Grocery delivery service is greener than driving to the store

Monday, April 29, 2013

At the end of a long day, it can be more convenient to order your groceries online while sitting on the living room couch instead of making a late-night run to the store. New research shows it's also much more environmentally friendly to leave the car parked and opt for groceries delivered to your doorstep.

University of Washington engineers have found that using a grocery delivery service can cut carbon dioxide emissions by at least half when compared with individual household trips to the store. Trucks filled to capacity that deliver to customers clustered in neighborhoods produced the most savings in carbon dioxide emissions.

"A lot of times people think they have to inconvenience themselves to be greener, and that actually isn't the case here," said Anne Goodchild, UW associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. "From an environmental perspective, grocery delivery services overwhelmingly can provide emissions reductions."

Consumers have increasingly more grocery delivery services to choose from. AmazonFresh operates in the Seattle area, while Safeway's service is offered in many U.S. cities. FreshDirect delivers to residences and offices in the New York City area. Last month, Google unveiled a shopping delivery service experiment in the San Francisco Bay Area, and UW alumni recently launched the grocery service Geniusdelivery in Seattle.

As companies continue to weigh the costs and benefits of offering a delivery service, Goodchild and Erica Wygonik, a UW doctoral candidate in civil and environmental engineering, looked at whether using a grocery delivery service was better for the environment, with Seattle as a test case. In their analysis, they found delivery service trucks produced 20 to 75 percent less carbon dioxide than the corresponding personal vehicles driven to and from a grocery store.

They also discovered significant savings for companies ? 80 to 90 percent less carbon dioxide emitted ? if they delivered based on routes that clustered customers together, instead of catering to individual household requests for specific delivery times.

"What's good for the bottom line of the delivery service provider is generally going to be good for the environment, because fuel is such a big contributor to operating costs and greenhouse gas emissions," Wygonik said. "Saving fuel saves money, which also saves on emissions."

The research was funded by the Oregon Department of Transportation and published in the Journal of the Transportation Research Forum.

The UW researchers compiled Seattle and King County data, assuming that every household was a possible delivery-service customer. Then, they randomly drew a portion of those households from that data to identify customers and assign them to their closest grocery store. This allowed them to reach across the entire city, without bias toward factors such as demographics and income level.

They used an Environmental Protection Agency modeling tool to calculate emissions at a much more detailed level than previous studies have done. Using factors such as vehicle type, speed and roadway type, they calculated the carbon dioxide produced for every mile for every vehicle.

Emissions reductions were seen across both the densest parts and more suburban areas of Seattle. This suggests that grocery delivery in rural areas could lower carbon dioxide production quite dramatically.

"We tend to think of grocery delivery services as benefiting urban areas, but they have really significant potential to offset the environmental impacts of personal shopping in rural areas as well," Wygonik said.

Work commuters are offered a number of incentives to reduce traffic on the roads through discounted transit fares, vanpools and carpooling options. Given the emissions reductions possible through grocery delivery services, the research raises the question of whether government or industry leaders should consider incentives for consumers to order their groceries online and save on trips to the store, Goodchild said.

In the future, Goodchild and Wygonik plan to look at the influence of customers combining their grocery shopping with a work commute trip and the impact of the delivery service's home-base location on emissions.

###

University of Washington: http://www.uwnews.org

Thanks to University of Washington for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

This press release has been viewed 124 time(s).

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127978/Grocery_delivery_service_is_greener_than_driving_to_the_store

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Officials say threatened FAA towers to remain open

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has assured lawmakers the Obama administration will prevent the closure of 149 small airport towers as well as end furloughs of air traffic controllers nationwide as a result of legislation passed by Congress, according to officials involved in negotiations on the bill.

The disclosure came as senators sought signatures on a letter to LaHood saying that that their support of the legislation "was based on the understanding that the contract towers would be fully funded." In all, 149 towers are ticketed for possible closure beginning June 15 as the FAA carries out its share of the $85 billion in across-the-board budget cuts that took effect in March at numerous federal agencies.

