$50,000, six-foot air conditioner obeys voice commands

7 hrs.

Devin Coldewey , NBC News

Stay cool this summer and impress your friends (and creditors) at the same time with this fabulously expensive and enormous air conditioning unit from LG. It looks like a cross between a Xbox 360 and a Dalek, and it costs tens of thousands of dollars.

LG's?Whisen series of AC units, announced Wednesday, is unquestionably the top of the line. You can control it by voice from up to 16 feet?away, and you won't even have to yell, since it's low-power and quiet. Or use your smartphone to check its status and turn it on while you drive home.

It's equipped with an infrared sensor that counts the number of people in the room and adjusts the fans, or simply tuns on or off when someone enters. And there's a normal camera as well, which you can access remotely to check on the cats or watch for burglars ? that is, if neither is?scared off by the towering robot in the living room.

Of course, it cools the air as well, and LG claims it does so faster than any other unit in its class by intelligently blowing the?coldest air in the directions that need it. And it does this with 72 percent less power than competing products, according to them.

The catch? Pricing starts at about $23,000 and runs all the way up to $50,000 for the fully-equipped "Champion style" model. For that price, you could hire someone?full time?to follow you around and fan you with banana leaves.

Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBCNews Digital. His personal website is?coldewey.cc.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/gadgetbox/50-000-six-foot-air-conditioner-obeys-voice-commands-1C7802818

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Obama lauds House vote on 'fiscal cliff'

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden makes a statement regarding the passage of the fiscal cliff bill in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden makes a statement regarding the passage of the fiscal cliff bill in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama says an effort to change the nation's tax code that is too skewed toward the wealthy has been achieved with the "fiscal cliff" deal approved in Congress.

The president said in an appearance late Tuesday in the White House that the House vote to prevent a mix of tax increases and spending cuts avoids a problem that could have sent the economy back into recession.

Obama says the deficit is "still too high" and warns that he will not negotiate with Congress over another increase in the nation's debt ceiling.

The House approved Senate-backed legislation preventing middle-class tax increases and spending cuts that technically took effect with the new year.

It represented a triumph for Obama after he campaigned for re-election on higher taxes on the wealthy.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-01-01-Fiscal%20Cliff-Obama/id-5d98e4f6d97a45cbab9daba0b262b747

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Property Insurance Rates Rise For 2013 ? CBS Tampa

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) ? The one thing a New Year always brings in Florida is higher property insurances rates and 2013 will be no different.

Although Florida escaped a major hurricane for a seventh straight year in 2012, property insurance costs continue to soar.

Data from the New York-based Insurance Information Institute shows homeowners? claims have increased an average of more than 17 percent annually over the past decade? more than double the number filed in 2003. And virtually all of these in recent years have been claims on non-catastrophic events.

Additional litigation and an increase in the number of public adjusters also factor into the rising number of insurance claims by home and business owners. Rate requests have also received more favorable action from state regulators. When all added up, consumers pay more.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

Source: http://tampa.cbslocal.com/2013/01/01/property-insurance-rates-rise-for-2013/

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Cliff Deal Would Extend Tax Cuts For Households Up to $450,000

During an oddly jokey statement at the White House as the fiscal deadline bore down Monday afternoon, President Obama said, "I'm going to be president for the next four years. I?hope." He was warning Republicans that, yes, they'd have to deal with him for a while. But it was, to be sure, a strange moment. Could he actually have been joking about assassination? About impeachment? The?apocalypse? Or has everyone just had enough of these negotiations??

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cliff-deal-extend-tax-cuts-households-450-000-143257075--politics.html

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Musicplayr: Here's Your New Year's Eve Playlist

You've got your 2013 novelty glasses, your case of champagne, and now all you need is a playlist. Musicplayr's got your back. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/2wnge2yXucU/musicplayr-heres-your-new-years-eve-playlist

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Asian nations giving enthusiastic welcome to 2013

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) ? Fiscal cliff? Recession? Not in Asia, where the first countries to see 2013 dawn will enthusiastically welcome the new year.

Increasingly democratic Myanmar will have a public countdown for the first time. Jakarta plans a huge street party befitting Indonesia's powering economy.

In Sydney, eager revelers camped over Sunday night on the shores of the harbor to get the best vantage points as some 1.5 million are expected to see the fireworks show centered on the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

In Hong Kong, this year's 12.5 million Hong Kong dollar ($1.6 million) fireworks display was being billed by organizers as the biggest ever in the southern Chinese city. Police expect as many as 100,000 people to watch, local news reports said.

The buoyant economies of the Asia-Pacific are prepared to party with renewed optimism despite the so-called fiscal cliff threatening to reverberate globally from the United States and the tattered economy of Europe.

In a field in Myanmar's largest city, Yangon, workers early Monday were testing a giant digital countdown screen with the backdrop of the revered Shwedagon pagoda.

Arranged by local Forever Media group and Index Creative Village, a Thai major event organizer, the celebration will be the first public New Year countdown in Myanmar, a country ruled for almost five decades by military regimes that discouraged or banned big public gatherings.

