BERLIN, April 29 (Reuters) - Barcelona will try every trick in the book to overturn a 4-0 first-leg deficit against Bayern Munich in their Champions League semi-final return leg on Wednesday, honorary Bayern president Franz Beckenbauer warned on Monday. Bayern crushed the Spaniards last week in a surprisingly one-sided encounter but Beckenbauer, former player, coach and president of Germany's most successful club, warned that Barcelona were not ready to surrender. "Barca will try everything to throw Bayern off balance," he told Bild newspaper. ...
BERLIN, April 26 (Reuters) - Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund striker Robert Lewandowski have not signed a deal, the newly-crowned champions said on Friday, shooting down widespread speculation of another surprise transfer. "Bayern, as opposed to some reports, has no contract with Robert Lewandowski," the Bavarian Champions League semi-finalists said in a brief two-line statement. ...
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? For four straight games, the San Antonio Spurs showed off all the teamwork and tenacity that the Los Angeles Lakers lacked all season long.
And when the Lakers' tumultuous season finally collapsed Sunday night, the smooth Spurs rolled right past them to the second round.
Tony Parker scored 23 points, and San Antonio completed its first-round sweep of the injury-plagued Lakers with a 103-82 victory in Game 4.
Tim Duncan had 11 points and six rebounds for the second-seeded Spurs, who will face the winner of Denver's series with Golden State in the second round. They'll get plenty of rest after flattening the Lakers, who staggered through back-to-back blowout losses at home without three regular starters in their first opening-round exit since 2007.
"Obviously, it wasn't a fair fight," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. "When you're a competitor, you want to compete on an even basis, and the Lakers weren't able to do that. ... Even though it wasn't a fair fight, we still want to win the series, and I'm glad we did. Our focus was great."
San Antonio never trailed in the clincher, leading by 25 points in one more businesslike effort against the seventh-seeded Lakers, who provided their usual drama right down to their last gasp.
In his final game before unrestricted free agency, Dwight Howard scored seven points before getting ejected early in the third quarter for arguing. Pau Gasol had 16 points for the Lakers, who were swept from the postseason for the second time in three years despite a late courtside appearance by Kobe Bryant on crutches.
"It was just a weird feeling," Parker said. "Obviously, I am happy we won, but it was just weird. They were missing a lot of guys, so we're just happy to go to the next round."
Howard said the season was "like a nightmare. It's like a bad dream, and we just couldn't wake up from it. That's what it felt like."
The Los Angeles Lakers gave away thousands of white towels to their fans Sunday, and they acquired an unfortunate symbolism: In the final game of a season that began with championship aspirations, the Lakers couldn't keep up without injured starters Bryant, Steve Nash and Metta World Peace. They had just nine available players in uniform for the final minutes.
"I'm proud of them, because they fought," Lakers coach Mike D'Antoni said. "It was kind of a year that was all upside-down, but I appreciate the effort to get us into the playoffs. We just didn't have it."
After Duncan led the Spurs' blowout in Game 3, Parker took the lead in the clincher, scoring 15 points in the first half while exploiting the Lakers' hastily assembled backcourt. Los Angeles' top four guards are out with injuries, including backups Steve Blake and Jodie Meeks, and Parker was merciless against third-stringers.
"What I was pleased about our team was that we kept our focus every night," Popovich said. "We played hard, followed the game plan and were very active and energetic every night, and sometimes that's hard to do when your opponent is wounded."
Kawhi Leonard and DeJuan Blair added 13 points apiece in the Spurs' balanced scoring effort. San Antonio trailed for fewer than five combined minutes in the four-game series, grinding out points and defensive stops with the steady professionalism of Popovich's best teams.
"This is a good start for us," Duncan said. "We like the pace we're at right now. We like the rhythm we're at right now, and how healthy we are right now. Hopefully it can stay that way."
After an unimpressive game featuring just two field goal attempts in 20 minutes, Howard was tossed with 9:51 left in the third quarter for his second technical foul. The All-Star center, furious with the Spurs' unpunished physical play, yelled a few parting words at the court after walking past general manager Mitch Kupchak in the tunnel to the locker room.
"I hate it for him," D'Antoni said, lamenting the lack of foul calls against players guarding Howard. "He gets banged up so much in there that I'm sure he didn't mean to (get ejected), but he takes a pounding, and after a while, I guess his nerves were shot."
Moments later, Bryant got the solemn Staples Center crowd on its feet when he hobbled out of the tunnel to a seat behind the Lakers' bench, making his first appearance at courtside since tearing his Achilles tendon 16 days ago. Bryant, who might not be healthy by the start of next season, repeatedly yelled instructions and encouragement at the Lakers' young backcourt, Andrew Goudelock and Darius Morris, and fill-in starter Earl Clark.
The 16-time NBA champion Lakers had high hopes for this season after landing Howard and Nash to play alongside Bryant and Gasol, but their hopes disappeared in an avalanche of injuries, losing streaks and turmoil.
There's almost no turbulence around the Spurs, who seamlessly replaced injured starting center Tiago Splitter in Game 4 with Australian rookie Aron Baynes, who had six points and played decent defense in his first NBA start.
The Spurs had control of this series from the start: They posted two methodical victories at home before sending the Lakers to their biggest home playoff defeat in their long franchise history in Game 3, 120-89. The clincher was more of the same, with the Lakers unable to mount enough teamwork to challenge the smooth Spurs.
