Small plane crashes in Conn., up to 6 feared dead

EAST HAVEN, Conn. (AP) ? A small plane crashed into a residential neighborhood a few blocks from an airport while trying to land, setting fire to two houses and likely killing up to six people, authorities said.

Just before noon Friday, the multi-engine, propeller-driven plane struck two small homes near Tweed New Haven Airport. The aircraft's left wing lodged in one house and its right wing in the other.

Late Friday, officials from a number of agencies were still at the scene trying to determine how many people had been killed. Officials said the total was between four and six. The victims of the crash have not been identified.

"We haven't recovered anybody at this point, and we presume there is going to be a very bad outcome," East Haven fire Chief Douglas Jackson said Friday.

National Transportation Safety Board investigator Robert Gretz said at a news conference Friday night there were casualty reports of two or three people in the plane and two or three people in one of the homes. He said the reports were unconfirmed and that local and state authorities were at the scene looking for victims.

Shortly after the crash, officials had said at least three people were missing: the pilot and two children, ages 1 and 13, in one of the houses. Later, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said the plane also may have been carrying two passengers. However, officials were still trying to verify whether that was true.

Less than two hours later, Malloy said rescuers had spotted two bodies, including one of an adult, but hadn't recovered them. The plane's fuselage had entered one of the houses, and the recovery effort was focusing on the home's basement, he said.

Mayor Joseph Maturo Jr. said later that the houses were still unstable and crews had not completed a full search.

The 10-seater plane, a Rockwell International Turbo Commander 690B, flew out of Teterboro Airport in New Jersey and crashed at 11:25 a.m., the Federal Aviation Administration said.

Tweed's airport manager, Lori Hoffman-Soares, said the pilot had been in communication with air traffic control and hadn't issued any distress calls.

"All we know is that it missed the approach and continued on," she said.

A neighbor, David Esposito, said he heard a loud noise and then a thump: "No engine noise, nothing."

"A woman was screaming her kids were in there," he said.

Esposito, a retired teacher, said he ran into the upstairs of the house, where the woman believed her children were, but couldn't find them after frantically searching a crib and closets. He returned downstairs to search some more, but he dragged the woman out when the flames became too strong.

Wilson Idrovo said he was working on a house nearby when his son said: "Daddy, the airplane is falling down."

Idrovo said he went into the house but couldn't get into a room where the plane had crashed.

Angela Wordie was on her deck taking in towels when she noticed a plane making a strange sound.

"It kind of was gliding," she said. "The next thing I know it hit the house."

Maturo, the mayor, said a priest was with the woman whose children were feared dead, and he offered sympathy to the family.

"It's total devastation in the back of the home," he said.

Neighbors said the woman moved into the neighborhood recently.

A vigil is planned for Saturday night at Margaret Tucker Park.

___

Associated Press writer Michael Melia in Hartford, Conn. contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/small-plane-crashes-conn-6-feared-dead-065615287.html

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'Usher Don't Do' What Cee Lo Green Does On 'The Voice'

'To be honest, I don't know how hot it was, in comparison,' Green says of season four.
By Natasha Chandel, with reporting by Sway Calloway

Usher and Cee Lo Green on "The Voice"
Photo: NBC

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1712078/usher-cee-lo-green-the-voice-pressure.jhtml

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[VIDEO] Microsoft Unboxes The Xbox One

[VIDEO] Microsoft Unboxes The Xbox One
Posted by Joseph Lee?on 08.08.2013

And all the peripherals...

Microsoft has revealed four videos in which they reveal the look of the new Xbox One, the wireless controller, the plug & play kit and the chat headset.

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Source: http://www.411mania.com/games/news/293477

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Flu vaccine not tied to pregnancy complications

By Kathryn Doyle

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Pregnant women who get flu shots are at no greater risk for complications like high blood pressure, urinary tract infection or gestational diabetes, according to a new U.S. study.

The results are not surprising in light of previous research, said lead author Dr. Elyse Kharbanda of Health Partners Institute for Education and Research in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

"Studies of several thousand pregnant women in scientific literature have assessed the safety of using the flu vaccine during pregnancy," Kharbanda told Reuters Health. "These studies have shown no evidence of harm to pregnant women, to the unborn child, or to newborns of vaccinated women."

Routine monitoring of adverse events by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also have not raised safety concerns, she noted.

Doctors already recommend that pregnant women get the shot, but not all women agree. Surveys indicate that many women are unsure of the safety of the vaccine despite evidence there are no dangers.

