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Friday, March 29, 2013

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) ? During a celebration last week to mark the Persian new year, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did something quietly remarkable: He stood modestly to the side and let his favored aide have the spotlight.

The gesture was far more than just a rare demure moment from the normally grandstanding leader. It was more carefully scripted stagecraft in Ahmadinejad's longshot efforts to promote the political fortunes of his chief of staff ? and in-law ? and seek a place for him on the June presidential ballot that will pick Iran's next president.

In the waning months of Ahmadinejad's presidency ? weakened by years of internal battles with the ruling clerics ? there appears no bigger priority than attempting one last surprise. It's built around rehabilitating the image of Esfandiari Rahim Mashaei and somehow getting him a place among the candidates for the June 14 vote.

To pull it off, Ahmadinejad must do what has eluded him so far: Come out on top in a showdown with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the other guardians of the Islamic Republic. Ahmadinejad has been slapped down hard after bold ? but ultimately doomed ? attempts in recent years to push the influence of his office on policies and decisions reserved for the ruling clerics.

That has left him limping into the end of his eight-year presidency with many allies either jailed or pushed to the political margins. Mashaei is part of the collateral damage.

He's been discredited as part of a "deviant current" that critics say seeks to undermine Islamic rule in Iran and elevate the values of pre-Islamic Persia. The smear campaign has even included rumors that Mashaei conjured black magic spells to cloud Ahmadinejad's judgment.

The prevailing wisdom is that the backlash has effectively killed Mashaei's chances for the presidential ballot. The ruling clerics vet all candidates and, the theory follows, they seek a predictable slate of loyalists after dealing with Ahmadinejad's ambitions and disruptive power plays. In short: Friends of Ahmadinejad need not apply.

Khamenei and others, including the powerful Revolutionary Guard, also are hoping to quell domestic political spats that they fear project a sense of instability during critical negotiations with the West over Tehran's nuclear program.

Yet none of this seems to have discouraged Ahmadinejad, whose son is married to Mashaei's daughter. Ahmadinejad has been trying to groom Mashaei for years as his potential heir and now appears reluctant to toss his backing behind a less controversial figure.

To that end, the president has hit the road as a cheerleader for Mashaei under the slogan "Long Live Spring."

At one stop, Ahmadinejad described Mashaei as "a pious man." At another event he called him "excellent, wise," and at a third said his adviser has "a heart like a mirror."

At last week's event, both men burst into tears as they discussed the need to help children with cancer. Ahmadinejad then "thanked God for having the opportunity to get to know Mashaei."

Ahmadinejad appears to be banking on his populist appeal to force the Guardian Council ? the gatekeepers for the candidates ? to consider Mashaei too prominent to reject.

"Ahmadinejad doesn't want to go out with a whimper. That's not his style," said Mustafa Alani, an analyst at the Gulf Research Center based in Geneva. "He wants his legacy, his man, as his successor."

Tehran-based political analyst Sadeq Zibakalam also sees Mashaei as Ahmadinejad's last-ditch insurance policy. Without an ally as successor, Ahmadinejad fears he will be cast to the political sidelines.

"Ahmadinejad has no option but to get one of his loyalists into power," he said.

It will be more than a month before the candidate list is finalized. The presidential hopefuls will register from May 7-11, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported Monday.

Already, however, the general contours are taking shape.

There is Ahmadinejad's quest for Mashaei as the only active campaign roadshow.

Many conservatives, meanwhile, seem to be coalescing around a three-way alliance ? all apparently in the good graces of the ruling system ? of former Foreign Minister and current Khamenei adviser Ali Akbar Velayati; Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf and prominent lawmaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, whose daughter is married to Khamenei's son.

"Should we win, our coalition will form the backbone of the future government," Velayati told a press conference earlier this month, suggesting that the potential winner would seek key posts for the other two.

A separate roster of establishment-friendly candidates is getting bigger by the day. It includes former Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian; parliament's vice speaker, Mohammad Reza Bahonar, and a former Revolutionary Guard commander, Mohsen Rezaei, who ran against Ahmadinejad in his disputed re-election in 2009.

Reformists remain undecided whether to fall behind a potential candidate or boycott the vote in protest of the 2009 outcome ? which they claim stole the election from Green Movement leader Mir Hossein Mousavi ? and the crushing pressures on dissent that followed. Mousavi and fellow reformist candidate Mahdi Karroubi have been under house arrest for more than two years.