The Spurs have swept three of their last four playoff series, winning every game in the first two rounds last season before losing in six games to Oklahoma City in the Western Conference finals. San Antonio is in the second round of the postseason for the fourth time in six seasons since their last championship in 2007.
NOTES: Gasol got a standing ovation when he left the game with 3:08 to play. The two-time NBA champion has one year left on his contract with the Lakers, but could be a trade chip in the Lakers' rebuild. ... Splitter has a sprained ankle and is out indefinitely, although his teammates think he can return during the second round. F Boris Diaw practiced with contact this weekend in his comeback from a back injury. ... The Lakers faced an 0-3 series deficit for the eighth time in franchise history ? and for the eighth time, they were swept. ... Jack Nicholson and Lil Wayne watched at courtside, but both left early in the fourth quarter.
Carson Britt and Matthew Drake convinced everyone with their onstage demo of Laser Mountain at the Disrupt NY Hackathon. They attached Android phones to the Nerf guns (that TechCrunch gave away yesterday) to recreate a laser tag game with a real-time score server. After receiving the Nerf guns, they started working right away on Laser Mountain. “We already had the domain name lasermoutain.com, so we didn’t have a choice,” Britt said. When asked why they bought this domain, Drake answered, “I pick up domains all the time.” The Android phones track movements using the built-in gyroscopes and then transmit the information to a Node.js server. To register when someone is firing, they use the phone’s microphones and the Nerf gun’s loud firing noise. Last night, the team of two didn’t sleep at all to finish their hack on time for the onstage demo. It wasn’t their first hackathon but it was the first time at the Disrupt Hackathon. But it’s not the end for Laser Mountain. “We are going to Kickstarter it,” Drake said. With fewer than 24 hours of development, the team is certainly talented enough to succeed. You should watch the two developers play laser tag onstage:
Justin Bieber’s tour bus was busted for pot in Sweden on Wednesday night. The singers ride was raided and the drugs were found but is the singer really to blame? The Europeon leg of his tour is turning out to be not so great for the teen sensation. It seems as though a slew of bad publicity has plagued Justin since he got there. The lastest drama comes in the form a little thing called marijuana. The cops in Stockholm have confirmed to TMZ.com what exactly happened surrounding the raid and bust. Turns out that after the bus left the Grand Hotel, where Bieber and his peeps are staying and headed to the Globe Arena for the show, a cop smelled weed coming from the bus. The police officer then called the narcotics unit, which searched the vehicle while Justin was performing his concert. There was no one on board when the police raided the bus outside the Globe Arena, which begs the question just whose drugs did the police find? That question has yet to be answered as the cops do not have a suspect. Here is the kicker though, when or if they find the culprit the amount [...]
Apr. 23, 2013 ? "When designing next generation solar energy conversion systems, we must first develop ways to more efficiently utilize the solar spectrum," explained Lane Martin, whose research group has done just that.
"This is a fundamentally new way of approaching these matters," said Martin, who is an assistant professor of materials science and engineering (MatSE) at Illinois. "From these materials we can imagine carbon-neutral energy production of clean-burning fuels, waste water purification and remediation, and much more."
Martin's research group brought together aspects of condensed matter physics, semiconductor device engineering, and photochemistry to develop a new form of high-performance solar photocatalyst based on the combination of the TiO2 (titanium dioxide) and other "metallic" oxides that greatly enhance the visible light absorption and promote more efficient utilization of the solar spectrum for energy applications.
Their paper appears in the journal Advanced Energy Materials.
According to Martin, the primary feature limiting the performance of oxide-based photovoltaic and/or photocatalytic systems has traditionally been the poor absorption of visible light in these often wide band gap materials. One candidate oxide material for such applications is anatase TiO2, which is arguably the most widely-studied photocatalyst due to its chemical stability, non-toxicity, low-cost, and excellent band alignment to several oxidation-reduction reactions. As the backbone of dye-sensitized solar cells, however, the presence of a light-absorbing dye accounts for a large band gap which limits efficient usage of all but the UV portion of sunlight.
"We observed that the unusual electronic structure of SrRuO3 is also responsible for unexpected optical properties including high absorption across the visible spectrum and low reflection compared to traditional metals," stated Sungki Lee, the paper's first author. "By coupling this material to TiO2 we demonstrate enhanced visible light absorption and large photocatalytic activities."
"SrRuO3 is a correlated electron oxide which is known to possess metallic-like temperature dependence of its resistivity and itinerant ferromagnetism and for its widespread utility as a conducting electrode in oxide heterostructures," Lee added. Referring to this material as a "metal," however, is likely inappropriate as the electronic structure and properties are derived from a combination of complex electronic density of states, electron correlations, and more.
Using a process called photo-excited hot-carrier injection from the SrRuO3 to the TiO2, the researchers created new heterostructures whose novel optical properties and the resulting high photoelectrochemical performance provide an interesting new approach that could advance the field of photocatalysis and further broaden the potential applications of other metallic oxides.
This work provides an exciting new approach to the challenge of designing visible-light photosensitive materials and has resulted in a provisional patent application. The work was primarily supported by the ongoing International Institute for Carbon Neutral Energy Research (I2CNER) program, a partnership between Kyushu University in Japan and the University of Illinois.
