Dijit?s Universal Remote Control App Gets Revamped For The iPad

dijit-ipad-splashscreenThe social remote control app Dijit has certainly been getting around lately: it started off on iPhones, made the leap onto Android devices not long ago, and now the company has announced that an iPad-friendly version of the app is in the works. According to Jeremy Toeman, Dijit's Chief Product Officer, one of the company's big focuses was to make effective use of all the screen real estate the iPad afforded them. "We've tried to think through all the nuance of what a full, 10" entertainment console sitting on a user's coffee table should look like," he said.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/XPhXwkG2PMQ/

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'Game Of Thrones' Set Photos Show Dragons, Qarth

For a land plagued by winter, it looks awful warm and sunny in Westeros and across the narrow sea. Entertainment Weekly sent one lucky reporter to visit the "Game of Thrones" set, where the cast and crew are busy filming season two. While the mag only unveiled a tiny teaser of the set visit, they did [...]

Source: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2011/11/28/game-of-thrones-set-photos/

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Best Home Owner Insurance Quote

This article has been viewed 20 times.

Making a purchase as big and important as a home owner insurance policy should be taken seriously. Undoubtedly, you want to purchase your policy from the best company, as well as get the best home owner insurance quote.

How can you do that?

When it comes to home owner insurance quotes, what sets the insurance companies apart?

Home owner insurance companies are set apart in many ways. Look at the rating of the home owner insurance companies in question, as well as whether or not they are licensed to do business in your state. Home owner insurance companies also differ in the level of coverage they offer and the kinds of coverage you can add on to your home owner insurance policy.

While you?re shopping for the best home owner insurance quote, find the company?s rating. This will let you know how financially stable the insurance company is. Talk to family members, friends, and neighbors about the home owner insurance companies with which they do business. Unless they are employees of the company, they?ll be more than willing to dish the dirt ? both good and bad.

What really makes the best home owner insurance quote?

The best home owner insurance quote varies from person to person. You want to get a quote for a home owner insurance policy that offers the exact coverage you want at a rate that will not completely drain your bank account. Therefore, you need to check out several different home owner insurance companies. Ask about coverage, price, additional coverage, and discounts.

Where can I find everything I need to know about home owner insurance in my state?

Your state?s department of insurance has all the information you need to know about home owner insurance coverage in your state. The insurance department will also be able to provide you with a list of home owner insurance companies and agents licensed to do business in your state.

If you want extra facts in regard to life insurance agent, pay a visit to the blogger's Site without hesitation.

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Best Home Owner Insurance Quote

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Making a purchase as big and important as a home owner insurance policy should be taken seriously. Undoubtedly, you want to purchase your policy from the best company, as well as get the best home owner insurance quote.

How can you do that?

When it comes to home owner insurance quotes, what sets the insurance companies apart?

Home owner insurance companies are set apart in many ways. Look at the rating of the home owner insurance companies in question, as well as whether or not they are licensed to do business in your state. Home owner insurance companies also differ in the level of coverage they offer and the kinds of coverage you can add on to your home owner insurance policy.

While you're shopping for the best home owner insurance quote, find the company's rating. This will let you know how financially stable the insurance company is. Talk to family members, friends, and neighbors about the home owner insurance companies with which they do business. Unless they are employees of the company, they'll be more than willing to dish the dirt - both good and bad.

What really makes the best home owner insurance quote?

The best home owner insurance quote varies from person to person. You want to get a quote for a home owner insurance policy that offers the exact coverage you want at a rate that will not completely drain your bank account. Therefore, you need to check out several different home owner insurance companies. Ask about coverage, price, additional coverage, and discounts.

Where can I find everything I need to know about home owner insurance in my state?

Your state's department of insurance has all the information you need to know about home owner insurance coverage in your state. The insurance department will also be able to provide you with a list of home owner insurance companies and agents licensed to do business in your state.

If you want extra facts in regard to life insurance agent, pay a visit to the blogger's Site without hesitation.

