Lady Gaga Under Fire After 'PopStarsDontEat' Comment ...

May 30, 2012

What was clearly intended as a jokey tweet lamenting the rigorous diet and exercise routine she is currently undertaking to prepare for her 110-date Born This Way Ball has put Lady Gaga in the crosshairs of some angry fans and eating-disorder organizations. On Tuesday, the pop star tweeted, ?Just killed back to back spin classes. Eating a salad dreaming of a cheeseburger #PopSingersDontEat #IWasBornThisWay.? Some fans thought the tweet wasn?t exactly keeping with the pop star?s ?You?re perfect the way you are? message and that her choice of the ?#PopStarsDontEat? hashtag could be misinterpreted as encouraging eating disorders because she posits herself as a role model to her fans.

The National Eating Disorder Association even weighed in, hitting its own Twitter account to write, ?Huh? This is the same person who recently implored girls to stop dieting??

MTV Buzzworthy has an Open Letter To Lady Gaga While it seems clear that Gaga was joking ? who hasn?t dove into a salad wishing it was something else? ? the comment does appear out of character for the star, who has spoken publicly about her own struggles with an eating disorder as a teen. Using that particular hashtag might have been a poor choice, but it?s safe to say Lady Gaga wasn?t knowingly making light of eating disorders ? and, otherwise, wasn?t she mostly just encouraging exercise and healthy eating? Gaga tweets often about all sort of less-than-healthful habits, from drinking (?after 12 margaritas my phone was confiscated?) to, well, other things (?princess xena of xanaxland has lil secrets in her inbox?). Why she is being scrutinized for making an observation about something we already know ? that celebrities engage in intense fitness regimens to meet the unrealistic expectations placed on their appearance ? is kind of a mystery. But, you know, totally appropriate and necessary reason for outrage, everyone. Sound off on Gaga?s #PopSingersDontEat tweet in the comments below!

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Apocalypse Soon: Has Civilization Passed the Environmental Point of No Return?

News | Energy & Sustainability

Although there is an urban legend that the world will end this year based on a misinterpretation of the Mayan calendar, some researchers think a 40-year-old computer program that predicts a collapse of socioeconomic order and massive drop in human population in this century may be on target

By Madhusree Mukerjee ?| May 23, 2012

Image: flickr/Alexey Kudenko

Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...

Read More??

Remember how Wile E. Coyote, in his obsessive pursuit of the Road Runner, would fall off a cliff? The hapless predator ran straight out off the edge, stopped in midair as only an animated character could, looked beneath him in an eye-popping moment of truth, and plummeted straight down into a puff of dust. Splat! Four decades ago, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer model called World3 warned of such a possible course for human civilization in the 21st century. In Limits to Growth, a bitterly disputed 1972 book that explicated these findings, researchers argued that the global industrial system has so much inertia that it cannot readily correct course in response to signals of planetary stress. But unless economic growth skidded to a halt before reaching the edge, they warned, society was headed for overshoot?and a splat that could kill billions.

Don't look now but we are running in midair, a new book asserts. In 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years (Chelsea Green Publishing), Jorgen Randers of the BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo, and one of the original World3 modelers, argues that the second half of the 21st century will bring us near apocalypse in the form of severe global warming. Dennis Meadows, professor emeritus of systems policy at the University of New Hampshire who headed the original M.I.T. team and revisited World3 in 1994 and 2004, has an even darker view. The 1970s program had yielded a variety of scenarios, in some of which humanity manages to control production and population to live within planetary limits (described as Limits to Growth). Meadows contends that the model's sustainable pathways are no longer within reach because humanity has failed to act accordingly.

Instead, the latest global data are tracking one of the most alarming scenarios, in which these variables increase steadily to reach a peak and then suddenly drop in a process called collapse. In fact, "I see collapse happening already," he says. "Food per capita is going down, energy is becoming more scarce, groundwater is being depleted." Most worrisome, Randers notes, greenhouse gases are being emitted twice as fast as oceans and forests can absorb them. Whereas in 1972 humans were using 85 percent of the regenerative capacity of the biosphere to support economic activities such as growing food, producing goods and assimilating pollutants, the figure is now at 150 percent?and growing.

