Downton Abbey Cast Covers One Direction's 'What Makes You Beautiful'

TV Watch

By Maggie Coughlan

02/20/2013 at 09:45 AM EST

You don't know you're beautiful, Downton Abbey. But comedian Richard Sandling does!

Sandling is the brains behind a video mashup of the Crawley crew performing One Direction's "What Makes You Beautiful." Using footage from seasons 1 through 3 (and both Christmas specials), cast members of Downton lend their dramatic dialogue to the hit song.

And after Sunday's shocking season 3 finale, a little Downton humor is just what the Dowager Countess ordered.

Originally created for Richard Sandling's Perfect Movie, a monthly live show created by the comedian, the cast of Downton manages to utter every lyric – with one exception. Rather than crooning "the way that you flip your hair gets me overwhelmed," Lord Gratham and gang opts for "the way that you flip your hair gets me flabbergasted."

This isn't the first fun mashup Sandling has created – his website, That Awesome Movie Guy, also combined Mad Men with Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" for a viral video that's reached over 1.2 million views.

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Future science: Using 3D worlds to visualize data

CHICAGO (AP) — Take a walk through a human brain? Fly over the surface of Mars? Computer scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago are pushing science fiction closer to reality with a wraparound virtual world where a researcher wearing 3D glasses can do all that and more.

In the system, known as CAVE2, an 8-foot-high screen encircles the viewer 320 degrees. A panorama of images springs from 72 stereoscopic liquid crystal display panels, conveying a dizzying sense of being able to touch what's not really there.

As far back as 1950, sci-fi author Ray Bradbury imagined a children's nursery that could make bedtime stories disturbingly real. "Star Trek" fans might remember the holodeck as the virtual playground where the fictional Enterprise crew relaxed in fantasy worlds.

The Illinois computer scientists have more serious matters in mind when they hand visitors 3D glasses and a controller called a "wand." Scientists in many fields today share a common challenge: How to truly understand overwhelming amounts of data. Jason Leigh, co-inventor of the CAVE2 virtual reality system, believes this technology answers that challenge.

"In the next five years, we anticipate using the CAVE to look at really large-scale data to help scientists make sense of that information. CAVEs are essentially fantastic lenses for bringing data into focus," Leigh said.

The CAVE2 virtual world could change the way doctors are trained and improve patient care, Leigh said. Pharmaceutical researchers could use it to model the way new drugs bind to proteins in the human body. Car designers could virtually "drive" their new vehicle designs.

Imagine turning massive amounts of data — the forces behind a hurricane, for example — into a simulation that a weather researcher could enlarge and explore from the inside. Architects could walk through their skyscrapers before they are built. Surgeons could rehearse a procedure using data from an individual patient.

But the size and expense of room-based virtual reality systems may prove insurmountable barriers to widespread use, said Henry Fuchs, a computer science professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who is familiar with the CAVE technology but wasn't involved in its development.

While he calls the CAVE2 "a national treasure," Fuchs predicts a smaller technology such as Google's Internet-connected eyeglasses will do more to revolutionize medicine than the CAVE. Still, he says large displays are the best way today for people to interact and collaborate.

Believers include the people at Marshalltown, Iowa-based Mechdyne Corp., which has licensed the CAVE2 technology for three years and plans to market it to hospitals, the military and in the oil and gas industry, said Kurt Hoffmeister of Mechdyne.

In Chicago, researchers and graduate students are creating virtual scenarios for testing in the CAVE2. The Mars flyover is created from real NASA data. The brain tour is based on the layout of blood vessels in a real patient.

Brain surgeon Ali Alaraj remembered the first time he viewed the brain using the CAVE2.

"You can walk between the blood vessels," said the University of Illinois College of Medicine neurosurgeon. "You can look at the arteries from below. You can look at the arteries from the side.... That was science fiction for me."

Would doctors process information faster with fewer errors using CAVE2? That's the question behind a proposed study that would compare CAVE2 to conventional methods of detecting brain aneurysms and determining proper treatment, said Andreas Linninger, UIC professor of bioengineering, chemical engineering and computer science.

But it's not all serious business at the lab.

