The sky's no limit for adaptive sports program | Sun Peaks ...

Submission contributed by Veronica Connors, past Promotions Coordinator for Adaptive Sports at Sun Peaks. See the abbreviated version in Volume 11, Issue 5 of ?SPIN.

The focus of Adaptive Sports at Sun Peaks is to provide opportunities for people with a wide range of disabilities to participate in adaptive snow sports and recreation programs at Sun Peaks Resort. The team at Adaptive Sports at Sun Peaks (ASSP) certainly did that this season. Over 200 lessons were given by volunteer instructors whose numbers tripled since last winter. In addition to providing lessons, ASSP held a successful local Sun Peaks Adaptive Festival highlighting the work of the many?volunteers, students and their families. The presence of the instructors on the hill in their red jackets significantly raised awareness, advocacy and outreach again this season.

ASSP invited senior instructors from other resorts to train together this season. This networking of expertise ensured excellent lesson quality for the many guests with disabilities attracted to Sun Peaks. ASSP continued to work with the Sun Peaks sports school with their growing numbers of out of town guests again this season, sharing the passion for all. Promotion of the work done here was captured by Local CFJC TV and CBC Francophone Radio network?generating significant interest in adaptive lessons offered at Sun Peaks.

The resort was showcased at the recent Canadian Association of Disabled Skiing (CADS)?National Festival and Para-Alpine Championships?with?ASSP?acting as host committee, supporting students and athletes, their coaches and instructors, from all over Canada. During?this week-long festival,?ASSP?hosted the Warren Miller/Robert Redford movie fundraiser, The Movement, and a toonie slalom race as well.

A most significant highlight was in ASSP instructor Gerry Tremblay receiving the National CADS Instructor of the Year award. Gerry takes leave from his job in Vancouver each season to teach students here all winter. This is a well deserved award of national recognition.

ASSP gained charitable status this season and continues to fundraise to purchase adaptive equipment, provide scholarships and comprehensive instructor training. The charity?s next plan is to buy a building to house their equipment, stage their students, and run their training courses.

The Adaptive Sports program continues to grow in its student and instructor base and enjoys the reputation of a successful program for skiers and snowboarders with a disability. This is due to a very dedicated group of volunteers who work hard both on the snow and behind the scenes on behalf of the students, as well as the continuing support of the Sun Peaks Resort Corporation management and staff.

Adaptive Sports at Sun Peaks thanks all those who continue to ensure this mountain is for all.

For information contact adaptivesportsatsunpeaks@gmail.com or visit?adaptivesportsatsunpeaks.org

Source: http://sunpeaksnews.com/the-skys-no-limit-for-adaptive-sports-program-14449.htm

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Swype's Keyboard Is Now Out of Beta and in the Play Store?For $1

Swype has finally dropped its Beta tag and gone official—which means it's now in the Play store, easy to install, and no longer free. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/HaoyCASLYm0/swypes-keyboard-is-now-out-of-beta-and-in-the-play-storefor-1

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TokBox Brings WebRTC To The Cloud, Enables Multi-Party Video Chats & SIP Interop

Telefonica’s TokBox announced a huge upgrade to its OpenTok on WebRTC service today. TokBox’s new cloud-based Mantis media distribution framework is designed to overcome some of WebRTC’s limits with regard to video distribution. By default, WebRTC is a peer-to-peer platform, but that makes it hard to scale video chats beyond two participants. With Mantis, TokBox essentially puts its own cloud infrastructure in the middle of these calls and is then able to route and manage calls that include multiple participants without using a prohibitive amount of bandwidth and using a complicated mesh-based architecture. In the future, as TokBox CEO Ian Small told me earlier this week, this will also enable TokBox to shape video streams according to the different users’ bandwidth conditions and the developers’ needs. “With Mantis, what we’re doing is putting smarts into the WebRTC infrastructure,” Small said. “Today, we’re routing traffic. Tomorrow, we’ll shape traffic.” On cool feature Mantis already enables today is SIP interop, so developers will actually be able to write WebRTC-based apps that allow users to call in from their standard phone lines. This, for example, is useful for video conferencing services where you can now have a number of WebRTC-based video streams and a few participants on regular phone lines simultaneously. Currently, Small told me, the system scales well for chats with up to 10 users. In a webinar setting where just one user is broadcasting, it can easily scale up to more than a hundred users. The company beta-tested Mantis with the help of LiveNinja and Roll20. Current OpenTok developers won’t have to do anything to take advantage of the new system, given that TokBox already abstracts most of the WebRTC calls anyway. They will just have to create the topology they need for their apps (P2P, multi-party chat, etc.) and get started. It just “happens in the cloud automatically,” as Small noted, and now that it’s in the cloud, the company will be able to add many new features to its implementation in the near future. WebRTC, of course, is still in its early phases, something Small also acknowledged in our interview. In his view, we are not even in the early adopter phase right now. Instead, he believes, WebRTC is still in its experimentation and early mover phase. Once WebRTC arrives in the stable release channel of Firefox (it’s about to hit the developer channels soon and should be in