Randers's ideas most closely resemble a World3 scenario in which energy efficiency and renewable energy stave off the worst effects of climate change until after 2050. For the coming few decades, Randers predicts, life on Earth will carry on more or less as before. Wealthy economies will continue to grow, albeit more slowly as investment will need to be diverted to deal with resource constraints and environmental problems, which thereby will leave less capital for creating goods for consumption. Food production will improve: increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will cause plants to grow faster, and warming will open up new areas such as Siberia to cultivation. Population will increase, albeit slowly, to a maximum of about eight billion near 2040. Eventually, however, floods and desertification will start reducing farmland and therefore the availability of grain. Despite humanity's efforts to ameliorate climate change, Randers predicts that its effects will become devastating sometime after mid-century, when global warming will reinforce itself by, for instance, igniting fires that turn forests into net emitters rather than absorbers of carbon. "Very likely, we will have war long before we get there," Randers adds grimly. He expects that mass migration from lands rendered unlivable will lead to localized armed conflicts.

Graham Turner of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization fears that collapse could come even earlier, but due to peak oil rather than climate change. After comparing the various scenarios generated by World3 against recent data on population, industrial output and other variables, Turner and, separately, the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessmeng Agency, conclude that the global system is closely following a business-as-usual output curve. In this model run the economy continues to grow as expected until about 2015, but then falters because nonrenewable resources such as oil become ever more expensive to extract. "Not that we're running out of any of these resources," Turner explains. "It's that as you try to get to unconventional sources such as under deep oceans, it takes a lot more energy to extract each unit of energy." To keep up oil supply, the model predicts that society will divert investment from agriculture, causing a drop in food production. In this scenario, population peaks around 2030 at between seven and eight billion and then decreases sharply, evening out at about four billion in 2100.

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Living Legends

Bigfoot sightings go back for several decades at least, but it would be very surprising if a large humanoid had managed to live mostly undetected in North America. Bigfoot believers can take some encouragement from the fact that the world?s most famous former cryptid is a nonhuman primate. English sailor Andrew Battell, who was held captive by the Portuguese in West Africa around 1600, claimed to have seen a monster on the Dark Continent: ?The Pongo is in all proportions like a man; for he is more like a giant in stature than a man ... They cannot speak, and have no more understanding than a beast.? (Descriptions of hairy, manlike creatures were scattered throughout early Western literature as well.) In all likelihood, Battell was describing the gorilla, although the animal would remain just a rumor to Western scientists until an American missionary brought a gorilla skull to an anatomist in the mid-19th century. Perhaps our reluctance to accept the existence of near-human creatures comes from some revulsion at their appearance. As evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins notes, ?where other animals such as cats or deer could be seen as beautiful in their own way, gorillas and other apes, precisely because of their similarity to ourselves, seemed like caricatures, distortions, grotesque.?

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Exactly What The Specialists Ought To Say About Joint disease

In case you are an joint disease victim, you know how unpleasant and annoying it will make your daily life. Many individuals sense helpless from the deal with of joint inflammation-related soreness and inflammation, but there are lots of steps you can take to adopt back again your way of life.

Doing exercises moderately can an joint disease patient. As well as the health and fitness benefits you get from exercise, additionally, it may improve overall flexibility of joints minimizing flare ups. Design and style your fitness program so that it operates close to your rheumatoid arthritis symptoms and tightness and doesn?t unnecessarily anxiety your impacted joint parts.

Record your trouble within a log. Keeping a record of a number of activities and when and where you sense discomfort, can assist you understand developments and, consequently, what activates the joint disease. Be sure you document details including place and level of pain along with food products which you take in also.