During the 2010-2011 U.S. flu season, for example, only about half of pregnant women reported getting a flu vaccine, Kharbanda and her colleagues point out in their report, published in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology.

For the new study, they looked back at data on 74,000 women who had received a flu shot while pregnant, in any trimester, and compared them to 300,000 women who were similar in age, pregnancy start dates and other characteristics but had not received the shot.

Vaccinated women were more likely to have health problems, like high blood pressure or diabetes, before becoming pregnant, they found, and more likely to be hospitalized before and after the shot than the other women.

That may be explained by the fact that in general, adults with pre-existing conditions are especially encouraged to get flu shots, according to Kharbanda.

But in the 42-day period following the vaccination, women who got the shot were no more likely than women who didn't to suffer severe morning sickness, urinary tract infections, high blood pressure, excess protein in the urine or gestational diabetes.

When they were followed through delivery, vaccinated women were still no more likely to experience those pregnancy complications or others, including preeclampsia, blood clots and other vascular problems or bacterial infection after birth.

In addition, vaccination was tied to a reduced risk of gestational diabetes, probably because women who get vaccinated are also more likely to maintain a healthy diet, the authors write.

"This is a wonderful study, I found it delightful," said Dr. William Schaffner, chair of the department of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical School in Nashville, Tennessee.

"This is the single largest and best and most reliable safety study we have to date," Schaffner said. "We didn't have concerns about (the safety of the vaccine), and this puts the icing on the cake," he said.

For a pregnant woman, contracting the flu is "really dangerous," according to Dr. Laura E. Riley, medical director of labor and delivery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Pregnant women with the flu are at greater risk of death, respiratory disease requiring hospitalization and premature labor and delivery, Riley told Reuters Health.

The risk-benefit ratio was already clear, she said, but collecting new safety data is always good.

"Flu shots protect pregnant women, their unborn babies, and even protect the baby after birth," Kharbanda said.

Babies don't receive vaccines until six months of age, so they are vulnerable to catching the flu in the first six months of life, he said. But previous studies have found that some of the protection passes across the placenta to the baby and can help shield them from flu after birth.

"What mother doesn't want to do that?" Schaffner said. "There should be no hesitation for women getting the vaccine."

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1cNtoQh Obstetrics and Gynecology, September 2013.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/flu-vaccine-not-tied-pregnancy-complications-163354945.html

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Development and Optimization for NDK-based Android Game Application on Platforms based on Intel? Architecture

The Android Native Development Kit (NDK) is a companion tool to the Android SDK and allows you to implement parts of your app using native-code languages such as C and C++.

You can download the NDK toolkit: http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html

NDK for X86 Instruction Set Architecture

Android is an open-source operating system developed by Google. Currently, Android can be run on three families of instruction set architectures: ?ARM, x86, and MIPS. X86 denotes a family of instruction set architectures based on the Intel 8086 CPU, introduced in 1978. Let?s describe the differences between X86 (also called Intel? architecture or IA) and the other chipsets that Android runs on from an application perspective.

Android applications can be classified into two types:

• Dalvik applications that include Java* code and use the official Android SDK API only and necessary resource files, such as .xml and .png, compiled into an APK file.
• Android NDK applications that include Java code and resource files as well as C/C++ source code and sometimes assembly code. All native code is compiled into a dynamic linked library (.so file) and then called by Java in the main program using a JNI mechanism.

Android Game Engine

The game engine is a key module for game applications. There are several engines that run in Android, including 2D and 3D engines which are open source and commercial engines. Thus, it is difficult to migrate and develop Android-based games to run on the IA platform. Cocos2d-x and Unity 3D are the most popular game engines for Android platforms.

Cocos2d-x is based on Cocos2d-iPhone and consists of expanding supported platforms, with multiple programming languages that share the same API structure. Since its introduction in July 2010, cocos2d-x has been downloaded over 500 million times. Giants in the mobile game industry such as Zynga, Glu, GREE, DeNA, Konami, TinyCo, Gamevil, HandyGames, Renren Games, 4399, HappyElements, SDO, and Kingsoft are using cocos2d-x.

Unity 3D is a cross-platform game engine with a built-in IDE developed by Unity Technologies. It is used to develop video games for web plugins, desktop platforms, consoles, and mobile devices, and is utilized by over one million developers. It grew from an OS X supported game development tool in 2005 to a multi-platform game engine. The latest update, Unity 4.1, was released March 2013. It currently supports development for iOS, Android, Windows, Blackberry 10, OS X, Linux, web browsers, Flash*, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Windows Phone, and Wii.

