Hands-on with Verizon?s LG Intuition ?phablet?

There?s nothing like some friendly competition to get the mobile wars going. Whether we love it or hate it, ?phablets? ? devices that are larger than most smartphones and smaller than tablets ? are here to stay. Samsung?s (005930) 10 million-strong Galaxy Note and upcoming?Note II are proof enough that people want and are willing to accept smartphones with oversized displays. LG (06657011) has officially joined the ?phablet? fray with its own stylus-packing, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich-powered Intuition on Verizon (VZ). Unlike most run-of-the-mill 16:9 aspect ratio smartphones with 720p HD displays, the Intuition stands on its own legs with a radical 5.0-inch 4:3 aspect ratio display that makes it wider than any smartphone I?ve ever held. Read on for my first-impressions of Verizon?s new 4G LTE-equipped phablet.

It?s clear from the get-go after I unboxed the Intuition that LG knows how to build a smartphone that doesn?t look shoddy. The Intuition?s glossy?faux metal sides are complemented nicely by a delicately textured matte back, giving it a hint of premium credibility. On the front is a big honking Verizon logo. Why can?t carriers keep their logos on the rear? I found the Intuition to be surprisingly light despite its gigantic size and was happy to discover that it?s pocketable in my rear jeans pocket. My only issue is that, although it does fit in my pants pockets, attempting to carry it there will result in some rather unwanted pocket puffing as the phablet?s design is boxy with four harsh corners.

Beneath its exterior is a skinned version of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S3 processor, 1GB of RAM, 8-megapixel rear camera with LED flash capable of 1080p HD recording, 1.3-megapixel front camera capable of 720p HD recording, 32GB of internal storage and of course, Verizon?s speedy 4G LTE. It sounds impressive, but how does it perform?

Unfortunately, this is where things take a sour turn for the Intuition. With LG?s Ice Cream Sandwich skin, all of the bells and whistles of stock Android seems to have been stripped out.

The OS has some noticeable lag when opening and switching between multiple apps,?Android apps designed for 16:9 devices look weird when stretched out in 4:3 aspect ratio (although, you can have the apps display in regular 16:9 with pillar boxing) and the RAM just fizzes out at times causing unknown freezes and memory leaks.

Several times, I thought the touch-sensitive buttons on the front had just flat-out failed, but alas, it seems it?s just buggy software (rebooting seemed to fix the issues). The rear speaker is also only moderately loud and suffers from being severely undersized.

Where the Intuition shines is its 1024 x 768-pixel screen. Because it?s got a 4:3 aspect ratio display, seven apps can be pinned to the main dock (but strangely enough, home screens can only support four apps in a row and five apps in a row when in the Apps menu).

Reading on the Intuition is also an absolute pleasure and feels very close to reading on a Kindle in terms of size, if a Kindle e-reader screen was an inch smaller and could do color. I noticed the display?s color temperature is a little warmer than on most devices, but it?s nothing most people will lose sleep over. Typing with two thumbs in landscape and portrait mode is one of the best experiences I?ve had on any smartphone, thanks again to its generous width, and the camera is more than adequate for Facebook and Instagram addicts (yes, even the ?Cheese? shutter feature that listens for the word ?Cheese? to activate the shutter works as advertised).

This being a device that is going up against the Galaxy Note, it?s only natural to talk about the stylus and its sensitivity. In a completely unscientific comparison, I feel the Intuition is more precise and has less lag, but in terms of implementation, the Note?s S Memo app is lightyears ahead of LG?s generically named Notebook app when it comes to deciphering all of the strange menu icons. My only gripe is that the Intuition doesn?t have a slot to store the awfully named and trademarked ?Rubberdium pen.?

LG made it very evident during a press briefing introducing the Intuition that its phablet is being marketed at a specific demographic that has come to terms with devices that have a larger size and display. That?s fine, but is the Intuition better than the Galaxy Note? Sadly, my gut feeling is no. If not for a seriously disfigured build of Android 4.0, the Intuition could have given the Note a serious run for its money instead of playing second fiddle. Its epic size and unique proportions do have advantages, though: lots and lots of stares from strangers in public wondering what that thing is.

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hands-verizon-lg-intuition-phablet-134504364.html

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Who (and what) can you trust?

