2012 NBA predictions: Bryant, Lakers in for two fights; Where is Dwight going?

Sporting News looks at five story lines to watch in the NBA in 2012:

1. The battle for L.A.

The trade that sent Chris Paul to the Clippers had a special place in the craw of Lakers fans. For one thing, before the veto of commissioner David Stern, Paul was very nearly a Laker. Additionally, he was part of the Lakers? plan for the future that also included acquiring Orlando center Dwight Howard. The addition of Paul?with Chauncey Billups and Caron Butler?to the Blake Griffin Show means that the Clippers now have at least as much, if not more, talent than the Lakers. The Staples Center co-tenants will battle not only for bragging rights in town, but for the Pacific Division crown.

PREDICTION: The Lakers figure to right themselves once they work Andrew Bynum back into the lineup, but once the Clippers develop chemistry, they have the more talented roster. Look for the Clips to nose out the Lakers in the Pacific Division.

CBA reality series

Part I: Drafting a star gets you seven years | Part II: 'Bird Rights' are a myth | Part III: The luxury tax could pull apart the Heat | Part IV: Superstar trades won't become the norm

2. What will Dwight do?

We have seen this scenario before: Star player in a small market playing for a good-but-not-great team, star player wants out, free agency is coming up and a long, drawn-out saga over the player?s future ensues. Last year, it took Denver until the week of the trade deadline to finally make a move on Carmelo Anthony, and this year, Orlando might do the same (the trade deadline is March 15) with Howard. The options are narrow, as Howard has indicated he prefers the Nets or the Lakers, and both teams have limited or flawed assets. The Magic, for their part, have said they are not seeking trades for Howard?at least not yet. In the backdrop is this uncomfortable fact: The Magic will be hosting the All-Star Game in February, and the entire weekend could be overshadowed by Howard?s status.

PREDICTION: The Magic will eventually have to read the writing on the wall and accept the fact that they can either get some assets for Howard or lose him for nothing. Orlando will take its time, but the bet here is that Howard winds up in New Jersey.

3. The Heat?s Big Three in Year 2

Miami did not come up with the championship that many expected after it brought in LeBron James and Chris Bosh to team with Dwyane Wade. But the Heat did earn a spot in The Finals, blowing away Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago in last year?s playoffs before running into the Dallas buzzsaw. It is motivation from that Finals loss?and the addition of veteran wing defender Shane Battier?that should have the Heat primed to take home this year?s title.

PREDICTION: That Finals loss is a pretty significant motivating factor for the Heat this year. Throw in the addition of veteran wing defender Shane Battier and the play of rookie point guard Norris Cole, and the Heat are primed to take home this year?s title.

4. The last stands

With Kobe Bryant playing through a wrist injury and Pau Gasol aging, the Lakers had hoped that the Paul trade would infuse the roster with a star player in his prime. Instead, the Lakers are looking to squeeze one more title run out of this group. They?re hardly alone. The aging defending-champion Mavericks pared their roster in order to prepare for rebuilding next year, the Spurs are trying to infuse some youth on the fly as Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili decline, and after showing their age in the postseason, the Celtics look especially old this year. These teams account for 11 of the last 13 championships, but there might not be much left in any of their tanks.

PREDICTION: Time to close the book on all four of these teams. If either the Mavs or Lakers can nab Howard, they?ll stay in the championship picture. But not this year.

5. The next steps

If there is a vacuum forming as the top teams in the league age, then that vacuum will be filled by two non-Miami teams: The Bulls and the Thunder. Not that both teams don?t have issues to work out. In order to compete for a title, the Bulls need to locate the Carlos Boozer they thought they were signing when they gave him a five-year, $80 million deal in the summer of 2010, and they need new shooting guard Richard Hamilton to play like it is 2006 (or at least, 2009). That will take pressure off point guard Derrick Rose, who needs to get better at figuring out when to use his teammates and when to be a scorer himself?he forced the action too much in the playoffs last year.

?SI.com: Always thinking of MJ, Rose is after one thing: championship trophy

The same can be said for Thunder point guard Russell Westbrook, who likely holds the key to his team?s title hopes. We?ve already seen that Westbrook has some difficulty dealing with teammates, and he needs to be a better leader, on and off the floor.

PREDICTION: Bulls continue to improve, but not quite enough to get past Miami. Oklahoma City, meanwhile, punches its ticket to the Finals. And loses to Miami.

Source: http://aol.sportingnews.com/nba/story/2011-12-30/2012-nba-predictions-chris-paul-clippers-kobe-lakers-derrick-rose-dwight-howard

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Friend: Texas gunman upset his wife was doing well

LANCASTER, Texas -- Family friends say a Texas man accused of killing six relatives in a Christmas Day murder-suicide was struggling financially and didn't like that his estranged wife was doing well.

Authorities say 56-year-old Aziz Yazdanpanah (ah-ZEEZ' YAWZ'-dahn-pahn-aw) was dressed as Santa when he fatally shot his estranged wife, their two teenage children and three other relatives Sunday inside an apartment in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Grapevine.

