What is Stock Android?

There's Nexus and Google Play editions and experiences ... Just what exactly is 'Stock Android' anymore? (And does it even matter?)

The term "Stock Android" gets thrown around quite a bit — particularly with the introduction of these Google Play edition devices — and has earned a level of reverence that's pretty unparalleled in the Android world. Even the words get a capital letter, so you know it's something that people care about. The (very vocal) minority of us have even forced HTC and Samsung's hand to release their latest and greatest with all their hard work removed and the mighty Stock Android in place. But Stock Android itself is a misnomer, and it's almost impossible to define.

Webster's tells us that "stock" is the original from which others derive. In that sense, it does describe Android as Google intended it. But we don't apply a direct definition to most things when they work their way into daily use, so Stock Android (with the capital S) needs some further explanation.

I'm not preaching from my virtual soapbox here; I'm every bit as guilty of muddling things as anyone else is. But that doesn't mean we can't discuss it, right? 

Let's do that, then.

read more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/fdXhpF22IEM/story01.htm

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Reading DNA, backward and forward: Biologists reveal how cells control the direction in which the genome is read

June 24, 2013 ? MIT biologists have discovered a mechanism that allows cells to read their own DNA in the correct direction and prevents them from copying most of the so-called "junk DNA" that makes up long stretches of our genome.

Only about 15 percent of the human genome consists of protein-coding genes, but in recent years scientists have found that a surprising amount of the junk, or intergenic DNA, does get copied into RNA -- the molecule that carries DNA's messages to the rest of the cell.

Scientists have been trying to figure out just what this RNA might be doing, if anything. In 2008, MIT researchers led by Institute Professor Phillip Sharp discovered that much of this RNA is generated through a process called divergent expression, through which cells read their DNA in both directions moving away from a given starting point.

In a new paper appearing in Nature on June 23, Sharp and colleagues describe how cells initiate but then halt the copying of RNA in the upstream, or non-protein-coding direction, while allowing it to continue in the direction in which genes are correctly read. The finding helps to explain the existence of many recently discovered types of short strands of RNA whose function is unknown.

"This is part of an RNA revolution where we're seeing different RNAs and new RNAs that we hadn't suspected were present in cells, and trying to understand what role they have in the health of the cell or the viability of the cell," says Sharp, who is a member of MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. "It gives us a whole new appreciation of the balance of the fundamental processes that allow cells to function."

Graduate students Albert Almada and Xuebing Wu are the lead authors of the paper. Christopher Burge, a professor of biology and biological engineering, and undergraduate Andrea Kriz are also authors.

Choosing direction

DNA, which is housed within the nucleus of cells, controls cellular activity by coding for the production of RNAs and proteins. To exert this control, the genetic information encoded by DNA must first be copied, or transcribed, into messenger RNA (mRNA).

When the DNA double helix unwinds to reveal its genetic messages, RNA transcription can proceed in either direction. To initiate this copying, an enzyme called RNA polymerase latches on to the DNA at a spot known as the promoter. The RNA polymerase then moves along the strand, building the mRNA chain as it goes.

When the RNA polymerase reaches a stop signal at the end of a gene, it halts transcription and adds to the mRNA a sequence of bases known as a poly-A tail, which consists of a long string of the genetic base adenine. This process, known as polyadenylation, helps to prepare the mRNA molecule to be exported from the cell's nucleus.

By sequencing the mRNA transcripts of mouse embryonic stem cells, the researchers discovered that polyadenylation also plays a major role in halting the transcription of upstream, noncoding DNA sequences. They found that these regions have a high density of signal sequences for polyadenylation, which prompts enzymes to chop up the RNA before it gets very long. Stretches of DNA that code for genes have a low density of these signal sequences.

The researchers also found another factor that influences whether transcription is allowed to continue. It has been recently shown that when a cellular factor known as U1 snRNP binds to RNA, polyadenylation is suppressed. The new MIT study found that genes have a higher concentration of binding sites for U1 snRNP than noncoding sequences, allowing gene transcription to continue uninterrupted.

A widespread phenomenon

The function of all of this upstream noncoding RNA is still a subject of much investigation. "That transcriptional process could produce an RNA that has some function, or it could be a product of the nature of the biochemical reaction. This will be debated for a long time," Sharp says.

His lab is now exploring the relationship between this transcription process and the observation of large numbers of so-called long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs). He plans to investigate the mechanisms that control the synthesis of such RNAs and try to determine their functions.

"Once you see some data like this, it raises many more questions to be investigated, which I'm hoping will lead us to deeper insights into how our cells carry out their normal functions and how they change in malignancy," Sharp says.

