Are American Jews unfit to marry Israelis?

Israel has pulled a controversial series of ads that portrayed American Jews as out of touch with their roots. The flap illustrates a growing distance between US Jews and Israelis.

The immigration and retention of Jews is now and always has been a major priority for Israel. But a recent government campaign in the US targeting Israeli expatriates infuriated a broad swath of American Jews.

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By some estimates, 2 million Israelis live in the United States, and the Immigration Ministry apparently decided to do something about it.

Hebrew billboards in at least five US cities warned Israelis to come home before they lose their identity, and a series of slickly produced videos drove the point home.

In one, a clueless American boyfriend of an Israeli woman doesn't understand why she's mourning on the day Israelis mourn fallen soldiers. In another, the child of Israeli Americans answers "Christmas" when asked what holiday her family is celebrating, while her grandparents look on in horror, a Hanukkah Menorah on the mantle behind them. In a third, a father ignores his young son's entreaties of "daddy" until he reverts to the more acceptable "Abba."

The ads were pulled yesterday, after the Jewish Federation of North America said in a letter to supporters that "we share the concerns many of you have expressed that this outrageous and insulting message could harm the Israeli-Diaspora relationship" and the head of the Anti-Defamation League said they were "demeaning."

Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren apologized for the campaign in a statement, writing: "Prime Minister Netanyahu, once made aware of the campaign, ordered the videos immediately be removed from YouTube, and he ordered that the billboards be removed as well. The prime minister deeply values the American Jewish community and is committed to deepening ties between it and the State of Israel."

Minister for Immigrant Absorption Sofa Landver oversaw the campaign. Ms. Landver is a member of Yisrael Beiteinu, a right-wing partner in Mr. Netanyahu's coalition government. The party's leader, Avigdor Lieberman, currently Israel's foreign minister, is emerging as a possible future rival to Netanyahu.

The flap illustrates a growing reality ? that there are real and growing differences, of both style and substance, between American Jews and the Israeli state. The rise of the ultra-orthodox right in Israel is having an influence, and younger American Jews don't appear to identify with Israel in the same way that their parents and grandparents did.

The underlying message of the campaign certainly seemed to be you can't really remain Jewish in the US. The Jewish Channel called it a "semi-covert national campaign" carried out in at least five US cities with large Israeli populations to "convince them that their heritage will be lost if they don't soon go back to Israel."

The Jewish Channel said the ads suggest that "marrying American Jews could make Israelis lose their sense of identity" and ended the segment by segueing into growing Israeli complaints that it's hard to live there unless you pursue an "ultra-orthodox lifestyle."

Jeffrey Goldberg, an American Jew and ardent Zionist, wrote:

I don't think I have ever seen a demonstration of Israeli contempt for American Jews as obvious as these ads. ...

These government-sponsored ads suggest that it is impossible for Jews to remain Jewish in America. How else are we supposed to understand the "Christmas" ad? Obviously, assimilation and intermarriage are issues in America in ways they aren't in Israel. Israel has other problems of course, such as the fact that many of its rabbis act like Iranian mullahs. ...

The message is: Dear American Jews, thank you for lobbying for American defense aid (and what a great show you put on at the AIPAC convention every year!) but, please, stay away from our sons and daughters.

Follow Dan Murphy on Twitter.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/5S-pgJ82tR0/Are-American-Jews-unfit-to-marry-Israelis

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Bat Ears Deform For Better Ping Pickups

60-Second Science | More Science

Slow motion video and high resolution imaging show that horseshoe bats can deform the shape of their outer ears for superior echolocation. Cynthia Graber reports.

December 2, 2011

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Bat see with their ears. Which are highly attuned to pick up minute variations in the reflection of the sound pulses they use to echolocate. Here are some pulses, slowed down. [Bat sound.]

And now researchers have shown that horseshoe bats can manipulate the shape of their ears in milliseconds to better catch those bouncing sound waves.

Horseshoe bats had been known to move their entire outer ear, or pinna. But scientists wondered whether the motion was a generalized swiveling of the entire ear?the way a cat can point its whole ear in a specific direction?or whether the bats could delicately manipulate the shape of the pinnae.