Developing Android NDK-based games on IA platforms

Before we talk game development, we should talk about the Android platform in general. As you know, games come in many different styles. Different styles of games need different design principles. At the start of your project, you usually decide the genre of your game. Unless you come up with something completely new and previously unseen, chances are high that your game idea fits into one of the broad genres currently popular. Most genres have established game mechanic standards (e.g., control schemes, specific goals, etc.). Deviating from these standards can make a game a great hit, as gamers always long for something new. Some of the common genres are:

• Arcade & Action
• Brain & Puzzle
• Cards & Casino
• Casual
• Live Wallpaper
• Racing
• Sports Games
• Widgets
• etc

The process for developing general Android games is similar to any other Android application. First, download the Android SDK and NDK from Google?s web site and install them properly.

I assume you have done all the installation and preparation work. Using Cocos2d-x game engine as the example, let?s see how to create a game for Intel architecture.

Download Cocos2D-x

Download the latest stable version of Cocos2D-x from the web site: http://www.cocos2d-x.org/projects/cocos2d-x/wiki/Download

Execute the batch

Execute the batch from Windows Explorer. When it asks you for the project location, set it to something like com.yourproject.something, and choose the project name and target ID. This will create a folder with the project name inside the cocos2dx installation folder. You should see the execution of a script, without any error, something like this:

Set Environment Variables of NDK_ROOT

Add the following environment variable at the end of the home\<yourname>\.bash_profile file (in this case:c:\cygwin\home\user\.bash_profile):

 NDK_ROOT=/cygdrive/<yourname>/  export NDK_ROOT  

restart cygwin,input cd $NDK_ROOT, and you should see this screen:

Execute the build_native.sh file

The default configuration is ARM; we need to change it to compile for x86. Open the file \helloworld\proj.android \build_native.sh, find ndk-build command, and add the APP_ABI=x86 parameter to the end of the command. Run it in Cygwin and you will see:

Import project to Eclipse

Now go to Eclipse, create a new project -> Import from existing project.

Build and Run

At this step, Eclipse will have some problems:

The import org.cocos2dx.lib cannot be resolved HelloWorld.java

/HelloWorld/src/com/young40/test line 26 Java Problem Cocos2dxActivity cannot be resolved to a type HelloWorld.java

/HelloWorld/src/com/young40/test line 30 Java Problem Cocos2dxActivity cannot be resolved to a type HelloWorld.java

/HelloWorld/src/com/young40/test line 33 Java Problem

You must import the following library into Eclipse as a project:

cocos2d-2.1beta3-x-2.1.1/cocos2dx/platform/android/java

Go to Project -> Build, and then Run As -> Android Application:

Then a game framework for the cocos2dx game engine will be built. You can add game logic, audio, picture, etc. resources to this project to make a full game.

Optimize Android NDK-based games on IA platforms

Intel? System Studio is a suite of tool for profiling and optimizing applications on Android platforms. Of course, we can use it for optimizing games. Intel System Studio includes:

• Intel^? C++ Compiler
• Intel^? Graphics Performance Analyzers
• Intel^? VTune^? Amplifier
• (Intel^? JTAG Debugger)

Here we won?t explain the details about each tool. Instead, we will walk through an example that shows how Intel tools work.

First, let?s take an application, called Bounding Ball, that we will run on an Intel? Atom? Z2460 (code name Medfield) processor. The game has more than 800 balls that move at random speed and collide with each other without any regularity. We can see the performance is bad by measuring the FPS, which is only 6 without any optimization.

We can use Intel? Graphics Performance Analyzers (Intel? GPA) to locate which module is the bottleneck and find out if it is CPU bound or GPU bound.

The Intel GPA screen shot below shows a chart that describes the details of this application via the GPA on Android platform . From this, you can see that the CPU consumed 52.5% of the resources. That is a rather high ratio for one application. Meanwhile ISP Load, TA Load, TSP Load and USSE Total Load running inside GPU are all less than 10%, which means that the GPU load is normal. Thus we can conclude the bottleneck is in CPU module. To further analyze the CPU bottleneck issue, we need to profile the code using the VTune? analyzer.

Here, we don?t describe how to use the VTune analyzer, we just explain the results we obtained when we ran it. The hotspots are the sin and cos functions inside libm.so. So the question is: why does the application spend so much time and CPU cycles to run these two functions?