The letter said the towers, which are staffed by employees under contract to the FAA, are a "vital public safety and economic development asset for dozens of communities - many of them rural - in every corner of the country." It was circulated by Sens. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.

The developments coincided with congressional passage during the day of a follow-up bill that fixed a stenographic error in legislation that cleared late last week. It was designed to give LaHood flexibility to shift up to $253 million among various accounts to "prevent reduced operations and staffing of the FAA," but the original measure lacked the letter "s'' on the word "accounts."

President Barack Obama is expected to sign the bill quickly.

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., the senior Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, said he met with LaHood on Thursday and spoke with him again the following day about the legislation. "I think his expectation is there is enough money and enough flexibility for him to" keep the towers open and end the furloughs of FAA employees, the South Dakotan said in a telephone interview.

"I would expect him to address that based on the discussions that took place."

He added that when he and Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W. Va., met last week with LaHood and FAA administration Michael Huerta, "it was understood they would take care of both of those issues if we gave them the money." Other officials said LaHood had provided similar assurances, although they spoke on condition of anonymity because they lacked authority to be quoted by name.

Justin Nisly, a spokesman for LaHood, had no immediate comment. The Transportation Department has not yet announced how it will use the flexibility provided in the legislation.

The impetus for the legislation was private pressure from the airlines whose business was disrupted by air traffic furloughs, coupled with public outrage from travelers who were forced to endure delays.

But political calculations also figured into a mini-drama that resulted in the bill's passage late last week, as Obama and Republicans continue to blame one another for the inconveniences caused by across-the-board spending cuts.

The White House abruptly retreated under pressure last Wednesday when it indicated it would accept an easing of the FAA cuts while leaving the balance of the $85 billion in reductions unchanged. Given lengthy political struggle surrounding across-the-board cuts, the issue was sensitive enough so that when Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine and Mark Udall, D-Colo., initially proposed legislation that explicitly said the measure would assure the towers remain open, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., objected, according to several officials briefed on the discussions.

The wording was altered to drop the explicit reference, although the flexibility to keep the towers open was retained. It was not clear whether Reid insisted on his own behalf, as a proxy for other Democrats, or on behalf of the White House. But it was not the first time the leader has become involved in a struggle over the fate of the towers.

When the Senate was debating a different measure earlier in the year, he quietly prevented Moran from gaining a vote on a stand-alone proposal to keep the towers open.

A spokesman for Reid was not immediately available to comment.

Huerta testified recently that the cost of cancelling FAA furloughs would be $220 million through Sept. 30, leaving about $33 million in freed-up funding to maintain the towers. He also said the agency is working with about 50 communities and airport operators in hopes of arranging alternative funding.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/officials-threatened-faa-towers-remain-open-203307176.html

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Reading wordless storybooks to toddlers may expose them to richer language

Apr. 29, 2013 ? Researchers at the University of Waterloo have found that children hear more complex language from parents when they read a storybook with only pictures compared to a picture-vocabulary book. The findings appear in the latest issue of the journal First Language.

"Too often, parents dismiss picture storybooks, especially when they are wordless, as not real reading or just for fun," said the study's author, Professor Daniela O'Neill. "But these findings show that reading picture storybooks with kids exposes them to the kind of talk that is really important for children to hear, especially as they transition to school."

The study, by Professor O'Neill of the Department of Psychology at Waterloo, and Angela Nyhout, a graduate student, recorded 25 mothers while they read to their toddlers both a wordless picture storybook and a vocabulary book with pictures.

"What we found was that moms in our study significantly more frequently used forms of complex talk when reading the picture storybook to their child than the picture vocabulary book," said Professor O'Neill.

The researchers were especially interested in looking at the language mothers use when reading both wordless picture storybooks and picture vocabulary books to see if parents provided extra information to children like relating the events of the story to the child's own experiences or asking their child to make predictions.

"So, when reading the picture story, we would hear moms say things such as 'where do you think the squirrel is going to go?' or 'we saw a squirrel this morning in the backyard.' But we didn't hear this kind of complex talk as often with vocabulary books, where mentioning just the name of the animal, for example, was more common, " said Professor O'Neill.