The researchers analyzed the pinnae with high-speed video and high-resolution imaging. And they found that the pinnae could move from upright to bent and back again within a tenth of a second, less than the blink of an eye. The study appeared in the journal Physical Review Letters. [Li Gao et al, Ear Deformations Give Bats a Physical Mechanism for Fast Adaptation of Ultrasonic Beam Patterns]

The changes in the deformation of the bats? ears can correspond to different echolocation beam patterns. Which might allow the bats to tune in to particular frequencies. And you thought wiggling your ears was impressive.

?Cynthia Graber

[The above text is a transcript of this podcast]

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=415bf37972f3e605e3f5292c7287e46a

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PFT: Vick's contract might help Reid stick around

Getty Images

Undrafted in 2010 and a reserve for nine of 11 games in 2011, Giants receiver Victor Cruz is on pace to do something very significant.

At his current rate of 87 receiving yards per game, Cruz would finish with 1,392.? And that would set the franchise single-season record.? (Amani Toomer currently holds the mark, with 1,343 yards in 2002.)

?That?s crazy man,? Cruz said, per Jeff Roberts of the Bergen Record.? ?I mean, I don?t even know how to respond, how to react to that, because it wasn?t even in my wildest dreams to even be the all-time leading receiver for the New York Giants.?

When he joined the team, Cruz hoped merely to make the roster.? ?I was just trying to find my niche on this team and just find a place, whether it be special teams or kickoff returns, just any way I could help this team out and get myself on the field, that?s what I wanted to do,? Cruz said.

He?s now 43 yards away from a 1,000-yard receiving season.

Cruz emerged as a potential star in the 2010 preseason, but a hamstring injury shut him down without a catch in his rookie regular season.? Now, he?s standing out among a group that includes Hakeem Nicks and Mario Manningham.? And with Manningham listed as doubtful for Sunday?s game against the Packers, look for Cruz to get even more chances.

He may even get his third career start.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/12/02/vicks-contract-will-be-a-factor-in-reids-status/related/

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Egypt Islamists tell rivals to accept vote result (Reuters)

CAIRO (Reuters) ? Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood called on its rivals to accept the will of the people on Saturday after a first-round vote set its party on course to take the most seats in the country's first freely elected parliament in six decades.

Preliminary results showed the Brotherhood's liberal rivals could be pushed into third place behind ultra-conservative Salafi Islamists, mirroring the trend in other Arab countries where political systems have opened up after popular uprisings.

The Brotherhood is Egypt's best-organized political group and popular among the poor for its long record of charity work. Banned but semi-tolerated under President Hosni Mubarak, who was toppled on February 11 by a street revolt, the Brotherhood now wants a role in shaping the country's future.

Rivals accused the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party of using handouts of cheap food and medicine to influence voters and of breaking election rules by lobbying outside voting stations.

The Brotherhood told critics to back off and respect the result.

"We call upon everyone, and all those who associate themselves with democracy, to respect the will of the people and accept their choice," it said in a statement after the first-round vote, which drew an official turnout of 62 percent.

"Those who weren't successful ... should work hard to serve people to win their support next time," the Brotherhood added.

The world is watching the election for pointers to the future in Egypt, the most populous Arab nation and one hitherto seen as a firm U.S. ally committed to preserving its peace treaty with Israel and fighting Islamist militancy.

The Brotherhood's political opponents say it seeks to impose sharia (Islamic law) on a country that also has a large Christian minority.

The movement insists it will pursue a moderate agenda if it wins power and do nothing to damage an economy reliant on millions of Western tourists.

"DON'T GIVE UP"

Liberal parties lacking the Islamists' grassroots base were trying to avert a landslide in run-off votes set for Monday and in two further rounds of an election staggered over six weeks.

The Egyptian Bloc, an alliance of liberal groups, ran large advertisements in newspapers to appeal for more support.

"Don't soften your support for the civil, moderate current to achieve a balanced parliament that represents the Egyptian people, and do not give up your rights," the message read.

With the Brotherhood and its ultra-conservative Salafi rivals apparently set for a majority in the assembly, newspapers were debating if they would unite to form a dominant bloc.

Nader Bakkar, spokesman for the Salafi al-Nour Party, told al-Dustour daily that talk of forming a coalition with the Brotherhood was premature and the results of the second and third rounds would determine the possibilities.

