending to stay weak in the April-June quarter as consumers adjust to smaller paychecks.

Ben Herzon, an economist at Macroeconomics Advisers, thinks the tax increases could shave roughly 1 percentage point from growth this year. He expects the government spending cuts to reduce growth by a further 0.6 percentage point.

The drop in government spending cut growth in the January-March quarter by 0.8 percentage point.

Three-fourths of that decline came from defense spending. The past two quarterly declines in defense spending ? at a 22.1 percent annual pace in the fourth quarter and 11.5 percent in the first quarter ? have been the sharpest such back-to-back drops since the Korean War was winding down in the 1950s.

Many large developing countries are growing much faster than the United States. China's economy expanded 7.7 percent in the first three months of the year compared with a year earlier ? and that was a slowdown from its previous double-digit growth. Indonesia's economy grew 6.2 percent in 2012, India's 4.1 percent.

But among developed countries, the United States is still performing relatively well. Most of Europe is stuck in a second year of recession. Germany's economy grew just 0.7 percent in 2012. France's didn't grow at all. Italy's shrank 2.4 percent.

And in the January-March quarter, Britain grew at an annual rate of just 1.2 percent, less than half the estimated U.S. pace.

Last quarter, U.S. companies were more cautious about spending on computers, machinery and facilities, possibly because of the looming government spending cuts and higher taxes. Business investment grew at an annual rate of just 2.1 percent, down from a 13.2 percent rate in the fourth quarter.

That slowdown could hurt hiring in coming months. If companies buy fewer machines or build fewer stores or factories, they will likely fill fewer jobs.

U.S. income growth adjusted for inflation fell in the January-March quarter after a surge in the final three months of 2012. The fourth-quarter gain had reflected a rush to pay dividends and make bonus payments before higher tax rates took effect Jan. 1. Incomes were also held back last quarter by the higher Social Security tax. After paying taxes, incomes fell at an annual rate of 5.3 percent in the first quarter after surging 6.2 percent in the fourth quarter.

The jump in consumer spending, along with slower income growth, meant that the saving rate fell to 2.6 percent of after-tax income in the first quarter. That was down from 4.7 percent in the October-December quarter.

One area where consumers are feeling some relief is at the gas pump: The national average price for a gallon of gas has fallen by 29 cents since Feb. 27 to $3.50.

Cheaper gas helps the economy because it makes goods less expensive to transport and gives consumers more money to spend on other things. Over the course of a year, a decline of 10 cents a gallon translates to roughly $13 billion in savings at the pump.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-04-26-US-Economy-GDP/id-b0950ce341d241ffb1c47850ddfa20fa

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