Fantasy Baseball 2013: Chicago Cubs Season Preview

Jerry Lai- USA TODAY Sports

Not much went right for the Chicago Cubs?in 2012. They didn?t finish last in the NL Central but don?t let that fool you because they had the second worst record in baseball. They have gotten slightly worse each of the last three seasons to the point that they lost 101 games last year. Chicago is the only team to finish with a sub-.500 record and keep a payroll over $100 million (aside from the Toronto Blue Jays?who are obviously on the rise). Without any signs of optimism, the Cubs appear destined to suffer through at least one more season of mediocrity. Their fantasy baseball prospects reflect the poor product that they intend to field in 2013.

After finishing 26^th in team batting average 28^th in runs, Chicago is prepared to enter the 2013 season with no indication of improvement. The only change to their lineup is the transition between a Reed Johnson/Bryan LaHair platoon to a Scott Hairston/Nate Schierholtz platoon in right field.

Aside from that minor change, the fate of the Cubs offense rests on the shoulders of Anthony Rizzo, Alfonso Soriano and Starlin Castro. Rizzo and Castro are the lone bright spots going forward for this organization. General Manager?Theo Epstein will try to work his magic to build a winning team?around them in the near future.

Unfortunately, Epstein seems to have things moving in the opposite direction. The only major transaction was the signing of Edwin Jackson who is the owner of a 4.40 career ERA. Without much organizational depth at pitching, Chicago was forced to spend on a long-term solution in free agency.

Jackson should make the Cubs rotation marginally better but regardless, there may not be any worthwhile fantasy options from this staff.

Chicago?s top five fantasy hitters: 1.Starlin Castro, 2. Anthony Rizzo, 3. Alfonso Soriano, 4. Darwin Barney, 5. Scott Hairston

Chicago?s top three fantasy pitchers: 1. Matt Garza, 2. Edwin Jackson, 3. Kyuji Fujikawa

Chicago projected record: 65-97

Stay tuned over the next month while I preview one team each day in preparation for the 2013 baseball season.

Source: http://www.rantsports.com/fantasy/2013/02/20/fantasy-baseball-2013-chicago-cubs-season-preview/

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PS4 price of ?300 under consideration at Sony - report

Sony is said to be considering launching the PlayStation 4 at around ?300.

That's according to a new rumour from The Times, which cites 'industry sources and leaked internal documents'.

Many blamed the PS3's slow start at life partly on its high price point - ?425 for the original 60GB model. If The Times' report is accurate, it would seem Sony is targeting a more aggressive pricing strategy with its new high-end machine.

Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun claimed earlier this month that Sony has internally set the PS4 price above 40,000 Yen - a figure that would represent about $430/?275 at current exchange rates.

Sony will host a PlayStation Meeting event on Wednesday, February 20, when it's expected to unveil the PlayStation 4.

Follow the latest PS4 news in our live blog and head through here to see what we expect to be announced at the PlayStation Meeting this week.

Source: http://rss.computerandvideogames.com/c/674/f/8604/s/28b22e7a/l/0L0Scomputerandvideogames0N0C391930A0Cps40Eprice0Eof0Epound30A0A0Eunder0Econsideration0Eat0Esony0Ereport0C0Dcid0FOTC0ERSS0Gattr0FCVG0EGeneral0ERSS/story01.htm

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Is It a Party of Abstractions? (talking-points-memo)

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Conflicting accounts by Egypt man dragged naked

CAIRO (AP) ? An Egyptian man who was beaten and dragged naked by riot police during a violent protest changed his story on Sunday, telling prosecutors that security forces harmed him ? a day after he accused protesters of undressing and assaulting him.

The beating was caught on camera by The Associated Press, and the video was broadcast live on Egyptian television late Friday as protests raged in the streets outside the presidential palace. The AP video showed police trying to bundle the naked man into a police van after beating him.

The beating prompted a rare statement of regret from the Interior Ministry, which promised to investigate the attack. The president's office said it was pained by the images and called the assault "shocking."

A new video emerged online Sunday of Hamda Saber in a hospital bed telling activists that police apologized for any wrongdoing. A male and female are heard urging him to speak honestly and not to accept any payments for absolving police in any abuse.

Saber was receiving treatment at a police hospital when he told prosecutors that protesters undressed him during clashes, denying police assaulted him. Later, speaking in a telephone interview to the Egyptian satellite channel al-Hayat, Saber said he changed his story to blame police after pressure from family and friends.

State prosecutors have since moved him to a public hospital.