The results of the study are significant for both parents and educators because vocabulary books are often marketed as being more educational. "Books of all kinds can build children's language and literacy skills, but they do so perhaps in different ways," said Professor O'Neill. "It's exciting to find that even short wordless picture books provide children with exposure to the kinds of sophisticated language that they will encounter at school and that lay the foundation for later reading development."

A Research Development Initiative grant, which the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada awarded to Professor O'Neill, supported this research.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Waterloo.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. A. Nyhout, D. K. O'Neill. Mothers' complex talk when sharing books with their toddlers: Book genre matters. First Language, 2013; 33 (2): 115 DOI: 10.1177/0142723713479438

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/l-KZeG6eXSs/130429164821.htm

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Rodney Allen Rippy, child star, bows out of Compton mayor race

Rodney Allen Rippy finished back in a pack of 12 candidates vying for mayor of Compton, Calif. Rodney Allen Rippy shot to fame as the kid in the Jack in the Box "Too bigga eat!" TV ads.

By John Rogers,?Associated Press / April 27, 2013

Former child actor Rodney Allen Rippy outside Compton City Hall in Compton, Calif. Rippy ran running for Mayor of Compton.

(AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes

Enlarge

Before he suddenly surfaced in the race for mayor of this hardscrabble Los Angeles suburb, Rodney Allen Rippy's name was likely to evoke that question inspired by that class of former child stars who didn't die young, end up in jail or a celebrity rehab series: "Whatever happened to that guy?"

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Rippy was just 3 in 1972, when he became the toast of a generation as the pint-sized TV pitchman for the Jack In The Box fast-food chain. When he picked up a hamburger that looked as a big as a hubcap and tried to cram it into his mouth, America was entranced. When he finally said, "Too bigga eat!" a national catchphrase was born.

Soon the cute, chubby-cheeked youngster with the Afro as big as his head was hanging out in Hollywood with Michael Jackson. He made movie cameos and recorded a hit album called "Take Life a Little Easier."

Then the 1970s ended, and so did Rippy's career.

More than 30 years later, he resurfaced as a candidate for mayor in a city known variously over the years as the birthplace of gangsta rap, the murder capital of the country and the home of the drive-by shooting.

Although he got only 75 votes, finishing 10th among 12 candidates. The final results in the primary election, released Thursday, show that Aja Brown beat long-time Mayor Eric Perrodin, and will now compete in a run off with former Mayor Omar Bradley, who is currently facing corruption charges.

But Rippy's earnest but futile campaign raised the inevitable question of where he had been.

Rippy never strayed far from Hollywood, it turns out. He simply stepped away from the cameras.

When his Jack In The Box career ended about the time he was finishing high school, he went to college and earned a marketing degree.

"I wanted to continue to act, but at the time acting was a thing that unless you were really burning hot, you better have something on the back burner," he said recently over lunch at a Compton restaurant down the street from City Hall.

Seeing how the adults around him had turned a cute little kid from Long Beach into a national star, he decided marketing was the way to go.

He formed Ripped Marketing Group in 2000 and has promoted everything from smokeless cigarettes to leisure wear to country music. It gave him the idea, he says, that he could promote Compton too. He wanted to change the image of a city that, although financially troubled, has seen crime and gang violence drop precipitously in recent years.

He wasn't the first child star to remerge from anonymity to run for office. His contemporary, the late Gary Coleman, did the same when he launched his quixotic campaign for governor of California in 2003.

Unlike Coleman and many other former child stars, Rippy never got into a fistfight with an autograph seeker. He hasn't been caught in a crack house or drunkenly crashed his car.

"Don't get me wrong, I know the good, the bad, the ugly, but I have sense enough to stay away from it," he said. "My mom always said, 'Rodney, you need to understand this: It's very easy to get into trouble. It's very difficult to get out."

The Afro and the chubby cheeks are gone, but Rippy's appearance often has people scratching their heads, wondering where they've seen him before. Their reaction when they find out is sometimes like that of Saudia Pearsall's.

"THE RODNEY ALLEN RIPPY?" the waitress shouted with glee after she spotted him at a back table.