[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 11-Sep-2012
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Anna Mikulak
amikulak@psychologicalscience.org
202-293-9300
Association for Psychological Science

How non-verbal cues can predict a person's (and a robot's) trustworthiness

People face this predicament all the timecan you determine a person's character in a single interaction? Can you judge whether someone you just met can be trusted when you have only a few minutes together? And if you can, how do you do it? Using a robot named Nexi, Northeastern University psychology professor David DeSteno and collaborators Cynthia Breazeal from MIT's Media Lab and Robert Frank and David Pizarro from Cornell University have figured out the answer. The findings were recently published in the journal Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

It's What You're Not Saying

In the absence of reliable information about a person's reputation, nonverbal cues can offer a look into a person's likely actions. This concept has been known for years, but the cues that convey trustworthiness or untrustworthiness have remained a mystery. Collecting data from face-to-face conversations with research participants where money was on the line, DeSteno and his team realized that it's not one single non-verbal movement or cue that determines a person's trustworthiness, but rather sets of cues. When participants expressed these cues, they cheated their partners more, and, at a gut level, their partners expected it. "Scientists haven't been able to unlock the cues to trust because they've been going about it the wrong way," DeSteno said. "There's no one golden-cue. Context and coordination of movements is what matters."

Robots Have Feelings, Too

People are fidgety they're moving all the time. So how could the team truly zero-in on the cues that mattered? This is where Nexi comes in. Nexi is a humanoid social robot that afforded the team an important benefit they could control all its movements perfectly. In a second experiment, the team had research participants converse with Nexi for 10 minutes, much like they did with another person in the first experiment. While conversing with the participants, Nexi operated remotely by researchers either expressed cues that were considered less than trustworthy or expressed similar, but non-trust-related cues. Confirming their theory, the team found that participants exposed to Nexi's untrustworthy cues intuited that Nexi was likely to cheat them and adjusted their financial decisions accordingly. "Certain nonverbal gestures trigger emotional reactions we're not consciously aware of, and these reactions are enormously important for understanding how interpersonal relationships develop," said Frank. "The fact that a robot can trigger the same reactions confirms the mechanistic nature of many of the forces that influence human interaction."

Real-Life Application

This discovery has led the research team to not only answer enduring questions about if and how people are able to assess the trustworthiness of an unknown person, but also to show the human mind's willingness to ascribe trust-related intentions to technological entities based on the same movements. "This is a very exciting result that showcases how social robots can be used to gain important insights about human behavior," said Cynthia Breazeal of MIT's Media Lab. "This also has fascinating implications for the design of future robots that interact and work alongside people as partners." Accordingly, these findings hold important insights not only for security and financial endeavors and for the evolving design of robots and computer-based agents. The subconscious mind is ready to see these entities as social beings.

###

You can see more of Nexi at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQLo06V-q2M&feature=youtu.be

For more information about this study, please contact: Lori Lennon at l.lennon@neu.edu.

The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article "Detecting the Trustworthiness of Novel Partners in Economic Exchange" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Anna Mikulak at 202-293-9300 or amikulak@psychologicalscience.org.



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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 11-Sep-2012
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Anna Mikulak
amikulak@psychologicalscience.org
202-293-9300
Association for Psychological Science

How non-verbal cues can predict a person's (and a robot's) trustworthiness

People face this predicament all the timecan you determine a person's character in a single interaction? Can you judge whether someone you just met can be trusted when you have only a few minutes together? And if you can, how do you do it? Using a robot named Nexi, Northeastern University psychology professor David DeSteno and collaborators Cynthia Breazeal from MIT's Media Lab and Robert Frank and David Pizarro from Cornell University have figured out the answer. The findings were recently published in the journal Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

It's What You're Not Saying

In the absence of reliable information about a person's reputation, nonverbal cues can offer a look into a person's likely actions. This concept has been known for years, but the cues that convey trustworthiness or untrustworthiness have remained a mystery. Collecting data from face-to-face conversations with research participants where money was on the line, DeSteno and his team realized that it's not one single non-verbal movement or cue that determines a person's trustworthiness, but rather sets of cues. When participants expressed these cues, they cheated their partners more, and, at a gut level, their partners expected it. "Scientists haven't been able to unlock the cues to trust because they've been going about it the wrong way," DeSteno said. "There's no one golden-cue. Context and coordination of movements is what matters."