"We are planning this public new year event because we want residents of Yangon to enjoy the public countdown like in other countries," said Win Thura Hlaing, managing director of Forever Blossom company, a subsidiary of Forever Media.

With live music performances by singers and celebrities, colorful light beams, spotlights, food stalls, fireworks and other events at the venue, the countdown is expected to draw 50,000 people, Win Thura Hlaing said.

Jakarta's street party will center on a 7-kilometer (4-mile) main thoroughfare closed to all traffic from nightfall until after midnight. Workers were erecting 16 large stages along the normally car-clogged, 8-lane highway through the heart of the city. Indonesia's booming economy is a rare bright spot amid global gloom and bringing prosperity ? or the hope of it ? to Indonesians.

Spirits in the capital have been further raised by the election of a new, populist governor, who is pledging action in tackling the city's massive infrastructure problems.

Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore said about 1.5 million spectators were expected to line the harbor to watch the 6.6 million Australian dollar ($6.9 million) fireworks display, while another 2 million Australians among a population of 22 million would watch it on television.

"This is really putting Australia on the map in terms of welcoming people to the new year," Moore told reporters at the harbor before the event.

Thousands lined the harbor shore in festive crowds under a blue summer sky by late afternoon, their number undiminished by Australian government warnings that the Washington deadlock on the U.S. debt crisis was partly to blame for a slowing Australian economy.

Australian pop singer Kylie Minogue is host and creative ambassador for Sydney's event.

___

Associated Press writers Chris Brummitt in Jakarta and Kelvin Chan in Hong Kong contributed to this report

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/asian-nations-giving-enthusiastic-welcome-2013-061809017.html

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Did Human Ancestors "Walk" Up Trees? [Video]

Twa man in Uganda "walking" up a tree to forage; image courtesy of Nathaniel Dominy

A new study suggests that we might be thinking about tree climbing in our recent ancestors all wrong.

The traditional idea that our ancestors descended from the trees and gradually?and exclusively?began walking upright might be a gross over simplification. Fossil evidence from early hominins suggests that adaptations for tree climbing, such as long arms and fingers, coexisted with adaptations for upright walking, such as an arched foot and humanlike hips. Eventually, these upper-body climbing adaptations vanished and we became the adept striders that we are today. But just because our ancestors seemed to be adapting to bipedal walking, does that mean they left behind a path into the trees?

Some researchers have tried to answer this question not by looking at fossils but rather by looking at modern human hunter-gatherers. Indigenous groups often climb trees to gather food without relying on chimp-like branch-climbing or supportive equipment. And though they?re not as good at climbing as chimpanzees, neither are they all that much worse?deaths from falls are only marginally higher (6.6 percent compared to 4 percent) in some studies of frequent tree climbers.

New research on hunter-gatherer groups in Uganda and the Philippines, conducted by a team based at Dartmouth, found that these people are using their two feet to ascend straight up a small tree?s trunk. These findings suggest that other earlier hominins that were adapted for upright walking might also have used their upright anatomy to ascend into the trees?perhaps much more often that we would have previously expected.

The researchers, led by Vivek Venkataraman, a graduate student at Dartmouth, studied two Ugandan groups?the Twa, who are hunter-gatherers, and the nearby Bakiga, who are farmers?and two Philippine groups?the Agta, who are hunter-gatherers, and the Manobo, who are farmers. Both groups of hunter-gatherers consume locally collected honey as an important part of their diets. Both groups climb trees to gather the honey, and many individuals start climbing at a young age. To ascend the trees, the climbers wrap their arms around the tree trunk at head-level, then, placing one foot in front of the other, the climbers advance upward to the honey source; in a sense, they ?walk? up trees.

This tree-based foraging appears to alters these individuals? feet, ankles and legs to be much more adept at this form of locomotion. Using ultrasound imaging, the researchers found that the muscle fibers of the people who regularly climbed trees were drastically different than the fibers of those who did not. Thanks to longer calf muscle fibers, climbers could flex their ankles more than 45 degrees toward their shins?much farther forward than most non-climbing humans can, and closer to that of a chimpanzee foot flexion. If individuals began climbing trees as children, it would give them years to develop this soft-tissue trait.

The skeletal features of the climbers? feet looked no different from a foot from someone that has spent their life walking the plains?or the sidewalks of New York City (and in fact, people who spend decades wearing high heels experience a shortening of the calf muscle fibers).

This functional, soft-tissue shift suggests that upright-walking human ancestors, such as Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis), may have been quite capable of ascending into the trees in this fashion. And she would have had plenty of incentive to do so, the researchers noted, including foraging, escape and perhaps even just finding a safe place to rest. The findings were published online December 31 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ?Au. afarensis might be expected to climb on tree trunks and near the central core of trees, rather than within a fine-branch niche,? as other extant primates do today, the researchers noted.

?Our findings challenge the persistent arboreal-terrestrial dichotomy that has informed behavioral reconstructions of fossil hominins,? the researchers wrote. The finds, they suggested, also ?highlight the value of using modern humans as models for inferring the limits of hominin arboreality.?

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=4e31270b955b26074b159b5606529bfb

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