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/wTQ9fSe290c/

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Zions, other banks teach personal finance to Utah kids | The Salt ...

(Steve Griffin | The Salt Lake Tribune) Zions Bank CEO Harris Simmons works with fourth-graders in Paul Mulder's class at Guadalupe School in Salt Lake City Monday April 22, 2013. The banking executive visited the school to teach students about financial literacy Monday April 22, 2013.

Personal finance ? Some say required class is failing; others say it?s way too soon for a verdict.

Buying a new bottle of water every day versus refilling a container from the drinking fountain. Purchasing a new pair of jeans versus waiting until a current pair wears out.

In each scenario that Zions Bancorporation President and CEO Harris Simmons threw out to fourth-graders at Salt Lake City?s Guadalupe School, 10-year-old Audrey Palestino consistently chose the frugal option.

That is, until she had to decide between buying the next volume in the Lemony Snicket series or waiting until a library copy became available.

"That?s a need," she said.

Distinguishing between needs and wants is a lesson Simmons and thousands of volunteers from various banks and credit unions have been teaching in classrooms and after-school programs across the state as part of Financial Literacy Month.

In a state known for high rates of foreclosures, bankruptcy filings and scams, Utah leaders have targeted financial literacy ? helping students learn how to save, budget and prevent debt ? as a public policy goal. In 2008, the Utah State Office of Education developed an online curriculum to help teachers teach about money management and lawmakers made passing a half-semester financial literacy course a requirement for high school graduation. This year, legislators passed Senate Bill 43, which creates a task force to study how to improve that high school class.

It?s all a good start, but it?s not enough, says Brian Nelson Ford, a personal finance consultant and author of The 8 Pillars of Financial Greatness.

"I think we?re trending in the right direction, but we?re not where we need to be," Ford said.

Ford said many children form their spending habits and patterns well before high school. And while teachers may be well-meaning, they often don?t know enough about money management themselves.

"We need teachers who are a little more passionate and better trained in personal finance," he said. "We need to move away from ?textbook? personal finance and toward ?real world? personal finance."

story continues below

State Sen. Pat Jones, D-Cottonwood Heights, agrees. This is why she sponsored SB 43 to assess what?s working and what?s not.

"A lot of people are going online and giving us feedback like, ?it?s a waste of time? and ?it?s not meaningful?," she said. "It?s too hit and miss right now."

But that kind of evaluation is purely anecdotal at this point. Julie Felshaw, financial education specialist at the Utah State Office of Education, says the first group of students required to take the financial literacy class has only been out in the world for five years and the Legislature didn?t fund any kind of ongoing assessment.

"It?s going to be 15 to 20 years before we learn the impact of financial literacy classes," she said.

As far as teacher training, Felshaw says the state office does offer resources to boost teacher proficiency in personal finance, including an online course to help educators talk about money to various age groups. It also offers summer workshops to review standards and objectives. She said these resources are available but optional, and attendance is in the 50 to 60 percent range.

"We encourage them to attend, but in fairness to teachers, they?ve got a pretty full plate and a lot are not just teaching [personal finance]," she said.

Zions Bank?s Simmons added that while financial literacy in the classroom is very important, lessons about money should largely take place in homes.