Robots Have Feelings, Too

People are fidgety they're moving all the time. So how could the team truly zero-in on the cues that mattered? This is where Nexi comes in. Nexi is a humanoid social robot that afforded the team an important benefit they could control all its movements perfectly. In a second experiment, the team had research participants converse with Nexi for 10 minutes, much like they did with another person in the first experiment. While conversing with the participants, Nexi operated remotely by researchers either expressed cues that were considered less than trustworthy or expressed similar, but non-trust-related cues. Confirming their theory, the team found that participants exposed to Nexi's untrustworthy cues intuited that Nexi was likely to cheat them and adjusted their financial decisions accordingly. "Certain nonverbal gestures trigger emotional reactions we're not consciously aware of, and these reactions are enormously important for understanding how interpersonal relationships develop," said Frank. "The fact that a robot can trigger the same reactions confirms the mechanistic nature of many of the forces that influence human interaction."

Real-Life Application

This discovery has led the research team to not only answer enduring questions about if and how people are able to assess the trustworthiness of an unknown person, but also to show the human mind's willingness to ascribe trust-related intentions to technological entities based on the same movements. "This is a very exciting result that showcases how social robots can be used to gain important insights about human behavior," said Cynthia Breazeal of MIT's Media Lab. "This also has fascinating implications for the design of future robots that interact and work alongside people as partners." Accordingly, these findings hold important insights not only for security and financial endeavors and for the evolving design of robots and computer-based agents. The subconscious mind is ready to see these entities as social beings.

###

You can see more of Nexi at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQLo06V-q2M&feature=youtu.be

For more information about this study, please contact: Lori Lennon at l.lennon@neu.edu.

The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article "Detecting the Trustworthiness of Novel Partners in Economic Exchange" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Anna Mikulak at 202-293-9300 or amikulak@psychologicalscience.org.



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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-09/afps-ww091112.php

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Penn researchers make first all-optical nanowire switch

[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 10-Sep-2012
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Contact: Evan Lerner
elerner@upenn.edu
215-573-6604
University of Pennsylvania

PHILADELPHIA Computers may be getting faster every year, but those advances in computer speed could be dwarfed if their 1's and 0's were represented by bursts of light, instead of electricity.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have made an important advance in this frontier of photonics, fashioning the first all-optical photonic switch out of cadmium sulfide nanowires. Moreover, they combined these photonic switches into a logic gate, a fundamental component of computer chips that process information.

The research was conducted by associate professor Ritesh Agarwal and graduate student Brian Piccione of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science. Post-doctoral fellows Chang-Hee Cho and Lambert van Vugt, also of the Materials Science Department, contributed to the study.

It was published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

The research team's innovation built upon their earlier research, which showed that their cadmium sulfide nanowires exhibited extremely strong light-matter coupling, making them especially efficient at manipulating light. This quality is crucial for the development of nanoscale photonic circuits, as existing mechanisms for controlling the flow of light are bulkier and require more energy than their electronic analogs.

"The biggest challenge for photonic structures on the nanoscale is getting the light in, manipulating it once it's there and then getting it out," Agarwal said. "Our major innovation was how we solved the first problem, in that it allowed us to use the nanowires themselves for an on-chip light source."

The research team began by precisely cutting a gap into a nanowire. They then pumped enough energy into the first nanowire segment that it began to emit laser light from its end and through the gap. Because the researchers started with a single nanowire, the two segment ends were perfectly matched, allowing the second segment to efficiently absorb and transmit the light down its length.

"Once we have the light in the second segment, we shine another light through the structure and turn off what is being transported through that wire," Agarwal said. "That's what makes it a switch."

The researchers were able to measure the intensity of the light coming out of the end of the second nanowire and to show that the switch could effectively represent the binary states used in logic devices.

"Putting switches together lets you make logic gates, and assembling logic gates allows you to do computation," Piccione said. "We used these optical switches to construct a NAND gate, which is a fundamental building block of modern computer processing."

A NAND gate, which stands for "not and," returns a "0" output when all its inputs are "1." It was constructed by the researchers by combining two nanowire switches into a Y-shaped configuration. NAND gates are important for computation because they are "functionally complete," which means that, when put in the right sequence, they can do any kind of logical operation and thus form the basis for general-purpose computer processors.

"We see a future where 'consumer electronics' become 'consumer photonics'," Agarwal said. "And this study shows that is possible."

###

The research was supported by the U.S. Army Research Office and the National Institutes of Health's New Innovator Award Program.


