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Saturday, May 4, 2013

Pletcher chasing Lukas' standard at Ky Derby

Trainer Todd Pletcher watches horses during a morning workout at Churchill Downs Thursday, May 2, 2013, in Louisville, Ky. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Jockey Rudy Quevedo rides Kentucky Derby entrant Oxbow for a workout at Churchill Downs Thursday, May 2, 2013, in Louisville, Ky. Saturday will be the 139th running of the Kentucky Derby. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

Trainer Todd Pletcher watches some morning workouts at Churchill Downs Tuesday, April 30, 2013, in Louisville, Ky. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Trainer D. Wayne Lukas walks with Kentucky Derby entrant Oxbow and jockey Gary Stevens after a workout at Churchill Downs Monday, April 29, 2013, in Louisville, Ky. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Kentucky Derby entrant Orb gets a bath after a morning workout at Churchill Downs Thursday, May 2, 2013, in Louisville, Ky. Saturday will be the 139th running of the Kentucky Derby. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) ? It's easy to figure out where Todd Pletcher got the idea to enter five horses in this year's Kentucky Derby. He used to work for D. Wayne Lukas.

For the longest time, Lukas was the biggest star in the sport, the guy in the white hat with an army of thoroughbreds stashed coast-to-coast, winning every big race in sight.

In 1996, Lukas won his third Derby with Grindstone, a horse he considered the weakest of his five entries. It took him decades to admit as much, but he can do that now. At 77, Lukas has 13 Triple Crown wins, including four at the Derby, and is the sport's elder statesman. He's already in the Hall of Fame.

Pletcher tried overwhelming the Derby the same way. He daringly took aim with four horses his first time, in 2000, and then tried a record-tying five in 2007. It wasn't until he saddled four in 2010 that long shot Super Saver delivered his first whiff of red roses in the winner's circle.

Lukas had long ago advised him, "You can win all these stakes, but you got to get this one on your resume."

Other than another Derby win or two ? he's been to a dozen with only the one win ? Pletcher's resume couldn't get much better. He's won Breeders' Cup races, led the nation in money winnings, and commands the best and biggest racing operation in the country.

Indeed, he learned well from the master.

These days, though, they're a marked contrast of each other ? one is loose and takes all questions; the other is a little uptight.

With a fancy cowboy boot propped on a white sawhorse, Lukas holds court until the last visitor is satisfied.

"Can you believe we get paid for this?" he marvels.

Pletcher can barely stand being quizzed. He's as buttoned-down as Lukas is casual.

The 45-year-old son of a trainer, Pletcher comes to work in a perfectly pressed white shirt tucked into belted jeans, and his gray hair is cut short. Neatness is something he learned from Lukas' spit-shined example during seven years as an apprentice.

Not surprising, Lukas and Pletcher hold down the top two spots among trainers for the most Derby starters. Lukas is extending his record with Nos. 46 and 47 this year; while Pletcher's current five give him 36.

"Now," Lukas said, showing some of the candor that comes with well-worn success, "35 of those I didn't want to run."

Pletcher might have had seven horses in the starting gate at Churchill Downs if not for health issues with Breeders' Cup Juvenile winner Shanghai Bobby and Violence. "He knows what to do," Lukas said. "It's such a difficult race to win."

Lukas' legacy was cemented long ago. If he adds a fifth Derby on Saturday, he could become the oldest winning trainer in race history. He's throwing two long shots into the 20-horse mix: Oxbow and Will Take Charge.

Of Pletcher's five horses, undefeated Verrazano is the early 4-1 second choice. Revolutionary, Overanalyze, Palace Malice and Charming Kitten are listed at double-digit odds.

Lukas, a former Wisconsin high school basketball coach, clearly knows he's closer to the end of an enviable run. "I'm only going to do this until I'm 95," he said with a laugh.

Pletcher, meanwhile, still has to be coaxed out of the small office near his horses' stalls that offers a clear sightline to Lukas' perch. With a TV camera in his face, Pletcher is pleasant but bland, parting with innocuous nuggets about each of his horses.

Example: "He trained exceptionally well."

He's equally middle-of-the-road when pressed on who he would like to see win if it can't be him: "I root for everybody."

On a couple of points, though, Lukas and Pletcher are alike.

