Get ready to break out the pink! After keeping mum for months, Kim Kardashian finally revealed during Sunday night's premiere episode of "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" that she and Kanye West are expecting a baby girl!
"I'm so excited we're having a girl," the pregnant star, who is due in July, said. "Who doesn't want a girl? They're the best and I know that's really what Kanye has always wanted. He wanted a little girl."
NEWS: Get the deets on Kim's baby shower!
While in the doctor's office, Kim -- along with mom Kris Jenner and sistersKourtney Kardashian and Khlo? Kardashian Odom -- eagerly waited to find out what they were going to see on the monitor. (Watch video at E! Online.)
"Do you see a little peepee," Kris asked the doctor.
"I don't see any peepees," he responded.
"It definitely would take after his father so you would see it," Kim made sure to mention (hey now!).
Alas, the doctor finally announced it's a girl, which cued excited squeals and awws from the fam and a beaming smile from Kim.
Aw, congratulations!
PHOTOS: Check out Kim Kardashian's best pregnancy pictures!
LONDON (AP) ? Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie stepped out together Sunday at the premiere of zombie thriller "World War Z" ? Jolie's first public appearance since announcing last month that she had undergone a double mastectomy.
The couple walked a black, rather than red, carpet at the world premiere Sunday of the big-budget film, which stars Pitt as a United Nations employee battling to save the world from a zombie apocalypse.
The pair wore complementary black outfits as they signed autographs for fans in Leicester Square.
Jolie told reporters she felt great, and had "been very happy to see the discussion of women's health expanded" by her announcement.
Jolie revealed last month in an op-ed piece for The New York Times that she had had her breasts removed after discovering she has an inherited genetic mutation that puts her at high risk of breast and ovarian cancer.
Jolie's mother Marcheline Bertrand died from ovarian cancer at 56, and the actress' aunt died of breast cancer last month.
The 37-year-old actress revealed that, beginning in February, she underwent three surgeries ? which she succeeded in keeping secret from the public ? in which her breasts were removed, and later replaced by implants. She said the procedure had reduced her chance of developing breast cancer from 87 percent to under 5 percent.
Pitt said Jolie's mastectomy and subsequent revelation had been "a very moving experience" for the couple, who have six children.
"What it means to others has really surprised me," he told the BBC. "The beautiful thing is that for us, life will go on. ... It certainly brought our family tighter together."
Rock band Muse is performing an outdoor concert Sunday for the premiere of the shot-in-Britain film which producers hope will be a summer blockbuster.
A hormone that promotes social attraction also helps men keep their distance
By Michele Solis
Image: GETTY IMAGES
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
Read More??
Oxytocin, the so-called love hormone, activates feelings of trust and attraction between people when it is released in the brain, and it rises in the early stages of romantic love. Yet it is not just a Cupid's arrow that spurs you to fall in love with the nearest person, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Neuroscience. Instead oxytocin's social magic depends on whether or not a person is in a monogamous relationship.
A team of researchers from the University of Bonn in Germany and elsewhere monitored a first encounter between straight male study participants and an attractive woman in a laboratory setting. When given oxytocin via an intranasal spray before the meeting, men who had indicated they were currently in a stable relationship kept a greater physical distance from the woman in the lab compared with single guys given oxytocin and with single and ?taken? guys given a placebo. Although they stayed only 10 to 15 centimeters farther away, the extra distance left the woman outside of what most people consider ?personal space,? a zone reserved for loved ones. Moreover, it was not because they did not find her attractive: the monogamous men who received oxytocin rated the woman just as good-looking as the other men did.
The results suggest that oxytocin has a role in maintaining relationships after they are sparked and add to growing evidence for differences in how the hormone acts to modulate social interactions?for example, promoting bonds with familiar people but provoking aggression with strangers. ?It's not all positive with oxytocin,? says Dirk Scheele, a psychologist involved with the study. ?And what you call prosocial or antisocial depends on your perspective.?
This article was originally published with the title Love That Knows Bounds.
The BBC says Matt Smith is stepping down from the lead role in long-running sci-fi series "Doctor Who," spurring intense speculation about his replacement.
The broadcaster said Sunday that Smith will leave after a November episode to mark the show's 50th anniversary, and a Christmas special.
The titular Doctor is a time-traveling extra-terrestrial Time Lord who can regenerate into new bodies. Smith is the 11th actor to play the character since the series began in 1963.
Smith, who took over the role from David Tennant in 2010, said playing the Doctor had been "the most brilliant experience for me as an actor and a bloke."