Weight reduction can relieve the symptoms of joint disease. Rheumatoid arthritis soreness and inflammation are a whole lot worse for many who hold extra pounds. Excess irritation might be the effect of a few extra pounds, because of the added pressure that joint parts encounter. Make sure you lose fat to lower both level and power of your flare ups.

Don?t just handle the anguish presuming you may have joint disease. Get yourself a specialist prognosis. Treating your self for joint inflammation when you don?t actually have it is only a spend of time and money.

A confident feeling will considerably affect your physical health. If you concentrate your mind on the soreness, the pain will truly feel much more extreme even if your degree of swelling is the same. You must center on positive actions and relaxing concepts as an alternative to pain.

People who stick to veggie diets seem to have fewer difficulties with arthritis. You do not have to forgo beef fully but you should continue to attempt to consist of a lot more plants in what you eat. Your joints will be enhanced with vitamin antioxidants attained through legumes and legumes. Make these kinds of beneficial veggies component of balanced and healthy diet.

Arthritis can be an unbearable condition, causing you to be sensation neglected and powerless. There are several groups which you can become a member of to foster assistance. Both in the real world or online, you will discover assist organizations in order to connect with many other sufferers who understand what you?re undergoing. You can change methods and helpful easy methods to manage the effects of joint disease.

Get useful equipment. The best tools can assist you carry out careers with joint inflammation. Gadgets including rails to the bathroom, as well as simple to open jars make managing rheumatoid arthritis much easier, enabling you to maintain much more of your self-reliance. These power tools will help you to conduct day to day jobs easily.

Try to find opportunities to take a break in the daytime. Being energetic for extented amounts of time can cause your rheumatoid arthritis to have an impact on you. You may want to consider splits somewhere between savoring your day-to-day routines.

Walk as soon as you try to eat meal. Going for a standard go walking soon after dinner can assist you feel good and provide much more electricity throughout your night. Consider strolling with another person within your loved ones or with a close friend. This may cause the go walking more pleasurable, and you?ll acquire some great dialogue in too.

When designing your software for joint inflammation treatment method, it is vital you have an energetic strategy. There are millions of rheumatoid arthritis affected individuals, and gentleman different varieties of joint disease, meaning that no two remedies will probably be alike. You should have a mental catalog in the offered treatments and check out them until finally you discover a combination of therapies that be right for you.

Are you fed up with becoming minimal through your joint inflammation? When you?re furnished with the proper information, you are able to win the fight to get a pain-free of charge daily life. Recover the lifespan you experienced well before rheumatoid arthritis by exercising the recommendation given right here.Easy Steps On How To Approach Arthritis

The amount of medical professionals have you consulted regarding your rheumatoid arthritis, and just how a variety of answers do you have received? Cease strenuous on your own and focus on techniques that actually work. Use this write-up to help you on your own find out how to deal with arthritis far better through coping components.

When you have a kid suffering with juvenile arthritis, you need to have a consistent plan for treatment of physical exercise and physical rehabilitation along with pain alleviation medications. Teenagers with rheumatoid arthritis have to keep lively to be able to preserve overall flexibility even so, they should also take care to shield their joint parts from injury and soreness.

You should think of weight loss and keeping fit as a have to in your lifetime. Weight problems can exacerbate your joint disease. You may lessen the soreness you have simply be decreasing some pounds. You will be happily surprised with the comfort you could find simply by burning off some weight.

Some rheumatoid arthritis patients get development using fish-oil. Medical research has shown that omega-3 fatty acid, containing omega-3 fatty acids, can help to minimize the inflammation and ache in your important joints. Omega-3 fatty acid is offered at wellness food items market segments and a lot of food markets.

Swap among hot and cold remedies. When your joint parts have been above-taxed, using cool and very hot provides alternately can ease ache and decrease puffiness. Don?t overdo these treatment options, even though, since you can get much more concerns in the future. Try out at most 2 times each day.

You may aid combat arthritis by to listening to your body. Joint disease influences every person in a different way, and only you know how your rheumatoid arthritis is personally affecting you. You have to heed your systems signs. For example, if you have a flare-up, a very important thing to accomplish is always to sleep until it passes by.