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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 10-Sep-2012
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Evan Lerner
elerner@upenn.edu
215-573-6604
University of Pennsylvania

PHILADELPHIA Computers may be getting faster every year, but those advances in computer speed could be dwarfed if their 1's and 0's were represented by bursts of light, instead of electricity.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have made an important advance in this frontier of photonics, fashioning the first all-optical photonic switch out of cadmium sulfide nanowires. Moreover, they combined these photonic switches into a logic gate, a fundamental component of computer chips that process information.

The research was conducted by associate professor Ritesh Agarwal and graduate student Brian Piccione of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science. Post-doctoral fellows Chang-Hee Cho and Lambert van Vugt, also of the Materials Science Department, contributed to the study.

It was published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

The research team's innovation built upon their earlier research, which showed that their cadmium sulfide nanowires exhibited extremely strong light-matter coupling, making them especially efficient at manipulating light. This quality is crucial for the development of nanoscale photonic circuits, as existing mechanisms for controlling the flow of light are bulkier and require more energy than their electronic analogs.

"The biggest challenge for photonic structures on the nanoscale is getting the light in, manipulating it once it's there and then getting it out," Agarwal said. "Our major innovation was how we solved the first problem, in that it allowed us to use the nanowires themselves for an on-chip light source."

The research team began by precisely cutting a gap into a nanowire. They then pumped enough energy into the first nanowire segment that it began to emit laser light from its end and through the gap. Because the researchers started with a single nanowire, the two segment ends were perfectly matched, allowing the second segment to efficiently absorb and transmit the light down its length.

"Once we have the light in the second segment, we shine another light through the structure and turn off what is being transported through that wire," Agarwal said. "That's what makes it a switch."

The researchers were able to measure the intensity of the light coming out of the end of the second nanowire and to show that the switch could effectively represent the binary states used in logic devices.

"Putting switches together lets you make logic gates, and assembling logic gates allows you to do computation," Piccione said. "We used these optical switches to construct a NAND gate, which is a fundamental building block of modern computer processing."

A NAND gate, which stands for "not and," returns a "0" output when all its inputs are "1." It was constructed by the researchers by combining two nanowire switches into a Y-shaped configuration. NAND gates are important for computation because they are "functionally complete," which means that, when put in the right sequence, they can do any kind of logical operation and thus form the basis for general-purpose computer processors.

"We see a future where 'consumer electronics' become 'consumer photonics'," Agarwal said. "And this study shows that is possible."

###

The research was supported by the U.S. Army Research Office and the National Institutes of Health's New Innovator Award Program.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-09/uop-prm091012.php

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Vision Without Lenses, Health & Fitness

Top Converting Vision Improvement Product With Salescopy Written By Top Copywriter. Featuring Great Improvement Over Other Competing Products. Top Affiliate Are On Board Promoting This So Don't Miss Out Http://www.visionwithoutlenses.com/affiliates.php

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    LiveMojo - Eye Health Month: Be Kind to Your Eyes

    LiveMojo - Eye Health Month: Be Kind to Your Eyes

    LiveMojo Learn to recognize the signs and symptoms of Computer Vision Syndrome and different ways to avoid it with Dr. Langis Michaud.
    Ranked 4.00 / 5 | 18 views | 0 comments

    Click here to watch the video (03:36)
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    Tags: Health Optometrist Eye Health Vision Computer Vision Syndrome Baby Boomers Computers Digital Screen Photophobia Canadian Association Of Optometrists Diplopia Headaches Eye Exam Offices Eye Strain Contact Lenses Glasses Doctor Eye
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    Lauren Conrad: LC?s Eye On?Health

    Lauren Conrad: LC?s Eye On?Health

    Lauren Conrad shares health tips with fans
    Ranked 3.28 / 5 | 957 views | 0 comments

    Click here to watch the video (02:05)
    Submitted By: Lilohk
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Source: http://invest.5ver.com/categories/37-health-fitness/27052-vision-without-lenses-health-fitness.html

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BedandBreakfast Tv ? Top Paid Surveys Online ? Find The Highest ...

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Welcome to Easy Extra Money Online. Here we review the best online top paying survey sites that pay you cash for surveys. We represents only tried and tested paid survey companies that are really worth joining and have good market reputation. Our professionally organized database is frequently updated and is absolutely FREE. You never have to pay firms to join surveys for money online. Go through our list of free paid surveys and join them without spending.