"The I2CNER project brings together some of the leading energy researchers from around the globe," explained I2CNER Director Petros Sofronis, who is also a professor in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at Illinois. "Results from Dr. Martin's research group and others demonstrate that I2CNER is not only an experiment on international collaboration. It is a concerted institutionalized effort to pursue green innovation and reduced CO2 emissions, as well as to advance fundamental science and develop science-based technological solutions for the reorganization of sustainable and environmentally friendly society."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Illinois College of Engineering. The original article was written by Rick Kubetz.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Sungki Lee, Brent A. Apgar, Lane W. Martin. Strong Visible-Light Absorption and Hot-Carrier Injection in TiO2/SrRuO3Heterostructures. Advanced Energy Materials, 2013; DOI: 10.1002/aenm.201201116
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Miami Heat guard Dwyane Wade, left, and forward LeBron James laugh as they sit on the bench in the final seconds of Game 2 in their first-round NBA basketball playoff series against the Milwaukee Bucks, Tuesday, April 23, 2013 in Miami. Wade scored 21 points and James contributed 19 as the Heat won 98-86. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Miami Heat guard Dwyane Wade, left, and forward LeBron James laugh as they sit on the bench in the final seconds of Game 2 in their first-round NBA basketball playoff series against the Milwaukee Bucks, Tuesday, April 23, 2013 in Miami. Wade scored 21 points and James contributed 19 as the Heat won 98-86. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Miami Heat forward LeBron James (6) shoots against Milwaukee Bucks forward John Henson (31) during the first half of Game 2 in their first-round NBA basketball playoff series, Tuesday, April 23, 2013 in Miami. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Miami Heat guard Ray Allen shoots against Milwaukee Bucks guard J.J. Redick (5) during the first half of Game 2 in their first-round NBA basketball playoff series, Tuesday, April 23, 2013 in Miami. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Milwaukee Bucks forward John Henson, left, fouls Miami Heat forward Shane Battier (31) as he goes up for a shot during the first half of Game 2 in their first-round NBA basketball playoff series, Tuesday, April 23, 2013 in Miami. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
MIAMI (AP) ? A banner bearing Dwyane Wade's jersey number hangs in the arena the Milwaukee Bucks call home, in tribute of his days as a standout at Marquette.
Suffice to say, he won't have favorite-son status over the next few days.
Wade and the Miami Heat are halfway to advancing in the NBA playoffs after topping the Milwaukee Bucks 98-86 on Tuesday night to take a 2-0 lead in the teams' Eastern Conference first-round series. Wade scored 21 points, LeBron James finished with 19 and the Heat opened the fourth quarter on a 12-0 run to pull away.
Now comes a Wednesday flight to Milwaukee, followed by Game 3 there on Thursday night, when the Heat can take absolute control of the matchup. And Wade is certain that nothing will come easily, not even for the defending NBA champions.
"They're going to come out and play with emotion," Wade said. "I've been in Milwaukee when they've had playoff teams. I know that place can get very loud."
So can his current home arena, which roared for 2 minutes in the fourth quarter when the Heat finally shook off Milwaukee's upset bid.
It was 68-65 entering the fourth. With James and four backups on the court, the Heat needed only 2 minutes, 22 seconds to score a dozen unanswered points and stretch the lead to 80-65.
"We held court," Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. "We protected it for two games. We did what we're supposed to do. And that's it."
Chris Bosh, Shane Battier and Chris Andersen all scored 10 points for the Heat. James' postseason streaks of 22 straight games with at least 20 points, and 16 straight games of at least 25 points, both came to an end.
Ultimately, none of that mattered.
"We were able to jump on them," James said.
Ersan Ilyasova scored 21 points for Milwaukee, which got 16 from Mike Dunleavy and 14 from Larry Sanders. The Bucks' starting guards, Brandon Jennings and Monta Ellis, combined for only 15 points ? after teaming up to score 48 in Game 1.
"It's a series," said Sanders, who had a sore right ankle after a collision with Battier in the fourth quarter. "We made progress this game."
They'll need to make more, and do it quickly. James has never lost in 10 previous series in which his team takes a 2-0 lead, and Wade is 8-0 in that same situation.
He was a skinny kid who Miami drafted as a point guard in 2003, a couple months after he took Marquette to the Final Four. Three years later, he became an MVP of the NBA Finals. Now he's looking for his fourth trip to the title round in eight seasons.
To this day, he credits the help he got in Milwaukee for much of his success.
"I went to Milwaukee with not a lot of expectations, and I came out of Milwaukee the fifth pick in the draft," Wade said. "Milwaukee has been special to me. It has helped me get to this point. Going back there in the playoffs is a cool thing."
For a while on Tuesday, it looked as though Wade and the Heat might go to Milwaukee without a 2-0 series lead. It was that 12-0 run that was the difference ? in what finished as a 12-point game.
Andersen started it with a three-point play, James had a layup not long afterward and the Heat were starting to roll. Another basket by Andersen off a pass from Ray Allen made it 77-65, and James found Norris Cole for a 3-pointer that capped the flurry and made it 80-65.
Just like that, it was over, even to Miami's surprise.
"They were doing some things that had us spinning around a little bit defensively, got us on our heels, and offensively we never got into a rhythm," Spoelstra said. "So we figured we were just going to have to find a way to grind in the fourth quarter, figuring it was going to be a close game."
Jennings and Ellis combined for 48 points in Game 1, and the Bucks got blown out. So in the first half of Game 2, they combined for one point, were held to five shots that all missed ... and the Bucks were within 47-43 at halftime.
Chances are, very few would have seen that coming.