Article Courtesy of ArticleCRUSH Article Directory

Source: http://www.articlecrush.com/finances/credit-finances/best-home-owner-insurance-quote/

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Miley Cyrus Admits She?s A Stoner

Miley Cyrus has found herself up in smoke – again. A video posted on TheDaily.com shows Miley Cyrus at her “private” 19th birthday party suggesting she?s a big fan of marijuana. The comment comes in the video after Kelly Osbourne presents her with a cake decorated with Bob Marley’s face. “You know you’re a stoner [...]

Source: http://www.celebritymound.com/miley-cyrus-admits-shes-a-stoner/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=miley-cyrus-admits-shes-a-stoner

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Ministry of Truth ? Blog Archive ? Beware the Cancer Quack

Before getting to the meat of this post, I want to kick things off with some eminently sensible pictorial advice

Believe it or not, this particular poster, by Max Plattner, dates to the period from 1936 to 1938 and yet, as the events of this week have shown, it remains as relevant today as it was is the year if was first published; a year which also saw Jesse Owens win four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics, much to the chagrin of a certain Mr A. Hitler. 1936 also saw the the publication of the very first Billboard magazine charts, from which i discovered, somewhat curiously, that I have copies of three of five recordings* that achieved the highest chart positions during that year.

*For the the record, the three that I have are Billie Holliday?s recording of Gershwin?s ?Summertime? and Robert Johnson?s ?Cross Road Blues? and ?Sweet Home Chicago?.

Returning to the 21st century, the story that serves as a reminder of the value of the advice given in that poster is, of course, that of Billie Bainbridge, a four year old girl with a rare and inoperable form of brain cancer.

Actually, if truth be told, the story I?m most interest in isn?t, strictly speaking, about young Billie. It?s actually about the American clinic, the Burzynnski Clinic, that Billie?s family hopes she will be able to attend, if they can manage to raise $200,000 to cover the costs. And its also about the manner in which a PR flack who claims to represent that clinic reacted when a blogger started raising some very pertinant questions about the clinic operating practices and the effectiveness of the treatments it offers.

I really don?t to revist ground that already been well enough covered elsewhere over the last few days, so if you?re coming to this for the first then you need to start with the following posts by Andy Lewis of The Quackometer:

The False Hope of the Burzynski Clinic

The Burzynski Clinic Threatens My Family

I?d also suggest that you pick up Dorothy Bishop?s article, ?The weird world of US ethics regulation?, David Colquhoun?s commentary, which covers some of the ?science? behind the activities of this clinic and shows it to be, quite literally, taking the piss, Cancer Research UK?s commentary. ?Hope or False Hope?? and this post, by Josephine James, which includes a fairly comprehensive collection of links to other articles covering this same story.

Last, and by no means least, Zeno?s been looking at some of the business/financial aspects of this story in a post which also includes the following table of the Burzynski clinic?s claimed response rates for common cancers:

Now, I?m no oncologist but I?ve read enough alt-med research papers over the years to know what scientifically meansingless data looks like, and Burzynski?s objective response rate data looks pretty meaningless to me.

For starters, Burzynski does a pretty lousy job of identifying exactly what it he claims to be treating, for example, lung cancer comes in five histological types; Non-small-cell carcinoma (NSCLC), small-cell carcinoma, carcinois, sarcoma and unspecified and each of these histological types may have their own sub-types ? NSCLC sub-types include squamous cell carcinoma, adenocarcinoma, bronchioalveola carcinoma, carcinoid and other. Lung cancers are highly heterogenous malignancies in which is its not unusal for tumors to consist of more than one subtype and so, if you look at some of the credible published research in this area what you will invariably find is that researchers go to quite some considerable length to spell out just exactly what kind of tumors they?ve been working on as not all types/subtypes respond equally well to particular treatments.

Cancer is a very complicated disease, or rather category of diseases, and its therefore necesssary for researchers to be very specific as to the type, and sub-type. of cancer they been working on, when presenting their findings, if their results to have any real scientific value.

So, already we?re off to a rather mediocre start in terms of the quality of the evidence on offer and that was enough to prompt me to do a bit more background reading on the subject of research standards which, perhaps, unsurprisingly, threw up another anomaly that merits further investigation.