"It?s something that parents can do," Simmons said. "Too often we rely on schools to do all of this. This is something that all of us as parents need to be teaching our kids."

jnpearce@sltrib.com

Twitter: @jnpearce

Copyright 2013 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/56198388-79/financial-http-utah-literacy.html.csp

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Italy president names center-left's Letta as new premier

By Barry Moody and James Mackenzie

ROME (Reuters) - Italian President Giorgio Napolitano on Wednesday asked center-left deputy leader Enrico Letta to form a new government, signaling the end of a damaging two-month vacuum since elections in the euro zone's third largest economy in February.

Letta, a youthful former Christian Democrat from the right wing of his Democratic Party, said he would start talks to form a broad-based coalition on Thursday. It will likely go to parliament for a vote of confidence by early next week.

The prime minister designate is expected to select a group of ministers, mixed between politicians and technocrats, under the guidance of Napolitano, whose own unprecedented re-election last weekend opened the way for an end to the crisis.

The new government will be backed primarily by Letta's center-left and the center-right of Silvio Berlusconi, which had hitherto repeatedly failed to cut a deal following inconclusive elections two months ago.

Formation of a government after a lengthy and turbulent political impasse will send a signal that Italy might at last be ready to make a start on much-needed reforms.

Accepting his mandate, Letta said he was surprised by the nomination and felt a profound responsibility on his shoulders. But he said he would not form a government "at all costs", warning that the warring parties must make compromises.

Italy faced an untenable "difficult and fragile" situation and the government must provide answers on jobs, poverty and the crisis facing small businesses in a deep recession, he said.

He added that European Union economic policies had been too focused on austerity instead of growth and that Italy's electoral and parliamentary system must be reformed.

Napolitano's choice of Letta instead of veteran former Prime Minister Giuliano Amato, who was said to have been his original favorite, indicated he had plumped for a more political figure who reflects a generational change in Italian politics.

The bespectacled and balding Letta, an urbane moderate who speaks fluent English, is 46 against Amato's 74 and is an elected member of parliament unlike the older, more experienced man.

He will be the second youngest prime minister in Italian postwar history and as a staunch pro-European is likely to be welcomed by foreign governments and markets.

MARKET RELIEF

Investors had already reacted with relief to the prospect of an end to the intractable crisis, with Italy's two-year borrowing costs on Wednesday tumbling to their lowest level since the start of European monetary union in 1999.

However, the country's problems are not over, with significant differences remaining between left and right over economic policy.

These were put sharply into focus even before Letta was chosen when Renato Brunetta, house leader for Berlusconi's PDL party, said they would only support a government committed to repealing a hated housing tax introduced by outgoing technocrat premier Mario Monti and paying it back.

The center-left agrees only to a partial reduction of the tax and many economists say such a move would leave a gaping hole in Italy's public accounts.

But Napolitano, who reluctantly agreed to serve another term as president, has made clear that he will brook no more endless squabbling between the parties and has threatened to resign if they do not unite behind economic policies and important constitutional reforms.

Chief among these is the repeal of a dysfunctional electoral law which was largely responsible for the post election impasse.

Letta, the nephew of Berlusconi's long-time chief of staff Gianni Letta, is close to former party leader Pier Luigi Bersani, who resigned at the weekend after rebels sabotaged him in the voting for a new president in a debacle that threatens to tear the PD apart.

Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL) party, Letta's PD and Monti's centrist Civic Choice movement had all said they would cooperate with whomever Napolitano chooses.

"Given the crisis the country finds itself in, the country needs a strong, a durable government that can make important decisions," Berlusconi said after meeting Napolitano on Tuesday.

The billionaire media magnate has exploited the center-left's divisions, with one poll this week giving the center-right an eight-point lead. This could be a worry for Letta if he forms a government, with Berlusconi tempted to pull the plug if he does not get his own way.

In February's general election, the center-left narrowly won a majority in the lower house but failed to win control of the Senate and was not able to form a government.

Italy's economy has been the most sluggish in Europe for more than a decade and mired in a deep recession since the middle of 2011, with no recovery in sight.