"Ahhhhh! I might vote for you just because I like you," she added, laughing. "That little Afro. 'This burger's too bigga eat!'"

A day later, she was having second thoughts, realizing she didn't know much about his campaign.

Her reaction ? delight at meeting a celebrity but wondering what the heck he's doing here ? is something Rippy says he sees often.

Rippy lost out on a marketing job once, when the person he was to work for started to believe he was being punked for a reality show: "He thought it was some kind of game, like I had some sort of hat-cam on."

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/dMWfhErUqN8/Rodney-Allen-Rippy-child-star-bows-out-of-Compton-mayor-race

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Ear Infections in Babies | Natural Holistic Health Blog

Babies can be fussy for a number of reasons. One reason is that their ears are hurting them. This could signify that an ear infection is in progress. Here is some helpful information on ear infections and what to do if your baby shows the signs.

An ear infection is not uncommon in babies. It occurs when there is a build-up of fluid behind the ear drum, or tympanic membrane. In that same area are the Eustachian tubes which are there to drain fluid and maintain our balance. But, sometimes these tubes can get blocked after a cold or an infection in the sinuses.

What are the signs of an ear infection? Well, babies can?t tell you what is happening to them so they cry, but this cry is often accompanied by other behaviors. You may notice that your baby pulls at their ears, leaving them red. Other signs include drainage from the ear, frequent diarrhea, fever and lack of appetite. If you notice these things happening after they have just gotten over a cold, it could be the final piece of the puzzle.

It is time to visit the doctor. Infections of the middle ear can go from bad to worse if left untreated. The pediatrician will examine your child?s ears and may refer you to an otolaryngologist. This doctor specializes in matters of the ears, nose and throat. They can prescribe a more detailed course of action for you and your baby.

The first thing that the doctor will do is look again with an otoscope. They may prescribe antibiotic drops to try and reduce the infection and drain the fluid naturally through the Eustachian tubes. For the pain, he may prescribe ibuprofen. Since babies like to squirm, lay them on their sides when administering the drops so they all get into the ear canal.

If the symptoms don?t subside, he will want to see you back. Sometimes frequent ear infections may require a surgical procedure called a myringotomy. The doctor makes an incision into the ear drum and inserts a tympanostomy tube to help the fluid drain away. Through the tube, drops can be administered and the bacteria can be washed away resolving the infection.

It is not uncommon for babies and young children to have many ear infections. They are around many other children in daycare and play centers. This exposes them to a greater amount of germs than they would encounter inside their home. Keep your child up on their immunizations to reduce the frequency of infections and illnesses they catch.

Breastfeeding your child also increases their immunity. Doctors recommend breastfeeding for at least six months for your baby to get the immunological boost.

If your child has the signs of an ear infection, get them to a doctor right away. Untreated, ear infections can affect their hearing.

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About Dee Braun

Dee is an Adv. Certified Aromatherapist, Reiki Master, Adv. Color/Crystal Therapist, Herbalist, Dr. of Reflexology and single mom who is dedicated to helping others any way she can. One way she chooses to help is by offering information on the benefits and uses of natural health and healing methods for the well-being of both people and pets. Dee also teaches Aromatherapy, Reflexology and Color/Crystal Therapy at the Alternative Healing Academy

Source: http://www.natural-holistic-health.com/ear-infections-in-babies/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ear-infections-in-babies

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Deal of the Day ? Best Gear for Multitasking

Instead of a single product for Saturday’s Deal, LogicBUY has information about some of the Best Tech Gadgets for Multitasking. ?With increased work efficiency, we can get more done in less time, leaving more time to spend with our families and still have some time to work on our health. Check the above link for [...]

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Transit bus, train crash in Pa.; at least 10 hurt

EVANS CITY, Pa. (AP) ? A rural transit bus carrying passengers to a program that offers services for people with developmental disabilities and a freight train crashed at an unmarked railroad crossing Friday morning, injuring at least 10 people.

Video from local TV helicopters suggested that the small bus may have hit the train and then come to rest about 20 feet away. The bus was upright on an embankment and had front-end damage. Police were investigating whether dense morning fog contributed to the crash.