Lots of people stop looking for treatments, and just quit. There are several forms of joint inflammation, and the things that work first man or woman might not work for another. Be diligent while keeping attempting to find new treatment options. Ultimately, you will come across one or numerous that are right for you.

Should you be building a residence and you have arthritis, make required adjustments. Sit down and talk to your tradesman to generate a listing. Finishing little adjustments such as these can simplicity your pain and make life easier for you.

It could be priceless to add a process of support. Managing rheumatoid arthritis may be demanding and hard to handle. Once you interact your feelings and speak about what you are actually going through with people that you trust, you can get all-important assistance and luxury that will help you deal greater. You can also look online to find support teams with compassionate those who will love speaking with you.

Engage with your doctor to go about when a diet plan rich in contra ?inflamation related foods is needed relieve your signs and symptoms. Many people have reported that this sort of diet program can help minimize soreness and alleviate some soreness related to joint inflammation. These diets can be so helpful in relieving ache that lots of arthritis victims have discovered that they may substantially minimize their reliance upon pain medications.

Speak to a physical therapist about what sort of exercise will be secure and valuable in helping ease the signs and symptoms linked to joint inflammation. Spending some time to learn proper workouts exclusively for your requirements, as well as appropriate warm up and funky down methods, will assist you to exercise to your max abilities with out resulting in trauma. Doing exercises can help you get more powerful making your joints much more versatile.

Always maintain a close eyes for brand new arthritis treatment options. Physicians are usually unwilling to consider using a new treatment over an individual unless of course what they?re previously carrying out is totally faltering. If you find that one thing will not be helping you, tell your physician and see if he can change your treatment.

When 1 requires steps like individuals advised over, it is actually really probable to deal with arthritis but still make everything 1 wants to do. Do your greatest to help keep joint disease from impacting your physical and emotional well being. There are many different strategies to combat this problem and relieve the discomfort. Whenever you keep your go up, you can get over this.

If for any reason you fancy added details about does acupuncture work for arthritis see Ronda U. Kiphart?s site there?s plenty of information not detailed in this article, visit Author?s site to uncover supplementary information.

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How To Find The Cheapest Birmingham Airport Car Rentals Online

Finding a car to rent to drive to the airport is a very common thing to do and thousands of people do it all over the globe each and every day. There are so many car rental companies out there which allows people to have a lot of choice when it comes to choosing a nice car for a great price. However with this vast selection available to us it can get quite overwhelming going through all the different companies in papers and through phone books, getting quotes and prices from each of them trying to work out which is cheapest and which offers the nicest cars, it really can get very strenuous. Many people thought the pressure would be taken off and that it would be easier to look online for the cheapest yet highest value Birmingham airport car hire, but they were mistaken as online there are hundreds of car rental websites half of which aren't even to do with airport car hire services.

So what's the best way to search for Birmingham airport car hire? How can you find the best deals available out there for Birmingham airport car hire? The best answer is the internet as there are some websites that don't actually sell car rentals, they are comparison sites.

Comparison websites have become very popular in recent years as they make life much easier when it comes to searching for services and products to buy. You've seen the countless car insurance advertisements on the TV and the insurance comparison adverts on TV, there are so many services out there that we really do need these comparison websites because if we tried to do it without their help, we'd take triple the time to get things done, if not longer.

So you must find a reputable, helpful and professional airport car rentals comparison site that will narrow down your searches and only present relevant answers and solutions for your budget, destination and car needs or wants fro Birmingham airport car hire. This would make life much easier for you as you won't have to go searching through page after page of car rental websites on the net, which aren't even related to your destination or needs for car rental. You need a car to travel to the airport in, not one to last you a few weeks. If you type into a search engine Birmingham airport car hire service, you will be presented with hundreds if not thousands of services that are unrelated to what you need them for. If you try to narrow it down by searching for airport car rental services, you will still be presented with too many results to search through, it will give you a headache.