"All the indications show that the Muslim Brotherhood does not want to inaugurate an alliance with Islamic forces, but rather to conclude a coalition with liberal and secularist forces during the coming parliament," Asem Abdel-Maged, spokesman for al-Gama'a al-Islamiya, a Salafi group not aligned closely with al-Nour, told al-Dustour.

(Writing by Tom Pfeiffer; Editing by Tim Pearce)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111203/wl_nm/us_egypt_election

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Mysterious Ultra-Red Galaxies May Be Cosmic 'Missing Link' (SPACE.com)

Scientists have spied a new type of ultra-red galaxy lurking at the far reaches of the universe, a new study reports.

Using NASA's Spitzer space telescope, the astronomers spotted four remarkably red galaxies nearly 13 billion light-years from Earth ? meaning it's taken their light about 13 billion years to reach us. So researchers are seeing the galaxies as they were in the early days of the universe, which itself is about 13.7 billion years old.

NASA's Hubble space telescope has imaged even more ancient galaxies, but the four ruddy objects seen by Spitzer are a breed apart, researchers said.

"Hubble has shown us some of the first protogalaxies that formed, but nothing that looks like this," study co-author Giovanni Fazio, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a statement. "In a sense, these galaxies might be a 'missing link' in galactic evolution."

The four newfound galaxies shine much more brightly in infrared light than in visible wavelengths, which is how the infrared-sensitive Spitzer was able to detect them. The research team still isn't sure why they're so strikingly red.

There are three main reasons why a galaxy may appear red, researchers said. First, it may be extremely dusty. Second, it could contain many old, red stars. Or third, the galaxy may be extremely distant, in which case the expansion of the universe has stretched its light to very long (and very red) wavelengths.

All three of these factors may be in play in the newfound galaxies' case, researchers said. But they're not sure, since much about them remains mysterious.

"We've had to go to extremes to get the models to match our observations," said study lead author Jiasheng Huang, also of the CfA.

The four galaxies are grouped together and appear to be physically associated, rather than constituting a chance alignment of like objects, researchers said.

The team hopes to study the galaxies further, perhaps employing powerful ground-based instruments such as the Atacama Large Millimeter Array in Chile. And they'd like to find more examples of this new type of galactic "species."

"There's evidence for others in other regions of the sky," Fazio said. "We'll analyze more Spitzer and Hubble observations to track them down."

The astronomers reported their results online in the Astrophysical Journal.

Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/space/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/space/20111202/sc_space/mysteriousultraredgalaxiesmaybecosmicmissinglink

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China expects 48,000 new HIV cases this year (AP)

BEIJING ? China will have about 780,000 people infected with the AIDS virus by the end of this year, state media reported Wednesday, with most having contracted it through heterosexual sex.

The official Xinhua News Agency said that a report from the Ministry of Health and the United Nations estimates there will be about 48,000 new HIV infections in China this year. Xinhua quoted the report as saying the virus remains "mildly prevalent" in China.

HIV gained a foothold in China largely because of unsanitary blood plasma buying schemes and tainted transfusions in hospitals. Health authorities say heterosexual sex has now overtaken drug abuse as the main channel of transmission.

After ignoring or demonizing people with AIDS for much of the 1980s and 1990s, China's authoritarian government has taken a more compassionate line on the disease and combating its spread in recent years. But people with AIDS still face difficulties in getting treatment and compensation, and authorities remain deeply suspicious of independent activists.

On Wednesday, a handful of relatives of HIV or AIDS patients who contracted the virus through tainted transfusions planned to protest in front of the Ministry of Finance in Beijing but abandoned the plan because of the tight security there.

Organizer Sun Ya said the group was demanding government compensation. Sun's 15-year-old son contracted HIV from a tainted blood transfusion in 2002 at the Peking University Dental Hospital in Beijing.

Sun said he and others have tried to use the legal system to fight for compensation but courts have declined to take their cases, so they have resorted to sporadic protests in the capital.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/aids/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111130/ap_on_he_me/as_china_aids

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New Roving Science Lab Charts A Course For Mars

NASA/JPL-Caltech

The compact car-sized Mars Science Laboratory is due to land on the red planet on Aug. 6, 2012. It is equipped with a suite of instruments to study rocks and soils, and take other measurements.