The crash occurred in Evans City, about 25 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, at about 8:10 a.m. Friday. Eleven people, including the driver, were on the bus, and at least 10 were being taken to hospitals, officials said.

Three men and a woman were being treated in the Allegheny General Hospital emergency room in Pittsburgh, said hospital spokesman Dan Laurent. The men were 35, 38 and 75 years old, and the woman's age was not immediately available.

Police said the Butler Area Rural Transit bus was on its way to a program known as Lifesteps.

A woman who identified herself as the granddaughter of a 90-year-old woman on the bus told WPXI-TV that her grandmother was headed to geriatric care program at Lifesteps. The woman said the bus takes adult patients of all ages to the facility for a variety of programs.

A Lifesteps official did not immediately return a call for comment, but the facility's website said it is a nonprofit that has operated since 1923. Lifesteps "services for children, families, adults with special needs and seniors are designed to encourage growth, independence, confidence and dignity," the website said.

The transit agency's website indicates it partners with the Alliance For Nonprofit Resources, a social service agency based in the county seat of Butler, to provide reduced-fee transportation for people with disabilities. Neither agency immediately returned calls Friday.

The transit agency's website said it operates 17 wheelchair-accessible buses that make about 300 trips a day, six days a week.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/transit-bus-train-crash-pa-least-10-hurt-140214687.html

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NYC officials seek human remains amid plane debris

NEW YORK (AP) ? The New York City medical examiner's office plans to resume searching for human remains two blocks from the World Trade Center after the sudden discovery of an airplane's landing gear.

Medical examiner's spokeswoman Ellen Borakove told The Associated Press on Saturday that the alley behind a mosque site will first be tested as part of a standard health and safety evaluation.

Borakove says sifting for human remains will begin at 8 a.m. Tuesday.

The New York Police Department has declared the alley a crime scene, documenting it with photos and restricting access.

Authorities say the rusted landing gear is believed to be from a Sept. 11 hijacked plane. Police were guarding the area as a crime scene Saturday.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nyc-officials-seek-human-remains-amid-plane-debris-171255347.html

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Rethinking early atmospheric oxygen

Thursday, April 25, 2013

A research team of biogeochemists at the University of California, Riverside has provided a new view on the relationship between the earliest accumulation of oxygen in the atmosphere, arguably the most important biological event in Earth history, and its relationship to the sulfur cycle.

A general consensus exists that appreciable oxygen first accumulated in Earth's atmosphere around 2.4 to 2.3 billion years ago. Though this paradigm is built upon a wide range of geological and geochemical observations, the famous "smoking gun" for what has come to be known as the "Great Oxidation Event" (GOE) comes from the disappearance of anomalous fractionations in rare sulfur isotopes.

"These isotope fractionations, often referred to as 'mass-independent fractionations,' or 'MIF' signals, require both the destruction of sulfur dioxide by ultraviolet energy from the sun in an atmosphere without ozone and very low atmospheric oxygen levels in order to be transported and deposited in marine sediments," said Christopher T. Reinhard, the lead author of the research paper and a former UC Riverside graduate student. "As a result, their presence in ancient rocks is interpreted to reflect vanishingly low atmospheric oxygen levels continuously for the first ~2 billion years of Earth's history."

However, diverse types of data are emerging that point to the presence of atmospheric oxygen, and, by inference, the early emergence of oxygenic photosynthesis hundreds of millions of years before these MIF signals disappear from the rock record. These observations motivated Reinhard and colleagues to explore the possible conditions under which inherited MIF signatures may have persisted in the rock record long after oxygen accumulated in the atmosphere.

Using a simple quantitative model describing how sulfur and its isotopes cycle through the Earth's crust, the researchers discovered that under certain conditions these MIF signatures can persist within the ocean and marine sediments long after O2 increases in the atmosphere. Simply put, the weathering of rocks on the continents can transfer the MIF signal to the oceans and their sediments long after production of this fingerprint has ceased in an oxygenated atmosphere.