Regarding the competition, Lukas likes to quote Charlie Whittingham, the oldest Derby-winning trainer: "Never say anything bad about a horse until he's been dead 10 years."

Pletcher likes to control every last detail around his neat-as-a-pin barn, another habit he picked up from Lukas. The gravel is always carefully raked and blooming flowers spill out of hanging baskets.

Lukas' stable area is still the housekeeping standard, topped off by two huge sprays of red roses.

Pletcher lives in a perpetual state of unease about his horses' welfare, whether it's before the Derby or a low-priced claiming race at a smaller track.

"That's part of life as a trainer," he said. "I put the same amount of pressure every year on myself."

Pletcher is answering to five different owners at the Derby. They range from 85-year-old Cot Campbell, a refined son of the South, to 44-year-old Mike Repole, a brash entrepreneur from Queens, to Kentucky native Ken Ramsay who comes down with a yearly case of Derby fever.

"It's gone pretty well so far," Pletcher said. "We'll see after Saturday."

Repole respects Pletcher for running his stable like a corporate CEO.

"There's a lot of great NBA players, but there's only one LeBron James. Todd is the best at what he does," Repole said. "He's pretty honest with everybody. Everyone respects how hard he works."

Of the trainer's five jockeys in the race, four are Hall of Famers with six Derby wins among them.

"I'm not a guy that handcuffs a guy with a lot of instructions," Pletcher said. "I tell them a few key points and they have to make decisions out there."

Lukas plays it even looser with his riders.

"I always tell them at the end, 'Hell, just do what you want,'" he said, laughing.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-05-02-RAC-Kentucky-Derby/id-b2f9c5a529304e5faac90c138f1e4e7a

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Friday, May 3, 2013

Motion Control Is Awesome for Surgeons (Or Anyone with Bloody Hands)

High fidelity motion control is awesome, but for most of us it's not quite essential. For surgeons and murders(?) though, a motion-controlled interface like this one could be super useful.

Making use of the awesome Leap Motion, Scopis Medical has developed the first hands-off surgical navigation system for use in the operating rooms of the future. The system has a standard mouse-emulation mode for point and clicking, as well as a 3D gesture system for manipulating images like CT scans and MRIs.

If there's anywhere where a full-on Minority Report interface makes sense, it's in instances like this where the user really really shouldn't be touching anything with their filthy-but-life-saving hands. Not having to touch anything with your cheetos-eating hands will be a close second though. [Scopis]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/motion-control-is-awesome-for-surgeons-or-anyone-with-489229962

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North Korea sentences American to 15 years' labor

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) ? A Korean American detained for six months in North Korea has been sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for "hostile acts" against the state, the North's media said Thursday ? a move that could trigger a visit by a high-profile American if history is any guide.

Kenneth Bae, a Washington state man described by friends as a devout Christian and a tour operator, is at least the sixth American detained in North Korea since 2009. The others eventually were deported or released without serving out their terms, some after trips to Pyongyang by prominent Americans, including former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

With already abysmal U.S.-North Korean ties worsening since a long-range rocket-launch more than a year ago, Pyongyang is fishing for another such meeting, said Ahn Chan-il, head of the World Institute for North Korea Studies think tank in South Korea.

"North Korea is using Bae as bait to make such a visit happen. An American bigwig visiting Pyongyang would also burnish Kim Jong Un's leadership profile," Ahn said. Kim took power after his father, Kim Jong Il, died in December 2011.

The authoritarian country has faced increasing criticism over its nuclear weapons ambitions. Disarmament talks including the Koreas, the United States, Japan, China and Russia fell apart in 2009. Several rounds of U.N. sanctions have not encouraged the North to give up its small cache of nuclear devices, which Pyongyang says it must not only keep but expand to protect itself from a hostile Washington.

Pyongyang's tone has softened somewhat recently, following weeks of violent rhetoric, including threats of nuclear war and missile strikes. There have been tentative signs of interest in diplomacy, and a major source of North Korean outrage ? annual U.S.-South Korean military drills ? ended Tuesday.

In Washington, the U.S. State Department said it was working with the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang to confirm the report of Bae's sentencing. The United States lacks formal diplomatic ties with North Korea and relies on Sweden for diplomatic matters involving U.S. citizens there.