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/vK48xKSPdxQ/130624141412.htm

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Boston trial of 'Whitey' Bulger enters 3rd week

FILE - This June 23, 2011 booking photo provided by the U.S. Marshals Service shows James "Whitey" Bulger, captured in Santa Monica, Calif., after 16 years on the run. Bulger's trial began Wednesday, June 12, 2013 in federal court in Boston, where he is charged with playing a role in 19 killings during the '70s and '80s while allegedly the boss of the Winter Hill Gang. (AP Photo/ U.S. Marshals Service, File)

FILE - This June 23, 2011 booking photo provided by the U.S. Marshals Service shows James "Whitey" Bulger, captured in Santa Monica, Calif., after 16 years on the run. Bulger's trial began Wednesday, June 12, 2013 in federal court in Boston, where he is charged with playing a role in 19 killings during the '70s and '80s while allegedly the boss of the Winter Hill Gang. (AP Photo/ U.S. Marshals Service, File)

FILE - In this Sept. 17, 2008 file photo, John Martorano is questioned about his plea agreement in exchange for testifying against former FBI agent John Connolly, in the Miami Courthouse. Martorano has admitted to 20 killings and previously spent 12 years in prison in exchange for his cooperation with authorities. He lives in a condo on a golf course in Milford, Mass. Neighbors say they didn?t have a clue about his past until seeing him on television in connection with court case in Boston. (AP Photo/Marice Cohn Band, Pool, File)

FILE - This June 23, 2011 booking photo provided by the U.S. Marshals Service shows James "Whitey" Bulger, captured in Santa Monica, Calif., after 16 years on the run. Bulger's trial began Wednesday, June 12, 2013 in federal court in Boston, where he is charged with playing a role in 19 killings during the '70s and '80s while allegedly the boss of the Winter Hill Gang. (AP Photo/ U.S. Marshals Service, File)

The trial of James "Whitey" Bulger enters its third week Monday with more testimony from prosecution witnesses. Bulger is accused in a 32-count racketeering indictment of a long list of crimes, including participating in 19 killings. Here are some highlights from the courtroom last week:

THE DEFENDANT

The 83-year-old Bulger took notes on a legal pad and stared straight ahead during testimony. Bulger, whom prosecutors say is the former leader of the Winter Hill Gang, was one of the nation's most wanted fugitives after he fled Boston in 1994. He was captured in 2011 in Santa Monica, Calif. His early image as a modern-day Robin Hood who gave Thanksgiving dinners to working-class neighbors and kept drug dealers out of his South Boston neighborhood was shattered when authorities started digging up bodies.

THE PROSECUTION

Former hit man James Martorano testified about murders he said he committed at the request of Bulger and Bulger's partner, Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi. Martorano also described a 1975 killing he said Bulger and Flemmi did themselves. Martorano, who admitted killing 20 people, spoke in a clipped, businesslike manner while describing how he pumped bullets into people and shot up cars, but he said Bulger and Flemmi "sort of broke my heart" when he learned they had been FBI informants. Prosecutors also called to the stand family members of people they say were killed by Bulger and his gang and others who survived the attacks. The government also began the process of introducing Bulger's FBI informant file into evidence. The prosecution says Bulger was a longtime informant who provided the FBI with information on the rival New England Mafia; Bulger's lawyers deny he was an informant.

THE DEFENSE

Under cross-examination by Bulger lawyer Hank Brennan, Martorano insisted he was not a hit man or a serial killer. He said he did not get paid for killing people but instead just did it as part of his work for Bulger's gang, to help family or friends, or to defend himself. "I always tried to be a nice guy," he said. The defense asked prosecution witness Ralph DeMasi if during his time in prison, he learned that inmates who become government witnesses know they can get "extraordinary benefits," an obvious reference to plea deals struck by Martorano and other Bulger associates expected to testify against him. "Absolutely," DeMasi said. "Guys are walking the street after they killed 20 people, if they cooperated." Martorano served 12 years in prison after cutting a deal with prosecutors to testify against Bulger.

Bulger's defense attorneys filed a motion Saturday asking Judge Denise J. Casper to lift a gag order because it is infringing on Bulger's Constitutional right of free speech. They cited "personal attacks" against their client in the media and "an enormous degree of media attention and public discourse."

Prosecutors responded Sunday that Bulger is free to tell his story by testifying. They noted that Bulger spent considerable time before the trial trying to bar some reporters from the courtroom.

It was not clear when Casper would rule on the request.

THE JURY

Eleven men and seven women are serving on the jury, which includes six alternates. The trial is expected to last three to four months.

THE GALLERY

Academy Award winner Robert Duvall sat in the back of the courtroom Friday. The 82-year-old Duvall has had a long TV and film career, including starring roles in "The Godfather" and "The Godfather: Part II." In those mob epics, he played Tom Hagen, a lawyer and adviser to the Corleone family. He has been shooting a movie, "The Judge," in Shelburne, Mass., this month. Duvall plays the title character in the film.