But the most unpredictable element is still Ahmadinejad's push for Mashaei, whom he bills as his ideological heir and supporter of populist initiatives such as government stipends to poor families.

"Ahmadinejad will travel city to city and tell the public that they should vote for me if they want Ahmadinejad's plans to be pursued," Mashaei was quoted as saying by Iranian media.

The president ? the same man who calls for the destruction of Iran's enemies ? is often musing and sentimental as Mashaei's pitchman.

"I testify that this man loves all human beings," Ahmadinejad said of his in-law.

Mashaei, however, has been a political lightning rod for years. In 2009, Ahmadinejad appointed him as his first vice president, but was forced to backtrack on orders from Khamenei.

Mashaei is believed to have been Ahmadinejad's adviser in a stunning feud with Khamenei over the choice of intelligence chief in 2011. The president boycotted Cabinet meetings for 11 days ? an unprecedented show of disrespect to Iran's supreme leader ? but finally backed down.

In December, Ahmadinejad named Mashaei to a top post in the Nonaligned Movement, a Cold War holdover that Iran seeks to revive as a counterweight to Western influence. The appointment was seen as an attempt to raise Mashaei's political profile and give him some international experience.

While it's not possible to rule out any candidate until the vetting process is complete, one conservative cleric gives Mashaei no chance.

"The exalted supreme leader ordered that Mashaei is not qualified to serve as first vice president." said Qasem Ravanbakhsh. "So will the Guardian Council approve for president a man was not qualified to be the first vice president? Never."

___

Murphy reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ahmadinejad-roadshow-pitching-political-heir-063835043.html

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Thursday, March 28, 2013

Multiple moves found harmful to poor young children

Mar. 28, 2013 ? Poor children who move three or more times before they turn 5 have more behavior problems than their peers, according to a new study by researchers at Cornell University and the National Employment Law Project. The study is published in the journal Child Development.

Moving is a fairly common experience for American families; in 2002, 6.5 percent of all children had been living in their current home for less than six months. Among low-income children, that number rose to 10 percent. In addition, in 2002, 13 percent of families above poverty moved once, but 24 percent of families below poverty moved. Research has shown that frequent moves are related to a range of behavioral, emotional, and school problems for adolescents.

Using national data on 2,810 children from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal, representative study of children born in 20 large U.S. cities between 1998 and 2000, researchers sought to determine how frequent moves relate to children's readiness for school. Parents were interviewed shortly after the birth of their children, then again by phone when the children were 1, 3, and 5; in-home assessments were done when the children were 3 and 5. The study also looked at the children's language and literacy outcomes, as well as behavior problems reported by mothers.

The study found that 23 percent of the children had never moved, 48 percent had moved once or twice, and 29 percent had moved three or more times. Among children who moved three or more times before age 5, nearly half (44 percent) were poor; poverty was defined based on the official federal threshold. Moving three or more times was not related to the children's language and literacy outcomes.

But children who moved three or more times had more attention problems, anxiousness or depression, and aggressiveness or hyperactivity at age 5 than those who had never moved or those who had moved once or twice. These increases in behavior problems occurred only among poor children, the study found, suggesting that frequent moves early in life are most disruptive for the most disadvantaged children.

"The United States is still recovering from the great recession, which has taken a major toll on the housing market," notes Kathleen Ziol-Guest, postdoctoral associate at Cornell University, who led the study. "As housing markets have collapsed across communities, highly mobile low-income families have moved in search of work and less expensive housing.

"The findings in this study suggest that the housing crisis and its accompanying increase in mobility likely will have negative effects on young children, especially poor children."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Society for Research in Child Development, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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

Journal Reference:

Kathleen M. Ziol-Guest, Claire C. McKenna. Early Childhood Housing Instability and School Readiness. Child Development, 2013; DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12105

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/most_popular/~3/Y4-8E5yDj7Y/130328080229.htm

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Monday, March 25, 2013

Joe Weider, fitness mentor to Schwarzenegger, dies at 93

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Joe Weider, a legendary figure in bodybuilding who helped popularize the sport worldwide and played a key role in introducing a charismatic young weightlifter named Arnold Schwarzenegger to the world, died Saturday. He was 93.

Weider's publicist, Charlotte Parker, told The Associated Press that the bodybuilder, publisher and promoter died of heart failure at his home in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley.