In clinical trials of non-surgical cancer treatments, how do we assess whether or not the treatment is having any actual effect, given that, in many, if not most cancers, its relatively unusual for a treatment to be so successful that it entire eradicates the tumors?

The answer is that we look for evidence of shrinkage in the size of the tumor(s) and in order to do that we need some sort of objective standard against which measure this shrinkage, if it occurs, and decide whether its significant enough to provide evidence of a definite response to treatment. That, in very simple terms, what the objective response rate is used for ? it measures the percentage of patients who exhibited a clincially significant response to the treatment based on standard assessment criteria, and for cancers thist standard is determined by a set of published rules called RECIST (Research Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumours), which was initally published in 2000 (version 1.0) and then revised in 2008 (version 1.1). If you?re at all interested, then a full copy of the guidelines can be accessed here, and for our purposes you should take a good close look at section 4.3, ?Response Criteria?, which starts on page 5 of the pdf, or page 232 if you?re going from the page numbers on the actual pages.

Burzynski?s data table includes the following list of definitions in relation to his table of figures:

OR: Objective Response, includes CR, PR, MR, & IM.

CR: Complete Response. Complete disappearance of all signs of cancer in response to treatment of 4 weeks or longer.

PR: Partial Response. More than 50% decrease in the size of the tumors (the sum of cross-sectional area of the tumors), in response to treatment of 4 weeks or longer.

MR: Mixed Response. Significant decrease (more that 25%) in the size of tumors wifi simultaneous increase in size of some of the other tumors.

IM: Improvement. Decrease in size of the tumors, not confirmed yet by the second follow-up radiological measurement.

SD: Stable Disease. Hb decrease or increase in the size of the tumors, but no progression, in response to treatment of 12 weeks or longer.

PD: Progressive Disease. More then 50% increase in size of the tumors (the sum of cross-sectional area of the tumors), in response to treatment of 4 weeks or longer.

EP: Evaluable Patients. Patients who remained on treatment long enough to enable an objective evaluation of the response.

So, Burzynski?s claimed ?objective response? includes any/all patients who had either a complete, partial or mixed response to treatment or who showed an improvement, even if this had not been verified by a second, follow-up, radiological measurement*

*Ideally, measurements should be taken via a CT scan although measurements can also be taken from X-ray photographs for some lung cancers, provided certain conditions are met, i.e. the X-ray photograph must provide an unobsrtructed view of the tumor.

If, however, you consult the RECIST guidance you?ll find no reference whatsoever to any kind of ?mixed response? category and, of course, researchers shouldn?t be including results in their data before they?ve been propery verified, so there?s no ?improvement? category either.

What you will come across, if you go beyond the guidelines and look at a few journal papers for recent studies conducted using the RECIST standards, are references to a ?minor response? category, as here:

PATIENTS AND METHODS: Per protocol, the first three disease assessments were done at 2, 4, and 6 months. For the purpose of the analysis (landmark method), disease response was subclassified in six categories: partial response (PR; > 30% size reduction)*, minor response (MR; 10% to 30% reduction), no change (NC) as either NC- (0% to 10% reduction) or NC+ (0% to 20% size increase), progressive disease (PD; > 20% increase/new lesions), and subjective PD (clinical progression).

*I should point out, before anyone become confused by the numbers here that under the RECIST standard, the size of a tumour is measured in terms of the sum of its diameters in two planes of measurement and not by its cross-sectional area, as used by Burzinski, and the two measures amount to near enough the same thing as makes no difference for our purposes, or those of cancer researchers.

Now all this raises a couple of rather important questions about Burzynki?s response rates.

One is that his data appears to be off protocol in so far as his ?mixed response? category is not the same as the ?minor reponse? category that is fairly commonly used by other researchers, even if its not part of the formal RECIST standard, as the latter make no reference whatsoever to any tumours showing an increase in size at the same time as other showing a measurable decrease, albeit one too small to categorised as a partial response. It also, noticably, includes results that haven?t, at the time of publication, been properly verified, which is also a bit of a no-no.

