Rob Portman (Charles Dharapak/AP) A prominent conservative senator said Thursday that he now supports gay marriage.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, told reporters from the Columbus Dispatch and other Ohio newspapers that his change of heart on the hot-button issue came two years after his son, Will, told him and his wife that he is gay.
"It allowed me to think of this issue from a new perspective, and that's of a Dad who loves his son a lot and wants him to have the same opportunities that his brother and sister would have -- to have a relationship like Jane and I have had for over 26 years," Portman said.
In an interview with CNN, Portman said his son, then a freshman at Yale University, told him "that he was gay, and that it was not a choice, and that it's just part of who he is, and that he'd been that way for as long as he could remember."
The dramatic announcement comes just a week before the U.S. Supreme Court is to hear oral arguments on the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars federal recognition of same-sex marriage, a measure Portman co-sponsored as a member of the House in 1996.
Portman was on the short list to be Mitt Romney's running mate last year. He said he informed Romney during the vetting process that he had a gay son, but that the issue was not a deal breaker for Romney.
He also told CNN that he sought guidance from former Vice President Dick Cheney, whose daughter Mary is openly gay.
Portman said Cheney's advice to him was simple: "Follow your heart."
Online Gamers used to have little choice in regards to what kind of technology they could use to access online casino games. Primarily, they had to use desktops and then later on laptops became another option. Today, there is much more variety in devices as mobile phones and tablets have come onto the scene.
When these two types of technology were compared in regards to how much they were used for gaming, the tablets came out on top. 67% of tablet?s total usage is often for gaming. This is much higher than the 39% average gaming usage for mobile phones. To determine the reasons for this difference, one only has to compare the devices themselves. While both tablets and mobile phones are generally lightweight devices that can easily be held in one?s hands, tablets are larger. With their increased size they do offer more room on the screen to display gaming. All tablets operate using touch screen technology which makes it easy to play a game at an online casino. While most mobile phones have touch screen displays, some still do not. They must rely upon physical buttons which can make it a bit awkward to game on such a small device. In the case of gaming, size really does matter. When choosing a game at an online casino such as Jackpot city, you will find that they definitely will look better on a tablet with increased performance. Coupled with this is gaming innovations courtesy of online casinos. In fact, some online casinos do provide 3-D versions of popular casino games. Among these is roulette. Using 3-D technology, the game is three dimensional and quite life like. This technology is almost wasted on a small display found on a mobile phone. The game is played like any other roulette game. The only difference is in the graphics making up the game.
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's acting president said on Wednesday that "far right" figures in the United States were plotting to kill opposition leader Henrique Capriles in an increasingly volatile atmosphere ahead of an April 14 election.
Accusations are flying and emotions are running high in the South American nation of 29 million people since the death last week of former socialist leader Hugo Chavez.
"We have detected plans by the far right, linked to the groups of (former Bush administration officials) Roger Noriega and Otto Reich, to make an attempt against the opposition presidential candidate," Nicolas Maduro said.
He gave no more details, but said in a televised speech that the government had sent a senior general to meet with aides of Capriles.
The State Department in Washington declined any immediate comment and there was no immediate response from Capriles' camp.
Noriega, a former Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America under former President George W. Bush, denied Maduro's accusation. "It's absolute nonsense," Noriega said.
"They call you what they are and they accuse you of doing what they do. That is the way they operate," Noriega said.
Reich was not immediately available to comment. Noriega left the Bush administration in 2005. Reich was his predecessor.
Maduro did not explain why right-wing foreigners would want to bring down the business-friendly Capriles.
During the Chavez era, there were frequent claims of U.S. plots aimed at discrediting his self-styled revolution. Critics said they were a smokescreen to create a sense of "imperialist" threat and distract Venezuelans from daily problems.
The upcoming vote will pit Maduro, Chavez's heir apparent, against Capriles, a centrist state governor who lost an election to Chavez in October.
Earlier this week, Capriles' team said the opposition candidate had not registered his candidacy in person on Monday because they had received information that an attack against him was planned. Aides delivered his papers instead.