"Doctor Who" is one of the BBC's most popular programs, and Smith's tenure has seen the show gain new fans in the United States, where it is shown on BBC America.
The BBC did not announce Smith's replacement, but fans took to the Internet to speculate about casting fo the 12th Doctor.
Bookmaker William Hill made "Being Human" star Russell Tovey and "Harry Potter" alumnus Rupert Grint 10-1 favorites, followed by stage star Rory Kinnear and "Homeland" actor David Harewood.
William Hill also offered 8-1 odds on the next Doctor being female.
Carlton Smith?s office is on the edge of downtown Jacksonville, under the shadow of the Matthews Bridge, adjacent to Gator Bowl Boulevard.
No, the former St. Augustine quarterback does not work at EverBank Field. But watching as his father?s firm provided landscaping for the home of the Jaguars, and elsewhere, was an inspiration for him to enter into the business world.
These days Smith is the vice president of Heavy Equipment Resources of Florida, a firm that exports machinery and other materials to mining industry in Africa.
His success in that field led to the company receiving the President?s ?E? Award in mid-May from the U.S. Department of Commerce.
For 52 years the award has recognized people and businesses that have contributed to increasing American exports. Heavy Equipment Resources of Florida (HERO) was one of 37 companies in the country to win a 2013 ?E? Award for Exports ? and just one of two based in Florida.
On May 20, HERO received a letter from Gov. Rick Scott congratulating the company for its professional excellence by winning the President?s ?E? Award.
?For us, the President?s ?E? Award for Exports, that?s the biggest honor that you can get for an export company,? Smith said. ?With a three-person show like we have here, that started in 2008, it?s huge for us. Then to get the recognition from the governor, it gives us a lot of pride. Dealing with the customers that we deal with, we?re able to show them the recognition that we got not only from our country and our state; it really gives us leverage when doing business with those guys. It shows we have the utmost professionalism.?
Even when Smith was the signal caller for coach Joey Wiles and helping the Yellow Jackets to an 11-1 season and a trip to the 2004 state semifinals he always wanted to get into business. To him, football was fun, but a means to an end.
The only starting quarterback who has ever beaten Tim Tebow three times does not bring a so-called football mentality to his current leadership role; however, the lessons he learned as the Yellow Jackets quarterback for two seasons are applicable.
?It?s hard work, it?s persistence, it?s being able to see, and act out, on a vision that a lot of people cannot necessarily see,? Smith said. ?It?s dealing with adversity. There are a lot of life lessons with football, and especially from coach Wiles.?
Smith said Wiles is one of the three most influential men in his life. He said Wiles? lessons were things ?you can?t put a finger on unless you are there and you have a record button.?
Another mentor is his father, Leslie, who was with him in Washington earlier in May to receive the award from Deputy Commerce Secretary Rebecca Blank and Acting Deputy Under Secretary for International Trade at the?U.S. Department?of?Commerce Kenneth Hyatt.
It was a conversation with dad that led to HERO?s founding in 2008.
The family was brainstorming and the elder Smith said ?Let?s see if we need to do something different? Carlton recalls.
?We were reading in one of the local papers there was an Export 101 class. It was something interesting. They put together (officials) from Enterprise Florida, the Chamber of Commerce and JAXPORT to put on this event. It was a six-week course and we got involved in it.?
At the time, the Smiths had no clue what they would export. Eventually, it came to them. They would export heavy equipment.
Through networking, working with the Jacksonville office of the U.S. Commercial Service, and pounding the pavement, HERO steadily grew over the years. Their primary consumers are in Africa for a few reasons: many of the countries they export to have English as an official language, there is less competition from European interests and the continent, in many ways, is an untapped market.
Smith?s love for travel and people skills may be the perfect combination for an exporter.
?He believed that he could do this,? said Jorge Arce, Director of the Jacksonville office of the U.S. Commercial Service, who worked with the Smiths back in 2008.
?I mentioned to him the biggest difficulty with most Americans was understanding another country?s ways of doing business. ... The biggest issue, and he understood this clearly, was developing relationships. People are not going to trust you with a dollar if you come from another country, let alone another continent.?
Arce added companies that are exporting to countries, and regions that are not economically tied to the U.S. are doing well.
He specifically cited Latin America, Africa, India and Southeast Asia as areas where exporters have been successful because those lands were not as impacted by the Great Recession that ravaged American and European markets.
In the coming years HERO may delve into the South American market ? as well as housing their products in an onsite warehouse and expanding its employee pool ? but that is well off on the horizon.
For now, it?s all about the incremental growth that has been a staple of this five-year-old company.