"This lag would blur our ability to date the timing of the GOE and would allow for dynamic rising and falling oxygen levels during a protracted transition from an atmosphere without oxygen to one rich in this life-giving gas," Reinhard said.

Study results appear in Nature's advanced online publication on April 24.

Reinhard explained that once MIF signals formed in an oxygen-poor atmosphere are captured in pyrite and other minerals in sedimentary rocks, they are recycled when those rocks are later uplifted as mountain ranges and the pyrite is oxidized.

"Under certain conditions, this will create a sort of 'memory effect' of these MIF signatures, providing a decoupling in time between the burial of MIF in sediments and oxygen accumulation at Earth's surface," he said.

According to the researchers, the key here is burying a distinct MIF signal in deep sea sediments, which are then subducted and removed from Earth's surface.

"This would create a complementary signal in minerals that are weathered and delivered to the oceans, something that we actually see evidence of in the rock record," said Noah Planavsky, the second author of the research paper and a former UC Riverside graduate student now at Caltech. "This signal can then be perpetuated through time without the need to generate it within the atmosphere contemporaneously."

Reinhard, now a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech and soon to be an assistant professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, explained that although the researchers' new model provides a plausible mechanism for reconciling recent conflicting data, this can only occur when certain key conditions are met ? and these conditions are likely to have changed through time during Earth's long early history.

"There is obviously much further work to do, but we hope that our model is one step toward a more integrated view of how Earth's crust, mantle and atmosphere interact in the global sulfur cycle," he said.

Timothy W. Lyons, a professor of biogeochemistry at UCR and the principal investigator of the research project noted that this is a fundamentally new and potentially very important way of looking at the sulfur isotope record and its relationship to biospheric oxygenation.

"The message is that sulfur isotope records, when viewed through the filter of sedimentary recycling, may challenge efforts to precisely date the GOE and its relationship to early life, while opening the door to the wonderful unknowns we should expect and embrace," he said.

###

University of California - Riverside: http://www.ucr.edu

Thanks to University of California - Riverside for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

This press release has been viewed 27 time(s).

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127923/Rethinking_early_atmospheric_oxygen

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Adam Savader, Ryan-Romney Intern, Arrested For Sextortion Against Women

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First Hands-On With The Incident Tech gTar

I was lucky enough to get Incident Tech's new gTar, a MIDI/DSP-based guitar that is perfect for both teaching and composition. The guitar, with the current software and feature set, isn't quite the shredder's dream - yet - but as a teaching system it's excellent and I found it quite playable both "live" and while recording MIDI music.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/NCVzFUoTd5E/

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Hoax tweet tests firms that filter social media for Wall Street

By Ryan Vlastelica

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Firms that scour social media sites such as Twitter for information to help investors and traders make money faced their biggest test yet this week.

A tweet reporting explosions at the White House appeared on the Associated Press's official feed Tuesday afternoon, sparking a temporary sell-off that briefly wiped out about $140 billion in market value on the S&P 500.

The tweet was a fake and the account had been hacked. But for analytics firms that comb through tweets for tradable ideas - a small but growing niche industry - it was the latest example of the challenges they face in delivering information to a client base that often prizes speed first.

Failure to highlight a tweet saying President Barack Obama had been injured in an explosion would have left people in the dust as the market zoomed lower - but a hair-trigger response to sell may have been worse.

Some of these firms did throw up red flags, based on other tweets or on the unusual nature of the news, but the selloff had already happened. For some of the firms, that's just fine - they're aware of their limitations.

"The guys who trade on tweets as they happen will always be susceptible to things like this, that's why we've shied away from delivering every tweet to people for them to trade off," said Oli Freeling-Wilkinson, chief executive officer of the London-based analytics firm Knowsis, one of several recent start-ups which sell subscriptions to investors and institutions such as retail brokers and fund managers.

"Algorithms used to trade off news headlines, now they trade off tweets. That's very dodgy, very shaky ground."

For Knowsis and other firms doing this analytical work, the ability to discern news from noise is the key to success, and it appears to be getting harder. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said earlier this month that companies can use Twitter, Facebook and other social media to make key announcements.

