PST: Newcastle sinks Chelsea

Newcastle may be much improved after spending their winter window hitting ?Buy It Now? on French soccer Ebay, but it?s difficult to look beyond Chelsea when trying to explain today?s result. The Blues allowed themselves to go behind on a Jonas Gutierrez header before taking a 2-1 lead through Frank Lampard and Juan Mata just past the hour mark. Yet thanks to two goals from new midfielder Moussa Sissoko, Chelsea leaves St. James Park 3-2 losers and destined to be pulled back into a race for third.

The Blues came into this weekend action with a four-point lead on Spurs for fourth, but returning to London without a point, they?re dangerously close to being pulled into a second successive fight for Champions League. With a draw from Everton (against Aston Villa) and a win by Arsenal (over Stoke City), Chelsea?s now only four-points away from sixth.

Rafa Benitez has been terrible ??we know this?? but Chelsea?s a team that has always had a strong player leadership culture, one that was able to carry the likes of Avram Grant to a Champions League final. Didier Drogba is gone, but Frank Lampard, John Terry, and Petr Cech are not only still there, they were on the field when Chelsea gave up today?s lead. No matter what you think of Benitez, it?s hard to see how he got in the way of this win, particularly when a bench thinned by injury, suspension, and Cup of Nations left him with no meaningful way to tinker.

Beyond Ben?tez or the wane of Chelsea leadership, today?s issue is one pundits and followers have been harping on all season. As Moussa Sissoko scored a late double in his second Premier League match, you saw the type of drive, strength, and resolve that would bolster an underperforming Chelsea midfield. How do Spurs end up with a player like Sissoko when taking a flyer on him (or any other player like him) would cost Chelsea a fraction of their transfer budget?

Late in this match, as he became the most important player on the field, you couldn?t help but ask how he was allowed to do that? How can this player that had struggled of late for Toulouse be dropped into the league and, a week later, win matches against the European champion?

MORE: United?s flawed, fabulous season continues at Fulham

Obviously there are a lot of problems at Chelsea right now, but if that question even needs to be asked, those problems might run deeper than we had previously thought. Through most of this season Chelsea?s been a troubled if stably third place side, but while giving up today?s lead they showed the type of perpetual vulnerability that defined last year?s slide. Now it?s worth asking whether the Blues are much better than the team that finished sixth last season.

Of course, there is a big difference. Last year?s slide was make possible but Roberto Di Matteo putting all of the team?s eggs into the Champions League basket. What?s this year?s excuse?

There?s also the possibility Newcastle?s come together. They have Sissoko, Yoann Gouffran and Mathieu Debuchy. Yoann Cabaye is healthy, as is Steven Taylor at the back. This team is better than a 15th place side, even if they?ve rarely looked it.

MORE, EPL Roundup: Fellaini England?s best?

But Chelsea was up 2-1. They are the more talented side. They have the players to close out that game. Chelsea should have taken full points.

For the last two months we?ve likened Chelsea to Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Hyde, but with the team falling back into a race for their Champions League lives, the pressure mounts to find a cure to their constant bipolar transformations. Why is Mr. Hyde showing up more often than Dr. Jeykll?

Source: http://prosoccertalk.nbcsports.com/2013/02/02/chelsea-newcastle-result-english-premier-league/related

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Bus hits overpass in Boston, injuring more than 30

In this photo released by the Boston Fire Department via Twitter, firemen work to remove injured passengers from a bus that hit an bridge as it traveled along Soldiers Field Road in the Allston neighborhood of Boston Saturday night, Feb. 2, 2013. Officials said the bus carryinyg 42 people was traveling from Harvard University home to Pennsylvania when it struck the overpass. (AP Photo/Boston Fire Department)

In this photo released by the Boston Fire Department via Twitter, firemen work to remove injured passengers from a bus that hit an bridge as it traveled along Soldiers Field Road in the Allston neighborhood of Boston Saturday night, Feb. 2, 2013. Officials said the bus carryinyg 42 people was traveling from Harvard University home to Pennsylvania when it struck the overpass. (AP Photo/Boston Fire Department)