Finding a reputable, helpful and professional airport car rental comparison website is all you need to do. One Birmingham airport car hire company that runs a comparison website which allows you to simply enter in the relevant information for your needs is Airport Car Rentals.co.uk. airport car rentals.co.uk is a one-stop online travel site that seeks to equip you with all the tools you will need to research and book you next car hire. Airport car rentals for the lowest rates and the best deals on airport car rentals worldwide. Select from over 50 top car rental companies offering you the best deal ...

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Aiming For The Google Maps Behemoth, UpNext Releases Vector Mapping iPhone App

UpNext, an angel funded New York start-up, makes beautiful maps. Using a number of clever views, the team has built a wildly unique way to navigate your city and, more important, see buildings, points of interest, and even public transit in real time. The company, Raj Advani, Vik Advani, Robin Har, and Danny Moon, have been working in mapping for four years and recently released an iPad version of the app. "UpNext is dynamic, Google Maps is static," said Moon. "Google Maps is a navigation-centric map. Its cartography geared toward navigating road networks, relegating other map details to the background."

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Nintendo to pull the plug on 3D TV service in Japan

If you were still holding out for those 3D-erific videos of cute dogs and sumo wrestlers for your American 3DS via Nintendo's "Itsu no Ma ni Terebi" service, bad news just got badder. In short, it's not coming. Ever. In fact, worse than that, the service will take its last look at the rising sun on the 20th of June, as Nintendo has announced that it's shuttering the service one day short of a year since it launched. There is mention of occasional content coming to both 2D and 3D devices via the Nintendo Video service, but if we didn't know better, we'd suggest this is Kyoto's way of saying "I'll call you".

Nintendo to pull the plug on 3D TV service in Japan originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 May 2012 10:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Virginia profile rises in presidential contest

President Barack Obama speaks at a celebration of Cinco de Mayo in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Thursday, May 3, 2012. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Barack Obama speaks at a celebration of Cinco de Mayo in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Thursday, May 3, 2012. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, greets supporters during a campaign stop in Portsmouth, Va., on Thursday, May 3, 2012. (AP Photo/Virginian-Pilot,Ross Taylor)

President Barack Obama waves as he leaves a celebration of Cinco de Mayo in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Thursday, May 3, 2012. Speaking at the reception, Obama blamed the failure of the Dream Act on a few Republicans in Congress. Cinco de Mayo celebrations at the White House have become annual features under recent presidents. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, left, is introduced by Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., at a campaign stop in Portsmouth, Va., Thursday, May 3, 2012. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, center, and Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., left, listen as Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell speaks at a campaign stop in Portsmouth, Va., Thursday, May 3, 2012. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

PORTSMOUTH, Va. (AP) ? Move over Ohio and Florida. Virginia is becoming the hottest new battleground in this year's race for the White House.

Shifting demographics have President Barack Obama fighting for another win in this Southern state four years after he became the first Democratic presidential nominee to carry Virginia in more than four decades. Republican rival Mitt Romney is banking on buyers' remorse as he works to prove that Obama's unlikely 2008 victory was a fluke.

Six months before Election Day, both sides concede that Virginia is truly up for grabs. And the outcome here could have dramatic consequences ? for Romney especially.

"This may well be the state that decides who the next president is," Romney told supporters Thursday in coastal Portsmouth, Va. "You're going to hear it all, right here in Virginia."

Already, Romney allies and Obama's campaign are pouring money into television ads. And, by week's end, each candidate will have visited the state.

Romney spent two days campaigning here this week, his first Virginia trip since becoming his party's presumptive presidential nominee. Obama will be in the state on Friday and Saturday ?what his aides are calling his first formal day of campaigning ? before traveling to Ohio.

Four years ago, Obama executed a winning strategy by registering and turning out scores of minorities and young voters who long had sat on the political sidelines.