Tuesday's fateful tweet appeared at 1:07 p.m. EDT. It was picked up almost immediately by investors and analytic companies scanning Twitter for key words to determine breaking news or measure sentiment. Stocks and commodities moved sharply lower and bond prices soared.

Within minutes, analytics firm Dataminr issued an alert saying the AP account was probably hacked, citing another tweet by a reporter in the White House basement.

That warning came at 1:11 pm EDT, "just four minutes after the fake message had been published on the AP's hacked Twitter account," said Ted Bailey, New York-based chief executive of Dataminr, which was founded in 2009.

The difficulty of reacting to such news can be seen in this case, however. By the time Dataminr's message went out, the market recovery was already underway.

The nature of the hoax created a challenge as the AP account is considered a trusted source. Past hoaxes originated from newly created accounts that were more readily identifiable as suspect. But the extraordinary nature of the news would have been another cautionary signal, some said, especially in the absence of similar reports by other news outlets.

"We would have published the AP tweet but because it could not have been verified at the time we would have clearly marked it as a rumor," said Emmett Kilduff, chief executive officer at Eagle Intel in Dublin. "When it was proven to be false we would have published a note to our clients saying so."

Kilduff, in an email, noted differences in the language of the fake tweet and official Associated Press style that could have outed it as a hoax, including the use of capital letters and that it referred to "Barack Obama" instead of "President Obama" or "Obama," the two ways the AP refers to the president.

European markets were closed at the time of the hoax tweet.

The mini-crash sparked by the bogus tweet was reminiscent of the "flash crash" of May 2010 when security prices suddenly plunged, as if the floor had been yanked from underneath them.

The free-fall nature can be explained by a couple of factors. For one, automatic stop-loss orders, which are designed to limit an investor's losses, kicked in, adding to the selling.

In addition, trading firms that provide liquidity pulled their bids, making the selloff more chaotic. Similar moves worsened the flash crash. In a market where participants step back when news is either onerous or uncertain, the combination of stop-loss orders and market makers withdrawing bids can make a selloff worse.

"We see this every time this type of news comes out: liquidity evaporates quickly. High-frequency traders cancel their orders on even one little tweet," said Dennis Dick, a trader at Bright Trading LLC in Las Vegas.

Freeling-Wilkinson said analytics firms like his are more interested in looking at trends than individual tweets.

"I would never recommend that anyone trades on a single tweet," he said.

(Additional reporting by Herb Lash; Editing by Claudia Parsons)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hoax-tweet-tests-firms-filter-social-media-wall-075118556--sector.html

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Spring storm socks Midwest, Deep South

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) ? A powerful spring storm unleashed tornadoes and winds strong enough to peel the roofs from homes in the Deep South and heaped snow and ice on the Midwest, killing three people and leaving thousands without power.

The National Weather Service confirmed Friday that the storm system spawned 12 tornadoes in six states in recent days. Forecasters said they had confirmed three tornadoes each in Missouri, Arkansas and Alabama; and one each in Louisiana, Mississippi and Georgia.

Emergency officials said one person was killed by a tornado in Mississippi on Thursday. In Missouri, a utility worker repairing power lines was electrocuted, and a woman in Nebraska died when she tried to trudge through a blinding snowstorm from her broken-down car to her house a mile away.

Golf-ball and baseball-sized hail pelted parts of Georgia and the Carolinas late Thursday and early Friday. The second day of play at the Masters at Augusta National in eastern Georgia began as scheduled Friday morning, though, and skies had cleared by the afternoon. The course was a bit wet but otherwise undamaged.

High winds knocked down trees and power lines across the Southeast. Sleet and freezing rain made driving treacherous in northern New York, where several schools closed Friday and scores of others delayed the start of classes.

And more wintry weather was on the way for the nation's northern tier.

The weather service was predicting that another storm system would hit the north-central U.S. starting Saturday afternoon, potentially bringing 6 to 12 inches of snow to parts of eastern Montana, much of North Dakota, northern South Dakota and northern Minnesota.

In the Deep South, meanwhile, families and business persons were picking up the pieces Friday after powerful storms pounded the region a day earlier.

