Vouchers, ice cream given in return for blood at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Visalia

Vouchers, ice cream given in return for blood at St. Mary?s Catholic Church in Visalia

The congregation at St. Mary?s Catholic Church in Visalia is planning a blood drive June 10 at 506 N. Garden St. in Visalia.

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Topeka Remembers 1966 Tornado That Killed 16

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) - Forty-six years ago, a tornado tore through downtown Topeka, leaving 16 people dead and more than $100 million in damage.

The tornado hit Topeka at 6:55 p.m. on June 8, 1966, and stayed on the ground for 39 minutes. It followed a 22-mile path through the heart of the city.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports (http://bit.ly/L8WSd3 ) that if adjusted for inflation, the damage total today would be around $716 million.

Despite the destruction and deaths, many Topekans believe more people would have been killed if residents had not sought cover.

Bill Kurtis, a newsman at WIBW-TV at the time, is credited with saving lives. His urgent warning "For God's sake, take cover'' is part of the city's lore.

___
Information from: The Topeka Capital-Journal, http://www.cjonline.com

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Euro 2012 kicks off: Nokia Maps transforms into a football tour guide

Euro 2012 commences today, with the first game taking place this evening between Greece and host nation Poland. Are you there? Or heading out soon? Or even just curious about host nations Poland and Ukraine? Nokia?s got your back.

Nokia Maps has just finished transforming itself into a hive of knowledge for all things football. Head to the website and type in either ?football? or any of the match venues, and Nokia will provide you with a virtual smorgasbord of information.

Between today and the final on July 1st, Nokia Maps? football hub will keep you up to date with venue info (as well as tell you how to get there), alongside last minute accommodation and up-to-date match results.

How to watch football online

Each of the eight host cities (Warsaw, Kiev, Wroclaw, Kharkiv, Lviv,Gdansk, Poznan and Donectks) has its own page, with relevant info and facts. Like the fact that Warsaw has the thinnest house in the world (97cm wide)? As you do.

It?s an interesting time for online mapping at the moment, with Apple about to pull Google Maps from iOS and Google upping the ante in response. Whether Nokia Maps can evolve into a true competitor to Google?s remains to be seen, but niceties like this are a good step in the right direction.

Link: Nokia Conversations?| Nokia Maps

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Three US diplomatic officials to testify in WikiLeaks case

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AMD shows off LiveBox mini desktop based on one of its Fusion chips (video)

AMD Livebox

Between the Raspberry Pi and the new Chromebox, we've been spending more time than usual lately talking about miniature desktops. Until now, though, AMD hasn't really entered the discussion; all of the models we've tested have featured either an ARM chip or Intel processor. So we were intrigued, then, when we found this mini PC hanging out at the company's Computex booth. It's called the LiveBox, and it runs one of AMD's X86-based Fusion chips. Before we get into specifics, though, have a gander at our hands-on photos and check out that funky design. In addition to being tiny, it has a two-pronged power connector attached, allowing you to plug it directly into an outlet. We're not sure individual consumers will prefer that cordless design, but we can see it translating well in businesses and schools -- precisely the sorts of places where AMD thinks these boxes might find a home.

Again, the LiveBox is based on a Fusion APU (a 1GHz C-60 chip, to be exact), complemented by 1GB of RAM and Radeon HD 6200 graphics. As for storage, the unit on display had a Samsung-made 64GB SSD. Take a tour around the edges and you'll find two USB 2.0 ports (no USB 3.0), a Gigabit Ethernet jack and an HDMI socket. There's also a memory card reader, a SIM slot for quad-band 3G (WCDMA) and Bluetooth 4.0, in case you want to pair it with any wireless peripherals. As you can see in the video below, those modest internals are enough to output smooth 1080p video, which means this setup should suffice for basic things like email, web surfing and YouTube. Unfortunately, the machine on display was running Windows 7, not 8, which is a bummer. We also wish we knew more about the target price: AMD won't say what brand will be selling this, or when it will be available. Until then, it's tough to say where the LiveBox fits in. But hey, hands-on photos and video can't hurt, right?

Continue reading AMD shows off LiveBox mini desktop based on one of its Fusion chips (video)

AMD shows off LiveBox mini desktop based on one of its Fusion chips (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Jun 2012 04:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Huge Crowds Welcome Shuttle Enterprise to NYC Museum

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Bill Clinton parts with Obama on extending Bush tax breaks

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Virtual Lecture Today: ?Retail Property Management Update & Trends?

Multidisciplinary & Emerging Programs (MEP) is proud to announce the launch of MEP Talks, a new lecture series.

For the inaugural lecture in this series, Richard Muhlebach, commercial real estate broker and president of Muhlebach LLC, presents ?Retail Property Management Update and Trends? today (Tuesday, June 5) at 12 p.m. EST. The lecture will be held online, and is free and open to the public.

As a commercial real estate broker, Richard Muhlebach represents retailers, office and medical office tenants. He provides consulting services to real estate companies, and is a Certified Property Manager (CPM), Senior Certifies Shopping Center Manager (SCSM), Counselor of Real Estate (CRE) and Real Property Administrator (RPA). Muhlebach has been an educator for 35 years, teaching for various organizations and institutions, including the University of Washington, Commercial Brokers Association, Institute of Real Estate Management, and the Building Owners and Managers Association. He has been a featured speaker domestically and across the globe.
He co-authored 18 commercial real estate books, including Managing and Leasing Commercial Properties, Shopping Center Management and Leasing, The Leasing Process: Landlord and Tenant Perspectives and Business Strategies for Real Estate Management Companies. He authored more than 100 articles, some of which were published in Asia and Europe.