In this photo released by the Boston Fire Department via Twitter, firemen work to remove injured passengers from a bus that hit an bridge as it traveled along Soldiers Field Road in the Allston neighborhood of Boston Saturday night, Feb. 2, 2013. Officials said the bus carryinyg 42 people was traveling from Harvard University home to Pennsylvania when it struck the overpass. (AP Photo/Boston Fire Department)

In this photo released by the Boston Fire Department via Twitter, firemen work to remove injured passengers from a bus that hit an bridge as it traveled along Soldiers Field Road in the Allston neighborhood of Boston Saturday night, Feb. 2, 2013. Officials said the bus carryinyg 42 people was traveling from Harvard University home to Pennsylvania when it struck the overpass. (AP Photo/Boston Fire Department)

In this photo released by the Boston Fire Department via Twitter, firemen work to remove injured passengers from a bus that hit an bridge as it traveled along Soldiers Field Road in the Allston neighborhood of Boston Saturday night, Feb. 2, 2013. Officials said the bus carryinyg 42 people was traveling from Harvard University home to Pennsylvania when it struck the overpass. (AP Photo/Boston Fire Department)

Emergency personnel remove passengers at the scene of a bus crash, Saturday, Feb. 2, 2013 in Boston. Authorities say a charter bus heading from Harvard University to Pennsylvania has struck a bridge in Boston, injuring 33 people. (AP Photo/The Boston Herald, Stuart Cahill) BOSTON GLOBE OUT; METRO BOSTON OUT; MAGS OUT; ONLINE OUT

BOSTON (AP) ? A charter bus carrying high school students from Pennsylvania crashed when it attempted to pass under a low bridge in Boston on Saturday night, injuring more than 30 people, several seriously, and leaving some trapped inside for hours, authorities said.

The students had been in the area to visit Harvard University. The bus, which was carrying 42 students and adult chaperones, was heading back to the Philadelphia area when it struck an overpass on Soldier's Field Road, a major crosstown road, at around 7:30 p.m., Massachusetts State Police said.

Authorities said the Calvary Coach bus did not belong on that road, which was not authorized for over-sized vehicles, and State Police were investigating whether charges were warranted against the driver, who apparently failed to see a sign prohibiting the vehicle from taking that route.

Ray Talmedge, owner of the Philadelphia-based Calvary Coach Bus company, said his driver was being interviewed by police. Talmedge said the driver, who also drives a school bus, didn't know about the road restrictions.

The students were part of a Destined for a Dream Foundation group, Talmedge said. Officials with the Bristol, Pa.-based group, a nonprofit that helps underprivileged youth, had no immediate comment on the crash.

The group's Facebook page said the trip to Harvard was to "visit the campus, sit with the office of cultural advancement, followed by a tour of the campus ... followed by Harvard Square (shopping, eating, site seeing...etc...) This should be a fun time for all!"

The bus suffered significant damage in the crash.

State police said at least 32 people were injured, including three seriously. Photos posted on the Fire Department's website showed firefighters standing on the top of the bus using boards to extract people. The last victim was freed from the bus around 9 p.m., according to the department.

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority sent buses to pick up non-injured passengers and get them out of the frigid temperatures.

Soldiers Field Road curves along the Charles River and passes by Harvard and Boston University. It is a major roadway to the Massachusetts Turnpike.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-02-02-Boston%20Bus%20Crash/id-9eb66ec2bdb04d68bf47b50bec97b6e5

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Turkey: U.S. Embassy bomber had terror conviction

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) ? The suicide bomber who struck the U.S. Embassy in Ankara spent five years in prison on terrorism charges but was released after being diagnosed with a hunger strike-related brain disorder, officials said Saturday.

The bomber, identified as 40-year-old leftist militant Ecevit Sanli, killed himself and a Turkish security guard on Friday, in what U.S. officials said was a terrorist attack. Sanli was armed with TNT and also detonated a hand grenade, officials said.