This year, Virginia ? perhaps more so than any other state ? will test whether he can cobble together a similar winning coalition amidst shifting demographics and despite a challenging economic environment.

Virginia has swung dramatically right in the years since the Democratic president took office ? so much so, that Romney aides suggest that the state has become a linchpin in their national path to victory.

"It's an important key in the overall map," Romney's political director, Rich Beeson, said.

Republican insiders go further, saying that it's hard to see Romney reaching the 270 electoral votes needed without the 13 that Virginia provides.

Indeed, an Obama win here could prove devastating for Romney, whose team understands the challenge of unseating a sitting president who has tremendous financial and organizational advantages. Already, Obama has established a comprehensive ground game in Virginia, with more than 13 offices spread across the state. Romney, who spent most of the year consumed by a bitter and expensive Republican primary, has yet to open one.

Beeson said Thursday that the Romney campaign would be "up and running" in Virginia in the "next week or two."

The Obama campaign argues that the stakes are higher here for Romney.

"We can win without Virginia, but we don't think we need to," said Obama campaign manager Jim Messina. "The truth is we have several pathways to get to 270 electoral votes."

Virginia's prominent role in the 2012 presidential election follows a decade of political and demographic changes that make this fall's outcome difficult to predict.

Although Democrats had not aggressively competed in a Virginia presidential contest for a generation, Obama carried the state by 6 percentage points over Republican John McCain in 2008, based on an outpouring of the state's high African American vote and heavy turnout in the metropolitan Washington area. Before Obama, no Democrat had won Virginia since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

Republican George W. Bush had carried it easily, by 8 percentage points, in 2000 and 2004.

"Over the last 10 years, there has been a progression. It has gone from solidly red to trending blue to settling right in the middle. It's about the most-purple shade of purple you can find," said Democratic strategist Mo Elleithee.

Virginia has a high black-voter base. But the state is also home to a growing number of younger, well-educated voters flocking to northern Virginia, the region where Obama is credited with winning the state ? and that makes it competitive again in 2012.

Obama carried the metropolitan Washington area of northern Virginia by 260,000 votes, about the same margin as he carried the entire state. Obama is hoping again to turn out big numbers in burgeoning suburbs such as Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties, to offset the rising GOP tide elsewhere, where Romney is hoping he will prevail.

The political battle has already begun on the state's airwaves.

While Romney has yet to buy any ads directly, the pro-Romney group, Restore Our Future, has spent $354,000 in Virginia on a television advertising campaign that began running statewide Thursday. The ad highlights Romney's role in helping to find his business partner's lost daughter.

The Obama campaign spent $270,000 for a new ad ? its third so far in Virginia ? that began running statewide this week and accuses Romney of sending jobs overseas during his business career, reminding voters that the former Massachusetts governor had a Swiss bank account.

Virginia-based Republican strategist Chris LaCivita suggests that Obama is likely worried about his chances in Virginia if he's already using attack ads. But like others here, he says it's too early to make any predictions.

"To assume Virginia is going to go Republican is a dangerous thing to do," he said.

Women's issues, especially the recent debate over birth-control coverage by health insurance, play a disproportionate role in the northern part of the state, with its bustling suburbs. The rural economy, social issues and military policy are a problem for Obama in the more traditionally conservative parts of Virginia, such as the southeast, in places like Hampton Roads, where Romney campaigned this week.

Obama's team says it expects disproportionate turnout among the state's black voters. However, neither campaign is expecting the same record turnout that helped elect Obama the nation's first African American president.

Romney is banking on Virginia's recent Republican momentum to continue.

Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell, who has endorsed Romney, won election in 2009. The following year, Virginia Republicans made gains in the U.S. House, and last year in the state legislature.

Romney aides are bracing for resistance in crucial northern Virginia to the candidate's proposed 10-percent cut in the federal workforce. Virginia, and especially northern Virginia, is home to the nation's highest concentration of federal workers.