You will also find hundreds of work from home and surveys make money online opportunities that are legitimate and have been screened by me personally. It is ideal for anyone looking for extra income, whether to make ends meet or improve finances.

Most of the people spend more time browsing the internet and landing up with a couple of free paid survey sites. Be careful, sometimes you may fall into the wrong hands. So, it is always good to take the suggestions from some of your close friends who are already doing this job. Suppose if you don?t have a PayPal account, you can always get paid through cheques.

Such advertisements are usually put up by paid survey database companies like Surveyscout. They charge you for giving access to a database of market research companies, often in the range of $30 to $60. They typically have 400 to 500 survey companies in their database.

Online business is extremely competitive, so getting these details from men and women just like you is essential for their success. The greater the suggestions they acquire, the greater their merchandise is going to be, and so the more money they will earn.

How it works ? Large companies contract market research companies to conduct surveys so they can get reactions and opinions, from people like you, about their products. The market research companies then offer you to participate in these surveys and pay you in the form of a check or electronic transfer of funds through Paypal.

There are risks involve in this industry and the best way to equip yourself against paid survey scams is by being vigilant as well as being a skeptic. Every site has a sales pitch that is pretty convincing enough to make you hand over your money in order to gain access. But if you are wise, you would know how to spot the scam sites from the real deal.

Online surveys are fun and easy and they really do pay! One of the most enjoyable methods to make money online is through free paid surveys.
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Source: http://www.bedandbreakfasttv.com/top-paid-surveys-online-find-the-highest-paying-surveys/

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Gillmor Gang: Silver Bullet Theory

Gillmor Gang test patternThe Gillmor Gang ? Danny Sullivan, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor ? handicap the latest entries in the Tablet Stakes. It feels like a game of musical chairs, with three chairs and four tablet platforms. When the music stops, Apple, Amazon, and Google are sitting pretty, with Microsoft missing a business model to finance the Surface. The iPhone 5 launch next week looms large(r) than life, but all the exciting action is in the 7-inch form factor. Amazon may seem attractive to the reading crowd, and Apple (TV) to the big screeners, but Nexus 7 has turned my iPhone into mostly a hotspot. The Gang seems primed for the move to the sequential device model, but for now the one device for all mirage fits the Silver Bullet Theory, that Clint's Invisible Chair can win by staying just out of sight.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/0ivzg6WA0Dw/

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China earthquakes damage 20,000 homes, leave 50 dead ( video)

China earthquakes: Southwestern China was hit with a series of shallow, damaging earthquakes Friday. The quakes damaged an estimated 20,000 homes and buildings in rural China.?

By Christopher Bodeen,?Associated Press / September 7, 2012

Damaged cars are seen in Luozehe town, Yiliang County, southwest China's Yunnan Province, Friday, Sept. 7, 2012. A series of earthquakes collapsed houses and triggered landslides in a remote mountainous part of southwestern China.

(AP Photo/Xinhua, Zhou Hongpeng)

Enlarge

A series of earthquakes collapsed houses and triggered landslides in a remote mountainous part of southwestern China on Friday, killing at least 50 people with the toll expected to rise. Damage was preventing rescuers from reaching some outlying areas, and communications were disrupted.

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The quakes started with a 5.6-magnitude shock before 11:30 a.m. along the borders of Guizhou and Yunnan provinces, and another equally big quake struck shortly after noon followed by more than 60 aftershocks, Chinese and U.S. government seismologists said. Though of moderate strength, the quakes were shallow, which often causes more damage.

Hardest hit was Yiliang County, where 49 of the 50 deaths occurred, said Yunnan province government agencies and state media. Another 150 people in the county were injured, said Zhang Junwei, a spokesman for the provincial seismology bureau.

RECOMMENDED: How well do you know China geography? Take the quiz

China Central Television showed roads littered with rocks and boulders, and pillars of dust rising over hillcrests ? signs of landslides. Footage showed a couple hundred people crowding into what looked like a school athletic field in Yiliang's county seat, a sizeable city spread along a river in a valley bottom.

With some roads impassable, rescuers had yet to reach some outlying villages and towns, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Though quakes in the area occur frequently, buildings in rural areas and China's fast-growing smaller cities and towns are often constructed poorly. In 2008, a magnitude-7.9 quake that hit Sichuan province, just north of Yunnan, killed nearly 90,000 people, with many of the deaths blamed on poorly built structures, including schools.