But play was sloppy from the outset, with the teams combining for eight turnovers in the first 6 minutes to set the tone for a clumsy first half. Wade, James and Chalmers shot 15 for 19 combined in the first half for Miami ? and the rest of the Heat were 3 for 17. For Milwaukee, Ilyasova had 12 points in the first 10 minutes, then two points the rest of the half.
So much like in Game 1, Milwaukee came out for the second half with a chance of stealing home-court advantage.
And for the entirety of the third quarter, the Bucks hung around, though the Heat showed some signs of getting things going. Bosh had a dunk for a six-point lead, then made a jumper ? on a play that James started by running down a loose ball and flicking it between his legs for a save along the sideline ? for a 68-60 lead, what was then the biggest Heat margin of the night.
The Bucks got within 68-65 to end the third, but then came the run that Miami had been waiting for all evening.
"We felt pretty good about the position we were in, giving ourselves an opportunity on the road with 12 minutes to go," Bucks coach Jim Boylan said. "You feel good about that. Then they come out, go on a 12-0 run and it changes the complexion of the game. Playing catch-up is very hard to do against a high-quality team like Miami."
Jennings said Milwaukee would win in six games before the series began, and his confidence didn't waver even now with his club in an 0-2 hole.
"We showed a lot of improvement tonight," said Jennings, who shot 3 for 15. "Aside of making that run in the fourth, I think we should have won this game."
NOTES: Battier needed stitches in his chin after the collision with Sanders with 6:59 left. ... It's the 11th time the Heat have gone up 2-0 in a playoff series. They're 10-0 in the previous instances. ... Milwaukee has lost 21 of its last 29 playoff games.
BOSTON (Reuters) - The badly wounded Boston Marathon bombing suspect faced federal charges as early as Monday and the city of Boston planned tributes to the dead after a week of blasts, shootouts, lockdowns and one of the largest manhunts in U.S. history.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, an ethnic Chechen college student suspected of carrying out the attacks with his older brother, lay in a Boston hospital under armed guard. He was unable to speak after he was captured with throat injuries sustained during shoot-outs with police.
Police declined to comment on media reports he was communicating with authorities in writing.
"There have been widely published reports that he is (communicating silently). I wouldn't dispute that, but I don't have any specific information on that myself," Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis told CNN. "We're very anxious to talk to him and the investigators will be doing that as soon as possible."
The FBI said on Monday morning that Tsarnaev remained in serious condition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
Tsarnaev's capture on Friday night ended a manhunt that virtually shut down greater Boston for some 20 hours. His older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died after a gunfight with police early Friday morning.
The city of Boston crawled back to normal on Monday, a week after twin bombs exploded at the crowded finish line of the city's famous marathon road race, killing three people and wounding 176. Ten of the injured lost limbs.
The crime scene around the blasts was still closed but was expected to reopen within a day or two. Signs declaring "Boston Strong" hung about the city.
Memorial services were set on Monday for two of those killed in the bombings: Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager, and Chinese graduate student Lingzi Lu.
An 8-year-old boy, Martin Richard, was also killed.
PAUSE AT TIME OF BOMBINGS
The city also planned to pause at 2:50 p.m. EDT to mark the moment a week ago when the two bombs made of pressure cookers and packed with nails and ball bearings tore through the crowd watching runners complete the Boston Marathon.
In the days that followed, investigators examining thousands of images from surveillance video, media coverage and spectators taking pictures were able to pick out two men as suspects, later identified as the Tsarnaev brothers.
On Tuesday, the day after the attack, the younger Tsarnaev was working out in the gym at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, listening to music on his iPod, when he struck up a conversation with fellow sophomore Zach Bettencourt.
Bettencourt said he and Tsarnaev chatted about the bombings.
"It's crazy this is happening now," Bettencourt recalled Tsarnaev telling him. "This (these bombings) is so easy to do. These tragedies happen all the time in Afghanistan and Iraq."
Police said the Tsarnaev brothers made enough additional bombs for them to believe that more attacks were planned. They were also armed with handguns. A shootout with police in the Boston suburb of Watertown early Friday morning left more than 200 spent shell casings in the street.
Neither Tsarnaev brother was licensed to own guns in the towns where they lived, Cambridge, Massachusetts, authorities said on Sunday.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could be charged with several crimes including use of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and bombing of places of public use in addition to homicide, said former federal prosecutor and University of Notre Dame law professor Jimmy Gurul?.
Because death resulted, each statute authorizes the death penalty, he said.
Though the case is likely to involve officials at the highest levels including Attorney General Eric Holder, the prosecutor in charge will be Carmen Ortiz, the U.S. attorney for the district of Massachusetts.
Ortiz has faced criticism for coming down too hard on some defendants, but that approach may become a legal asset for the biggest case of her career, said attorneys who have faced off against her.
The Tsarnaev brothers emigrated to the United States a decade ago from Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim region in Russia's Caucasus. The men's parents, who moved back to southern Russia some time ago, have said their sons were framed.
Much of investigators' attention has focused on a trip to Russia last year by Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and whether he became involved with or was influenced by Chechen separatists or Islamist extremists there.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev traveled to Moscow in January 2012 and spent six months in Dagestan, a law enforcement source said. Neighbors in Makhachkala, the region's capital city, said he kept a low profile while visiting there last summer, helping his father renovate an apartment unit.
That trip, combined with Russian interest in Tamerlan communicated to U.S. authorities and an FBI interview of him in 2011, have raised questions whether danger signals were missed.
(Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen, Mary Ellen Clark, Ross Kerber and Hillary Russ; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Phil Barbara and Frances Kerry)
Panasonic has just announced a new mid-range Micro Four Thirds camera, the Lumix G6, that brings a solid list of specs for a mid-range camera. The 16-megapixel shooter can fire at a respectable 7fps in burst mode, has a top sensitivity of ISO 25,600 and like the recently launched Lumix GF6, has WiFi and NFC for device syncing. It also sports a 1,440K-dot OLED LVF, 0.5 second startup time, 3-inch, 1,036K-dot touchscreen with a 180 degree swivel and 270 degrees of tilt, new Venus image engine and full-area touch AF. It'll likely cheer hard-core video fans as well since it packs a similar sensor to the popular GH2 / GH3 models, along with 1080/60p video, AVCHD or MP4 recording, stereo audio, live autofocus and Touch AF that allows "professional-like rack focusing." There's no pricing or availability yet, but expect it to cost considerably less than the flagship Lumix GH-3's $1,500 sticker -- which may pose a quandary for shoppers on the fence about that model.
Study finds troubling patterns of teacher assignments within schoolsPublic release date: 23-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Daniel Fowler pubinfo@asanet.org 202-527-7885 American Sociological Association
WASHINGTON, DC, April 23, 2013 Even within the same school, lower-achieving students often are taught by less-experienced teachers, as well as by teachers who received their degrees from less-competitive colleges, according to a new study by researchers from the Stanford Graduate School of Education and the World Bank. The study, using data from one of the nation's largest school districts, also shows that student class assignments vary within schools by a teacher's gender and race.
In a paper published in the April issue of Sociology of Education, the researchers present the results of a comprehensive analysis of teacher assignments in the nation's fourth-largest school district, Miami-Dade County Public Schools. Their findings identify trends that may contribute to teacher turnover and achievement gaps nationwide.
Previous research indicates that high-quality teachers can significantly improve education outcomes for students. However, not all students have equal access to the best teachers.
"It is well-known that teachers systematically sort across schools, disadvantaging low-income, minority, and low-achieving students," said Demetra Kalogrides, a research associate at the Graduate School of Education's Center for Education Policy Analysis and one of the study's three authors. "Our findings are novel because they address the assignment of teachers to classes within schools. We cannot assume that teacher sorting stops at the school doors."
The authors note that more research needs to be done to see whether such patterns exist within schools across the country.
The assignment of teachers to students is the result of a complex process, involving school leaders, teachers, and parents. While principals are constrained by teachers' qualifications not all high school teachers, for instance, can teach physics they also may use their authority to reward certain teachers with the more desirable assignments or to appease teachers who are instrumental to school operations.
Teachers with more power, due to experience or other factors, may be able to choose their preferred classes. Parents, particularly those with more resources, also may try to intervene in the process to ensure that their children are taught by certain teachers.
"We wanted to understand which teachers are teaching which students," said Susanna Loeb, a Stanford professor of education, the director of the Center for Education Policy Analysis, and an author of the study. "In particular, are low-achieving students more likely to be assigned to certain teachers, and if so, why?"
Using extensive data from Miami-Dade, the authors compared the average achievement of teachers' students in the year before the students were assigned to them. They discovered that certain teachers those with less experience, those from less-competitive colleges, female teachers, and black and Hispanic teachers are more likely to work with lower-achieving students than are other teachers in the same school.
They found these patterns at both the elementary and middle/high school levels.
According to the researchers, teachers who have been at a school for a long time may be able to influence the assignment process in order to secure their preferred classes for instance, classes with higher-achieving students. The study found that teachers with 10 or more years of experience, as well as teachers who have held leadership positions, are assigned higher-achieving students on average.
Assigning lower-achieving students to inexperienced teachers could have significant repercussions. According to the researchers, it could increase turnover among new teachers, since novice teachers are more likely to quit when assigned more low-achieving students.
In addition, it could exacerbate within-school achievement gaps for example, the black-white gap. Since they are lower-achieving on average, minority and poor students are often assigned to less-experienced teachers than white and non-poor students. Less-experienced teachers tend to be less effective, so this pattern is likely to reinforce the relationships between race and achievement and poverty and achievement, the researchers said.
The study also found that lower-achieving students are taught by the teachers who graduated from less-competitive colleges, based on test scores for admission and acceptance rates. This trend is particularly evident at the middle school and high school levels, possibly due to the more varied demands of middle and high school courses. Teachers from more competitive colleges may have deeper subject knowledge than their colleagues from less-competitive colleges, leading principals to assign them to more advanced courses, the researchers said.
The researchers noted that assignment patterns vary across schools. Experienced teachers appear to have more power over the assignment process when there are more of them in a school; senior teachers are assigned even higher-achieving students when there is a larger contingent of experienced teachers in the school.
At the same time, schools under more accountability pressure are less likely to assign higher-achieving students to more-experienced teachers than schools that are not under accountability pressure.
Finally, according to the findings, class assignments vary depending on a teacher's gender and race. Since female teachers are more likely to teach special education than male teachers, on average they work with lower-achieving students than their male colleagues. Also, black and Hispanic teachers, when compared with white teachers in the same schools, work with more minority and poor students, who tend to be lower-achieving.
Unlike sorting based on experience, the authors said that teacher-student matching based on race could improve student achievement because previous research suggests that minority students may learn more when taught by minority teachers.
"Our analyses are a first step in describing within-school class assignments, an important, yet often overlooked, form of teacher sorting," said Kalogrides.
###
The other co-author is Tara Bteille of the World Bank. The research was supported by a grant from the Institute of Education Sciences.