The U.S. flag at the embassy flew at half-staff and already tight security was increased. Police sealed off a street in front of the security checkpoint where the explosion knocked a door off its hinges and littered the road with debris. Police vehicles were parked in streets surrounding the building.

Sanli's motives were still unclear. He had been a member of the outlawed Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP-C, which has claimed responsibility for assassinations and bombings since the 1970s but has been relatively quiet in recent years. Compared to al Qaida, it has not been seen as a strong terrorist threat.

Officials said Sanil was arrested in 1997 for alleged involvement in attacks on the police headquarters and a military guesthouse in Istanbul and jailed on charges of membership in the group. While in prison awaiting trial, he took part in a major hunger strike that led to the deaths of dozens of inmates, according to a statement from the Ankara governor's office. The protesters opposed a maximum-security system in which prisoners were held in small cells instead of large wards.

Sanli was released in 2002 after being diagnosed with Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, a malnutrition-related brain illness that affects vision, muscle coordination and memory and that can cause hallucinations. Sanli fled Turkey after his release and was wanted by Turkish authorities, the statement said. He was convicted in absentia in 2002.

The Ankara governor's office, citing the findings of a bomb squad that inspected the site, said Sanli had used 6 kilograms of TNT for the suicide attack and also detonated a hand grenade. Officials had earlier said that the bomber detonated a suicide vest at the checkpoint on the outer perimeter of the compound.

The guard who was killed was standing outside the checkpoint. A Turkish TV journalist was seriously wounded and two other guards had lighter wounds

The attack drew quick condemnation from Turkey, the U.S., Britain and other nations, and officials from both Turkey and the U.S. pledged to work together to fight terrorism.

It was the second deadly assault on a U.S. diplomatic post in five months. On Sept. 11, 2012, terrorists attacked a U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, killing U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The attackers in Libya were suspected to have ties to Islamist extremists, and one is in custody in Egypt.

U.S. diplomatic facilities in Turkey have been targeted previously by terrorists. In 2008, an attack blamed on al-Qaida-affiliated militants outside the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul left three assailants and three policemen dead.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/turkey-us-embassy-bomber-had-terror-conviction-093932685.html

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Kim Dotcom's Offering a Cash Reward If You Can Smash Mega's Encryption

A few weeks into its existence, Mega is holding up pretty well. It's fended off its first round of takedown requests and is still crouched safely behind its wall of protective encryption. In fact, Dotcom is so confident in that encryption, he's offering free money to anyone who can break it. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/2DNW_wGhxcY/kim-dotcoms-offering-a-cash-reward-if-you-can-smash-megas-encryption

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The effective collective: Grouping could ensure animals find their way in a changing environment

The effective collective: Grouping could ensure animals find their way in a changing environment

Friday, February 1, 2013

For social animals such as schooling fish, the loss of their numbers to human activity could eventually threaten entire populations, according to a finding that such animals rely heavily on grouping to effectively navigate their environment.

Princeton University researchers report in the journal Science that collective intelligence is vital to certain animals' ability to evaluate and respond to their environment. Conducted on fish, the research demonstrated that small groups and individuals become disoriented in complex, changing environments. However, as group size is increased, the fish suddenly became highly responsive to their surroundings.

These results should prompt a close examination of how endangered group or herd animals are preserved and managed, said senior researcher Iain Couzin, a Princeton professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. If wild animals depend on collective intelligence for migration, breeding and locating essential resources, they could be imperiled by any activity that diminishes or divides the group, such as overhunting and habitat loss, he explained.

"Processes that increase group fragmentation or reduce population density may initially appear to have little influence, yet a further reduction in group size may suddenly and dramatically impact the capacity of a species to respond effectively to their environment," Couzin said. "If the mechanism we observed is found to be widespread, then we need to be aware of tipping points that could result in the sudden collapse of migratory species."

The work is among the first to experimentally explain the extent to which collective intelligence improves awareness of complex environments, the researchers write. Collective intelligence is an established advantage of groups, including humans. As it's understood, a group of individuals gain an advantage by pooling imperfect estimates with those around them, which more or less "averages" single experiences into surprisingly accurate common knowledge. For instance, the paper in Science cites a 1907 study that predicted with near precision the weight of an ox based on the estimates of 787 people.