After a private burial for the six victims Thursday, family friend Azar Shahbazi (AH'-zahr shah-BAH'-zee) said she believed Yazdanpanah was upset because his wife "was doing good on her own."

The wife's brother, Ali Rahmaty (AH'-lee rah-MAH'-tee), says he'd been financially supporting the family. He says Yazdanpanah had been unemployed for more than a decade, but says he never thought Yazdanpanah would become violent.

Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/30/2566521/friend-texas-gunman-upset-his.html

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Melting Glaciers Cutting Peru Water Supply

You misunderstand evolution. Well, at least your comprehension of it isn't as absolute as you seem to think. The scenario you put forth is one possible example of evolution, but not the only possible one. A more likely scenario is one in which the environmental change is fairly gradual and, during the transition, a variation occurs making some subset of organisms more able to survive in the conditions the environment is transitioning to. The case where the environment shifts overnight is almost certainly less common and, even when it does occur, it's still more likely that the mutated subset of organisms that take over the niche don't come from the affected region, but repopulate it from nearby areas unaffected by the environmental change.

In any case, the kind of changes that require rapid adaptation by a population generally aren't very pleasant for the population. They're usually mostly, or absolutely destructive to the local population. Humans, as a species, or in smaller groupings, can survive all kinds of things. That doesn't mean that big changes don't cause all kinds of suffering and death on the individual level, however. This is something that some people seem to misunderstand (or callously dismiss when it doesn't affect them directly) leading to statements like "Don't live in places without water, stupid".

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/8hCgmAdSOj0/melting-glaciers-cutting-peru-water-supply

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China jails six for selling chemical-tainted pork (Reuters)

BEIJING (Reuters) ? A Chinese court has jailed six people for producing and selling chemical-tainted pork, state media said on Wednesday, the latest ruling in a food safety scandal.

The butchers in the east of the country were convicted of "harming public safety" for producing and selling pork tainted with clenbuterol, a toxic chemical used to produce lean meat, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing a court ruling.

The six were given terms of up to four years in prison by the court in Nanjing on December 13, it added.

"The six butchers, who worked at a Nanjing slaughter house, admitted they had bought live pigs from central Henan Province, slaughtered and sold the pork earlier this year, even though they knew the pork had been tainted by clenbuterol," Xinhua said.

"All six butchers signed contracts with the slaughterhouse in March 2009, vowing they would not sell clenbuterol-tainted pork."

They were also fined up to 50,000 yuan ($7,900).

Several others, including government officials, are still being tried in Nanjing, Xinhua added.

Lean meat sells for a premium in China, the world's largest producer and consumer of pork, which spurs some farmers to resort to using clenbuterol.

If eaten excessively by humans, however, the chemical can lead to muscle tremors, dizziness, headaches and gastric irritations.

The pork case first came to light in March, and since then at least 113 people have been jailed.

China is no stranger to food safety scares, including one involving tainted milk, despite repeated government campaigns to crack down on the problem and tough punishments handed out to those involved.

In 2008, at least six children died and nearly 300,000 fell ill from drinking milk made from powder laced with melamine, an industrial compound added to milk and milk power to give misleadingly high results in protein tests.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/china/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111228/hl_nm/us_china_tainted_pork

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Youth baseball, softball leagues reach Roscoe deal

ROSCOE ? Boys and girls will be back in action on Roscoe?s baseball diamonds this spring under Stateline Youth Athletics. The Roscoe Village Board and SYA representatives have reached a tentative four-year deal that will allow the youth baseball and softball league to use the village?s Porter, Leland and Thunder parks.

The village had threatened to sever ties completely with SYA if the league didn?t sign a proposed contract by Thursday. Representatives from both sides met early last week to clarify some of the provisions in the contract, such as when the concession stands would close each night and the procedure for selling advertising and signage space in the parks.
The SYA board of directors approved the proposed contract with a few minor language changes. The Village Board will be asked to approve the contract Thursday.

?Basically, we just needed to clarify some little things,? Village President Dave Krienke said.
Roscoe and SYA have been at odds since the Village Board began requiring organizations to sign written agreements before they use village property.

SYA officials refused to sign the agreement this spring to use Porter and Leland parks, saying it imposed unreasonable demands.

As a result, the youth league was not allowed to play ball in those parks this summer.

After months of back and forth and a series of give-and-take negotiations between Krienke and Trustee Chad DuBree and SYA President Jeff Schreck and representative Brad Lindmark, both sides thought they had a deal in the fall.

The Village Board sent the negotiated contract to SYA to ratify Nov. 14, but it instead received a counterproposal several weeks later.

On Dec. 15, the Village Board unanimously approved a proposed contract and said it would cut ties with SYA if the league didn?t approve it within one week.

The newest proposal will strictly limit the league to hosting youth baseball and softball games, which includes high school and college teams.

The league will not be allowed to host adult tournaments or other events, such as kickball tournaments.

If the Village Board approves the contract Thursday, boys and girls will start practice and games the first week of May, Schreck said.

Staff writer Greg Stanley can be reached at gstanley@rrstar.com or 815-987-1369.