?I knew that it could happen, but it took a long time to get the right customers,? Smith said. ?There was a lot of beating down doors, getting lucky and figuring out where we needed to be in the market. ?Once we got into the market, then we were able to get steady business. It wasn?t like that the first few years.?
In some ways, being an exporter is akin to being quarterback because others must be able to trust you and there is sweat equity involved in developing those relationships.
?These companies truly represent the spirit of American business and entrepreneurship ? bringing some of the best and most innovative products and services to the global marketplace with the sought after ?Made in the USA? label,? said Acting Commerce Secretary Rebecca Blank in a press release. ?Furthermore, the success of these exporters reflects historic progress in U.S. export growth. In 2012, U.S. exports hit an all-time high of $2.2 trillion, with record levels of sales to more than 70 trading partners, including major emerging markets and 11 free trade agreement (FTA) partners.??
The relationships Smith has fostered are apparent when one steps into his office on Duval Street. There is a large map of the world behind his desk. Pictures from his business travels line one wall, and there is a cricket bat as well as other memorabilia from South Africa.
Sarah L. Christie of Bay View was honored for Excellence in Youth Music Instruction.? She is Community Partnership Manager and Development Associate at the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra. Christie joined the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra in 2007 as Scholarship Coordinator. She manages MYSO?s Progressions program, an intensive string-training program that provides lessons and orchestral training to elementary school minority students who reside in Milwaukee. She is also involved with MYSO?s other urban music initiatives. In addition to her work at MYSO, Christie maintains a small studio of violin/viola students who are graduates of the Progressions program, and performs viola with the Festival City Symphony. Christie earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in music and business from UWM.
Copyright 2013 by Bay View Compass. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Contact: Catherine Meyers cmeyers@aip.org 301-209-3088 American Institute of Physics
All chefs know that "you have to break some eggs to make an omelet," and that includes engineers at Iowa State University who are using high-frequency sound waves to break down plant materials in order to cook up a better batch of biofuel. Research by David Grewell, associate professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering, and his colleagues Melissa Montalbo-Lomboy and Priyanka Chand, has shown that "pretreating" a wide variety of feedstocks (including switch grass, corn stover, and soft wood) with ultrasound consistently enhances the chemical reactions necessary to convert the biomass into high-value fuels and chemicals.
The team will present its findings at the 21st International Congress on Acoustics (ICA 2013), held June 2-7 in Montreal.
In one example of ultrasound's positive impact on biofuel production, the Iowa State researchers found that they could significantly increase the efficiency of removing lignin from biomass in solution. Lignin is the chemical compound that binds cellulose and hemicellulose together in plant cell walls. Commonly, enzymes or chemicals are used to remove it from biomass and allow the freed sugars to be dissolved for further processing into biofuel. Grewell and his colleagues found that pretreating instead with ultrasound makes lignin removal so efficient that sugar dissolution occurs in minutes rather than the hours needed with traditional mixing systems.
Grewell's team also found that hydrolysis of corn starch could be greatly accelerated using ultrasonics. In a conventional ethanol plant, ground corn is steamed with jet cookers at boiling point temperatures. This breaks down the corn, leaving a starch mash that is then cooled and treated with enzymes in a process known as hydrolysis to release glucose for fermentation. The Iowa State team replaced the initial steaming with ultrasound, sonically smashing the corn into tiny particles in the same way physicians use ultrasound to shatter kidney stones. The smaller corn fragments provided more surface area for enzymatic action, and therefore, resulted in fermentation yields comparable to jet cooking.
The potential cost savings for this method, says Grewell, are very encouraging. "Economic models," he explains, "have shown that once implemented, this technology could have a payback period of less than one year."
Grewell and his colleagues report a third application for ultrasound in biofuel production, showing that they can accelerate transesterification, the main chemical reaction for converting oil to biodiesel. In one case, the researchers found that subjecting soybean oil to ultrasound transformed it into biodiesel in less than a minute, rather than the 45 minutes it normally takes. Similarly, Grewell's team found that yeast populated with sugar and starved with glycerin, a co-product of biodiesel production, could prodfuce high yields of oil that could be extracted and simultaneously converted to biodiesel with ultrasonics in less than a minute. This is a dramatically faster and less complicated method than traditional techniques requiring multiple steps and relatively long cycle times.