"I knew about Joe Weider long before I met him," Schwarzenegger, who tweeted the news of his old friend's death, said in a lengthy statement posted on his website. "He was the godfather of fitness who told all of us to be somebody with a body. He taught us that through hard work and training we could all be champions."

A bodybuilder with an impressive physique himself, Weider became better known in later years as a behind-the-scenes guru to the sport.

He popularized bodybuilding and spread the message of health and fitness worldwide with such publications as Muscle & Fitness, Flex and Shape. Schwarzenegger himself is the executive editor of Muscle & Fitness and Flex.

He created one of bodybuilding's pre-eminent events, the Mr. Olympia competition, in 1965, adding to it the Ms. Olympia contest in 1980, the Fitness Olympia in 1995 and the Figure Olympia in 2003.

He also relentlessly promoted Schwarzenegger, who won the Mr. Olympia title a then-record seven times, including in 1980 and every year from 1970 through 1975.

"Every sport needs a hero, and I knew that Arnold was the right man," he said.

Weider brought Schwarzenegger to the United States early in his career, where he helped train the future governor of California as well as aided him in getting into business. Schwarzenegger also said Weider helped land him his first movie role, in the forgettable film "Hercules in New York," by passing off the Austrian-born weightlifter to the producers as a German Shakespearean actor.

"Joe didn't just inspire my earliest dreams; he made them come true the day he invited me to move to America to pursue my bodybuilding career," the actor said in his statement. "I will never forget his generosity. One of Joe's greatest qualities is that he wasn't just generous with his money; he freely gave of his time and expertise and became a father figure for me."

Weider also mentored numerous other bodybuilders.

Born in Canada in 1919, Weider recalled growing up in a tough section of Montreal.

Just like the apocryphal tale of the skinny kid who starts working out after a bully kicks sand in his face, Weider said he was indeed a small, skinny teenager picked on by bullies when he came across the magazine Strength.

He had tried to join a local wrestling team, he said, but was turned down by the coach who feared he was so small he'd be hurt.

Inspired by the magazine, he built his own weights from scrap parts found in a railroad yard and pumped them relentlessly.

Word of his efforts got around and he was invited to join a weightlifting club.

"When I saw the gym, saw the guys working out, supporting one another, I was mesmerized," he recalled.

He won his first bodybuilding ranking at age 17, and soon after began to publish his first magazine, Your Physique.

Later he started a mail-order barbell business, and in 1946 he and his younger brother staged the first Mr. Canada contest in at Montreal's Monument National Theater. At the same time, they formed the International Federation of Bodybuilders.

In recent years, Weider donated much of his bodybuilding memorabilia to the University of Texas at Austin, which opened the Joe and Betty Weider Museum of Physical Culture in 2011.

He is survived by his wife.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/joe-weider-fitness-mentor-schwarzenegger-dies-221700701--spt.html

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Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Cricket-hair sensor used in bio-inspired technology

Mar. 11, 2013 ? Crickets use sensitive hairs on their cerci (projections on the abdomen) to detect predators. For these insects, air currents carry information about the location of nearby predators and the direction in which they are moving. These University of Twente researchers wondered whether they could use the same principle to create a new kind of "camera," capable of imaging entire flow patterns rather than measuring flows at a single point. They mimic the cricket hairs using microtechnology.

The hairs themselves are made of a type of epoxy, which is attached to a flexible suspended plate. That acts as a capacitor, whose capacitance varies with movement. Measuring that variation gives you information about the movement. Using an entire field or array of such fine hairs, it is possible to identify patterns in the flow, in much the same way as complete images are formed from the individual pixels detected by chips in cameras.

Flow camera

The trick is then to be able to read each hair individually. To this end, a range of options have been explored. Frequency Division Multiplexing (FDM) offers the greatest advantages. With FDM, the measured signal is not delayed while in transit, it is not difficult to synchronize the individual sensors, and the sensor array can easily be expanded without sacrificing performance. Also, the hardware involved is less complex than that required by other technologies. Looking ahead, the researchers believe that it will ultimately be a relatively simple matter to integrate the sensors and the hardware. This will result in a "camera" that is capable of imaging flow patterns. These could be used as a motion detection system in robots, for example.

The study by Ahmad Dagamseh and his colleagues was carried out in the Transducer Science and Technology group, headed by Professor Gijs Krijnen. The group is part of the University of Twente's MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology. Their research was funded by the EU's Customized Intelligent Life-Inspired Arrays programme (CILIA), and by the "Bio-EARS" VICI grant awarded to Gijs Krijnen by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and the STW Technology Foundation.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Twente.