(Additional reporting by Paolo Biondi and Steve Scherer; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/italy-president-set-announce-choice-prime-minister-054722232.html

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The biology of fats in the body

Apr. 23, 2013 ? When you have your cholesterol checked, the doctor typically gives you levels of three fats found in the blood: LDL, HDL and triglycerides. But did you know your body contains thousands of other types of fats, or lipids?

In human plasma alone, researchers have identified some 600 different types relevant to our health. Many lipids are associated with diseases--diabetes, stroke, cancer, arthritis, Alzheimer's disease, to name a few. But our bodies also need a certain amount of fat to function, and we can't make it from scratch.

Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health are studying lipids to learn more about normal and abnormal biology. Chew on these findings the next time you ponder the fate of the fat in a French fry.

Fat Functions

Triglycerides, cholesterol and other essential fatty acids--the scientific term for fats the body can't make on its own--store energy, insulate us and protect our vital organs. They act as messengers, helping proteins do their jobs. They also start chemical reactions involved in growth, immune function, reproduction and other aspects of basic metabolism.

The cycle of making, breaking, storing and mobilizing fats is at the core of how humans and all animals regulate their energy. An imbalance in any step can result in disease, including heart disease and diabetes. For instance, having too many triglycerides in our bloodstream raises our risk of clogged arteries, which can lead to heart attack and stroke.

Fats help the body stockpile certain nutrients as well. The so-called "fat-soluble" vitamins--A, D, E and K--are stored in the liver and in fatty tissues.

Using a quantitative and systematic approach to study lipids, researchers have classified lipids into eight main categories. Cholesterol belongs to the "sterol" group, and triglycerides are "glycerolipids." Another category, "phospholipids," includes the hundreds of lipids that constitute the cell membrane and allow cells to send and receive signals.

Breaking It Down

The main type of fat we consume, triglycerides are especially suited for energy storage because they pack more than twice as much energy as carbohydrates or proteins. Once triglycerides have been broken down during digestion, they are shipped out to cells through the bloodstream. Some of the fat gets used for energy right away. The rest is stored inside cells in blobs called lipid droplets.

When we need extra energy--for instance, when we exercise--our bodies use enzymes called lipases to break down the stored triglycerides. The cell's power plants, mitochondria, can then create more of the body's main energy source: adenosine triphosphate, or ATP.

Recent research also has helped explain the workings of a lipid called an omega-3 fatty acid -- the active ingredient in cod liver oil, which has been touted for decades as a treatment for eczema, arthritis and heart disease. Two types of these lipids blocked the activity of a protein called COX, which assists in converting an omega-6 fatty acid into pain-signaling prostaglandin molecules. These molecules are involved in inflammation, which is a common element of many diseases, so omega-3 fatty acids could have tremendous therapeutic potential.

This knowledge is just the tip of the fat-filled iceberg. We've already have learned a lot about lipids, but much more remains to be discovered.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by NIH, National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), via Newswise.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/tXX0TXi6KXw/130423102127.htm

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Huawei A199 outed with 5-inch 720p display, 1.5GHz CPU, 2GB RAM

Huawei kicked off the year by introducing its 5-inch Ascend D2 and 6.1-inch Ascend Mate flagships, and after a few months of catering for smaller hands, it's revisiting larger screens with the A199. The new handset shares a handful of specs with the Ascend D2, and although it's not as equipped, you wouldn't call it a low-end device. Behind the 5-inch, 720p IPS display, you'll find Huawei's own quad-core 1.5GHz K3V2 CPU paired with 2GB of RAM and eight gigs of internal storage, expandable via a microSD slot (up to 32GB cards supported).

Weighing in at roughly 160g (5.6 ounces) with a 2,150mAh battery on board, the 8.9mm (0.35 inch) thick handset has an 8-megapixel main camera, a 1.3-megapixel shooter up front, and runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean as standard. We're inclined to believe the A199 will be destined for China and emerging markets only given the phone's dual-SIM support (GSM / CDMA / EV-DO), a feature popular in these regions. The device does, however, bear similarities in both specs and design to an Ascend G710 that was detailed in a leak back in February. Maybe, then, the A199 will make its way to the US eventually, albeit with a fresh name and brushed metal disguise.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Source: Huawei

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/22/huawei-a199/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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