"I said police are the ones who beat me," Saber tells the TV presenter. "By the time I reached the armored car, they had undressed me and my pants and were still dragging me."

On Sunday a 20-year-old man wounded in Friday's clashes died in a hospital. He was the second to die from the violence that night. The Health Ministry said both were shot in the head and chest.

Activists and the opposition accuse the police of using excessive force against protesters, some of whom have attacked government facilities and policemen.

Saber said police were beating him and ordering him to stand up and that he was unable to because of a bird shot injury to his foot. He told the TV presenter he was scared to be arrested and thrown into the armored vehicle.

Saber then said that his family, including his children, threatened to shun him unless he told the truth about the police attack.

"After becoming a hero, I was being ridiculed online and on Facebook and being accused of not being a real Egyptian and of taking money."

"I tell everyone at the presidential palace and Tahrir (Square) that I am sorry."

He said the officials at the police hospital treated him well, and that he was not pressured to distort what happened. He said he initially gave incorrect testimony to try to avoid more problems.

Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim angered activists Saturday when he told reporters that initial results of the state prosecutor's investigation showed that police were absolved of direct abuse and that protesters were the ones who undressed Saber.

The march on the palace Friday evening, where President Mohammed Morsi was not present, was part of a wave of demonstrations in cities around the country called by opposition politicians, trying to wrest concessions from Morsi after around 60 people were killed in protests, clashes and riots over the past week.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/conflicting-accounts-egypt-man-dragged-naked-200408936.html

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Warm Bodies

Nicholas Hoult as R. in Warm Bodies

Photo by Jonathan Wenk ? 2012 Summit Entertainment, LLC.

There?s a built-in obstacle to the high concept of Warm Bodies, from writer/director Jonathan Levine, whose zombie rom-com riffs on the Twilight formula of pairing a mortal girl with an undead boy: Not many people fantasize about getting it on with a zombie. Vampires?at least movie vampires, who have long existed at a considerable remove from Bram Stoker?s original, foul-breathed Count Dracula?are brooding, suave, marble-skinned, and sexy, possessed of superhuman physical gifts of strength and speed. Zombies are shuffling, mindless, visibly decaying ambulatory corpses who (with rare exceptions, as in the 28 Days movies) can be outrun by all but the lowest-paid movie extras. In the Twilight series, Edward was a teenager preserved eternally at the height of his youthful beauty. R. (Nicholas Hoult), the undead hero of Warm Bodies, looks more like a pouty-lipped teen idol whose body has been moldering for six months in a dumpster.

The fact of zombies? relative unsexiness needn?t necessarily preclude the possibility of a zom-rom-com, but Levine?s likable-enough fourth feature (his first three were All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, The Wackness, and 50/50) never quite rises to the challenge. I did enjoy Warm Bodies? premise, as explained in a quite funny opening voice-over that riffs on the loneliness of the single boy in the unfeeling crowd. R., a particularly soulful and introspective young zombie, introduces the post-apocalyptic landscape he calls home as he reflects that, when you spend most of your days staggering through an abandoned airport past crowds of fellow lurching brain-eaters, it?s tough to really connect. The closest thing he has to a friend is M. (Rob Corddry), who occasionally sits with R. at a dust-covered airport bar and grunts sympathetically.

The zombie community inhabits a shadow world whose laws and customs are never quite clear?a fuzziness that becomes a real problem in the movie?s plot-driven third act. After a global apocalypse whose origin, like his full name, R. can no longer remember, the world has been divided into the undead and the living, who build fortified walls to protect themselves from the marauding brain-eaters on the other side. General Grigio (an off-his-game John Malkovich), who seems?again vaguely?to be the commander of an anti-zombie militia, sends a group of young fighters, including his daughter Julie (Teresa Palmer), on a mission across the wall. Nearly all the humans are killed in a zombie raid, but fair Julie gets rescued by R., who?s fallen in love at first sight. He takes her to his hideout on an abandoned airplane?a hovel full of vinyl records and other treasures R. has scavenged from the once beautiful world around him.

This middle section, which should have been the movie?s most charming, never quite takes off into the romantic stratosphere. Maybe that?s because R.?s refusal to take Julie back to the world of the living upon her request smacks uncomfortably of abduction?though he insists he?s only trying to keep her safe from the brain-eaters, there are hints that he?s exaggerating the risk in order to keep her there longer. Or maybe it?s just that the ramping up of their romance is too uneven?in one scene Julie is shrinking in repulsion from the monster who?s holding her hostage; in the next she?s taking him for a giggly joyride in a long-undriven sportscar.