Source: http://www.rrstar.com/news/x1569724900/Youth-baseball-softball-leagues-to-keep-playing-in-Roscoe

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Doh! Top Science Journal Retractions of 2011

News | More Science

Each year hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific articles are retracted. Most involve no blatant malfeasance; the authors themselves often detect errors and retract the paper. Some retractions, however, entail plagiarism, false authorship or cooked data

By Christopher Wanjek and LiveScience Bad Science Columnist ?| December 27, 2011?|

Image: City of Yuma, Arizona

Bad science papers can have lasting effects. Consider the 1998 paper in the journal The Lancet that linked autism to the MMR vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella. That paper was fully retracted in 2010 upon evidence that senior author Andrew Wakefield had manipulated data and breached several proper ethical codes of conduct.

Nevertheless the erroneous paper continues to undermine public confidence in vaccines. After the Lancet article, MMR vaccination rates dipped sharply and haven't fully rebounded. This decline in the MMR vaccine has been tied to a rise in measles cases resulting in permanent injury and death.

Each year hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific articles are retracted. Most involve no blatant malfeasance; the authors themselves often detect errors and retract the paper. Some retractions, however, as documented on the blog Retraction Watch, entail plagiarism, false authorship or cooked data.

No journal is safe from retractions, from the mighty "single-word-title" journals such as Nature, Science and Cell, to the myriad minor, esoteric ones.

Yet as astronomer Carl Sagan once said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Below are five science results retracted in 2011, pulled permanently off the books in part for falling far short of meeting the Sagan standard.

#5: Los Angeles marijuana dispensaries lead to drop in crime.

Keep smoking. The RAND Corporation retracted its own report in October after realizing its sloppy data collection.

Crime data compiled from neighborhoods with these highly contentious medical marijuana dispensaries supposedly revealed slightly lower crime rates. The authors attributed this decline not to marijuana itself but rather the presence of security cameras and guards in and around the dispensaries, having a positive effect on the neighborhood. [The History of 8 Hallucinogens]

The L.A. city attorney's office was incensed with the report, having argued the opposite ? that the dispensaries breed crime. The city's lawyers soon found critical flaws in RAND's data collection, largely stemming from RAND's reliance on data from CrimeReports.com, which did not include data from the L.A. Police Department. RAND blamed itself for the error, not CrimeReports.com, which had made no claims of having a complete set of data, and, in fact, didn't even know about the study.

#4 -- Butterfly meets worm, falls in love, and has caterpillars.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published a fantastic claim in 2009 by zoologist Donald Williamson, which was delightfully reported in the science news media. Williamson claimed that ancestors of modern butterflies mistakenly fertilized their eggs with sperm from velvet worms. The result was the necessity for the caterpillar stage of the butterfly life cycle.

The PNAS paper got a few laughs among evolutionary scientists, but it hasn't yet been retracted. Williamson's follow-up 2011 paper in the journal Symbiosis, however, has been retracted.

Researchers Michael Hart and Richard Grosberg at the University of Texas, Austin, systematically refuted all of Williamson's claims in the pages of PNAS by the end of 2009. They based their arguments entirely on well-known concepts of both basic evolution and the genetics of modern worms and butterflies. When Symbiosis published its butterfly-meets-worm article in January 2011, Hart raised questions with the editor. As of November the paper is no longer available.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=0a7fd8c181e860c847be268ff2e60426

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Users Mixed on New Facebook Timeline Format

December 26, 2011 Updated Dec 26, 2011 at 1:31 PM PST

"I hope you have an amazing day."

With more than a thousand Facebook friends, Maria Volari has been answering birthday greetings all day. She is approaching the new changes with caution. "I always kind of watch that. I'm a teacher so I know that a lot of my students and other colleagues are on there. I always watch what I put up."

In addition to bigger pictures, the biggest change to your Facebook layout will be the timeline, a chronological organization of everything you've posted on Facebook.

Balasam Yussif has been testing the new layout for the past few months. "I think it's a positive experience because if you use it properly you can set it up to be kind of a visual calendar of your life."

Socialogic is a Chicago firm that helps companies manage their social media policies. They have been playing with the new layout too, and experts here say it will require you to do some work.

Jacqueline Zenn, a Social Media Strategist says, "When you set up your timeline it's important to go through and really kind of take a look at what you've got on there and think about do you want that to be indexed and searched and have everybody be able to find it, or do you want just your friends and family to be able to see it, do you maybe want to delete those college party pictures."

But in the end, it will be up to users to judge whether the new Facebook is an improved Facebook.

"I think it's pretty cool. Yeah, it shows you like from the start. It tells a story."

"I think it's kind of annoying and doesn't really make sense to me. I think it was fine the way it was."

"Yeah I agree totally."

"It takes a little bit of effort to get used to it, so we'll see after a month if I like it or not, but right now it's kind of a pain."

And pain or not, users will have seven days to make the transition to the new Facebook.

Source: http://www.ksee24.com/news/local/Users-Mixed-on-New-Facebook-Timeline-Format-136233608.html

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