In January, Maduro said unidentified groups had entered the country with the aim of assassinating him and the head of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello.
This week, Maduro also said Venezuela will set up a formal inquiry into claims that Chavez's cancer was the result of poisoning by his enemies abroad.
In another surprising statement on Wednesday, Maduro said Chavez may even be wielding influence in heaven and have pulled strings to secure the first Pope for Latin America in Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
"We know that our commander ascended to the heights and is face to face with Christ," he said at a Caracas book fair. "Something influenced the choice of a South American pope, someone new arrived at Christ's side and said to him: 'Well, it seems to us South America's time has come.'"
GAY ROW
Venezuela's acrimonious election campaign was further stirred by remarks from Maduro that were widely perceived as a homophobic slur against Capriles.
Capriles, 40, was the target of racial and sexual innuendoes by Chavez's supporters throughout last year's presidential race: one cartoon shown on state media depicted him in pink shorts with a Nazi swastika on one arm.
Chavez himself was also vilified by foes as an uncouth clown throughout his rule. The mockery included racist insults and photos of apes with his face superimposed.
Denigrating jokes and cartoons of Maduro driving a bus - his former job - are now circulating among anti-government factions.
In the flurry of back-and-forth accusations from both camps this week, Maduro appeared to revive last year's line of attack over Capriles' sexuality. Capriles is unmarried.
"I do have a wife, you know? I do like women!" Maduro told a rally. He has also called Capriles "a little princess."
The comment drew hoots of laughter from supporters, some shouting explicit insults against the opposition leader.
That infuriated backers of Capriles, whom polls show has an uphill struggle to beat Maduro. "I believe in a society where no one feels excluded due to their way of thinking, race, beliefs or sexual orientation," Capriles said in response.
Images of guns pointed at TVs showing Capriles' image are also doing the rounds, triggering a formal opposition complaint.
On Wednesday, Maduro rowed back and insisted he was always respectful of others' private lives. "If I were homosexual I would be proud about it and I would love whomever I loved with my heart, without problem," he said.
Venezuela's acting leader also said on Wednesday that plans to embalm Chavez's remains, in the style of Communist leaders Lenin, Stalin and Mao, had run into problems.
"Russian and German scientists have arrived to embalm Chavez and they tell us it's very difficult because the process should have started earlier. ... Maybe we can't do it," he said.
(Additional reporting by Ana Isabel Martinez, Mario Naranjo and Patricia Velez; Editing by Simon Gardner and Jackie Frank)
As rumors swirl that the HTC One may or may not be delayed, the company announced today that it will make a Developer Edition of the device available as well. Following up on HTC's continued commitment to its HTCdev program, the Developer Edition handset will have identical hardware to those sold by carriers and retailers, but will have both its SIM slot and bootloader completely unlocked out of the box. Regarding that SIM slot, HTC's announcement post reiterates that the radio frequencies of this device will be those most often used in the U.S.:
HSPA/WCDMA: 850/1900/2100 MHz
GSM/GPRS/EDGE: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
LTE: 700/850/AWS/1900 MHz (US)
This device is a big deal for those who want to use the HTC One for android application and software development, giving them easier access to the hardware. HTC says the Developer Edition One will be available in "limited quantities" in the U.S. as soon as the carrier models are released, and will have the expectedly high price tag of $649.
International gender difference in math and reading scores persists regardless of gender equalityPublic release date: 13-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Tim Wall walltj@missouri.edu 573-882-3346 University of Missouri-Columbia
Addressing possible biological basis for difference could be used to improve education
Malala Yousafzai, the teenaged advocate for Pakistani girls' education, was released from the hospital earlier this month. Most of the world's girls don't have to fight as hard as Yousafzai for their education. However, even in countries with high gender equality, sex differences in math and reading scores persisted in the 75 nations examined by a University of Missouri and University of Leeds study. Girls consistently scored higher in reading, while boys got higher scores in math, but these gaps are linked and vary with overall social and economic conditions of the nation. A better understanding of these gaps and how they are related could help educators design curricula to help students of both genders apply their talents and deal with their weaknesses.