Burzynski also published his ?objective response rate? without any further qualification ? there is no data given to show what proportion of the patients who did exhibit a response of some kind fall into each of his four categories, and from the point of view of cancer patients, that?s pretty important information because the figure that they?re naturally going to be most interested in is the ?complete response? category as that shows the number of patients for whom the treatment was a complete success.

So, we have no way of knowing exactly how much of Burzynski?s claimed response rate is based on results that have yet to be properly verified at the time of publication and, equally, no way of knowing how much of this same rate is accounted for by his off protocol ?mixed response? category, the clinical value of which is, to day the least, distinctly dubious as, ultimately, a treatment which shrinks some tumours, but not others, is only ever going to be of limited value to patients unless it can be used as part of a combination therapy with other treatments that successfuly target the tumours that Burzynski?s treatments fail to reach.

To me that all looks just a bit dodgy, especially as Burzynski appears to be touting his wholly unproven antineoplastion therapy as something of a one-size-fits-all miracle cure.

Then, as I was researching this post, the plot thickened even further as I happened across on of Burzynski?s less than happy former customers, Wayne Merritt, who was diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic/liver cancer in 2009. Of everything on the Merritt?s site, one claim, in particular, caught my eye:

Along with the long list of other meds that were supposed to work in conjunction with each other, the Burzynski Clinic gave my husband standard chemotherapy medications. We were never told that two of the medications were conventional chemo medications. We discovered from our local pharmacy that one medication the Burzynski Clinic had charged us over $2300.00 for could have been purchased from the pharmacy for around $170.00.

Leaving aside the alleged 1250% markup, what the Merritt?s are alleging ? and this is only an allegation at this point ? is that Burzynski has been mixing standard chemotherapy meds in with his antineoplastion therapy without telling his patients.

If this is true then it is an extremely serious breach of medical ethics and it raises further questions about Burzynski?s claimed response rates as, without proper controls, there would be absolutely no way of establishing the extent to which any of his claims may be attributable to to the covert adulteration of his treatments with conventional chemotherapy medications, particularl when you consider that a ?mixed response? is pretty much what you?d expect to see in patients who received partial chemotherapy.

Footnote.

Incidentally, Wayne Merritt is still alive and seemingly doing pretty well even if the very obvious lessons of hsi encounter with the Burzynski clinic haven?t struck home. The ?what are we doing now? link on his site leads to a webpage which stands as veritable cornucopia of cancer woo but which whooly omits an mention of the single most salient detail in his story:

Monday 12 September 2011

I have great news! We saw the oncologyst today to get the results of the CT Scan Wayne had last week. The results are as follows: There has been no change. No growth. No new areas of suspect. Total inactivity! What does that mean? Well,? it?s kind of hard to say but we are accepting the fact and believing that the tumors have died! The doctor said she and the doctor who diagnosed would discuss doing a second biopsy to deturmine if there are any live cells within the tumor. If that happenes, and the results are that the tumors are truely dead, then we hope to be able to discuss ceasing the chemotheropy treatments!

So, that?s a win for medical science then?

Sadly, no ? not according to the Merritt?s, as their journal entry continues?

We?ve prayed and believed so long and hard for a miracle?. believing that it would come the way our human minds picture it?? instantly. However God has choosen to give us this miracle in bits and pieces. Bit by bit, a little each day. He did not take these tumors away all at once,? but left them there as evidence that they were in fact there,? life threatening,?. and now it appears?.. STOPPED IN THEIR TRACKS BY THE POWER OF PRAYER AND FAITH!!!

God has taken us on this journey for a reason. And while we still don?t know where or how the journey will end?? we will declare till the end that God is a miracle working God!

Yes, witness the miraculous power of the cognitive bias and its unmatched ability to blind people to the obvious.

Source: http://www.ministryoftruth.me.uk/2011/11/28/beware-the-cancer-quack/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=beware-the-cancer-quack

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Italy's Cinque Terre, hit by flash flooding, digs out

Thirty-two years ago, I met two American college girls while hitchhiking in Switzerland. They were studying in Florence, and I asked them their favorite place in Italy. They surprised me by naming a place I had never heard of before: the Cinque Terre. Curious, I headed south and discovered a humble string of five villages along Italy's Riviera coast with almost no tourism ? and, it seemed, almost no contact with the modern world. I fell in love with this stretch of Mediterranean coastline and have returned almost every year since.