###
Presentation 5aPA3, "Enhancing biofuel production by ultrasonics," is in the morning session on Friday, June 7. Abstract: http://asa.aip.org/web2/asa/abstracts/search.jun13/asa1501.html
MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE ICA 2013 MONTREAL
USEFUL LINKS:
Main meeting website: http://www.ica2013montreal.org/
Itinerary planner and technical program: http://acousticalsociety.org/meetings/ica-2013/
WORLD WIDE PRESS ROOM
ASA's World Wide Press Room will be updated with additional tips on dozens of newsworthy stories and with lay-language papers, which are 300-1200 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience and accompanied by photos, audio, and video.
PRESS REGISTRATION
We will grant free registration to credentialed journalists and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend, contact Jason Bardi (jbardi@aip.org, 240-535-4954), who can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.
This news release was prepared for the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) by the American Institute of Physics (AIP).
ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world's leading journal on acoustics), Acoustics Today magazine, ECHOES newsletter, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. For more information about ASA, visit our website at http://www.acousticalsociety.org.
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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.
Contact: Catherine Meyers cmeyers@aip.org 301-209-3088 American Institute of Physics
All chefs know that "you have to break some eggs to make an omelet," and that includes engineers at Iowa State University who are using high-frequency sound waves to break down plant materials in order to cook up a better batch of biofuel. Research by David Grewell, associate professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering, and his colleagues Melissa Montalbo-Lomboy and Priyanka Chand, has shown that "pretreating" a wide variety of feedstocks (including switch grass, corn stover, and soft wood) with ultrasound consistently enhances the chemical reactions necessary to convert the biomass into high-value fuels and chemicals.
The team will present its findings at the 21st International Congress on Acoustics (ICA 2013), held June 2-7 in Montreal.
In one example of ultrasound's positive impact on biofuel production, the Iowa State researchers found that they could significantly increase the efficiency of removing lignin from biomass in solution. Lignin is the chemical compound that binds cellulose and hemicellulose together in plant cell walls. Commonly, enzymes or chemicals are used to remove it from biomass and allow the freed sugars to be dissolved for further processing into biofuel. Grewell and his colleagues found that pretreating instead with ultrasound makes lignin removal so efficient that sugar dissolution occurs in minutes rather than the hours needed with traditional mixing systems.
Grewell's team also found that hydrolysis of corn starch could be greatly accelerated using ultrasonics. In a conventional ethanol plant, ground corn is steamed with jet cookers at boiling point temperatures. This breaks down the corn, leaving a starch mash that is then cooled and treated with enzymes in a process known as hydrolysis to release glucose for fermentation. The Iowa State team replaced the initial steaming with ultrasound, sonically smashing the corn into tiny particles in the same way physicians use ultrasound to shatter kidney stones. The smaller corn fragments provided more surface area for enzymatic action, and therefore, resulted in fermentation yields comparable to jet cooking.
The potential cost savings for this method, says Grewell, are very encouraging. "Economic models," he explains, "have shown that once implemented, this technology could have a payback period of less than one year."
Grewell and his colleagues report a third application for ultrasound in biofuel production, showing that they can accelerate transesterification, the main chemical reaction for converting oil to biodiesel. In one case, the researchers found that subjecting soybean oil to ultrasound transformed it into biodiesel in less than a minute, rather than the 45 minutes it normally takes. Similarly, Grewell's team found that yeast populated with sugar and starved with glycerin, a co-product of biodiesel production, could prodfuce high yields of oil that could be extracted and simultaneously converted to biodiesel with ultrasonics in less than a minute. This is a dramatically faster and less complicated method than traditional techniques requiring multiple steps and relatively long cycle times.
###
Presentation 5aPA3, "Enhancing biofuel production by ultrasonics," is in the morning session on Friday, June 7. Abstract: http://asa.aip.org/web2/asa/abstracts/search.jun13/asa1501.html
MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE ICA 2013 MONTREAL
USEFUL LINKS:
Main meeting website: http://www.ica2013montreal.org/
Itinerary planner and technical program: http://acousticalsociety.org/meetings/ica-2013/
WORLD WIDE PRESS ROOM
ASA's World Wide Press Room will be updated with additional tips on dozens of newsworthy stories and with lay-language papers, which are 300-1200 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience and accompanied by photos, audio, and video.
PRESS REGISTRATION
We will grant free registration to credentialed journalists and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend, contact Jason Bardi (jbardi@aip.org, 240-535-4954), who can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.
This news release was prepared for the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) by the American Institute of Physics (AIP).
ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world's leading journal on acoustics), Acoustics Today magazine, ECHOES newsletter, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. For more information about ASA, visit our website at http://www.acousticalsociety.org.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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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.
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Public release date: 31-May-2013
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