It's time to go back to Mars. Once every two years, the orbits of Earth and Mars are aligned just right, so it's possible to send a spacecraft from here to there. That special time is now.

NASA's latest mission is the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL). It's another six-wheeled rover, but much larger than the rovers Spirit and Opportunity that landed on Mars in 2004. They weighed under 400 pounds. MSL weighs nearly a ton and is about the size of a small compact car.

Another important difference between MSL and its predecessors is it doesn't rely on solar panels for its power. Instead, it's carrying 8 pounds of plutonium that gives off heat that is converted to electricity.

The way MSL lands is also different. Spirit and Opportunity "basically crash landed, softly with airbags," says John Grotzinger, project scientist for MSL. "Mars Science Laboratory is so large that we need an active propulsion system."

The active propulsion system makes use of something NASA has never tried before. It's a sort of a rocket-powered helicopter: When it gets to about 200 feet above the surface, it lowers the rover down on a cable. With the rover dangling below, it descends slowly until rover wheels touch the ground.

"The risks are obvious," says Grotzinger, "but the advantages of this are that the rover lands basically intact, and there's almost no subsequent set-up that has to be done after the rover lands."

The rover has a mast with a camera on it, and a robotic arm. But Grotzinger says MSL is not just about taking pictures and pulverizing rocks.

"It is a laboratory, and so within the belly of the rover are two very important instruments," he says. "One of them is an X-ray diffractometer, which is the instrument that geologists use on Earth to characterize the mineral content of rocks and soils."

The other instrument is called the Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM. It's actually a suite of instruments enclosed in a box about the size of a microwave oven. There are 74 sample cups inside SAM. The idea is that the rover's robotic arm will drill into rocks, and some of the resulting powder will be delivered to one of the cups.

The cup then goes into an oven, where it's heated to 1,000 degrees. "As the gases are coming off, we measure their composition with a mass spectrometer," says Paul Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Mahaffy is the principal investigator for SAM.

One of the elements SAM will be able to measure is carbon. Carbon is essential for life, but Mahaffy and everyone else associated with this mission say finding carbon compounds will not be proof that there is or was life on Mars. It will be just another piece of evidence pointing in that direction.

"We fully don't expect we're going to go to Mars and get a definitive answer, 'Yes, there was life,' or 'No, there wasn't life,' unless we absolutely happen to hit a home run and land in exactly the right spot, and conditions were exactly right," says Mahaffy.

If everything had gone according to plan, MSL would already be on Mars. The mission was supposed to launch in 2009. But delays in building hardware forced a two-year postponement.

Mahaffy says the launch can't come too soon for him and his team. "We've been anxiously awaiting the launch for a long time," he says, "and even more anxiously awaiting August 6th of 2012, when we land in Gale crater and start exploring."

Gale crater is MSL's target. It's a giant crater with a mountain in the middle of it. The site was chosen because measurements from Mars' orbit showed there was lots of interesting geology in the crater, and possibly evidence that Mars was once habitable. With luck, MSL will provide confirmation of that.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/11/26/142705177/new-roving-science-lab-charts-a-course-for-mars?ft=1&f=1007

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S&P downgrades Belgium to AA on funding pressures (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) ? Standard & Poor's downgraded Belgium's credit rating to AA from AA-plus on Friday, saying funding and market risk pressures are raising the chances the country's financial sector will need more support.

S&P said difficulties in the country's banking system and the government's inability to respond to economic pressures contributed to the downgrade.

Belgium's government debt position has worsened in recent months, particularly after it bought the Belgian arm of failing French-Belgian bank Dexia (DEXI.BR) earlier this year.

Borrowing costs have increased sharply in recent days. The country's benchmark 10-year yield rose one percentage point to 5.832 percent on Friday from 4.817 percent at the beginning of the week.

"We think the Belgian government's capacity to prevent an increase in general government debt, which we consider to be already at high levels, is being constrained by rapid private sector deleveraging both in Belgium and among many of Belgium's key trading partners," S&P said in a statement.

(Reporting by David Gaffen; Editing by Padraic Cassidy)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111125/bs_nm/us_belgium_sp

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