By checking the application source code, we find that these two hotspot functions are called when every ball is rendered by OpenGL ES*. As geometry of all the balls is the same, only the size is different. We can duplicate balls using the OpenGL function glScale so that hotspot function can be decreased greatly.

After code optimization, performance is improved 80%; the FPS is 14. Further, we can compile the application with Intel C/C++ Compiler to get better performance on Intel architecture platforms. The Intel C/C++ Compiler has many flags for performance optimization on IA platforms. Here we just introduce some of them.

• SSSE3_ATOM
  Supplemental Streaming SIMD Extensions 3 (SSSE3 or SSE3S) is a SIMD instruction set created by Intel and is the fourth iteration of the SSE technology.
• IPO
  Interprocedural Optimization flag will reduce function call overhead, eliminate dead code, and reorder constant propagation and procedure.
• PGO
  Profile-Guided Optimizations flag will analyze leaves many questions open for the optimizer like:
• How often is x > y
• What is the size of count
• Which code is touched and how often

In addition, the Intel C/C++ Compiler can also enhance applications as follows:

• More accurate branch prediction
• Basic block movement to improve instruction cache behavior
• Better decision of functions to inline (help IPO)
• Better optimization of function ordering
• Optimization of switch-statements
• Better vectorization decisions

Using different compilers and different compiling parameters, an app can get different performance. Here is a performance comparison of two compilers GCC and ICC. Same application Bounding Ball is running on android phone based on Intel Medfield. Blue part is performance of GCC and red part is that of ICC. Baseline is to compile without any parameters. The second part of chart is to compile with arch=atom. The third part is to recompile with all parameters mentioned above. Finally, you can see the performance of app compiled by ICC is 60% higher than GCC.

Summary

We?ve given you a quick introduction of Android game development and optimization in IA platforms. Game engines are the core part of all game development. If they run well on IA platforms, then the games will run well too. We took the popular game engine, cocos2dx, as an example to demonstrate how to develop on the IA platform. Intel also offers many tools for developers to optimize their game applications on Android platforms. Using Intel System Studio we showed the steps of how to optimize a demo application.

About the Author

Tao Peng is an application engineer in Intel Software and Service Group, and focus on mobile application enabling, including Android applications development and optimization for x86 devices, Web HTML5 application development.

Source: http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/development-and-optimization-for-ndk-based-android-game-application-on-platforms-based-on

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Carl Icahn increases Nuance stake to 16 percent: filing

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Activist investor Carl Icahn increased his stake in speech recognition and digital imaging software maker Nuance Communications Inc to 16.03 percent, a regulatory filing showed Thursday.

Icahn's stake in Nuance stood at 10.72 percent as of April 30. Apple Inc uses Nuance's speech recognition technology in its iPhone devices as part of its "Siri" voice recognition feature.

Shares of Nuance were up 1.7 percent to $19.42 per share in intraday trading Thursday.

(Reporting by Sam Forgione; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/carl-icahn-increases-nuance-stake-16-percent-filing-170212777.html

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Kutcher: Better at keeping personal life private

NEW YORK (AP) ? After embodying Steve Jobs in his new movie, Ashton Kutcher came to admire how the Apple Computer founder was able to balance his public and personal lives.

"He was better at it than I am," the 35-year old actor said Wednesday at the New York premiere of his new film, "JOBS."

"This business has a propensity to force you to be more public than you probably want to be," Kutcher said of show business.

He should know. Kutcher has seen his share of tabloid headlines after his very public breakup with actress Demi Moore. His current relationship with former "That '70s Show" co-star Mila Kunis has also been widely publicized.

But Kutcher says he's getting better at it.

"I think I've learned how to restrict that public image, and over the years I'm starting to understand the value of privacy," he said.

In the film, Kutcher plays the techno prophet who, along with Steve "Woz" Wozniak, ignited the personal computer revolution.

Jobs died two years ago after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 56.

Kutcher said that while researching the role, he found there was a "Steve that Steve didn't always want to show."

He also said the most important aspect of playing such a public figure was to understand that the version of Jobs known by the public came much later.

"The guy with the glasses and the jeans and black turtleneck and the New Balance shoes giving a keynote speech to present some new, great, next, amazing product ... he wasn't always that guy. He actually evolved into that person in the same way that I'm not the same today at 35 as I was at 25, and I was at 15," Kutcher said.

"JOBS" opens Aug. 16.

___

Follow John Carucci at www.twitter.com/jacarucci

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kutcher-better-keeping-personal-life-private-050036216.html

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