Video: President Obama sings often, FLOTUS says

In an appearance on the ?Tonight Show with Jay Leno,? Michelle Obama praised her husband?s singing voice. NBC?s Brian Williams reports.

>>> speaking of "the tonight show with jay leno ," the first lady was jay's guest last night. jay was most interested about that clip of the president singing al green at the apollo theater in harlem a while back. that's when we learned president is evidently quite the singer around the people's house.

>> he does have a beautiful voice. he sings to me all the time.

>> really? like what does he sing in.

>> he sings that song. i said i bet he sings al green . he does that all the time. i can't sing.

>> i think would you say he has a better singing voice than you?

>> absolutely does, yes. he doesn't hesitate to show off his lungs to his wife. he's good.

>> mrs. obama added the first daughters are less thrilled, adding something all parents know, she said, quote, everything we do

Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/46228691/

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Word-of-Mind: Researchers Decode Words from the Brain's Auditory Activity

News | Mind & Brain

Interpreting signals from the brain's language-processing center may improve speech-recognition technology or provide a means for the severely disabled to communicate

By Daisy Yuhas ?| January 31, 2012?|

Image: Skip the Budgie, courtesy Flickr

Oh, to be a fly on the auditory cortex!

That, in a manner of speaking, is exactly what a group of researchers working in Berkeley and San Francisco have done. Measurements of electrical signals in the region of the brain that processes speech enabled the group to decode the words a subject was hearing?in essence, a form of neural eavesdropping.

The goal was far nobler than finding out what your boss really thinks of you or what is going on in the neighboring cubicle. The research sheds light on how the brain sorts out sounds and turns it into language. "The hope," says Brian Pasley, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author on the study, "is that this knowledge can be utilized to help restore communication in the severely disabled." The work could complement other efforts to reconstruct speech using muscle movements in the vocal tract, lips and tongue.

The researchers?who also hailed from the University of Maryland, College Park, Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, San Francisco?published their work today in PLoS Biology (pdf).

During the experiment, subjects listened to words on a loudspeaker or piped through earbuds: sometimes just isolated words like "jazz" or "property"; pseudo-words like "fook" and "nim"; and in a few cases full sentences. Later, the research team studied a record of this activity as it appeared in the brain's auditory cortex, the region that processes what is heard, allowing the comprehension of language, along with other sounds.

The subjects, 15 volunteers with normal language skills, also happened to be undergoing neurosurgical treatments for epilepsy or brain tumors. Because their brain activity was already being monitored at the cortex's surface for seizures, the researchers could examine these direct cortical measurements for their auditory study. Pasley explains that it would have been impossible to have access to such brain scans without these volunteers.

Pasley and colleagues crafted an algorithm?a computational model?to map the sound a listener was hearing to the electrode's measurements. The model could then "learn" how to match sound to the brain's electrical signals.

Next, researchers tested their model by turning the tables: Starting with a listener's brain activity, they used the model to reconstruct the word that a listener had heard. Specifically, the model reconstructed a sound, resembling but not immediately recognizable as a word. To close the loop, the researchers then looked through a set of 47 words to find one that most closely matched the model?s sound.

Not only could they successfully "eavesdrop" via cortical activity, the researchers created two versions of their model to account for different features of sound. One version of their computational model made use of a linear representation of sound, called a spectrogram, which plots frequency over time. The other version used a nonlinear representation of sound called a modulation model. Pasley explains that in the linear version, sound rhythms are coded by the brain?s oscillations whereas in the nonlinear version, rhythms are conveyed by the overall level of brain activity. At a slow speech rhythm, both models work well, but at faster rhythms the nonlinear sound representation creates a more accurate model.

This technique could improve speech-recognition technology. Although smart phones do a decent job, anyone who's received a cryptic Google voice transcription knows that speech recognition still is not perfect.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=daf033dfe2c91da053c75e34c2ba5727

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Summary Box: Chrysler posts net income of $183M (AP)

BIG TURNAROUND: Chrysler Group LLC turned its first annual net income since 1997. It emerged from bankruptcy in mid-2009.

BY THE NUMBERS: Net income totaled $183 million in 2011, compared with a loss of $652 million in 2010. Revenue rose 31 percent from a year earlier to $55 billion, reflecting stronger sales. Chrysler rode 16 new or revamped models to success during 2011. U.S. sales rose 26 percent and were led by the Ram pickup and Jeep Grand Cherokee SUV.

THE FORECAST: CEO Sergio Marchionne says he's optimistic about 2012 and beyond. The company is forecasting net income of about $1.5 billion in 2012 on revenue of around $65 billion. Marchionne promises more new products for 2013.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/earnings/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120201/ap_on_bi_ge/us_earns_chrysler_summary_box

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Pfizer recalls 28 lots of birth control pills (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Pfizer Inc. is recalling 1 million packets of birth control pills after uncovering a packaging error that could leave women with an inadequate dose of the hormone-based drugs and raise the risk that they will get pregnant accidentally.

The problem affects 14 lots of Lo/Ovral-28 tablets and 14 lots of generic Norgestrel and Ethinyl Estradiol tablets. Both products are manufactured by Pfizer and marketed in the U.S. by Akrimax Rx Products.

Pfizer found that some packets of the drugs had too many active tablets, while others had too few. Oral birth control products use a series of 21 drug tablets and 7 inactive sugar tablets to regulate the menstrual period while providing contraception.

A company spokeswoman said the problem was caused by both mechanical and visual inspection failures on the packaging line. She said the problem has been corrected.

Pfizer issued a statement saying the problem is not related to safety but does raise the risk of unintended pregnancy.