Go to Drexel Learning Live to?attend the lecture virtually.

Image via Peter Glass/Photolibrary

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On a Tiny Caribbean Island, Hermit Crabs Form Sophisticated Social Networks [Video]

hermit-crab CRAFTY CRABS: Hermit crabs and other animals that periodically move into larger dwellings use sophisticated social strategies to exchange limited resources. Image: Grook Da Oger, Wikimedia Commons

Why do testicles hang the way they do? Is there an adaptive function to the female orgasm? What does it feel like to want to kill yourself? Does ?free will?...

Read More??

Carrie Bow Cay is a tiny island in the Caribbean Sea, about 14 miles off the coast of Southern Belize. The island is so small?0.77 acres?that you can walk its entire perimeter in under 10 minutes. Scientists regularly visit Carrie Bow Cay to study coral reefs, mangroves and seagrass meadows, as well as the animals that live in these unique ecosystems.

When Sara Lewis and Randi Rotjan of Tufts University travel to Carrie Bow Cay, they spend most of their time underwater, examining corals. But they also wanted to make the most of their time on land, inbetween dives. So the biologists decided to study the behavior of Caribbean hermit crabs (Coenobita clypeatus), around 1,000 of which live on Carrie Bow Cay's sandy shores.

Like all hermit crabs, Caribbean hermit crabs?which are the most popular pet variety in the United States?depend on other creatures' shells for protection. Strip a hermit crab of its shell and you will see its soft, pink abdomen curled behind its head like a fern's frond. Most hermit crabs favor snail shells, although some use the shells of bivalves, like clams and scallops, and others have made do with driftwood, stones and pieces of glass or plastic bottles.

In 2009, Lewis and Rotjan surveyed the entire hermit crab population on Carrie Bow Cay. Many crabs were living shells that were a tight fit or had one too many holes. As they grow, hermit crabs must move into larger shells, so they are always on the lookout for a more spacious dwelling. And an undamaged shell is preferable to a broken one, even if the shells are the same size. Knowing this, the researchers decided to dramatically change the available hermit crab real estate on Carrie Bow Cay. They placed 20 beautifully intact shells that were a little too big for most hermit crabs at various spots around the island and watched what happened.

When a lone crab encountered one of the beautiful new shells, it immediately inspected the shelter with its legs and antennae and scooted out of its current home to try on the new shelter for size. If the new shell was a good fit, the crab claimed it. Classic hermit crab behavior. But if the new shell was too big, the crab did not scuttle away disappointed?instead, it stood by its discovery for anywhere between 15 minutes and 8 hours, waiting. This was unusual. Eventually other crabs showed up, each one trying on the shell. If the shell was also too big for the newcomers, they hung around too, sometimes forming groups as large as 20. The crabs did not gather in a random arrangement, however. Rather, they clamped onto one another in a conga line stretching from the largest to smallest animal?a behavior the biologists dubbed "piggybacking."

Only one thing could break up the chain of crabs: a Goldilocks hermit crab for whom the shell introduced by Lewis and Rotjan was just right. As soon as such a crab claimed its new home, all the crabs in queue swiftly exchanged shells in sequence. The largest crab at the front of the line seized the Goldilocks crab's abandoned shell. The second largest crab stole into the first's old shell. And so on.

No one had ever documented such well-orchestrated shell swapping before, but similar behavior was not unknown. In 1986, Ivan Chase of Stony Brook University made the first observations of hermit crabs exchanging shells in a "vacancy chain"?a term originally coined by social scientists to describe the ways that people trade coveted resources like apartments and jobs. When one person leaves, another moves in. Since then, several researchers?including Lewis and Rotjan?have studied the behavior in different hermit crab species. Some preliminary evidence suggests that other animals use vacancy chains too, including clown fish, lobsters, octopuses and some birds. As Chase explains in the June issue of Scientific American, vacancy chains are an excellent way to distribute resources: Unlike more typical competition, a single vacancy chain benefits everyone involved?each individual gets an upgrade. So it makes sense that hermit crabs and other animals have evolved sophisticated social behaviors to make the most of vacancy chains.

The orderly vacancy chain that Lewis and Rotjan observed is called a synchronous vacancy chain, which is different from an asynchronous vacancy chain in which a lone crab encounters a shell, claims it and leaves behind its old home, which is later seized by a different crab that never interacts with the first animal. As the above video makes clear, however, synchronous vacancy chains are not always civilized affairs. Sometimes crabs fight each other for the best shell or gather in violent groups. And the exchanges often happen extremely quickly. Lewis and Rotjan had to slow down the footage just to see what was happening and it is still difficult to make out: three hermit crabs crowd a large green shell; the largest claims the green shell and the other two swiftly trade up. Lewis thinks the chain would have been more orderly if the crabs were not disturbed by two biologists filming them.

"Hermit crabs really have to think about and evaluate these shell resources?these are life and death decisions," Lewis says. "They're interesting to look at from that perspective. They have greater than average crab intelligence." Lewis wonders whether hermit crabs release chemical signals to attract nearby crabs and start a vacancy chain, which is what she wants to investigate next. As soon as she finds time to return to Carrie Bow Cay.


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