In his spare time during the past two years, research assistant Arthur Nishimoto has been programming the CAVE2 computer with the specifications for the fictional Starship Enterprise. He now can walk around his life-size recreation of the TV spacecraft.

The original technology, introduced in the early 1990s, was called CAVE, which stood for Cave Automatic Virtual Environment and also cleverly referred to Plato's cave, the philosopher's analogy about shadows and reality. It was named by former lab co-directors Tom DeFanti and Dan Sandin.

The second generation of the CAVE, invented by Leigh and his collaborator Andy Johnson, has higher resolution. The project was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.

"It's fantastic to come to work. Every day is like getting to live a science fiction dream," Leigh said. "To do science in this kind of environment is absolutely amazing."

___

AP Medical Writer Carla K. Johnson can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/CarlaKJohnson.

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Wall Street little changed after data, Fed minutes on tap

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were little changed on Wednesday after housing and inflation data pointed to a continuation of modest economic improvement and ahead of the minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee's January meeting later in the session.

Groundbreaking to build new U.S. homes fell 8.5 percent in January but new permits for construction rose to a 4 1/2-year high while producer prices rose in January for the first time in four months.

The data should enable the Fed to maintain its easy monetary policy in its efforts to stimulate the economy.

Later in the session, investors will look to the minutes from the Fed's January meeting for any indication as to how long the current monetary policy will remain in effect.

"It's hard in any given data point to take a strong conclusion that we are moving dramatically forward, but over time, clearly things are getting better," said Robert Lutts, chief investment officer at Cabot Money Management in Salem, Massachusetts.

Lutts described an economy that was addicted to stimulus.

"The bottom line is the economy is on heroin today and we will at one time move to a diluted form of heroin, but it's very important for people to remember we are still on an unbelievably aggressive, never-seen-before accommodative policy and this economy is going to improve."

The S&P 500 <.spx> is up more than 7 percent for the year, fueled by legislators' ability to sidestep an automatic implementation of spending cuts on tax hikes on January 1, better-than-expected corporate earnings and modestly improving economic data that has been tepid enough for the Fed to maintain its stimulus policy.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> dropped 5.99 points, or 0.04 percent, to 14,029.68. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> lost 2.60 points, or 0.17 percent, to 1,528.34. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> shed 3.12 points, or 0.10 percent, to 3,210.48.

U.S. oil and gas producer Devon Energy Corp reported a fourth-quarter loss as it wrote down the value of its assets by $896 million due to weak gas prices. Shares dipped 1.6 percent to $59.60.

OfficeMax Inc and Office Depot Inc shares were halted as the companies announced a merger agreement. An earlier online statement of the deal was pulled down as an agreement had not yet been struck.

Toll Brothers Inc lost 4 percent to $35.43 after the largest luxury homebuilder in the United States, reported first-quarter results well below analysts' estimates.

SodaStream dropped 3.2 percent to $50.79 after the seller of home carbonated drink maker machines posted fourth-quarter earnings and provided a 2013 outlook.

According to Thomson Reuters data through Tuesday morning, of the 391 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results, 70.1 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, compared with a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 5.6 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Nick Zieminski)

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The Lede: North Korean Video Shows Obama in Flames

North Korea has released a new propaganda video that shows President Obama and United States troops in flames and credits Washington with leading the impoverished country to become a proud nuclear power.

Songs, operas and novels that stoke hatred against the United States and belittle South Korea are daily fare for North Koreans living under a leadership that uses propaganda as a critical tool of governing. In the last several years, the country has taken its campaign to the Internet, posting thousands of videos onto YouTube that provide outsiders with rare glimpses into the world of North Korean propaganda.

More recently, the country’s propagandists have been busy trumpeting the successful launch of a satellite in December and a Feb. 12 nuclear test, telling North Koreans that their country was becoming a high-tech nuclear power under its young leader, Kim Jong-un.

“Thanks to the Americans,” the latest work by the propagandists, is a 90-second video that was uploaded on YouTube by the North’s official Uriminzokkiri Web site on Sunday.

“It is not incorrect to say that the United States’ gangster-like policy of hostility prompted us to become a most strong military power,” says the text that scrolls across the screen. “Thus it can be said that it was ‘thanks to’ the Americans that we conducted a nuclear test.”