WHAT'S UP NEXT

Former Boston FBI Agent John Morris is expected to testify Monday. Morris was the supervisor of John Connolly, who prosecutors say was Bulger's handler as an FBI informant. Morris, who was granted immunity from prosecution, has admitted he accepted cash from Bulger's gang.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-06-24-Whitey%20Bulger-The%20Trial%20So%20Far/id-1f492ca40178434fa059537eca52f59a

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Amazing Satellite Photos Show Earth's Plant Life from Space

Scienitsts have pieced together a year's worth of photos from the powerful Earth-watching Suomi NPP satellite to create the most detailed look ever of our world's plant life as seen from space.

The amazing maps of Earth's vegetation highlight areas where plant life is the densest and barest, while leaving out the 75 percent of the planet that is covered in blue oceans and seas.

The darkest green places represent lush vegetation and the pale sections show terrain where plant life is sparse due to deserts, rocks, snow or urban sprawl.

The?Suomi NPP satellite, short for National Polar-orbiting Partnership, is a minivan-sized spacecraft perched 512 miles (824 kilometers) above Earth. The $1.5 billion satellite is designed to collect data for short-term weather forecasts and long-term climate models as part of a partnership between NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Suomi NPP's new images are based on data collected from April 2012 to April 2013 using the satellites Visible-Infrared Imager/Radiometer Suite, or VIIRS. The instrument is designed to detect changes in the reflection of light on Earth, which can be a good indicator of the health of plants on the ground.

Measurements of how vegetation changes over time can influence weather and ecological forecasting, NOAA officials said. Minute, pixel-sized changes can serve as an early warning for drought, fire conditions or potential malaria outbreaks, for example.

The data will be incorporated into the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), a measure of plant growth, vegetation cover and biomass based on light reflected. ?High values on the NDVI indicate lush, healthy vegetation, while low values represent sparse or stressed-out vegetation that may be experiencing drought, according to a NASA statement.

Follow SPACE.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/amazing-satellite-photos-show-earths-plant-life-space-113135217.html

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Snowden charges first step in perhaps long extradition

By Tabassum Zakaria and Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has filed espionage charges against Edward Snowden, a former U.S. National Security Agency contractor who admitted revealing secret surveillance programs to media outlets, according to a court document made public on Friday.

The charges are the government's first step in what could be a long legal battle to return Snowden from Hong Kong, where he is believed to be in hiding, and try him in a U.S. court. A Hong Kong newspaper said he was under police protection, but the territory's authorities declined to comment.

Snowden was charged with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorized person, said the criminal complaint, which was dated June 14.

The latter two offenses fall under the U.S. Espionage Act and carry penalties of fines and up to 10 years in prison.

A single page of the complaint was unsealed on Friday. An accompanying affidavit remained under seal.

Two U.S. sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States was preparing to seek Snowden's extradition from Hong Kong, which is part of China but has wide-ranging autonomy, including an independent judiciary.

The Washington Post, which first reported the criminal complaint earlier on Friday, said the United States had asked Hong Kong to detain Snowden on a provisional arrest warrant.

Hong Kong's Chinese-language Apple Daily quoted police sources as saying that anti-terrorism officers had contacted Snowden, arranged a safe house for him and provided protection.

The report said the police had checked his documents but had not discussed other matters or taken any statements.

Hong Kong Police Commissioner Andy Tsang declined to comment other than to say Hong Kong would deal with the case in accordance with the law.

Snowden earlier this month admitted leaking secrets about classified U.S. surveillance programs, creating a public uproar. Supporters say he is a whistleblower, while critics call him a criminal and perhaps even a traitor.

He disclosed documents detailing U.S. telephone and Internet surveillance efforts to the Washington Post and Britain's Guardian newspaper.

The criminal complaint was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, where Snowden's former employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, is located.

That judicial district has seen a number of high-profile prosecutions, including the spy case against former FBI agent Robert Hanssen and the case of al Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui. Both were convicted.

'ACTIVE EXTRADITION RELATIONSHIP'

Documents leaked by Snowden revealed that the NSA has access to vast amounts of Internet data such as emails, chat rooms and video from large companies such as Facebook and Google, under a government program known as Prism.

They also showed that the government had worked through the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to gather so-called metadata - such as the time, duration and telephone numbers called - on all calls carried by service providers such as Verizon.

President Barack Obama and his intelligence chiefs have vigorously defended the programs, saying they are regulated by law and that Congress was notified. They say the programs have been used to thwart militant plots and do not target Americans' personal lives.