Bae's trial on charges of "committing hostile acts" against North Korea took place in the Supreme Court on Tuesday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported. KCNA referred to Bae as Pae Jun Ho, the North Korean spelling for his Korean name.

Bae was arrested in early November in Rason, a special economic zone in North Korea's far northeastern region bordering China and Russia, state media said. The exact nature of Bae's alleged crimes has not been revealed.

Friends and colleagues say Bae was based in the Chinese border city of Dalian and traveled frequently to North Korea to feed orphans. Bae's mother in the United States did not answer calls seeking comment Thursday.

There are parallels to a case in 2009. After Pyongyang's launch of a long-range rocket and its second underground nuclear test that year, two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor after sneaking across the border from China.

They later were pardoned on humanitarian grounds and released to Clinton, who met with then-leader Kim Jong Il. U.S.-North Korea talks came later that year.

In 2011, Carter visited North Korea to win the release of imprisoned American Aijalon Gomes, who had been sentenced to eight years of hard labor for crossing illegally into the North from China.

Korean American Eddie Jun was released in 2011 after Robert King, the U.S. envoy on North Korean human rights, travelled to Pyongyang. Jun had been detained for half a year over an unspecified crime.

Jun and Gomes are also devout Christians. While North Korea's constitution guarantees freedom of religion, in practice only sanctioned services are tolerated by the government.

U.N. and U.S. officials accuse North Korea of treating opponents brutally. Foreign nationals have told varying stories about their detentions in North Korea.

The two journalists sentenced to hard labor in 2009 stayed in a guest house instead of a labor camp due to medical concerns.

Ali Lameda, a member of Venezuela's Communist Party and a poet invited to the North in 1966 to work as a Spanish translator, said that he was detained in a damp, filthy cell without trial the following year after facing espionage allegations that he denied. He later spent six years in prison after a one-day trial, he said.

___

AP writer Lou Kesten contributed to this report from Washington.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/north-korea-sentences-american-15-years-labor-035931247.html

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Plant gases help curb global warming, finds study

Plants respond to warming temperatures by emitting vapors that help reflect sunlight, a team of scientists have discovered.

By Eoin O'Carroll,?Staff / April 29, 2013

An aerial view of Tongass National Forest near Ketchikan, Alaska. Tongass is the largest national forest in the United States.

Melanie Stetson Freeman / The Christian Science Monitor / File

Enlarge

It's well known that plants can help mitigate global warming, by absorbing carbon dioxide and trapping it, via photosynthesis, in things like leaves, stalks, and branches.

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But it turns out that plants help cool the planet in another way, by releasing tiny particles into the atmosphere that help reflect sunlight back into space.?

Yes, it's true: Plants pass gas. A new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience found that vapors emitted by plants scatter and absorb radiation from the sun, and that they help form cloud droplets that also reflect the sun's rays.?

"Everyone knows the scent of the forest," said study co-author Ari Asmi, in a press release from the University of Helsinki. "That scent is made up of these gases." ?

The scientists measured concentrations plant vapors and other aerosols at 11 different sites around the globe ? seven in Europe, two in North America, and the others in Siberia and South Africa ? and recorded the temperature. They found that, as temperatures increased, the plants emitted more vapors, effectively responding to the warming by increasing the cooling effect.

So does that mean we are good then? Do the global cooling emissions from plants offset the global warming emissions coming from a Chevy Camaro's tailpipe?

Not quite. The scientists found that the effect of the increased plant emissions counters only about 1 percent of global warming. ?This does not save us from climate warming,? said study co-author?Pauli Paasonen, in the press release.?

But the plant gasses still might cool things for you locally, especially if you live in a rural, forested area. The study found that, in places where there is little man-made soot in the air, the effect could counteract up to 30 percent of warming.

And this discovery has the potential to improve our understanding of how and why our climate is changing. Aerosols, that is, tiny solid or liquid particles that hang in the air, are one of the least understood aspects of our atmosphere. ?"Understanding this mechanism could help us reduce those uncertainties and make the models better,? said Paasonen.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/WVWtj27aNl0/Plant-gases-help-curb-global-warming-finds-study

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Benedict XVI returns to Vatican for first time

VATICAN CITY (AP) ? Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI came home to the Vatican on Thursday for the first time since he resigned Feb. 28, beginning an unprecedented era for the Catholic Church of having a retired pontiff living alongside a reigning one.