In the video, flames are superimposed on footage of Mr. Obama in Congress, American troops and screen shots of a South Korean television station reporting the North’s nuclear test. It ends with an animated simulation of a nuclear device exploding in an underground test site.

The scorching of the United States in “nuclear flames” or a “nuclear holocaust” is a recurring theme in North Korean statements. A ubiquitous propaganda poster in North Korean towns calls for a “score-settling war” against the Americans.

While North Korea has faced chronic food shortages and growing trade sanctions, its propaganda strives to inspire nationalistic pride among its people, portraying their country as a small nation prospering despite the constant bullying of the “imperialist” Americans.

Part of another video, posted on YouTube by the country’s Korean Central Television on Feb. 12, showed a boy wearing a red scarf singing a song against the backdrop of rockets flying into space and satellites circling the Earth.

“We will fill the space with satellites,” the boy sang. “We will grow to be conquerors of the space.”

Another video posted early this month showed a North Korean man dreaming about circling Earth on a homemade spacecraft and looking down to see the Korean Peninsula unified and Manhattan being attacked by missiles and going up in smoke.

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Judge says Apple likely violated SEC rules

Major Apple (AAPL) shareholder Greenlight Capital, headed by billionaire hedge-fund manager David Einhorn, recently sued the consumer electronics giant in an effort to limit the company’s ability to offer preferred stock. At the heart of its claims, Greenlight is arguing that combining three separate items into one proposition — one of which would change the way Apple’s board issues preferred stock — is a violation of SEC rules against “bundling.” On Tuesday evening, the judge presiding over the case said that he is inclined to agree.

[More from BGR: Do or die: Hands on with the HTC One]

“Candidly I do think the likelihood of success is in favor for Greenlight on the merits,” U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan said during a hearing on Tuesday evening, Fortune reported.

[More from BGR: Google working with Visa, Mastercard, PayPal to cut off funding for alleged piracy sites]

The judge said a decision in the case will likely be made before Apple’s upcoming shareholders meeting on February 27th.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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Michael Jackson's Son Prince Michael Works as TV Reporter

Only on People.com

By Jennifer Garcia

02/19/2013 at 09:35 AM EST

From left: James Franco, Zach Braff and Prince Michael Jackson

Courtesy ET

Michael Jackson's son, Prince Michael, stepped into a world his late father knew well, becoming a special correspondent for Entertainment Tonight.

Mentored by the show's Brooke Anderson, the 16-year-old interviewed actors James Franco, Zach Braff and director Sam Raimi for their new film Oz the Great and Powerful for shows airing this week.

"We have a mutual connection, and I have been working to do something with him for a while," Anderson tells PEOPLE. "I thought interviewing the cast of Oz the Great and Powerful would be the perfect opportunity, because he's a fan of The Wizard of Oz, his dad was in The Wiz and he wants to get into directing, producing and acting one day."

So how were his reporting chops?

"He showed me up big time," Anderson says. "Ultimately, he didn't really need too much guidance. I gave him pointers, but he was a natural."

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Hip implants a bit more likely to fail in women

CHICAGO (AP) — Hip replacements are slightly more likely to fail in women than in men, according to one of the largest studies of its kind in U.S. patients. The risk of the implants failing is low, but women were 29 percent more likely than men to need a repeat surgery within the first three years.

The message for women considering hip replacement surgery remains unclear. It's not known which models of hip implants perform best in women, even though women make up the majority of the more than 400,000 Americans who have full or partial hip replacements each year to ease the pain and loss of mobility caused by arthritis or injuries.

"This is the first step in what has to be a much longer-term research strategy to figure out why women have worse experiences," said Diana Zuckerman, president of the nonprofit National Research Center for Women & Families. "Research in this area could save billions of dollars" and prevent patients from experiencing the pain and inconvenience of surgeries to fix hip implants that go wrong.

Researchers looked at more than 35,000 surgeries at 46 hospitals in the Kaiser Permanente health system. The research, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, was funded by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

After an average of three years, 2.3 percent of the women and 1.9 percent of the men had undergone revision surgery to fix a problem with the original hip replacement. Problems included instability, infection, broken bones and loosening.