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

Journal Reference:

A M K Dagamseh, R J Wiegerink, T S J Lammerink, G J M Krijnen. Towards a high-resolution flow camera using artificial hair sensor arrays for flow pattern observations. Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, 2012; 7 (4): 046009 DOI: 10.1088/1748-3182/7/4/046009

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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/uS69_A91IDA/130311091126.htm

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For longtime yoga instructor, 90, only her age isn't a stretch

Fran Miller was in her 50s when she became a yoga teacher.

That was four decades ago.

Miller, who turns 91 this week, is still at it ? teaching three classes a week in the San Fernando Valley for the city's Department of Recreation and Parks.

She is so lithe and energetic that her students say they hardly notice her age. "I didn't even know she was that old," said Maureen Hanrahan. For much of the 10 years she's been taking Miller's classes, Hanrahan thought the instructor was in her 70s, she said.

Miller moved from her native New York to the Los Angeles area in 1941 and eventually settled in Valley Village. Her husband passed away when she was 40, and the onetime secretary was left to raise her daughters: Robin Cosio, 64, and Wendy Nordstrom, 60.

She first tried yoga after spotting a newspaper ad for a class taught by a rabbi at the Van Nuys YMCA.

Yoga had always fascinated Miller. But it seemed "so far out," she said.

A rabbi teacher was a different story, however. "How could I pass this up?" Miller recalled thinking. She is Jewish, and the class was close by, she said. She enrolled "and took to it like a duck to water."

The rabbi asked Miller to be one of his demonstrators in exchange for free classes. She agreed, and soon he asked her to fill in teaching his classes when he was away.

The first time the anxious Miller arrived to teach, she was armed with a list of notes. She didn't need them. She kept teaching, and when the rabbi announced he was retiring, he gave his position to Miller. Offers to lead private sessions followed, including a full-time summer job at the Highland Springs Resort in Cherry Valley, Calif.

"It just grew and grew," Miller said.

Years passed, and she just kept going. Her age is not something she dwells on. "To me, it's just a number," she said.

Though experts say Miller's staying power is rare, the prospect of "more and more 80- and 90-year-old participants" in yoga is likely as people live longer and the popularity of yoga grows, said George Salem, associate professor at USC's Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy, who has researched yoga and older practitioners.

The 5-foot-31/2 Miller, who weighs around 120 pounds, credits her overall well-being to yoga, along with weekly walks and a diet that includes nuts and yogurt and a mandatory cup of hot water with lemon each morning.

"It's not only stretching," Miller said. "It's your mind, your body, your breathing. It gives you more awareness."

Her classes at Balboa Sports Center and Studio City Recreation Center have built a faithful following. Students' ages range from 12 to the 70s.

It took Charo Martinez months to persuade her husband, Rick Benzel, to accompany her to Miller's yoga sessions.

"I'm not going to take yoga," the 61-year-old writer and publishing consultant told her. "And what, the teacher is 90 years old? How can a 90-year-old be teaching yoga?"

Martinez coaxed her husband "just go watch her, just once."

That's all it took, Benzel recalled. "I fell in love with it and with Fran on Day One." That was a year ago. Today, Benzel is a regular at Miller's sessions, which he says have helped improve his balance and flexibility.

Hanrahan, 61, the veteran student, said she feels "more comfortable" with Miller as an instructor than, say, a 20-year-old.

At a recent session, Miller, dressed in black leggings and a blue-and-black-striped top, ambled between the 20 or so participants as they lay on mats preparing to commence with 90 minutes of Hatha yoga, which focuses on balancing mind and body.

"As you quiet your body, you quiet your mind," Miller told the group as they lay in a restorative pose. Later she guided them through a salutation to the sun.

"Stand at the front of your mat ? feet apart ? inhale reaching upward," Miller commanded.

Bending forward, she pushed her chest to her thighs and her hands to the floor. With hands at either side of her right foot, she lunged her left leg behind her while lifting her shoulders and lengthening her spine. She stepped her right leg back so her feet were side by side. Head down, arms extended, body straight, she held the pose for several seconds.

ann.simmons@latimes.com

Source: http://feeds.latimes.com/~r/latimes/news/science/~3/HXK_KNCJcRM/la-me-fran-miller-20130311,0,3131907.story

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