Nicholas Hoult?s shambling, insecure hero has an appealingly guileless sweetness, but it?s hard to do a lot with a character whose history and motives are this vague. (Why does R., alone among zombies, have this capacity for self-reflection?) It doesn?t help that R. speaks mainly in grunts for the first half of the film, though his voice-over? ?Don?t be creepy, don?t be creepy,? he instructs himself as he nervously approaches his beloved?provides some welcome psychological context, as well as the majority of the movie?s laughs.

The preternaturally pretty Palmer brings an unusual amount of spunk to her damsel-in-distress role?she has a game, jock-ish quality that makes her believable as a warrior and could have seen her through better action scenes than this movie provides. Levine seems more at ease with the scenes involving romance and friendship (including a touching dramatic moment with an unusually subdued Corddry) than during the choppy, rushed late sequences in which zombies and humans alike are set upon by a digitally animated army of ?bonies?: extra-dessicated, fast-moving superzombies who are never entirely convincing either as a plot contrivance, a threat, or a special effect.

Warm Bodies, which is based on a novel by Isaac Marion, explicitly presents itself as a Romeo and Juliet story, from the names of its central couple to a classic wherefore-art-thou balcony scene. But though it?s about a pair of lovers whose passion is strong enough to break down the barriers between life and death, this mildly amusing, sort-of-sweet comedy is strangely sexless and passion-free?these bodies, whether human or zombie, feel room-temperature at best.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=5c6b209988fbb8277397b0fb0f7bfd8f

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Beer's bitter compounds could help brew new medicines

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Researchers employing a century-old observational technique have determined the precise configuration of humulones, substances derived from hops that give beer its distinctive flavor.

That might not sound like a big deal to the average brewmaster, but the findings overturn results reported in scientific literature in the last 40 years and could lead to new pharmaceuticals to treat diabetes, some types of cancer and other maladies.

"Now that we have the right results, what happens to the bitter hops in the beer-brewing process makes a lot more sense," said Werner Kaminsky, a University of Washington research associate professor of chemistry.

Kaminsky is the lead author of a paper describing the findings, published this month in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

There is documentation that beer and its bittering acids, in moderation, have beneficial effects on diabetes, some forms of cancer, inflammation and perhaps even weight loss.

Kaminsky used a process called X-ray crystallography to figure out the exact structure of those acids, humulone molecules and some of their derivatives, produced from hops in the brewing process. That structure is important to researchers looking for ways to incorporate those substances, and their health effects, into new pharmaceuticals.

Humulone molecules are rearranged during the brewing process to contain a ring with five carbon atoms instead of six. At the end of the process two side groups are formed that can be configured in four different ways ? both groups can be above the ring or below, or they can be on opposite sides.

Which of the forms the molecule takes determines its "handedness," Kaminsky said, and that is important for understanding how a particular humulone will react with another substance. If they are paired correctly, they will fit together like a nut and bolt.

If paired incorrectly, they might not fit together at all or it could be like placing a right hand into a left-handed glove. That could produce disastrous results in pharmaceuticals.

Kaminsky cited thalidomide, which has a number of safe uses but was famously used to treat morning sickness in pregnant women in the late 1950s and early 1960s before it was discovered to cause birth defects. Molecule "handedness" in one form of the drug was responsible for the birth defects, while the orientation of molecules in another form did not appear to have the negative effects.

To determine the configuration of humulones formed in the brewing process, coauthors Jan Urban, Clinton Dahlberg and Brian Carroll of KinDex Therapeutics, a Seattle pharmaceutical firm that funded the research, recovered acids from the brewing process and purified them.

They converted the humulones to salt crystals and sent them to Kaminsky, who used X-ray crystallography ? a technique developed in the early 20th century ? to determine the exact configuration of the molecules.

"Now that we know which hand belongs to which molecule, we can determine which molecule goes to which bitterness taste in beer," Kaminsky said.

The authors point out that while "excessive beer consumption cannot be recommended to propagate good health, isolated humulones and their derivatives can be prescribed with documented health benefits."

Some of the compounds have been shown to affect specific illnesses, Kaminsky said, while some with a slight difference in the arrangement of carbon atoms have been ineffective.

The new research sets the stage for finding which of those humulones might be useful in new compounds to be used as medical treatments.

###

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

Thanks to University of Washington for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/126532/Beer_s_bitter_compounds_could_help_brew_new_medicines

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