"There is an increased risk of failure in women compared to men," said lead author Maria Inacio, an epidemiologist at Southern California Permanente Medical Group in San Diego. "This is still a very small number of failures."

Women tend to have smaller joints and bones than men, and so they tend to need smaller artificial hips. Devices with smaller femoral heads — the ball-shaped part of the ball-and-socket joint in an artificial hip — are more likely to dislocate and require a surgical repair.

That explained some, but not all, of the difference between women and men in the study. It's not clear what else may have contributed to the gap. Co-author Dr. Monti Khatod, an orthopedic surgeon in Los Angeles, speculated that one factor may be a greater loss of bone density in women.

The failure of metal-on-metal hips was almost twice as high for women than in men. The once-popular models were promoted by manufacturers as being more durable than standard plastic or ceramic joints, but several high-profile recalls have led to a decrease in their use in recent years.

"Don't be fooled by hype about a new hip product," said Zuckerman, who wrote an accompanying commentary in the medical journal. "I would not choose the latest, greatest hip implant if I were a woman patient. ... At least if it's been for sale for a few years, there's more evidence for how well it's working."

___

Online:

Journal: http://www.jamainternalmed.com

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Wall Street opens higher on M&A activity

(Reuters) - A Texas mother had a one-in-70-million kind of Valentine's Day this year when she gave birth to two sets of identical twin boys, a Houston hospital announced on Monday. The four brothers were delivered at 31 weeks to Tressa Montalvo, 36, via Cesarean section at The Woman's Hospital of Texas in Houston, according to a news release from the hospital. Tressa and Manuel Montalvo Jr. were not using any fertility drugs and had just hoped for a little brother or sister for their 2-year-old son, Memphis, according to the release. ...

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IHT Rendezvous: As Europe Moves to Cap Bonuses, Britain Hesitates

LONDON — It is hard to imagine any European politician losing votes these days by promising to curb bankers’ pay, which may explain why members of the European Parliament are enthusiastically pushing for the toughest restrictions on bank bonuses since the 2008 financial crisis.

Representatives of the Parliament and of the 27 European Union governments were meeting on Tuesday to finalize a deal on banking law that would include pegging bankers’ bonuses at no more than their annual salaries.

The Parliament’s demands for a bonus cap reflect public outrage at continued revelations of huge payouts to bankers. But a side effect has been to hold up enactment of global banking regulations designed to strengthen the capacity of banks to withstand a future crisis.

A majority of member states have come around to supporting the bonus cap. Germany, a late convert to the idea, is prepared to compromise on the issue in order to ensure the wider banking changes are adopted by the elected European Parliament.

The debate has left the British government out on a limb, as it fights a possibly doomed rearguard action to protect the interests of the City of London, Europe’s biggest financial center.

The Conservative-led government believes the bonus cap could have the perverse effect of increasing bankers’ fixed pay, while allowing less opportunity to claw back variable bonuses in the event of poor performance.

Boris Johnson, the outspoken Conservative mayor of London, was quoted on Tuesday as saying, “we don’t need Europe butting in on bonuses,” as he attacked the European proposals as a threat to the City’s international competitiveness.

In the light of popular anti-banker sentiment, however, the British government has been relying on quiet diplomacy to argue its case with European partners in order to avoid the perception that it pushing the agenda of “fat cat” bankers.

It has been left largely to the business media to press the case against a bonus cap. Allister Heath, writing at the City A.M. Web site on Tuesday, suggested that a cap would be a “disaster for London.”

In an editorial this week, which said adoption of the bonus cap would be a defeat for common sense, the Financial Times wrote: “The parliamentarians’ pet idea is a result of populism mixed with ignorance of how banking works.”

“A cap on the ratio of variable to fixed pay will do little to lower total compensation (which is what outrages voters sick of bailing out failed banks),” according to the Financial Times. “It will just encourage higher fixed salaries to compensate for the lack of bonuses that tend to be far larger.”

Mr. Heath, in his City A.M. column, suggested that George Osborne, the British finance minister, was “seemingly too frightened by anti-City sentiment” to block the Brussels proposals.

“The cap will lead to further boosts to base pay, increasing fixed costs and risk,” Mr. Heath wrote. “When business volumes drop, the only answer will be to sack people, rather than cutting bonuses.”

