Chaz Bono is the latest star to exit 'Dancing'

In this Oct. 24, 2011 image released by ABC, Chaz Bono, right, and his partner Lacey Schwimmer perform on the dancing competition series "Dancing with the Stars," in Los Angeles. Bono and Schwimmer were voted off the show on Tuesday. (AP Photo/ABC, Adam Taylor)

In this Oct. 24, 2011 image released by ABC, Chaz Bono, right, and his partner Lacey Schwimmer perform on the dancing competition series "Dancing with the Stars," in Los Angeles. Bono and Schwimmer were voted off the show on Tuesday. (AP Photo/ABC, Adam Taylor)

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Chaz Bono has gotten his walking papers on "Dancing with the Stars."

Tuesday's edition of the hit ABC TV dance competition marked the last dance for Bono. Despite his cheerful, spirited style, he had struggled from the beginning and came in last in the judges' assessment the night before.

When he got the bad news, the transgender activist said he had come on the program "to show America a different kind of man."

"If there was somebody like me on TV when I was growing up, my whole life would have been different," he said.

Soccer star Hope Solo, who also was in jeopardy, avoided being sent home and will stay in contention.

Along with her, five other celebrities remain in the contest: actors David Arquette and J.R. Martinez, reality TV personality Rob Kardashian, and TV hosts Ricki Lake and Nancy Grace. Judges' scores combined with viewer votes determine who is kicked off the show each week.

Monday's episode had included insults, an animal comparison and two nearly perfect performances.

A heated exchange between professional dancer Maksim Chmerkovskiy and head judge Len Goodman stole the spotlight from first-place finishers Lake and Martinez.

Chmerkovskiy and his partner, Solo, landed near the bottom of the judges' leaderboard Monday. With 20 points out of 30, they finished just ahead of Bono, in last place with 19 points.

When Goodman called Solo's rumba "your worst dance of the whole season," Chmerkovskiy suggested the judge get out of the dance business.

Chmerkovskiy told one of the show's hosts that the judges seem to pick on certain contestants, and he kept up the conversation after Monday's episode.

"The judges have their favorites," he said. "They always have."

Bono's professional partner, Lacey Schwimmer, agreed.

"They always have their favorites, and this season it's completely clear who they are. I won't name names, but we are not one of them," she said. "I'm actually proud of what Maks said. A lot of us don't get the chance to stand up for us and our partners."

Schwimmer cried backstage during Monday's episode and was still upset after the show, when she complained about the judges' "rude" remarks about Bono.

"Every week he gets referred to as an animal," she said. "They always comment on his personality, and last I checked, this was a dancing show."

After the couple danced their tango, judge Bruno Tonioli said Bono was like "a cute little penguin trying to be a big menacing bird of prey." Tonioli had also compared Bono to an Ewok from "Star Wars."

Carson Kressley, Chynna Phillips, Kristin Cavallari, Elisabetta Canalis and Ron Artest have already been eliminated this season.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-10-25-TV-Dancing%20With%20the%20Stars/id-3b7c70bf13f24a0e929e77f430b8f949

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UPS reports higher profit, affirms outlook (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? United Parcel Service reported a higher quarterly profit as margins improved in the face of flat domestic shipping volume dulled by a sluggish economy, and it affirmed its outlook for record 2011 results.

UPS has forecast record earnings per share of $4.15 to $4.40 this year on the back of cost cuts and higher shipping rates in the face of a slowly expanding global economy.

"UPS produced another solid quarter of earnings growth against the backdrop of a deceleration in exports from Asia and a challenging global economic environment," Chief Executive Officer Scott Davis said in a statement.

The company's shares declined 1.4 percent to $69.89 in premarket trading.

Domestic shipping volume averaged 12.74 million packages a day, little changed from 12.73 million a year ago. Operating margins improved on higher yields, or revenue per package, as well as on more efficient networks, the company said.

International shipping volume averaged 2.34 million a day, up from 2.24 million.

Revenue in this segment rose more than 14 percent, twice the rate in the domestic segment, driven by 6.5 percent growth in export volume.

UPS and FedEx Corp are considered economic bellwethers because of the sheer volume of packages they handle.

The value of packages handled by UPS's trucks and planes each year is equivalent to about 6 percent of U.S. gross domestic product and 2 percent of global GDP.

The world's largest package delivery company said third-quarter net income rose to $1.04 billion, or $1.06 per share, from $991 million, or 99 cents a share, a year earlier.

Analysts on average were expecting $1.05 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Revenue rose 18 percent to $13.17 billion, matching the analysts' average forecast.

(Reporting by Lynn Adler in New York; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111025/bs_nm/us_ups

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Oil firm agrees to plead guilty in ND bird deaths (AP)

BISMARCK, N.D. ? One of seven oil companies charged with killing migratory birds during drilling operations in North Dakota has agreed to plead guilty and pay $12,000.