With their work, Couzin and his coauthors uncovered an additional layer to understanding collective intelligence. The conventional view assumes that individual group members have some level of knowledge albeit incomplete. Yet the Princeton researchers found that in some cases individuals have no ability to estimate how a problem needs to be solved, while the group as a whole can find a solution through their social interactions. Moreover, they found that the more numerous the neighbors, the richer the individual ? and thus group ? knowledge is.

These findings correlate with recent research showing that collective intelligence ? even in humans ? can rely less on the intelligence of each group member than on the effectiveness of their communal interaction, Couzin said. In humans, research suggests that such cooperation would take the form of open and equal communication among individuals regardless of their respective smarts, he said.

The researchers placed fish known as golden shiners in experimental tanks in groups as low as one and as high as 256. The tanks featured a moving light field that was bright on the outer edges and tapered into a dark center. To reflect the changing nature of natural environments, they also incorporated small patches of darkness that moved around randomly. Prolific schoolers and enthusiasts of darkness, the golden shiners would pursue the shaded areas as the researchers recorded their movement using computer vision software. Although the fish sought the shade regardless of group size, their capability to do so increased dramatically once groups spanned a large enough area.

The researchers then tracked the motion of individual fish to gauge the role of social influence on their movement. They found that individuals adjusted their speed according to local light level by moving faster in more brightly lit areas, but without social influence the fish did not necessarily turn toward the darker regions. Groups, however, readily swam to dark areas and were able to track those preferred regions as they moved.

This collective sensing emerged due to the coherent nature of social interactions, the authors report. As one side of the group slowed and turned toward the shaded area, the other members did as well. Also, slowing down increased density and resulted in darker regions becoming more attractive to these social animals.

###

Princeton University: http://www.princeton.edu

Thanks to Princeton University for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/126585/The_effective_collective__Grouping_could_ensure_animals_find_their_way_in_a_changing_environment

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Fireworks cause deadly highway collapse in China

BEIJING (AP) ? Fireworks for Lunar New Year celebrations exploded on a truck in central China, destroying part of an elevated highway Friday and sending vehicles plummeting 30 meters (about 100 feet) to the ground. State media had conflicting reports on casualties.

The huge blast collapsed an 80-meter (80-yard) stretch of a major east-west highway in Mianchi county in Henan Province. It scattered blackened chunks of debris and shattered the windows of a nearby truck stop. There was no immediate word on the cause of the explosion.

A Communist Party spokesman for the nearby city of Sanmenxia, Nie Jianyin, cited provincial officials as saying that five people were confirmed dead and eight hospitalized. The Xinhua News agency reported four dead. Earlier reports by China National Radio and some other outlets of up to 26 people killed were later removed from websites.

Photos posted on the website of a Henan newspaper, Dahe Daily, showed a stretch of elevated highway gone, with one truck's back wheels perched at the edge of a shorn-off section of the highway. Other photos showed firefighters below spraying water on scorched hunks of concrete, wrecked trucks and flattened shipping containers.

The location is about 90 kilometers (55 miles) west of Luoyang, an ancient capital of China known for grottoes of Buddhist statues carved from limestone cliffs.

Fireworks are an enormously popular part of Chinese Lunar New Year festivities. To meet the demand, fireworks are made, shipped and stored in large quantities, sometimes in unsafe conditions.

A result is periodic catastrophe: In 2006, on the first day of the Lunar New Year, a storeroom of fireworks exploded at a temple fair in Henan, killing 36 people and injuring dozens more. In 2000, an unlicensed fireworks factory in southern China exploded, killing 33 people, including 13 primary and secondary school students working there.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fireworks-cause-deadly-highway-collapse-china-065131273.html

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Arnold Schwarzenegger Naked Photo Worth How Much?

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/01/arnold-schwarzenegger-naked-photo-worth-how-much/

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