About the American Sociological Association and the Sociology of Education
The American Sociological Association, founded in 1905, is a non-profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions to and use of sociology by society. Sociology of Education is a quarterly, peer-reviewed journal of the ASA.
The research article described above is available by request for members of the media. For a copy of the full study, contact Daniel Fowler, ASA's Media Relations and Public Affairs Officer, at (202) 527-7885 or pubinfo@asanet.org.
For more information about the study, members of the media can also contact Jonathan Rabinovitz, Stanford Graduate School of Education, at (650) 724-9440 or jrabin@stanford.edu and Dan Stober, Stanford News Service, at (650) 721-6965 or dstober@stanford.edu.
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Study finds troubling patterns of teacher assignments within schoolsPublic release date: 23-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Daniel Fowler pubinfo@asanet.org 202-527-7885 American Sociological Association
WASHINGTON, DC, April 23, 2013 Even within the same school, lower-achieving students often are taught by less-experienced teachers, as well as by teachers who received their degrees from less-competitive colleges, according to a new study by researchers from the Stanford Graduate School of Education and the World Bank. The study, using data from one of the nation's largest school districts, also shows that student class assignments vary within schools by a teacher's gender and race.
In a paper published in the April issue of Sociology of Education, the researchers present the results of a comprehensive analysis of teacher assignments in the nation's fourth-largest school district, Miami-Dade County Public Schools. Their findings identify trends that may contribute to teacher turnover and achievement gaps nationwide.
Previous research indicates that high-quality teachers can significantly improve education outcomes for students. However, not all students have equal access to the best teachers.
"It is well-known that teachers systematically sort across schools, disadvantaging low-income, minority, and low-achieving students," said Demetra Kalogrides, a research associate at the Graduate School of Education's Center for Education Policy Analysis and one of the study's three authors. "Our findings are novel because they address the assignment of teachers to classes within schools. We cannot assume that teacher sorting stops at the school doors."
The authors note that more research needs to be done to see whether such patterns exist within schools across the country.
The assignment of teachers to students is the result of a complex process, involving school leaders, teachers, and parents. While principals are constrained by teachers' qualifications not all high school teachers, for instance, can teach physics they also may use their authority to reward certain teachers with the more desirable assignments or to appease teachers who are instrumental to school operations.
Teachers with more power, due to experience or other factors, may be able to choose their preferred classes. Parents, particularly those with more resources, also may try to intervene in the process to ensure that their children are taught by certain teachers.
"We wanted to understand which teachers are teaching which students," said Susanna Loeb, a Stanford professor of education, the director of the Center for Education Policy Analysis, and an author of the study. "In particular, are low-achieving students more likely to be assigned to certain teachers, and if so, why?"
Using extensive data from Miami-Dade, the authors compared the average achievement of teachers' students in the year before the students were assigned to them. They discovered that certain teachers those with less experience, those from less-competitive colleges, female teachers, and black and Hispanic teachers are more likely to work with lower-achieving students than are other teachers in the same school.
They found these patterns at both the elementary and middle/high school levels.
According to the researchers, teachers who have been at a school for a long time may be able to influence the assignment process in order to secure their preferred classes for instance, classes with higher-achieving students. The study found that teachers with 10 or more years of experience, as well as teachers who have held leadership positions, are assigned higher-achieving students on average.
Assigning lower-achieving students to inexperienced teachers could have significant repercussions. According to the researchers, it could increase turnover among new teachers, since novice teachers are more likely to quit when assigned more low-achieving students.
In addition, it could exacerbate within-school achievement gaps for example, the black-white gap. Since they are lower-achieving on average, minority and poor students are often assigned to less-experienced teachers than white and non-poor students. Less-experienced teachers tend to be less effective, so this pattern is likely to reinforce the relationships between race and achievement and poverty and achievement, the researchers said.
The study also found that lower-achieving students are taught by the teachers who graduated from less-competitive colleges, based on test scores for admission and acceptance rates. This trend is particularly evident at the middle school and high school levels, possibly due to the more varied demands of middle and high school courses. Teachers from more competitive colleges may have deeper subject knowledge than their colleagues from less-competitive colleges, leading principals to assign them to more advanced courses, the researchers said.
The researchers noted that assignment patterns vary across schools. Experienced teachers appear to have more power over the assignment process when there are more of them in a school; senior teachers are assigned even higher-achieving students when there is a larger contingent of experienced teachers in the school.
At the same time, schools under more accountability pressure are less likely to assign higher-achieving students to more-experienced teachers than schools that are not under accountability pressure.
Finally, according to the findings, class assignments vary depending on a teacher's gender and race. Since female teachers are more likely to teach special education than male teachers, on average they work with lower-achieving students than their male colleagues. Also, black and Hispanic teachers, when compared with white teachers in the same schools, work with more minority and poor students, who tend to be lower-achieving.
Unlike sorting based on experience, the authors said that teacher-student matching based on race could improve student achievement because previous research suggests that minority students may learn more when taught by minority teachers.
"Our analyses are a first step in describing within-school class assignments, an important, yet often overlooked, form of teacher sorting," said Kalogrides.
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The other co-author is Tara Bteille of the World Bank. The research was supported by a grant from the Institute of Education Sciences.
About the American Sociological Association and the Sociology of Education
The American Sociological Association, founded in 1905, is a non-profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions to and use of sociology by society. Sociology of Education is a quarterly, peer-reviewed journal of the ASA.