Slawson Exploration Co. Inc., of Wichita, Kan., was charged under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act with for killing 12 birds that died after allegedly landing in oil waste pits in western North Dakota from May 6 through June 20. Under a plea agreement filed in federal court Monday, Slawson will pay $12,000 ? or $1,000 per bird ? to the nonprofit National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

The maximum penalty for each misdemeanor charge under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act is six months in prison and a $15,000 fine.

U.S. Attorney Timothy Purdon said he could not comment on plea deal because it still must be approved by U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland in Bismarck. Stu Kowalski, an attorney for Slawson, also declined to comment.

Six other oil companies have pleaded not guilty to charges that their oil waste pits killed birds. They were arraigned last month in U.S. District Court in Bismarck and have until Tuesday to file pretrial arguments.

Slawson accounted for the bulk of the 28 dead birds discovered by federal wildlife officials in uncovered waste pits operated by the companies in May and June. Most of the birds were ducks and none were identified as being endangered. Killing endangered species can lead to felony charges that bring fines of up to $250,000.

Companies in North Dakota are required to cover the so-called reserve pits with netting if they are open for more than 90 days after drilling operations. The waste pits, which can contain oil, diesel, drilling muds and chemicals, are about the size of a large swimming pool, and birds sometimes mistake them for a good place to land.

Also charged in the case are ConocoPhillips Co., of Houston; Newfield Production Co., of Houston; Brigham Oil and Gas LP, of Williston; Continental Resources Inc., of Enid, Okla.; Petro Hunt LLC, of Dallas; and Fidelity Exploration & Production Co., of Denver;

Records show all seven companies have previously been fined for violating the Migratory Bird Act. Fidelity, a unit of Bismarck-based MDU Resources Group Inc., had the biggest sanction, a $44,025 penalty after 44 birds were found dead in waste pits near Green River, Utah.

North Dakota regulators are considering banning the oil waste pits and requiring companies to recycle liquid drilling waste amid a spate of toxic discharges and an increasing number of migrating birds that have died by mistaking the polluted ponds for fresh water. State officials have said companies have sometimes foregone netting because fines can be cheaper than installing and maintaining netting.

North Dakota, the nation's fourth-largest oil state, produces about 450,000 barrels of oil daily from about 6,000 wells.

State regulators in June levied $3 million in fines against 20 companies that failed to protect oilfield waste pits from spring flooding. About 10 percent of the state's 500 waste ponds were swamped by meltwater after one of the state's snowiest winters on record. The waste pit breaches came despite regulators' warnings that they could happen.

State health officials have said other fines are pending in the swamped waste pit incidents.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/science/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111024/ap_on_re_us/us_oiled_birds_plea

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Click.to

One of the more interesting consequences of the touchcreen revolution is the way that developments in smartphones and tablets are bleeding over into more traditional hardware and software. Click.to is a program designed to mimic in standard PCs (and Macs) the ease with which people can share content from a touch screen. In practically any app for smartphones and tablets, you can press a single button to share something on Facebook, or email a photo, or otherwise copy and paste content from one application to another. Why shouldn't we have this functionality on our plain old laptops and desktops?

Time-Saving Shortcut
Click.to is a small downloadable program that works on both Windows (XP, Vistas, 7) and Mac computers. After you install and launch it, Click.to will work in any application the moment you try to use the "copy function," whether you press Ctrl+C, Apple-command+C, or right-click and select "copy." A string of icons appears near the text. Select whichever one you want, and Click.to launches the program and pastes the content in the applicable spot. For example, if you select the button for Outlook, Click.to creates a new message and pastes the copied content into the body of the email.

You can customize which icons appear from an Options menu, and, if Click.to doesn't support an application you want to use, you can add it, although the process might seem slightly complicated for less technical people. To add a new program, you have to be able to identify the executable file for the program on your hard drive.

Numerous applications are already supported from the get-go: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Outlook, Word, Excel, Wikipedia, Gmail, Evernote, Flickr, PDF, Blogger, WolframAlpha, Bing Translate, Amazon, YouTube, and many more. Depending on what application you paste into, Click.to will automatically fill in other appropriate information, such as the subject line of an email (it will use the file name from which the text or image is pulled). Paste into a Word doc, and the source of the pasted info will be listed at the top of the file.

One of my favorite features is how the Wikipedia icon works. Rather than pasting your copied text directly into Wikipedia's search bar, Click.to pulls the most concise definition Wikipedia has for the selected text and displays it in a bubble right on screen, so you never have to leave the first application.

When Click.to Isn't So Time-Savey
The number of clicks that Click.to saves you depends on what kind of copying and pasting you normally do. For sharing to social networks and drafting emails, it's pretty handy, and the Wikipedia tie-in is brilliant. But when it came time for me to get some actual work done, I occasionally found Click.to distracting because it was offering its services at times when it they wouldn't work for me. One example: I was copying and pasting information from multiple sources into one existing Notepad document. I didn't want to start a new file every time I copied more text. I just wanted to continue pasting into the file that was already open, and I couldn't find a way to do that with Click.to. However,?I later learned that there is an action that could have helped me, but it wasn't apparent enough for me to find on my own. It's called back-action, and to use it, you have to add the "browse to" button (a red icon with two white arrows) to your Click.to commands list.