The affected packets have expiration dates ranging between July 31, 2013, and March 31, 2014.

The drugs were distributed to warehouses, clinics and retail pharmacies throughout the U.S.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120201/ap_on_he_me/us_pfizer_birth_control_recall

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HBT: Rangers have 'exploratory meeting' with Oswalt

As mentioned by Craig yesterday morning,?the Rangers did indeed have a meeting with Roy Oswalt today. But if you?re looking for any major developments, you?re probably going to be disappointed.

T.R. Sullivan of MLB.com reports that the situation ?remains?ongoing and unresolved.? Meanwhile, Richard Durrett of ESPNDallas.com described it as an ?exploratory meeting.? It?s probably fair to say that a contract was discussed today, but it?s also possible that they were talking about the logistics of a moon colony.

While the Rangers and Cardinals have full starting rotations at the moment, it seems pretty clear that both clubs have interest if the price is right. Rumors of a potential deal with St. Louis over the weekend turned out to be unfounded, but the club is reportedly trying to trade right-hander Kyle McClellan in order to clear some salary.

Source: http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/01/30/the-rangers-met-with-roy-oswalt-today/related/

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LaCie Little Big Disk Lightning Review: The Future Is Shockingly Super Fast [Hard Drives]

The Little Big Disk is simply the fastest way to backup your data you've ever used. But it's also, finally, a delivery on Apple's promise that Thunderbolt would do crazy things to our tech lives. That promise came true. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/F66FXJ-wKzA/lacie-little-big-disk-lightning-review-the-future-is-shockingly-super-fast

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Eurozone unemployment ends 2011 at record high

FILE - In this Oct. 30, 2007 file photo, employees are silhouetted at the Boehringer Ingelheim pharmaceutical factory in Ingelheim, central Germany. The Federal Labor Agency said Tuesday, Jan 31, 2012 that Germany's unemployment is back over 7 percent, after jumping 0.7 percentage points in January as winter hits certain industries such as construction. (AP Photo/Michael Pobst, file)

FILE - In this Oct. 30, 2007 file photo, employees are silhouetted at the Boehringer Ingelheim pharmaceutical factory in Ingelheim, central Germany. The Federal Labor Agency said Tuesday, Jan 31, 2012 that Germany's unemployment is back over 7 percent, after jumping 0.7 percentage points in January as winter hits certain industries such as construction. (AP Photo/Michael Pobst, file)

FILE - The Feb 24, 2011 file photo shows a workers mounting a door at the assembly line of the Golf production in the Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg, Germany. The Federal Labor Agency said Tuesday, Jan 31, 2012 that Germany's unemployment is back over 7 percent, after jumping 0.7 percentage points in January as winter hits certain industries such as construction. (AP Photo/Ferdinand Ostrop)

LONDON (AP) ? Unemployment across the 17 countries that use the euro ended 2011 at a record high of one person in every 10, official figures showed Tuesday, a day after EU leaders acknowledged they would have to boost economic growth with the same urgency that they had shown in combating their nations' debts.

Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, said the 10.4 per cent unemployment rate in December was unchanged at its highest level since the euro was launched in 1999, as November's was revised upward from a previous estimate of 10.3 percent. Unemployment has been steadily rising over the past year ? in December 2010, it stood at 9.5 percent ? largely because of Europe's debt crisis.

There are huge disparities across the eurozone, however, with those countries at the front line of Europe's current financial turmoil, such as Greece and Spain, suffering record rates of unemployment that are stoking concerns about the social fabric of their societies ? Spain's unemployment stands at a staggering 22.9 percent and Greece's is not far behind at 19.2 percent.

What even those figures mask is that unemployment among the young is much, much higher. Latest figures from Spain show unemployment among people aged under 25 was 48.7 percent, prompting concerns that an entire generation of people could fail to accumulate the necessary skills and experience for a prosperous life.

At the other end of the scale, some countries like Austria are operating not far off what is considered to be the natural rate of unemployment in an economy of 4.1 per cent, while Germany's rate at a post-unification low of 5.5 per cent.

Since Europe's debt crisis exploded around two years ago, the focus has been on austerity, with governments getting their houses in order with big, often-savage spending cuts, and tax increases.

However, there are growing signs that Europe is changing tack, and that measures to boost growth and jobs are now central to the crisis resolution effort.

On Monday, at a summit in Brussels designed to shore up the euro's budgetary defenses against debt, EU leaders promised to stimulate growth and create jobs across the region.

"Yes we need discipline, but we also need growth," said Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, the EU's executive arm.

The leaders pledged to offer more training for young people to ease their transition into the work force, to deploy unused development funds to create jobs, to reduce barriers to doing business across the EU's 27 countries and ensure that small businesses have access to credit.

The task is hand is massive, with just under 16.5 million people unemployed in the eurozone, up 751,000 on the year before. Across the EU, which includes non-euro countries such as Britain and Poland, the number of unemployed stands at 23.8 million, or 9.9 percent of the potential work force.

Even if reforms to economies across Europe help boost growth and potential employment opportunities, there are many headwinds that will be difficult to overcome, not least the fear that many economies will slip back into recession in the wake of ongoing austerity measures and subdued global demand.

"Governments in these countries urgently need to deliver labor market reforms that make it more attractive to hire workers and ensure that young people in particular are not put at risk of permanent exclusion from the work force," said Tom Rogers, a senior economic adviser at consultants Ernst & Young .

"Such reforms, if swiftly implemented, could have a powerful impact on confidence in the near term, and help ease the burden of the current crisis," Rogers added.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-01-31-EU-Europe-Economy/id-392c7c5fdb474a70b43fc58123deda08

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