Romney senior adviser Ed Gillespie, a former Virginia GOP chairman, joined Romney Thursday as he campaigned in Portsmouth, a port town with a significant industrial base and a large military presence. "This is going to be a hard-fought state," Gillespie said, dismissing polls that show Obama slightly ahead of his Republican challenger.

New polling, however, suggests that Obama is ahead of Romney. The Washington Post released results Thursday giving Obama a 7-point lead, 51 percent to 44 percent, among registered voters.

The winner in Virginia, however, could win a much larger prize.

"If Obama wins Virginia, I think he wins the election," said Elleithee, the Democratic strategist.

___

Associated Press writer Thomas Beaumont contributed to this report.

Associated Press

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Got Your Number: Skype Investigates IP Discovery Flaw

Skype is investigating a tool published recently on Pastebin that captures the last-known IP address of the VoIP service's users. "This is an ongoing, industry-wide issue faced by all peer-to-peer software companies," said Adrian Asher, Skype's director of product security. "We are committed to the safety and security of our customers and we are taking measures to help protect them."

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How wind farms could cause local (but not global) warming

The atmospheric turbulence caused by large wind farms could cause local temperature increases, a new study indicates.?

Large wind farms might have a warming effect on the local climate, research in the United States showed on Sunday, casting a shadow over the long-term sustainability of wind power.

Skip to next paragraph

Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels contribute to global warming, which could lead to the melting of glaciers, sea level rise, ocean acidification, crop failure and other devastating effects, scientists say.

In a move to cut such emissions, many nations are moving towards cleaner energy sources such as wind power.

The world's wind farms last year had the capacity to produce 238 gigawatt of electricity at any one time. That was a 21 percent rise on 2010 and capacity is expected to reach nearly 500 gigawatt by the end of 2016 as more, and bigger, farms spring up, according to the Global Wind Energy Council.

Researchers at the State University of New York at Albany analysed the satellite data of areas around large wind farms in Texas, where four of the world's largest farms are located, over the period 2003 to 2011.

The results, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, showed a warming trend of up to 0.72 degrees Celsius per decade in areas over the farms, compared with nearby regions without the farms.

"We attribute this warming primarily to wind farms," the study said. The temperature change could be due to the effects of the energy expelled by farms and the movement and turbulence generated by turbine rotors, it said.

"These changes, if spatially large enough, may have noticeable impacts on local to regional weather and climate," the authors said.

More research needed

But the researchers said more studies were needed, at different locations and for longer periods, before any firm conclusions could be drawn.

Scientists say the world's average temperature has warmed by about 0.8 degrees Celsius since 1900, and nearly 0.2 degrees per decade since 1979. Efforts to cut carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions are not seen as sufficient to stop the planet heating up beyond 2 degrees C this century, a threshold scientists say risks an unstable climate in which weather extremes are common.

The Texas study found the temperature around wind farms rose more at night, compared with nearby regions. This was possibly because while the earth usually cools after the sun sets, bringing the air temperature down, the turbulence produced by the farms kept the ground in their area warm.

Previous research in 2010 by other U.S. scientists found wind farms could make the nights warmer and days cooler in their immediate vicinity, but those effects could be minimised by changing turbines' rotor design or by building the farms in areas with high natural turbulence.

That research was based on evidence from two meteorological towers over a six-week period.

Although the warming effect shown in that study and the latest research is local, and small compared to overall land surface temperature change, the findings could lead to more in-depth studies.

The authors of the study released on Sunday said: "Given the present installed (wind farm) capacity and the projected installation across the world, this study draws attention to an important issue that requires further investigation."

"We need to better understand the system with observations and better describe and model the complex processes involved to predict how wind farms may affect future weather and climate."

Commenting on the study, Steven Sherwood, co-director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Australia, said:

"Daytime temperatures do not appear to be affected. This makes sense, since at night the ground becomes much cooler than the air just a few hundred metres above the surface. The wind farms generate gentle turbulence near the ground that causes these to mix together, thus the ground doesn't get quite as cool."

?(Edited by Pravin Char)

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