"Educational systems could be improved by acknowledging that, in general, boys and girls are different," said David Geary, MU professor of psychological science. "For example, in trying to close the sex gap in math scores, the reading gap was left behind. Now, our study has found that the difference between girls' and boys' reading scores was three times larger than the sex difference in math scores. Girls' higher scores in reading could lead to advantages in admissions to certain university programs, such as marketing, journalism or literature, and subsequently careers in those fields. Boys lower reading scores could correlate to problems in any career, since reading is essential in most jobs."
Generally, when conditions are good, the math gap increases and the reading gap decreases and when conditions are bad the math gap decreases and the reading gap increases. This pattern remained consistent within nations as well as among them, according to the study by Geary and Gijsbert Stoet of the University of Leeds that included testing performance data from 1.5 million 15-year-olds in 75 nations. The top five percent of scores within nations generally showed girls to be lower in math and boys to be lower in reading. That pattern continued in lower scoring groups until reaching the lowest scoring students, where the math achievement of boys and girls evened out but the reading gap increased, according to Geary.
"The consistent pattern within nations suggests the sex differences are not simply related to socio-economic factors," said Geary. Socio-economic and cultural factors are important in that they influence the performance of all students, but boys, as a group, respond more strongly than girls, perhaps due to a biological difference in sensitivity to wider conditions." For example, in nations with impoverished or violent conditions, boys' scores tended to fall faster and further than girls. On the other hand, in wealthier, socially stable nations boys' scores benefitted more than girls. This resulted in boys reducing the reading gap and widening the math gap.
"This finding has important implications for how we interpret the math gap of other countries," said co-author Gijsbert Stoet of the University of Leeds. "For example, policy makers often take Sweden as an example of being particularly good for reducing the gender gap in science, technology, engineering and math, but they do not realize that Swedish boys fall behind in reading more so than in most other highly developed nations. This is a good example of the inverse relation between the math and reading gaps. This phenomenon urgently needs more attention."
"In adult life, there are more male CEOs, but also more homeless men," said Geary. "Boys' prospects in life seem to react more intensely to positive and negative social conditions, hence we see more variation in boys' testing scores, especially when conditions are bad."
###
The study "Sex differences in mathematics and reading are inversely related: within and across nation assessment of 10 years of PISA data," was published in the journal PLOS ONE and can be viewed here: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0057988. David Geary is Curators' Professor and a Thomas Jefferson Fellow in the Department of Psychological Sciences in the College of Arts and Science.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
International gender difference in math and reading scores persists regardless of gender equalityPublic release date: 13-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Tim Wall walltj@missouri.edu 573-882-3346 University of Missouri-Columbia
Addressing possible biological basis for difference could be used to improve education
Malala Yousafzai, the teenaged advocate for Pakistani girls' education, was released from the hospital earlier this month. Most of the world's girls don't have to fight as hard as Yousafzai for their education. However, even in countries with high gender equality, sex differences in math and reading scores persisted in the 75 nations examined by a University of Missouri and University of Leeds study. Girls consistently scored higher in reading, while boys got higher scores in math, but these gaps are linked and vary with overall social and economic conditions of the nation. A better understanding of these gaps and how they are related could help educators design curricula to help students of both genders apply their talents and deal with their weaknesses.
"Educational systems could be improved by acknowledging that, in general, boys and girls are different," said David Geary, MU professor of psychological science. "For example, in trying to close the sex gap in math scores, the reading gap was left behind. Now, our study has found that the difference between girls' and boys' reading scores was three times larger than the sex difference in math scores. Girls' higher scores in reading could lead to advantages in admissions to certain university programs, such as marketing, journalism or literature, and subsequently careers in those fields. Boys lower reading scores could correlate to problems in any career, since reading is essential in most jobs."