To use the back action, you first have to create a new document using Click.to with the first "paste." Then, the next time you use Click.to, you can select the "browse to" icon, and the program will bring you to the file you pasted into last. You then have to use a command for paste (Ctrl+V or Apple command+V, or right-click and select "paste"), as the Click.to function in this case only returns you to the right file and doesn't do the pasting part.

If Click.to is still distracting for certain applications or tasks, you can always it off. And you can turn it off only for certain applications, which is a nice touch.

Fewer Clicks With Click.to
Productivity and efficiency experts have long studied the number of clicks and keystrokes the average office worker completes in a day. Click.to tries to decrease that total by removing several steps in the copy-and-paste process, which is usually more like: select text or item, copy, find and launch other application, open new document or navigate to appropriate spot, paste. The free product is worth downloading if you tend to use copy-paste workflows often.

More Productivity Reviews:?

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/1H4_pfLKXjQ/0,2817,2395207,00.asp

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Netflix Q3 Revenue Up 49 Percent To $822M; Will Double Content Spending In 2012

Streaming movie and TV show platform Netflix reported third quarter earnings today. Revenue came in at 822 million up 49 percent from 2010. Earnings per share for the quarter was $1.16, which is up 66 percent from the same quarter 2010. Analysts expected earnings of $0.96 cents per share. Net Income was $62 million for the quarter, up 63 percent from 2010. Netflix now has 23.8 million subscribers. Of those subscribers, 21.5 million are using the streaming service and 13.9 million are using the DVD service. Netflix actually lost around 800,000 subscribers from last quarter.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/8BIeRBHK7fo/

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5 Halloween Costume Ideas for Lindsay Lohan (omg!)

[unable to retrieve full-text content]omg! - 5 Halloween Costume Ideas for Lindsay Lohan

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Elaborate plumage due to testosterone?

Friday, October 21, 2011

In many bird species males have a more elaborate plumage than females. This elaborate plumage is often used to signal body condition, to intimidate rivals or to attract potential mates. In many cases plumage colouration also depends on the hormone testosterone. Christina Muck and Wolfgang Goymann from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen have now investigated whether this also holds true for sex role reversed bird species. In barred buttonquails that live in Southeast Asia, females are polygamous and pair with several males that incubate the eggs and raise the young. However, not only the behaviour, but also secondary sexual ornaments that depend on the male hormone testosterone are reversed between sexes.

Women who use typical male strategies to promote their careers are often not successful. Recent findings suggest that this strategy often leads to the opposite effect. Apparently certain behaviours are considered to be typical male, such as being offensive in business matters. Also in birds one can find clearly defined roles: The male defends a territory, courts a female and on top of has the better looks due to his elaborate plumage.

Colourful plumage and long feathers allow a male to express its quality and/or condition without further physical demonstration of its strength. With such features they may be able to avoid physical fights which are costly with respect to energy expenditure and the risk of injuries. The size and intensity of some parts of the plumage, for example the so-called black bib in house sparrows, depends on the male sex hormone testosterone; males with high testosterone levels also possess a larger and more intensely coloured bib.

There is hardly anything known regarding function and regulation of plumage colouration in female birds: females mostly have a dull plumage with almost no variation between individuals. However, in a few bird species sex roles are reversed: here, the females aggressively defend territories and court males. The latter incubate the eggs and care for the young without any help from the females. Only very few species are known to show such sex role reversal in behaviour and the evolutionary background is still unsolved.

Christina Muck and Wolfgang Goymann now found a relationship between plumage colouration, body weight and testosterone concentrations in female barred buttonquail, a bird species that lives in Southeast Asia. The researchers kept the birds in pairs for one year in large breeding boxes and regularly took blood samples to monitor the time course of testosterone levels. In addition they weighed the birds and took photographs of the black throat patch of females to determine its size and colour intensity on the computer. Males of this species are smaller than females and do not possess such a patch.

The researchers could first show that testosterone levels were similar in males and females and did not exhibit large seasonal changes. Moreover, testosterone levels were rather low which is common is species that do not show a pronounced seasonality. Nevertheless they found a strong relationship between the size and the intensity of the black throat patch and the testosterone levels in females. Moreover, in females there was a correlation between testosterone levels and female body condition. No such correlations existed in males.

"It is really remarkable", states Christina Muck, "that the sex role reversal in behaviours is accompanied by a reversed hormone dependency in the expression of secondary sexual characters". Thus, female button quails succeed when they not only adopt male behavioural strategies but also use the underlying physiological mechanisms.

###

Max-Planck-Gesellschaft: http://www.mpg.de

Thanks to Max-Planck-Gesellschaft for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/114528/Elaborate_plumage_due_to_testosterone_

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