“The fact is U.K. regulators have already created a bonus framework that is tough but fair,” according to Nick Goodway, writing in the London Evening Standard. “Europe is trying to bring in one that could have dire consequences for London’s status as one of the world’s top three financial centers.”

Does this all amount to special pleading on behalf of overpaid bankers? Or do the opponents of the bonus cap have a point? Is the European Parliament guilty of populism, or simply displaying good sense with its proposals to outlaw excessive bonuses?

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British author attacks “plastic” princess Kate

LONDON (Reuters) – One of Britain‘s most celebrated authors has launched a withering attack on the Duchess of Cambridge, the pregnant wife of Prince William, branding her a “shop-window mannequin” with a plastic smile whose only role in life is to breed.

Prime Minister David Cameron described award-winning writer Hilary Mantel as “misguided” after she likened the former Kate Middleton to a “machine made” doll, devoid of personality.

Her comments about the 31-year-old wife of William, second-in-line to the British throne, divided public opinion, with newspapers condemning Mantel as “venomous”, “cruel” and “staggeringly rude”.

Supporters said her words had been taken out of context from a long analysis of society’s centuries-old obsession with the appearance and fertility of royal wives that ended with a plea to “back off and not be brutes” to them.

“I saw Kate becoming a jointed doll on which certain rags are hung,” Mantel said in a lecture at the British Museum in London earlier this month in which she spoke about her changing view of the princess.

“She was a shop-window mannequin, with no personality of her own, entirely defined by what she wore. These days she is a mother-to-be, and draped in another set of threadbare attributions.”

Speaking during a visit to India, Cameron said Mantel was wrong and that people should do more to encourage a young royal who is a “fantastic ambassador for Britain”.

“She writes great books, but I think what she’s said about Kate Middleton is completely misguided and completely wrong,” Cameron told Sky News.

Mantel, who last year became the first Briton to twice win the Man Booker prize for fiction, referred to the princess’s severe morning sickness during the early stage of her pregnancy and said her role was to provide an heir.

“Once she gets over being sick, the press will find that she is radiant. They will find that this young woman’s life until now was nothing, her only point and purpose being to give birth,” Mantel said in the lecture organized by the London Review of Books on February 4. The literary magazine reprinted the lecture on its website this week.

‘UNCALLED FOR’

A smiling Duchess of Cambridge showed no sign of being affected by the row when she visited an addiction charity in London. Wearing a grey wrap dress, she crossed her hands over her small baby bump as she chatted to charity workers.

Well-wishers who waited in the late winter sunshine for a glimpse of her expressed sympathy.

“It’s totally uncalled for,” said Morag Hamilton, 36, from London. “It’s a shame – that’s what her life is going to become now.”.

Mantel, 60, is best known for her historical novel “Wolf Hall”, about the rise of blacksmith’s son Thomas Cromwell to the pinnacle of power in King Henry VIII’s court. Her follow-up “Bring Up the Bodies” recounted Anne Boleyn’s fall from grace after failing to give Henry a male heir.

In her lecture, Mantel said the Duchess of Cambridge was “selected for her role … because she was irreproachable”, contrasting her with the “emotional incontinence” of William’s late mother, Princess Diana.

“As painfully thin as anyone could wish, without quirks, without oddities, without the risk of the emergence of character. She appears precision-made, machine-made, so different from Diana,” Mantel said. The author’s agent and a royal spokeswoman declined to comment.

Reaction on Twitter suggested Mantel had split public opinion. Royal commentator Robert Jobson said the “venomous attack” was “unfair and publicity-seeking”. Others agreed with Mantel, saying she had elegantly articulated what many people had long thought about the royals.

The lecture looked at the public fascination with the “regal body”, examining the lives of royal women and the importance of providing an heir. Mantel compared their fate to caged pandas in captivity.

“Our current royal family doesn’t have the difficulties in breeding that pandas do, but pandas and royal persons alike are expensive to conserve and ill-adapted to any modern environment,” Mantel said. “But aren’t they interesting? Aren’t they nice to look at?”

(Additional reporting by Andrew Osborn in New Delhi; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Paul Casciato)

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