The research article described above is available by request for members of the media. For a copy of the full study, contact Daniel Fowler, ASA's Media Relations and Public Affairs Officer, at (202) 527-7885 or pubinfo@asanet.org.
For more information about the study, members of the media can also contact Jonathan Rabinovitz, Stanford Graduate School of Education, at (650) 724-9440 or jrabin@stanford.edu and Dan Stober, Stanford News Service, at (650) 721-6965 or dstober@stanford.edu.
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April 23 (Reuters) - Myanmar has decided to opt out of hosting two Davis Cup events due to security concerns following last month's anti-Muslim riots, the head of the country's tennis association said on Tuesday.
Myanmar was to host the 2013 Asia/Oceania Zone Group III and IV events from April 22-May 5 in Yangon where 19 nations were set to take part.
Sectarian violence in Buddhist-majority Myanmar killed 43 people last month. Thousands, mostly Muslims, were driven from their homes and businesses as bloodshed spread across the Southeast Asian country.
"The government informed us on April 13 that we will need to postpone the events due to security reasons," Aung Maw Thein, president of the Tennis Federation of Myanmar, told Reuters.
"While the sports ministry did not divulge the details, I think it was because of last month's problems."
Players from a number of Muslim countries like Malaysia, Bahrain and Iraq were scheduled to play in the event and the International Tennis Federation has not yet decided on alternative dates and a venue.
The world governing body could not be reached for comment. (Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly in Mumbai; editing by Ed Osmond)
The mayor of Boston says it c appears the two suspects in Monday's Boston Marathon bombing acted alone.
"All of the information that I have they acted alone," Thomas Menino said during an appearance on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" Sunday.
However, he added that it was not clear if they would be able to question the suspects about the possibility of outside help.
"The older brother's dead now. We have the second one at Beth Israel Hospital in very serious condition," he said "And we don't know if we'll ever be able to question the individual."
So far the FBI has only named two people in relation to the attack. Both suspects,?Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, had family ties to Chechnya, an area of Russia known for Islamic insurgency. The older suspect, Tamerlan, took a six-month-long trip to nearby Dagestan last year that is being investigated.
However, no other groups or individuals have been linked to Monday's bombing. A website affiliated with rebels from the North Caucasus region has disavowed the attack with a note saying "Caucasus fighters are not waging any military activities against the United States of America."
Menino said that another individual was taken into custody after the discovery of a pipe bomb, but this was not related to Monday's bombing.
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's SMBC Nikko Securities will expand its domestic retail branch network by more than 20 percent over the next three years as it bets that the new premier's economic policies will lift the stock market further, the head of the country's third-largest brokerage said.
Tetsuya Kubo, who became president of the brokerage arm of banking group Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc (SMFG) this month, said he wanted to open 25 new branches as part of an effort to increase retail client assets by one-third, to 30 trillion yen ($302 billion), by 2016.
The aggressive shift in strategy for SMBC Nikko, which has 109 branches and has not opened a new one in five years, could also mean tougher competition for Nomura Holdings Inc and Daiwa Securities Group Inc , Japan's two largest securities firms which have about 180 and 120 branches, respectively.
Kubo, 59, said there was a need to invest in the brokerage's retail network after years of tight cost controls under the previous owner Citigroup Inc , which sold the franchise, known as Nikko Cordial, to SMFG in 2009.
"Nikko is strong in retail but for the past several years we didn't really put resources into branches and staff," Kubo, previously chief financial officer of SMFG, told Reuters in an interview last week. His comments were embargoed for release on Monday.
"To be a winner over the long term there is a need to increase staff," Kubo said. Earlier this month, the company announced it would boost overall staffing by 600, to 8,600, under a three-year business plan.
A DIFFERENT LOOK
Kubo said he was confident that bold fiscal and monetary steps under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, aimed at pulling the economy out of deflation, would continue to push stock prices higher.
He would not be surprised, he said, if the Nikkei stock average <.n225> reached 16,000 by the end of 2013. That would be a gain of another 20 percent for the benchmark from its close on Friday at 13,316.48, after already rallying some 50 percent since Abe was tipped as a candidate for premier in mid-November.
Kubo also noted a marked increase in interest from foreign investors during the final months of his tenure as the banking group's CFO, when the aggressive economic stimulus espoused under "Abenomics" set stocks rising and the yen tumbling.
While it was normal to be called on by asset managers in charge of Japan, he also started to get requests for meetings from global managers of equity funds.
"There was a different look in their eyes. They wanted to know what was happening in Japan, what had changed," he said.
Japanese individuals, which park the bulk of their $15 trillion worth of savings in bank deposits and other low-yielding instruments, have been a particularly hard sell for Japanese stock brokers and asset managers. Memories still linger of the collapse of Japan's asset bubble two decades ago, which hit retail investors hard.
Kubo sees SMBC Nikko's ties to its parent bank, which owns 100 percent of the broker, as a key advantage over independent securities firms such as Nomura and Daiwa in tapping the renewed retail investor interest in stocks.
The brokerage has attracted 1 trillion yen in assets through referrals from SMFG bank clients since becoming part of Japan's third-largest banking group, Kubo said.
Of the 7 trillion yen increase in retail assets the brokerage is targeting over the next three years, it hopes to capture another 1 trillion yen through such referrals from SMFG, which has 10 times the number of accounts as SMBC Nikko, he said.
Only a month after the Boy Scouts brought in a badge for "Games Design", the Girl Scouts are offering one for "Games Development".