Generally, when conditions are good, the math gap increases and the reading gap decreases and when conditions are bad the math gap decreases and the reading gap increases. This pattern remained consistent within nations as well as among them, according to the study by Geary and Gijsbert Stoet of the University of Leeds that included testing performance data from 1.5 million 15-year-olds in 75 nations. The top five percent of scores within nations generally showed girls to be lower in math and boys to be lower in reading. That pattern continued in lower scoring groups until reaching the lowest scoring students, where the math achievement of boys and girls evened out but the reading gap increased, according to Geary.
"The consistent pattern within nations suggests the sex differences are not simply related to socio-economic factors," said Geary. Socio-economic and cultural factors are important in that they influence the performance of all students, but boys, as a group, respond more strongly than girls, perhaps due to a biological difference in sensitivity to wider conditions." For example, in nations with impoverished or violent conditions, boys' scores tended to fall faster and further than girls. On the other hand, in wealthier, socially stable nations boys' scores benefitted more than girls. This resulted in boys reducing the reading gap and widening the math gap.
"This finding has important implications for how we interpret the math gap of other countries," said co-author Gijsbert Stoet of the University of Leeds. "For example, policy makers often take Sweden as an example of being particularly good for reducing the gender gap in science, technology, engineering and math, but they do not realize that Swedish boys fall behind in reading more so than in most other highly developed nations. This is a good example of the inverse relation between the math and reading gaps. This phenomenon urgently needs more attention."
"In adult life, there are more male CEOs, but also more homeless men," said Geary. "Boys' prospects in life seem to react more intensely to positive and negative social conditions, hence we see more variation in boys' testing scores, especially when conditions are bad."
###
The study "Sex differences in mathematics and reading are inversely related: within and across nation assessment of 10 years of PISA data," was published in the journal PLOS ONE and can be viewed here: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0057988. David Geary is Curators' Professor and a Thomas Jefferson Fellow in the Department of Psychological Sciences in the College of Arts and Science.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Some sports venues ? think indoor basketball courts/ice hockey rinks ? use their space to support multiple sports. LEDSSPORT's Pulastic LED Court and ASB's GlassFloor both use LEDs to redraw line marking to suit different sports, but the new 4D Sportsground being developed in The Netherlands takes the concept to the next level, delivering a sports field that seamlessly rotates between three separate surfaces. Its designers hope to develop a field that spends 24 hours a day in use.
The 4D Sportsground uses a series of panels to form full surfaces. The prismatic machinery operating below ground level rotates the panels to form three distinct surfaces. One set of panels creates a soccer field out of artificial turf; one creates a multi-sport plastic court; and one is designated for non-sport revenue usage, such as billboard advertising or solar panels.
With the system in place, one park field can host multiple sets of sports and harvest energy or earn advertising income during its down time. Instead of a cold, abandoned field in winter, you have a revenue-earning solar field. The parties believe it can help sports clubs to be self-sustaining, earning the income needed to pay for expenses.
The 4D Sportsground was conceived last year by Dutch outfits Sublean and InnosportNL and is being constructed with the help of several other partners, including ProFit, a European Union-funded organization that supports sports innovation. It is being built at ProFit's field-lab in Eindhoven, Netherlands.
ProFit operates several urban field-labs, parks where its partners test new sports equipment and activities for public analysis and feedback. Sportsground designers will collect feedback about the users' experiences and use it in pursuing a possible commercial version of the rotating sports field. The Eindhoven test field will open within the next few months.
The 4D Sportsground utilizes what Sublean calls Cablean Technology, which it describes as the "world's first durable three-dimensional surface technology." Sports fields are just one of many applications of the technology, and the company is most interested in using Cablean panel systems to get more use out of infrastructure, including buildings, homes, fences, billboards and more.
For instance, it imagines equipping buildings with rotating walls so that the buildings themselves become multi-functional ? harvesting energy with solar panels and showcasing advertising or artistic lighting, for instance. It completed the concept in 2009, achieved its first industrial application last year and has plans to outfit Amsterdam Arena with a 4D facade this year.
The video below shows a little more about what ProFit calls the "first 4D sports ground in the world."
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Public release date: 13-Mar-2013
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