In Mississippi, Emergency Management Agency spokesman Jeff Rent said that one person died and 10 people were injured after a tornado struck Kemper County in the far-eastern part of the state on Thursday. Authorities said the man was killed when the tornado ripped apart a business. The National Weather Service said Friday that that tornado was a category EF-3 storm, with winds of 145 mph.

At Contract Fabricators Inc. in Kemper County, bent pieces of tin hung from a heavily damaged building. A tractor-trailer was twisted and overturned, and debris from the business was strewn through the woods across the street.

Derek Cody, an amateur storm chaser who works at East Mississippi Community College in Scooba, just south of Shuqualak (pronounced SHUG-a-lock), told The Associated Press he drove north on Thursday to the small town to try to catch a glimpse of a tornado.

Cody said the center of Shuqualak, an eastern Mississippi town of 500 people, was unaffected. But he said a gas station and about 10 or so houses west of the town center were damaged. He said one house was "completely flattened" with debris blown across the road.

Charlotte Conner, 47, and her mother were in a small, concrete block apartment on her family's property in Shuqualak in Noxubee County when the twister mowed it to the ground. The building, an old country store converted to an apartment, was reduced to a heap of broken concrete blocks and boards.

Conner said in a telephone interview Friday that she grabbed her mother's hand to keep the woman from being sucked out of the house. The two women had injured knees, scratches and bruises, and Conner had five stitches in her chin.

"I feel like I've been run over by an elephant and a train, but we're alive," Conner said. "It was just the hand of God that kept us safe."

Conner's aunt, Cindy Moore, 56, worried that the two women had been killed when she saw the roof of the concrete block building they were in hung in trees across the street in Shuqualak and their belongings scattered in the yard.

In Alabama, officials confirmed a tornado with winds up to 120 mph blew through a rural stretch east of Montgomery. Two weaker tornadoes touched down in Huntsville ? about 190 miles north of Notasulga, where an EF-2 tornado hit. No one was hurt in the state, though damage was scattered across several counties.

Friday-morning light showed there wasn't much left of the two-story home near Notasulga that 41-year-old James Brooks shared with his wife, Billieanne, and their three children.

With the lights out and the storm bearing down on the home, Brooks said he went to the kitchen to get a candle. Loud thunder rumbled continuously, and he dove to the floor.

Then, he said, "The house exploded."

Much of Brooks' roof was missing afterward, his wooden workshop was gone and linens hung across bare rafters. His two boats were damaged along with two cars and two trucks; the trampoline was in the neighbor's yard.

"What can we do?" asked Brooks, who built the home.

The system first swept across the nation's midsection Wednesday night and pummeled portions of Missouri. An EF-2 tornado damaged dozens of homes in the St. Louis suburb of Hazelwood, in this case bringing winds of 111 to 125 mph, the National Weather Service said Friday. More than 23,000 homes and businesses lost power. A utility worker for Ameren Missouri was electrocuted while helping to repair damage, the company said.

In the upper Midwest over the past couple of days, heavy, wet snow, ice and wind left thousands of homes and businesses without power. Some rivers topped their banks in Michigan, forcing officials to close roads and some residents to evacuate their homes.

In Wisconsin, authorities in Kenosha County on Friday closed a section of State Highway 75 as they kept an eye on a levee that was in danger of failing because of heavy rains.

As South Dakota residents started to clean up after a major spring storm brought freezing rain and heavy snow that snapped tree branches, residents of North Dakota were bracing for another wallop.

North Dakota could see freezing rain and as much as a foot of snow this weekend, the weather service said. Strong winds could accompany the storm, creating near-blizzard conditions and making travel hazardous.

___

Associated Press writers Kristi Eaton in Sioux Falls, N.D.; Jim Suhr and Jim Salter in St. Louis; Jeff Amy in Jackson, Miss.; David Runk in Detroit; Kathy Wingard in Notasulga, Ala.; Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Ala., and Phillip Lucas and Norman Gomlak in Atlanta contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/spring-storm-socks-midwest-deep-south-3-dead-143748114.html

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