Xinhua said Friday's quakes destroyed or damaged 20,000 homes. The Yunnan seismology bureau said and more than 100,000 people were evacuated from their homes. All told, Xinhua said, 700,000 people had their lives disrupted by the quake.

In Luozehe, a town in Yiliang near a zinc mine, residents and state media said boulders hurtled off hillsides and houses collapsed.

"It is scary. My brother was killed by falling rocks. The aftershocks struck again and again. We are so afraid," Xinhua quoted miner Peng Zhuwen as saying.

A government official in Jiaokui town said a large number of houses had collapsed.

"The casualty number is still being compiled. I don't know what was like for the other towns, but my town got hit badly," he said. Like many Chinese officials he refused to give his name.

Mobile phone services were down and regular phone lines disrupted. Phones were cut off to clinics in four villages in Qiaoshan, another town in Yiliang, which has about half a million people.

Xinhua said thousands of tents, blankets and coats were being shipped to the area.

It said that so far no casualties had been reported in neighboring Guizhou, but that homes had been damaged or destroyed there.

Friday's quakes were relatively shallow, about 6 miles or 10 kilometers deep, creating an intense shaking even at a lower magnitude.

By comparison, the 7.6-magnitude quake that struck Costa Rica this week was 25 miles (41 kilometers) below the surface, and combined with strict building codes, that kept damage and deaths to a minimum.

RECOMMENDED: How well do you know China geography? Take the quiz

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/world/~3/1lp1gSjqGaQ/China-earthquakes-damage-20-000-homes-leave-50-dead-video

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US futures up as jobless claims fall, hiring gains

FILE - In this Aug. 3, 2012 file photo, traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. U.S. stock prices closed mixed on Wednesday, Sept. 5, 2012, held in check by a warning from the huge package delivery company FedEx that its profits would be hurt because of a slowdown in the global economy. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

FILE - In this Aug. 3, 2012 file photo, traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. U.S. stock prices closed mixed on Wednesday, Sept. 5, 2012, held in check by a warning from the huge package delivery company FedEx that its profits would be hurt because of a slowdown in the global economy. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

(AP) ? U.S. market futures are rising, boosted by a better-than-expected report on unemployment claims and a strong report from a private payroll company on hiring.

Traders are also taking a cue from world markets, which gained on hopes that the European Central Bank will take action to ease Europe's debt crisis.

Dow Jones industrial average futures are up 61 at 13,111. S&P 500 futures added 6 to 1,409. Nasdaq 100 futures gained 11.5 to 2,778.

Germany's DAX is up 1.2 percent. France's CAC-40 rose 1.2 percent. Britain's FTSE added 0.8 percent. Asian markets posted modest gains.

Stocks to watch include Amazon Inc., which is expected to unveil a new Kindle Fire Thursday, and Supervalu Inc., the grocery chain disclosed plans to close 60 stores as part of its turnaround effort.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2012-09-06-Wall%20Street/id-0329719407ea41dabc0c021230f3dda5

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Author Judy Blume says had breast cancer surgery | LISNews:

Judy Blume, the author of young adult books "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret" and "Tiger Eyes," was diagnosed with breast cancer this summer and underwent a mastectomy, she said on her blog on Wednesday.

Blume, 74, one of America's most famous authors of young adult fiction, said that a month after her surgery she is recovering in New York. She also described the shock of learning from her doctor in June that she had breast cancer, given that she had no family history of the disease.

Source: http://lisnews.org/author_judy_blume_says_had_breast_cancer_surgery

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LIQUOR PEMIT Notice of Application This is to give that 1151 Washington St, APT AB Middletown, CT...

Source: Middletown Press

LIQUOR PEMIT Notice of Application This is to give that 1151 Washington St, APT AB Middletown, CT 06457-2931 Have filed an application placarded 09/04/2012 with the Department of Consumer Protection for a PACKAGE STORE LIQUOR PERMIT for the sale of alcoholic liquor on the premises at 558 Newfield Street, STE. % Middletown, CT 06457-1864 The business will be owned by : VIRADIA LLC Objections must be filled by: 10/15/2012 PARAG VIRADIA AD#2513232

Source: http://middletownpress.kaango.com/ad-liquor-pemit-notice-of-application-this-is-to-give-that-1151-washington-st-apt-ab-middletown-ct/21073968

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