Pope Francis welcomed Benedict outside his new retirement home ? a converted monastery on the edge of the Vatican gardens ? and the two immediately went into the adjoining chapel to pray together, the Vatican said.

The Vatican said Benedict, 86, was pleased to be back and that he would ? as he himself has said ? "dedicate himself to the service of the church above all with prayer." Francis, the statement said, welcomed him with "brotherly cordiality."

A photo released by the Vatican showed the two men, arms clasped and both smiling, standing inside the doorway of Benedict's new home as Benedict's secretary looks on.

Unlike the live, door-to-door Vatican-provided television coverage that accompanied Benedict's emotional farewell in February, the Vatican provided no television images of his return Thursday.

The low-key approach followed the remarkable yet somewhat alarming images transmitted on March 23 when Francis went to visit Benedict at the papal retreat in Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome, where Benedict was living. In that footage, Benedict appeared visibly more frail and thinner only three weeks after resigning.

Some Vatican officials questioned whether those images should have been released, given how frail Benedict appeared. Thursday's photo showed no obvious signs of further decline.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, has acknowledged Benedict's post-retirement decline but has insisted the 86-year-old German isn't suffering from any specific ailment and is just old.

"He is a man who is not young: He is old and his strength is slowly ebbing," Lombardi said this week. "However, there is no special illness. He is an old man who is healthy."

Benedict chose to leave the Vatican immediately after his resignation to physically remove himself from the process of electing his successor and from Pope Francis' first weeks as pontiff.

His absence also gave workers time to finish up renovations on the monastery tucked behind St. Peter's Basilica that until last year housed groups of cloistered nuns who were invited for a few years at a time to live inside the Vatican to pray.

In the compact, four-story building, Benedict will live with his personal secretary, Monsignor Georg Gaenswein, and the four consecrated women who look after him, preparing his meals and tending to the household. The building also has a small library, a study and a guest room for when his brother, Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, comes to visit.

"It is certainly small but well-equipped," Lombardi said.

When Benedict announced his intention to resign ? the first pontiff to do so in 600 years ? questions immediately swirled about the implications of having two popes living alongside one another inside the Vatican.

Benedict fueled those concerns when he chose to be called "emeritus pope" and "Your Holiness" rather than "emeritus bishop of Rome." He also raised eyebrows when he chose to continue wearing the white cassock of the papacy.

Given the political intrigues that plague the Vatican, it wasn't much of a stretch of the imagination to wonder if some cardinals, bishops and monsignors ? not to mention ordinary Catholics ? might continue making Benedict their point of reference rather than the new pope.

But Benedict made clear on his final day as pope that he was renouncing the job and pledged his "unconditional reverence and obedience" to his then-unknown successor. It was a pledge he repeated in person on March 23 when Francis went to have lunch with him.

It was during that visit that the world saw how weak Benedict had become: Always a man with a purposeful walk, he shuffled tentatively that day, using his cane.

Francis, for his part, seems utterly unfazed by the novel situation. He has frequently invoked Benedict's name and work and has called him on a half-dozen occasions, making clear he has no intention of ignoring the fact that there's another pope still very much alive and now living on the other side of the garden.

Francis' gestures to Benedict during that March 23 visit were also remarkable: He refused to pray on the special papal kneeler in the small chapel of Castel Gandolfo, preferring to join Benedict on a kneeler in the pews, and referring to his predecessor as his "brother."

Now that they're neighbors, they might bump into one another on walks in the Vatican gardens or at the shrine to the Madonna, which is just a stone's throw from Benedict's new home.

___

Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/benedict-xvi-returns-vatican-first-time-153403111.html

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Dropbox 2.2 for iOS simplifies photo viewing, supports Dropbox for Business

Android-based Dropbox users got a crack at an even more photo-centric interface back in January; it's now the iOS crowd's turn to play. Dropbox 2.2 for their platform makes it easier for them to see their photos, organize them into albums and share them with others. The corporate set will also want the update now that it permits the single sign-ons that make Dropbox for Business tick. Version 2.2 isn't the most dramatic update we've seen, but it should go some distance toward pleasing both shutterbugs and the suits.

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