U.S. federal prosecutors, by filing a criminal complaint, lay claim to a legal basis to make an extradition request of the authorities in Hong Kong, the Post reported. The prosecutors now have 60 days to file an indictment and can then take steps to secure Snowden's extradition from Hong Kong for a criminal trial in the United States, the newspaper reported.

The United States and Hong Kong have "excellent cooperation" and as a result of agreements, "there is an active extradition relationship between Hong Kong and the United States," a U.S. law enforcement official told Reuters.

Since the United States and Hong Kong signed an extradition treaty in 1998, scores of Americans have been sent back home to face trial. However, the process can take years, lawyers say.

Under Hong Kong's extradition process, a request would first go to Hong Kong's chief executive. A magistrate would issue a formal warrant for Snowden's arrest if the chief executive agrees the case should proceed.

Simon Young, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong, said the first charge of theft against Snowden might find an equivalent charge in Hong Kong, needed to allow extradition proceedings to move forward, but the unauthorized communication and willful communication charges may be sticking points that lead to litigation and dispute in the courts.

Whatever the Hong Kong courts decide could be vetoed by the territory's leader or Beijing on foreign affairs or defense grounds.

An Icelandic businessman linked to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said on Thursday he had readied a private plane in China to fly Snowden to Iceland if Iceland's government would grant asylum.

Iceland refused on Friday to say whether it would grant asylum to Snowden.

(Additional reporting by James Pomfret, Venus Wu and Grace Li in HONG KONG; Editing by Warren Strobel, Peter Cooney and Neil Fullick)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-files-espionage-charges-against-snowden-over-leaks-015108216.html

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The Voice Season 4 Coaches Perform "With a Little Help from My Friends"

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/06/the-voice-season-4-coaches-perform-with-a-little-help-from-my-fr/

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Simple and inexpensive process to make a material for CO2 adsorption

June 19, 2013 ? Researchers from Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), S. Korea, developed a novel, simple method to synthesize hierarchically nanoporous frameworks of nanocrystalline metal oxides such as magnesia and ceria by the thermal conversion of well-designed metal-organic frameworks (MOFs).

The novel material developed by the UNIST research team has exceptionally high CO₂ adsorption capacity which could pave the way to save Earth from CO₂ pollution.

Nanoporous materials consist of organic or inorganic frameworks with a regular, porous structure. Because of their uniform pore sizes they have the property of letting only certain substances pass through, while blocking others. Nanoporous metal oxide materials are ubiquitous in materials science because of their numerous potential applications in various areas, including adsorption, catalysis, energy conversion and storage, optoelectronics, and drug delivery. While synthetic strategies for the preparation of siliceous nanoporous materials are well-established, non-siliceous metal oxide-based nanoporous materials still present challenges.

A description of the new research was published (Web) on May 7 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.?

Leading the research team is married couple Hoi Ri Moon and Sang Hoon Joo, both assistant professors at UNIST, who contributed to synthesizing nanoporous metal oxides and characterizing nanoporous materials respectively. Fellow authors include Tae Kyung Kim, Kyung Joo Lee, Jae Yeong Cheon and Jae Hwa Lee from UNIST.

The UNIST research team used MOFs based on aliphatic carboxylate ligands which are thermally less stable and much more labile than aromatic ligands. Specifically, the aliphatic ligand is adipic acid, which is a precursor for the production of nylon, and thus very important from an industrial perspective and low in price. During the thermolysis of a crystalline, aliphatic carboxylate ligand-based MOF (aph-MOF), the ligands were transformed into organic moieties via chemical decomposition, and were confined as vesicles in the solids.

The organic vesicles acted as self-generated porogens, which later were converted into nanopores; they also prevented aggregation of the metal oxide nanocrystals. Finally, upon thermolysis at higher temperature, the confined organic moieties evaporated, generating highly porous nanostructures comprising nanocrystalline metal oxides. The control of the retention time and the evaporation rate of the organic moieties in the host solid were critical for the successful formation of nanoporous metal oxides with nanocrystalline frameworks. The thermal treatments converted the Mg-aph-MOF into 3-dimensionally nanoporous MgO frameworks instead of discrete MgO nanoparticles embedded in a carbon matrix. Significantly, nanoporous MgO exhibited exceptional CO₂ adsorption capacity (9.2 wt %) under conditions mimicking flue gas.

"I believe MOF-driven strategy can be expanded to other nanoporous monometallic and multimetallic oxides with a multitude of potential applications, especially for energy-related materials" said Prof. Moon. "Because of its high CO₂ adsorption capacity, it will open a new way for environmental solutions."

"Various metal oxides converted from well-designed MOFs are being studied as fuel cell catalysts, also" said Prof. Joo, explaining his future research plan.

This work was supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/EAQ-re4SiIM/130619161552.htm

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