On Oct. 25 of this year, a freakishly intense rainstorm ripped through the region and inflicted serious damage on the Cinque Terre towns of Monterosso and Vernazza. Torrents of water rampaged from the surrounding mountains into town, carrying with it tons of mud and debris. Massive flooding destroyed homes and businesses, and landslides filled the streets with rocks, dirt, and debris up to 12 feet deep. Entire ground floors were buried.

Photos and videos of the devastation show storefronts ripped off and fishing boats crumbled on rocks. The images of spindly, pastel Vernazza buried in rubble were especially difficult to look at. I've been there so many times that I actually think of it as a person. I believe I know more people in Vernazza than in all of Spain. After the disaster, the town looked like a crime scene. I felt as if I'd lost a friend ? as if nature had murdered someone I loved.

For some, it did. At least six people died in the flash floods, and several are still missing. In one heartbreaking account on the Save Vernazza website, Valentino Giannoni recalls the tense hours in his father's gelato shop as he did everything he could to keep his wife and 3-year-old son above the rising tide. They survived ? but Valentino's father was swept away while trying to keep the flood from consuming his family.

One of my staff members was also in Vernazza at the time. She and her family were eating pesto pasta when water started seeping into the restaurant. As the water level rose, everyone migrated into another room and took refuge on tabletops while several people held their bodies against the door to try to keep the water from raging in.

Danger doubled
As the group waited for the storm to subside, they started to smell gas. The floodwaters had ripped the restaurant's stove from the wall, leaving an exposed gas connection. As she recounted, they didn't know if they were going to drown or die in an explosion.

After more than two hours, the floodwaters receded momentarily (likely slowed by a pile-up of jumbled, overturned cars in the ravine), allowing everyone in the restaurant to escape to higher ground. Shortly thereafter, the rain increased, and the river rose even higher, pushing everything in its path into the sea. My staff member and her family ended up at Al Castello restaurant, where the owners provided food for about 100 tourists and townspeople. Later that evening, the owners of the Gianni Franzi hotel took them in; they were evacuated by boat the next morning.

Emergency responders have been working nonstop since the disaster and have made a lot of progress clearing the streets. I've heard from many friends in the region. The communities of Vernazza and Monterosso are in for a bleak, backbreaking winter of digging out and rebuilding, but they are determined to come back. One hotelier in Monterosso has promised to fix the damage in time to welcome our first tour group next year, in March.

I'll be back too. One of my favorite rituals in Vernazza is to walk the main drag at midnight, from top to bottom. In ancient times, a stream rushed down the middle of this street. At some point, generations ago, the stream was put under the pavement. But it still flows, draining water from the terraced vineyards that surround the town on three sides. At one point, you can actually hear the soft sounds of water flowing beneath the road, from vineyards to the sea. It's strange to imagine that within the course of a few hours, this underground rivulet turned into a roaring river that claimed lives.

When people ask me what they can do to help, I tell them to keep the Cinque Terre in their travel dreams. Like I do almost every year, I'll be traveling here next spring to do some filming and update my guidebook. Witnessing the damage ? and the progress ? firsthand will be both inspirational and bittersweet. Most of all, I look forward to taking that midnight stroll, stream trickling underneath my feet, just like I have for the past 30 years.

(Rick Steves writes European travel guidebooks and hosts travel shows on public television and public radio. E-mail him at rick@ricksteves.com, or write to him c/o P.O. Box 2009, Edmonds, Wash. 98020.)

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45307159/ns/travel-destination_travel/

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Jennifer Lopez And Boyfriend Casper Smart Spotted Cuddling On The Beach (PHOTOS)

www.tmz.com:

Jennifer Lopez and her new boy toy BF Casper Smart continued their Thanksgiving weekend romp in Hawaii, cozying up on the beach this morning ... in the first photos of the couple since word of their relationship got out.

Click through to see the steamy photos!

Read the whole story: www.tmz.com

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/27/jennifer-lopez-boyfriend-casper-smart_n_1114876.html

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