The difference is more than semantics; the guys only have to design a game.The girls, well, they'll have to use software and actually make one.
The badge is currently only available for Girl Scouts in Los Angeles, as it's part of a partnership with Women in Games International (WIGI), but it's hoped it will soon be implemented worldwide.
EXCLUSIVE: Women in Games International & Girl Scouts Creating Video Game Patch [Girl Gamer, via Ars Technica]
The Boy Scouts Add 'Games Design' to Their Merit Badge Program
Two years ago, the Cub Scouts offered their version of a merit badge for video gaming. This week,? Read?
NEW YORK (Reuters) - UBS' global head of industrial investment banking has left the firm to join The Blackstone Group's advisory business, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Karl Knapp was also a vice chairman at UBS, which is working to revamp its investment banking business after a number of high profile departures over the last few years.
UBS Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti hired Andrea Orcel to reshape its struggling investment bank business in July 2012. Italian banker Orcel has since brought in a group of close collaborators from Bank of America where he and Ermotti worked for years.
The Swiss bank cut its overall bonus pool for 2012 by 7 percent to 2.5 billion francs and introduced a scheme under which bankers can be paid in a form of deferred financial instruments that are revoked if the bank's capital targets are not met.
Knapp and UBS could not be immediately reached for comment.
(Reporting By Michael Erman and Soyoung Kim; Editing by Kenneth Barry)
Babies are aware of what's going on, not just reflexively reacting to it, scientists concluded after a series of experiments on babies as young as 5 months.
By Stephanie Pappas,?Live Science / April 18, 2013
A contestant in the 2000 American Baby Derby heads towards the finish line. Crawling babies raced to see who was fastest. According to the promoters, The Boston Baby Faire, a two-day event with more than 200 exhibitors of every type of baby product, is the largest baby exposition in the United States.
John Nordell / The Christian Science Monitor
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Infants have a conscious experience of the world at as early as 5 months of age, new research finds.
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New parents may raise an eyebrow at the idea that their baby might not be a conscious being, but scientists have, until now, not been able to clearly show that infants react with awareness rather than reflexively. Even in adults, much of the brain's processing of the world occurs without conscious awareness, said Sid Kouider, a neuroscientist at the Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique in Paris and the Technical University of Denmark. ?
One odd phenomenon, "blindsight," occurs in people with damage to part of their visual cortex. Although they cannot consciously see, they're able to "guess" the location of a visual stimulus or even catch objects tossed at them. Blindsight reveals that even unconscious processing in the brain can result in seemingly goal-directed behavior.
So when babies look toward a face or grasp an object, they, too, might be doing so without a conscious experience of what they're seeing.
"Infants might be responding in a kind of automatic manner," Kouider told LiveScience. Unfortunately, since babies don't talk, scientists can't test consciousness by asking infants what they experience.
Baby brain patterns
So Kouider and his colleagues turned to brain activity for a peak into babies' awareness. When adults are shown a subliminal image, their brains show a spike in electrical activity in sensory regions ? even though they may not consciously register that they've seen such a brief image.
When the image does consciously register, however, the brain shows a second leap in activity, typically about 300 milliseconds after the presentation of the image. This pattern reveals visual consciousness, Kouider said, which means that not only does the brain respond to the image, but also the owner of that brain perceives that response and has a conscious experience of the image.
The researchers wanted to know whether babies would show this same brain pattern. They recruited 30 5-month-olds, 29 12-month-olds and 21 15-month-olds and fitted the babies with electrode caps that measure the brain's electrical activity through the scalp.
Next, the babies sat on their mother or father's lap while watching a screen with a patterned image. For a fraction of a second (ranging from as quick as 17 milliseconds up to 300 milliseconds), the researchers flashed a photo of a face on the screen.
Experiencing awareness
The scientists then analyzed the babies' brain activity to search for the two-phase pattern that would indicate consciousness. They found it: Babies did indeed show a secondary spike in neural activity, just like adults.
But there was one important difference between the babies' neural patterns and those seen in adults, Kouider said. In 5-month-olds, it took 1.3 seconds for the second flurry of brain activity to show up. In adults, the timing is closer to three-tenths of a second, or 0.3 seconds.
"It's about four times slower, actually, in the younger infants," Kouider said.?
Older babies show snappier processing, though still not as quick as adults, the researchers found. In 12- to 15-month-olds, the second phase is stronger than in 5-month-olds and occurs around eight-tenths to nine-tenths of a second.
Carson Britt and Matthew Drake convinced everyone with their onstage demo of Laser Mountain at the Disrupt NY Hackathon. They attached Android phones to the Nerf guns (that TechCrunch gave away yesterday) to recreate a laser tag game with a real-time score server. After receiving the Nerf guns, they started working right away on Laser Mountain. “We already had the domain name lasermoutain.com, so we didn’t have a choice,” Britt said. When asked why they bought this domain, Drake answered, “I pick up domains all the time.” The Android phones track movements using the built-in gyroscopes and then transmit the information to a Node.js server. To register when someone is firing, they use the phone’s microphones and the Nerf gun’s loud firing noise. Last night, the team of two didn’t sleep at all to finish their hack on time for the onstage demo. It wasn’t their first hackathon but it was the first time at the Disrupt Hackathon. But it’s not the end for Laser Mountain. “We are going to Kickstarter it,” Drake said. With fewer than 24 hours of development, the team is certainly talented enough to succeed. You should watch the two developers play laser tag onstage:
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Public release date: 23-Apr-2013
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